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This week, in a burst of stunning hypocrisy, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that imposes sanctions on Iran for human rights abuses and targets eight Iranian government and military officials who are blamed for the torture, abuse and murder of citizens who protested Iran’s 2009 presidential election.

“The United States is strongly committed to the promotion of human rights around the world, including in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the White House said in an accompanying news release. “As the President noted in his recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, human rights are a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity for the United States.”

A State Department fact sheet added, “protesters [in Iran] were detained without formal charges brought against them and during this detention detainees were subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, and a denial of due process rights at the hands of intelligence officers under the direction of [Iran’s then-Minister of Military Intelligence] Qolam Mohseni-Ejei.

“In addition, political figures were coerced into making false confessions under unbearable interrogations, which included torture, abuse, blackmail, and the threatening of family members,” the State Department said.

Yet, President Obama has taken no action against U.S. officials who under the direction of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld imprisoned without charge “war on terror” detainees at secret black sites and at Guantanamo Bay.

These prisoners also were subjected to beatings, solitary confinement and a denial of due process. They, too, were coerced into making false confessions under unbearable interrogations, which included torture, abuse, blackmail, and the threatening of family members.

President Obama has excused his failure to exact any accountability on complicit U.S. officials by saying that he preferred “to look forward, not backwards.” It is apparently easier to look backwards in Iran and demand accountability than it is in Washington.

Even as the Obama administration insists on punishing alleged Iranian abusers, it continues to use the state secret privilege and other legal maneuvers to derail civil lawsuits that seek some justice against U.S. officials responsible for the abuse and deaths of detainees in American custody.

As Obama appointees were congratulating themselves for going after those eight Iranians, a U.S. District Court Judge in Washington, DC, was dismissing a lawsuit filed against Rumsfeld and two dozen other U.S. officials by the families of two Guantanamo detainees who, along with another prisoner, committed suicide at the detention center in 2006, , according to the government’s official account.

Judge Ellen Huevelle noted in her opinion that there was compelling evidence the detainees were murdered. But last year the Obama administration said in a legal brief that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 stripped the courts of jurisdiction to hear lawsuits that challenged the “detention, transfer, treatment or conditions of confinement” of “enemy combatants.”

Moreover, in court papers filed in June 2009, the Obama administration said, “Judicial intrusion into this politically sensitive area by creating a damages remedy for detainees could subvert these military and diplomatic efforts and lead to ’embarrassment of our government abroad.'”

Besides, the Obama administration said, just as torture memo author John Yoo is entitled to absolute immunity, Defense Department officials like Rumsfeld are entitled to “qualified immunity” because the “Fifth and Eighth Amendments do not extend to Guantánamo Bay detainees.” Judge Huevelle ultimately agreed to dismiss the case.

Three weeks ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Obama administration and blocked another lawsuit, this one filed against Jeppesen DataPlan, a subsidiary of Boeing, that was accused of knowingly flying people kidnapped by the CIA to secret overseas prisons where they were tortured.

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, argued that state secrets would be at risk if the case were allowed to move forward.

In a 6-5 decision, the appeals court judges said the lawsuit presented “a painful conflict between human rights and national security” and agreed with Obama’s Justice Department attorneys that the latter trumped the former.

Essentially, the decision means that victims of the Bush administration’s torture program are not entitled to have their day in court if the government believes sensitive national security information would be disclosed.

Ben Wizner, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who argued the case on behalf of the five plaintiffs, said, if the “decision is allowed to stand, the United States will have closed its courtroom doors to torture victims while providing complete immunity to their torturers.”

Obama’s aggressive efforts to protect his predecessor’s crimes are not limited to the United States.

Last year, the Obama administration told British officials that intelligence sharing between the U.S. and the UK could be halted if seven redacted paragraphs contained in secret U.S. documents relating to the torture of Binyam Mohamed, one of the victims named in Jeppesen lawsuit, were made public by a British High Court.

According to legal papers filed by the ACLU, Mohamed was beaten so severely on numerous occasions that he routinely lost consciousness and during one gruesome torture session “a scalpel was used to make incisions all over his body, including his penis, after which a hot stinging liquid was poured into his open wounds.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Obama said that while he has been unable to close Guantanamo as promised, he “has been able to ban torture” since being sworn into office.

But Obama’s use of the word “torture” to describe what had taken place during George W. Bush’s tenure obligates him under the Convention Against Torture to conduct a full investigation and to prosecute the offenders.

The Convention declares that: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Moreover, the Convention says individuals who resort to torture cannot defend their actions by saying they were acting on orders from superiors and it mandates that torturers be prosecuted wherever they are found.

According to that provision, “each state party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”

However, while Obama and his team give the Bush administration a pass on torture, different standards are applied to officials from “enemy” states.

During a news conference last Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the eight Iranian officials, saying that under their “watch or under their command, Iranian citizens have been arbitrarily arrested, beaten, tortured, raped, blackmailed, and killed.

“Yet the Iranian Government has ignored repeated calls from the international community to end these abuses, to hold to account those responsible and respect the rights and fundamental freedoms of its citizens.”

The hypocrisy has passed virtually unnoticed in the mainstream U.S. news media. Yet, it’s hard to take the Obama administration’s moralizing seriously when they have taken pass on evidence of American abuses, such as this:

Dilawar was chained by his wrists to the ceiling of his cell for four days and brutally beaten by Army interrogators on his legs for hours on end to the point where he could no longer bend them. He died on Dec. 10, 2002.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, an Air Force medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Dilawar, said Dilawar’s leg was pummeled so badly that the ”tissue was falling apart and had basically been pulpified.”

“Had Dilawar lived,” Rouse told Army investigators in sworn testimony, “I believe the injury to the legs are so extensive that it would have required amputation. I’ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus.’”

According to a report published by the Senate Armed Services Committee, Dilawar and another detainee whose death was also listed as a homicide, were killed within one week of Rumsfeld issuing a memo to military authorizing the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques against prisoners in Afghanistan.

The Armed Services Committee report said those “aggressive interrogation techniques conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody.”

As the New York Times reported, when Dilawar had died, “most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.”

Obama also has not taken steps to investigate the explosive claims leveled in a sworn declaration by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top Bush administration official, that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld knew the “vast majority” of the 700 or so prisoners sent to Guantanamo were innocent.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell during George W. Bush’s first term in office, said the administration refused to set them free after those facts were established because of the political repercussions that would have ensued.

President Obama apparently has made a similar political calculation regarding the partisan recriminations that would follow if he allowed the prosecutions of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other officials implicated in “war on terror” torture cases.

It appears to be much safer politically for Obama to turn a blind eye to crimes by his predecessor while pointing the finger at Iranians.

2 October 2010

Consortiumnews.com

A version of this article also appeared at Truthout.org.

“If it gets any worse,” said Wilda, a homeless Haitian mother, “we’re not going to survive.” Mothers and grandmothers surrounding her nodded solemnly.

We are in a broiling “tent” with a group of women trying to raise their families in a public park. Around the back of the Haitian National Palace, the park hosts a regal statute of Alexandre Petion in its middle. It is now home to five thousand people displaced by the January 2010 earthquake.

Nine months after the quake, over a million people are still homeless in Haiti.

Haiti looks like the quake could have been last month. I visited Port au Prince shortly after the quake and much of the destruction then looks the same nine months later.

The Associated Press reports only 2 percent of the rubble has been removed and only 13,000 temporary shelters have been constructed. Not a single cent of the US aid pledged for rebuilding has arrived in Haiti. In the last few days the US pledged it would put up 10% of the billion dollars in reconstruction aid promised. Only 15 percent of the aid pledged by countries and organizations around the world has reached the country so far.

With other human rights advocates from CCR, MADRE, CUNY Law School, BAI and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, I am huddled under faded gray tarps stamped US Aid. Blue tarps staked into the ground as walls. This is not even the hot season but the weather reports the heat index is 115.

The floor is bare dirt, soft from a recent rain. Our guide works with a vibrant grassroots women’s organization, KOFAVIV, which is working with women in many camps, and she encourages residents to tell us their stories.

Anne has seven children. She would really love to have a tent. She and her family live on a small plot of dirt eight feet by eight feet. Sheets are tied to pieces of wood to keep out the sun. Plastic sheeting covers the ground. When it rains everything they have is soaked. She begs every day for food.

Therese has three children, 12, 11, and 9. She has lived in the camps since the quake. A few weeks ago when she went to get a bucket of water, some men grabbed her and raped her. Before the quake she worked as a street vendor but has no money to buy supplies to sell. She prays all day every day for help.

Caroline lived with her husband and three children in an apartment in downtown Port au Prince. The quake took her husband and left the rest of the family homeless. She was raped in the first camp she settled in. When she moved she was raped again and fought back with KOFAVIV. She and other women set up their own security with whistles and flashlights to protect each other. They push the police to arrest. Her life is now in danger because the rapists know who she is and she is vulnerable.

We hear from dozens of other mothers and grandmothers – Alana, Beatrice, Celine, Marcie, Rene, Wilda and others. This is what they tell us.

There is no electricity at all in the camps. Some have lights on poles that work some of the time. Many have no lights at all.

There is no food. The children are terribly hungry. The food aid program was terminated in April and nothing took its place. The authorities cut off the food so people would leave the camps, but where is there to go?

Water is hard to find. For the people in Petion park, water is delivered by truck to a central site a block or two away in the middle of several camps. Thousands of people line up twice a day to get water before it runs out. In another camp we visited Sunday, Camp Kasim, there was no water at all for hundreds of families and none scheduled to be delivered until Monday at the earliest. Boys and girls surged around a pipe several blocks away trying to capture some water in Oxfam marked buckets.

People are coughing, sniffling, and their eyes watering. Quiet babies are the norm. Many have skin rashes and vaginal infections. There are several volunteer clinics but usually only the very sickest are seen because so many people need help. The biggest camps now have some toilets but not enough. Drainage is a big problem especially now during the rainy season.

Children cannot be kept in the suffocating tents. They play in the muddy paths. They would love to return to school but there is no money.

Security is a huge problem. Less than a dozen of the thousand plus camps have official security at night. During the day the police may come around or maybe the heavily armed MINUSTAH UN forces will patrol. But at night security forces vanish. With little or no light at night, tens of thousands of unguarded sheet structures and canvas walls offer thieves and gangs an inviting target. Violence against women and girls is widespread. Women who go to the latrines at night are attacked. Some women talk of carrying rape babies. Others will do anything for the crudest abortion. When they go to the police and ask them to investigate, officers demand money for gas. Even those who pay the police usually end up frustrated. There is a sense of impunity.

There are an estimated 1300 “camps” of homeless people in Haiti. Homeless people live literally everywhere. People are camped in the middle of many streets. Shanty structures are built right up to the edge of streets. Every park, every school yard, every parking lot appear to have people living under sheets or lean to tents.

The most fortunate families live in modest plastic tents. The newest tents are royal blue with red flags with yellow stars on them – donated in the last week from China. Less fortunate families, and there are many of them, live under faded sheets stretched between wooden poles made from tree branches. Within the camps there are dirt paths – some only inches wide. Tents and sheet shelters are side by side – inches apart.

Evictions are starting. Churches are pushing people off their property. Schools which are reopening are turning off the water to the people camped in the ball fields. Some in authority are openly saying that people must be forced out the camps. But only 13,000 temporary structures have been built and they are far away from family, school, jobs and healthcare. There is no place to go.

The UN, which effectively runs Haiti with the Haitians and the US, holds meetings nearly every day to coordinate responses to dozens of issues like security, food, water, reconstruction, and gender violence. Human rights advocates in Port au Prince complain that no meetings are conducted in Kreyol, the language of the Haitian people.

Yet there is hope. The Haitian mothers and grandmothers we heard from are fighting for their lives. KOFAVIV and BAI and other grassroots human rights groups are speaking out, demonstrating, educating the people in the camps, and working together for social justice.

During a torrential downpour Saturday, dozens gathered on folding chairs under the front porch overhang of BAI to work on how to get the US, the UN, Haiti and the NGOs to do their jobs.

Together the people have a chance. As one woman who works against violence told us, “If there is one woman and one man, maybe the man will win. But if the woman uses whistles to alert other women and gets other women to show up, maybe the man will see he is going to lose and will run away.”

Meanwhile, Wilda and a million other Haitians are slowly dying from starvation, illness, lack of security and neglect. Nine months after the quake.

By Bill Quigley

Bill wrote this article from Port au Prince with help from Laura Raymond and Sunita Patel.

Bill is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a Katrina survivor and has been active in human rights in Haiti for years with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Quigley77@gmail.com

An estimated 3.5 million workers and students marched nationwide in France Tuesday in a day of action called to oppose pension cuts demanded by President Nicolas Sarkozy. Though the most critical provisions of the pension “reform” have been passed—a two-year increase in the retirement age and a corresponding increase in the pay-in period—the law has yet to be formally voted on by the Senate.

The turnout testified to the determination of workers and young people to fight Sarkozy’s policies. Strikes and protest actions have been building for more than a week.

While it had been reported that the Senate would postpone its final vote on the bill until Thursday, and possibly delay the vote even further, some media outlets were reporting that the vote could take place today, as originally scheduled.

The strikes have spread to oil refineries, oil depots, ports and trucking firms, resulting in a growing gasoline shortage across France. The response of prominent union leaders to the upsurge in working class militancy and the widening economic impact of the strike wave—and opinion polls showing more than 70 percent of the population supporting the strikes—has been to indicate that the mass movement should be ended once the Senate has passed the pension bill.

The union leadership has from the onset sought to use the strikes and protests as a lever to obtain some cosmetic concessions from the government, while accepting the major cuts in the “reform.” They have rejected any struggle to bring down the Sarkozy government, insisting that the movement be limited to applying pressure on the president and the parliament.

They hoped that repeated one-day protests would wear down and exhaust the opposition of workers and students, but to date the intensity of the movement has only increased.

Sarkozy is moving to use the police to break numerous blockades of depots by oil workers. Last week, a large force of riot police was used to end a blockade at a strategic depot near Marseille. As of this writing, the union confederations have organized no public defense of workers occupying the oil depots.

Demonstrations in France’s largest cities were as big or bigger than the record turnout on October 12, the previous day of action. According to estimates by the unions, 330,000 marched in Paris, 240,000 in Marseille, 155,000 in Toulouse, 140,000 in Bordeaux, 60,000 each in Clermont-Ferrand, Rouen, Le Havre and Caen, 50,000 in Rennes, and 45,000 in Lyon.

Smaller regional trade union federations are pushing for broader strike action. In the Ardennes, the all trade union alliance passed a resolution calling for a renewable general strike “in all sectors of economic activity,” with rail workers and Peugeot auto workers voting in large numbers for the resolution.

Speaking to France3 television, Ardennes CGT (General Confederation of Workers) official Patrick Lattuada explained that his members had “completely had it” and were “fed up” with the fact that “the government pays no attention to the population’s demands and expectations.” The October 12 demonstration at Charleville-Mézières, with 10,000 people, was the largest in the region since the May-June 1968 general strike.

Student protests were at record levels, according to statistics provided by high school student unions. The FIDL (Independent and Democratic High School Student Union) said 1,200 of France’s 4,302 high schools were on strike, with 850 schools blockaded. At ten universities students met in general assemblies and voted to blockade their institutions. Youth marching in demonstrations chanted: “Unemployed at 25, exploited at 67, no, no, no!”

Police clashed with demonstrators across the country. In Lyon, police fired tear gas and fought with demonstrators at Bellecour Square and neighboring downtown areas. Dozens of cars were overturned and store windows smashed during the confrontation. Police blamed “1,300 violent protestors.”

The administration of Université Lyon-2 closed the institution “indefinitely” after students voted to blockade it. Similarly, the administration closed Toulouse-Le Mirail University after 75 percent of the 2,000-strong general assembly voted a blockade. Rennes-2 was also closed.

Youth clashed with riot police throughout the Paris suburbs. In Argenteuil, police attacked youth in a confrontation apparently planned in advance by city authorities. City official Nicolas Bougeard told Le Parisien: “It could have been worse. Incidents like that take six months of work to prepare. We put 20 very experienced people in place [official mediators wearing official vests, according to the newspaper] who know the youth and the area very well.” Police helicopters flew overhead to monitor the fighting.

Speaking yesterday morning in the beach resort of Deauville, where he was attending a summit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, Sarkozy said he would “see with law enforcement that public order would be maintained.” Sarkozy indicated his concern over the situation, but said he would not modify the cuts: “Do I fear excesses? Of course, it’s not with a light heart that I confront them. However, the greatest excess would be to not do my duty, which is to arrange for the financing of pensions.”

He threatened workers occupying refineries and oil depots, saying that “there are people who want to work and who must not be deprived of gasoline.” Upon his return to Paris, Sarkozy met with Prime Minister François Fillon, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux and several other leading officials. He explained that the meeting aimed to “unblock a certain number of situations.”

The government acknowledged yesterday that France is in the grip of a growing gasoline shortage, with Ecology and Transport Minister Jean-Louis Borloo admitting that 4,000 of France’s 12,500 gas stations are running dry. Prime Minister Fillon said it would take four or five days for gasoline supplies to return to normal.

Trucking company federations warned that numerous enterprises were running out of fuel and might shut down and furlough their workers. According to Agence France-Presse, the Caen Chamber of Commerce and Industry released a report yesterday stating: “There is currently no more fuel available on our territory… We are currently witnessing a slowdown of economic activity, which could halt completely in 48 hours if supplies are not re-established.”

An open struggle is looming between the working class and the state, as police forces try to break the oil strike and resupply businesses, taking away the workers’ most powerful weapon against the passage of Sarkozy’s cuts. In addition to the strike-breaking action by CRS riot police against oil workers outside of Marseille, workers at Grandpuits were formally “requisitioned” and forced back to work under threat of 5-year prison terms.

According to one report, managers secretly arrived by boat at a struck oil depot in Le Havre to restart kerosene shipments to Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport. Workers warned that they could not guarantee that the managers would be able to safely operate the equipment to produce kerosene. At a Caen oil depot police broke through workers’ barricades with a bulldozer, after which trucks arrived to haul away supplies.

The press is citing in threatening terms the legal measures available for use against blockades. Le Monde cited lawyers claiming that workers could face immediate dismissal without severance pay. According to the press, high school students could face immediate suspension, 3 years imprisonment and €45,000 fines if they participate in a blockade at a school that is not their own.

The national trade union leaderships have not responded with any campaign to defend striking workers. They are undoubtedly in talks with the government over the terms of a sellout. The major union federations are set to meet Thursday to discuss their next moves.

At yesterday’s protest march, Bernard Thibault, leader of the CGT, which is linked to the Stalinist French Communist Party, appealed to Sarkozy, saying, “Please be reasonable, accept discussion with the trade unions. Do not close yourself off from us with a unilateral choice.”

Thibault vaguely declared that the size of the demonstrations “will allow us to consider other initiatives.” However, unlike on previous days of action, the all trade union alliance did not announce a date for the next day of action.

The CFDT (French and Democratic Labor Confederation), which is France’s second most influential union and is politically close to the Socialist Party, is signaling that it will oppose further action against the cuts if the law is passed by the Senate. CFDT officials told business daily Les Echos: “If strikes continue and broaden, we will have to pursue them. But if they become hard conflicts in a few isolated industrial sectors, we will not be able to give it our approval indefinitely.”

The officials added that they expected this would not lead to a break with the CGT, as Thibault supports their positions: “The situation is challenging for us, but it is for the CGT as well. Bernard Thibault is pushing, but he can’t do too much to bolster his more activist wing, which is contesting his leadership inside the union.”

Thibault’s right-wing record has provoked considerable opposition among workers, including those in the CGT. He was publicly criticized last year by CGT auto delegate Xavier Mathieu for not assisting auto plants targeted for closure. Mathieu said that people like Thibault were “scum” who “are only good for chatting with the government and calming people down.”

Thibault was also criticized for negotiating pension cuts for public sector workers with Sarkozy in 2007, and for mobilizing CRS riot police and CGT thugs against striking undocumented workers occupying CGT offices in Paris last year.

The unions are effectively acting as counselors to Sarkozy on how to impose the cuts. They are warning the government not to move too rapidly in passing the pension bill so as to avoid provoking uncontrollable opposition in the working class.

CGT official Nadine Prigent told Agence France-Presse: “It’s not a done deal that a Senate [vote for the cuts] will calm things down.” The UNSA (National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions) warned: “No one knows what effect that vote will have.”

Written by Alex Lantier

Posted: 21 October 2010 16:21

WSWS.org

Mairead Maguire was deported from Israel at 4 a.m., on Tuesday 5^th October, 2010 and arrived back in Belfast later that afternoon.  Maguire had arrived in Israel on Tuesday 27^th September, to attend a Nobel Womens Initiative visit, and support those working in Israel and the Occupied PalestinianTerritories – particularly women groups – for human rights and justice.   On arrival she was detained in Ben Gurion Detention Centre,  Tel Aviv.  The Israeli security  tried to forcefully deport Maguire the following day but she peacefully resisted sitting quietly on the tarmac beside the plane refusing to be forcefully deported.  The Pilot of KLM refused to allowed her to be forcefully taken on by Israeli Guards, so she was taken back into detention, where she remained for 7 day solitary confinement, and harsh conditions, causing her to be hospitalized at the end of a week.  During the seven days, she had 3 court appearances to Appeal her conviction of 10 year deportation from Israel.   At the Supreme Court appeal Maguire on speaking to the 3 Judges said she loved the Israeli and Palestinian people and was saddened by their suffering.  However, she insisted peace will not come to Israel until the Israeli Government end Apartheid.   She also made  in the Supreme Court,  an Appeal through the  media, for Israeli Gov. to end Apartheid and Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.  On arriving home Maguire said ‘I am sorry to be deported for 10 years from Israel and have asked my Attorneys, Adalah, to challenge this order on my behalf, as I very much wish to return to Israel and the occupied Palestinian terrorities to support all those working for change.   I do not feel I have been treated justly by the Israeli Court.  In June 2010, I and my colleagues on the ‘Rachel Corrie’ boat, were illegally  hijacked in International waters by the Israeli Navy, whilst trying to break the siege of Gaza and bring humanitarian aid to people, suffering under illegal collective punishment by Israel.  I am not a criminal and ask ‘how can I be deported from Israel when I had been taken at gunpoint and forced to come to Israel against my will in June, 2010?’ ‘ I wish the three Supreme Court  Judges had been braver and upheld their proposal to the Israel State prosecution, that I been allowed to stay for a few days and join the NWI. However, they showed how little independence the Israeli Judiciary have, and obeyed the Israeli Security authorities, who were determined to uphold my 10 year deportation from Israel, a form of silencing those who are critical of Israeli policies.

Sadly also the Israeli media were  very selective and negative regarding me, carrying misrepesentations such as reporting I was in a plane and shouting and creating a scene, clearly Israeli propaganda against me.    In truth I went to Israel in good faith with  nothing but love for Israelis and Palestinians and wishing a good future for both people  to live in justice and peace.   Because I am critical of the Israeli Government policies does not make me an enemy of Israel or her people, but an upholder of an ethic of human rights and nonviolence, and a believer that peace is possible between both peoples when justice reigns.    It is my sincere hope I can return to Israel and  occupied Palestinian terrorities, to meet my friends soon again.’

Mairead Maguire (Nobel Peace Laureate)

News that Lauren Booth has converted to Islam provoked a storm of negative comments. Here she explains how it came about – and why it’s time to stop patronising Muslim women

Lauren Booth . . .’How hard and callous non-Muslim friends and colleagues began to seem’. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

It is five years since my first visit to Palestine. And when I arrived in the region, to work alongside charities in Gaza and the West Bank, I took with me the swagger of condescension that all white middle-class women (secretly or outwardly) hold towards poor Muslim women, women I presumed would be little more than black-robed blobs, silent in my peripheral vision. As a western woman with all my freedoms, I expected to deal professionally with men alone. After all, that’s what the Muslim world is all about, right?

This week’s screams of faux horror from fellow columnists on hearing of my conversion to Islam prove that this remains the stereotypical view regarding half a billion women currently practising Islam.

On my first trip to Ramallah, and many subsequent visits to Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, I did indeed deal with men in power. And, dear reader, one or two of them even had those scary beards we see on news bulletins from far-flung places we’ve bombed to smithereens. Surprisingly (for me) I also began to deal with a lot of women of all ages, in all manner of head coverings, who also held positions of power. Believe it or not, Muslim women can be educated, work the same deadly hours we do, and even boss their husbands about in front of his friends until he leaves the room in a huff to go and finish making the dinner.

Is this patronising enough for you? I do hope so, because my conversion to Islam has been an excuse for sarcastic commentators to heap such patronising points of view on to Muslim women everywhere. So much so, that on my way to a meeting on the subject of Islamophobia in the media this week, I seriously considered buying myself a hook and posing as Abu Hamza. After all, judging by the reaction of many women columnists, I am now to women’s rights what the hooked one is to knife and fork sales.

So let’s all just take a deep breath and I’ll give you a glimpse into the other world of Islam in the 21st century. Of course, we cannot discount the appalling way women are mistreated by men in many cities and cultures, both with and without an Islamic population. Women who are being abused by male relatives are being abused by men, not God. Much of the practices and laws in “Islamic” countries have deviated from (or are totally unrelated) to the origins of Islam. Instead practices are based on cultural or traditional (and yes, male-orientated) customs that have been injected into these societies. For example, in Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive by law. This rule is an invention of the Saudi monarchy, our government’s close ally in the arms and oil trade. The fight for women’s rights must sadly adjust to our own government’s needs.

My own path to Islam began with an awakening to the gap between what had been drip-fed to me about all Muslim life – and the reality.

I began to wonder about the calmness exuded by so many of the “sisters” and “brothers”. Not all; these are human beings we’re talking about. But many. And on my visit to Iran this September, the washing, kneeling, chanting recitations of the prayers at the mosques I visited reminded me of the west’s view of an entirely different religion; one that is known for eschewing violence and embracing peace and love through quiet meditation. A religion trendy with movie stars such as Richard Gere, and one that would have been much easier to admit to following in public – Buddhism. Indeed, the bending, kneeling and submission of Muslim prayers resound with words of peace and contentment. Each one begins, “Bismillahir rahmaneer Raheem” – “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate” – and ends with the phrase “Assalamu Alaykhum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh” – Peace be upon you all and God’s mercy and blessing.

Almost unnoticed to me, when praying for the last year or so, I had been saying “Dear Allah” instead of “Dear God”. They both mean the same thing, of course, but for the convert to Islam the very alien nature of the language of the holy prayers and the holy book can be a stumbling block. I had skipped that hurdle without noticing. Then came the pull: a sort of emotional ebb and flow that responds to the company of other Muslims with a heightened feeling of openness and warmth. Well, that’s how it was for me, anyway.

How hard and callous non-Muslim friends and colleagues began to seem. Why can’t we cry in public, hug one another more, say “I love you” to a new friend, without facing suspicion or ridicule? I would watch emotions being shared in households along with trays of honeyed sweets and wondered, if Allah’s law is simply based on fear why did the friends I loved and respected not turn their backs on their practices and start to drink, to have real “fun” as we in the west do? And we do, don’t we? Don’t we?

Finally, I felt what Muslims feel when they are in true prayer: a bolt of sweet harmony, a shudder of joy in which I was grateful for everything I have (my children) and secure in the certainty that I need nothing more (along with prayer) to be utterly content. I prayed in the Mesumeh shrine in Iran after ritually cleansing my forearms, face, head and feet with water. And nothing could be the same again. It was as simple as that.

The sheikh who finally converted me at a mosque in London a few weeks ago told me: “Don’t hurry, Lauren. Just take it easy. Allah is waiting for you. Ignore those who tell you: you must do this, wear that, have your hair like this. Follow your instincts, follow the Holy Qur’an- and let Allah guide you.”

And so I now live in a reality that is not unlike that of Jim Carey’s character in the Truman Show. I have glimpsed the great lie that is the facade of our modern lives; that materialism, consumerism, sex and drugs will give us lasting happiness. But I have also peeked behind the screens and seen an enchanting, enriched existence of love, peace and hope. In the meantime, I carry on with daily life, cooking dinners, making TV programmes about Palestine and yes, praying for around half an hour a day.

Now, my morning starts with dawn prayers at around 6am, I pray again at 1.30pm, then finally at 10.30pm. My steady progress with the Qur’an has been mocked in some quarters (for the record, I’m now around 200 pages in). I’ve been seeking advice from Ayatollahs, imams and sheikhs, and every one has said that each individual’s journey to Islam is their own. Some do commit the entire text to memory before conversion; for me reading the holy book will be done slowly and at my own pace.

In the past my attempts to give up alcohol have come to nothing; since my conversion I can’t even imagine drinking again. I have no doubt that this is for life: there is so much in Islam to learn and enjoy and admire; I’m overcome with the wonder of it. In the last few days I’ve heard from other women converts, and they have told me that this is just the start, that they are still loving it 10 or 20 years on.

On a final note I’d like to offer a quick translation between Muslim culture and media culture that may help take the sting of shock out of my change of life for some of you.

When Muslims on the BBC News are shown shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” at some clear, Middle Eastern sky, we westerners have been trained to hear: “We hate you all in your British sitting rooms, and are on our way to blow ourselves up in Lidl when you are buying your weekly groceries.”

In fact, what we Muslims are saying is “God is Great!”, and we’re taking comfort in our grief after non-Muslim nations have attacked our villages. Normally, this phrase proclaims our wish to live in peace with our neighbours, our God, our fellow humans, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Or, failing that, in the current climate, just to be left to live in peace would be nice.

The Guardian,     Wednesday 3 November 2010

There are two narratives at work in Israel that have a bearing on the capacity of its leaders to negotiate the creation of an independent Palestinian state next to it. The first is official and intended for external consumption. It is the one that claims Israel is ready to sit down with the Palestinians in direct talks without preconditions and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, should not have wasted so much of the 10 month partial freeze on settlement building before he did so. On Saturday, America was given another month by the Arab League to persuade Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to halt settlement building, the bare minimum required for talks to continue.

There is however a second narrative, which could be called business as usual, and it has nothing to do with occupation, Iran’s nuclear programme, Hizbullah’s rocket arsenal, or any threat which could be called existential. This was evident in all its inglory yesterday when the Israeli cabinet approved a measure requiring candidates for Israeli citizenship to pledge loyalty to “the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”. The naturalisation oath would not apply to Jews, who are granted automatic citizenship under the law of return, so it is, by definition, discriminatory. The existing text binds individuals to declare their loyalty to the state of Israel. The new version requires future citizens to declare their loyalty not just to a state but an ideology, one specifically designed to exclude one fifth of its citizens who see themselves as Palestinian.

Palestinian Israeli leaders have described this proposal as racist. Palestinian Israeli citizens do not have to take this oath, but their partners seeking naturalisation do. Neither could agree with Israel’s characterisation of itself as a Jewish state. It could be a state of Jews and all its citizens, but never a Jewish state. Nor is this the only bill around. There are 20 others in the slipstream that have a similar effect: there is a loyalty law for Knesset members and for film crews; there are bills that make it a criminal offence to deny the existence of Israel; that penalise the mourning of Nakba Day; that force any group financed by a foreign nation to report each contribution; and a bill to deny ethnic minorities’ access to Jewish settlements. The authors of these proposals not only intend to create a state ideology but to police it.

The question that lies behind this is why, and why now? Are these the actions of a nation prepared to make a historical compromise, end occupation and live in peace with its neighbourhood? If they are and we are all wildly misinterpreting this, why alienate and incite the very people who could have helped by their example bring a historic settlement about, people who have accepted the existence of Israel, who have never in their history taken up arms against it? This applies to Christian as well as Muslim. The opposite is happening. The Palestinian Israeli experience of inequality and discrimination only promotes the view that being a minority in a state with a Jewish majority is rapidly becoming untenable.

The Labour minorities minister Avishay Braverman described the loyalty oath yesterday as a terrible mistake. But it is surely more that. Mistake implies miscalculation, and there is calculation in this. It seeks to pre-empt negotiation on the third core issue after borders and the division of Jerusalem – the right of return of Palestinian refugees to sovereign Israeli territory. Abbas happens to be one of those refugees. If Netanyahu refuses to extend the settlement freeze, Abbas, the most pliant Palestinian negotiator Israel is likely to encounter, has threatened to resign, dissolve the Palestinian authority or seek US and UN recognition for a future Palestinian state. Netanyahu is only hastening the day when this happens and in one sense, he is doing the world a service. Future citizens will be swearing loyalty to a state that can not make peace.

By The Guardian

12 October, 2010

SOURCE: The Guardian

Mukesh Ambani is having a few friends round to celebrate moving into his new Mumbai pad. But as the home has 27 storeys, soars to 173 metres and is worth an estimated £630m, it will be a housewarming like no other.

The building – named Antilia, after a mythical island – will be home to Ambani, the richest man in Indiaand the fourth richest in the world, plus his wife and their three children. It contains a health club with a gym and dance studio, at least one swimming pool, a ballroom, guestrooms, a variety of lounges and a 50-seater cinema.

Those lucky enough to have received an invitation to the housewarming later this month will be able to choose a variety of means of transport to get there.

If they want to avoid Mumbai’s gridlock, there are three helicopter pads on the roof. If they do drive, they will not have any trouble parking: there is space for 160 vehicles on the lower floors.

Once in, nine lifts will take the guests from the lobby to upper levels, where the festivities will take place.

On the top floors, with a sweeping view of the city and out over the Arabian Sea, are quarters for the 53-year-old tycoon and his family. Overall, there is reported to be 37,000 sq metres of space, more than the Palace of Versailles. To keep things running smoothly, there is a staff of 600.

It cost an estimated £44m to build but, because of Mumbai’s astronomic land and property prices, will be worth about 15 times that amount – £630m. “Antilia is marvellous, I remember a Picasso painting [there], it was one of its kind – stunning,” one local businessman who visited the building gushed to the Times of India newspaper.

Experts say there is no other private property of comparable size and prominence in the world.

According to Forbes magazine, Ambani, who owns much of Reliance Industries, is worth £18bn. He ran the oil, retail and biotechnology conglomerate with his brother Anil until they fell out several years ago.

But Mukesh was always known as the quieter of the brothers and there is surprise that he has made such a public statement of his immense wealth. A deeply private man, he has distanced himself from the flamboyance of India’s ultra-rich, preferring home cooking to haute cuisine and local fashions to western suits.

The Ambanis had been living in a converted 14-storey apartment block.

“Perhaps he has been stung by his portrayal in the media as an introvert. Maybe he is making the point that he is a tycoon in his own right,” said Hamish McDonald, author of Ambani and Sons, a history of the business – India’s biggest privately owned company.

An asymmetric stack of glass, steel and tiles with a four-storey hanging garden, Ambani’s new home has been built, reports say, with local materials as far as possible. According to Forbes magazine, the plants save energy by absorbing sunlight, making it easier to keep the interior cool in summer and warm in winter.

Billionaire’s bling is not absent – hence the glass and gold chandeliers hanging from the ballroom ceiling. Interior design of Antilia was overseen by an American firm and is described as “Asian contemporary”. It has apparently been influenced by vaastu, an Indian tradition close to feng shui which supposedly allows positive energies to move through the building.

India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has previously called on business leaders to “eschew conspicuous consumption” and “be role models of moderation”.

Shiny Varghese, deputy editor of the Indian magazine Design Today, said the Ambanis’ house was the ultimate expression of a much broader trend. “It’s so obscenely lavish that I’m not sure too many people will go all that way, but we are heading into the sort of culture where money is not a question when setting up a home,” he said. “The lavishness is huge.

“People are now happy to spend 100,000 rupees (£1,400) on a chair.”

Friends defended Ambani from charges of ostentation in a city where millions live in slums. “He can’t just walk into a cinema and watch a film like you or me,” one associate told the Guardian. “So he has built a house to his requirements like anyone else would. It’s a question of convenience and requirements. It’s only a family home, just a big one. It’s just another home that someone is living in. It’s no big event.”

Jason Burke

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Global Research Editor’s Note,

From October 12 to 15, 2010, I had extensive and detailed discussions with Fidel Castro in Havana, pertaining to the dangers of nuclear war, the global economic crisis and the nature of the New World Order. These meetings resulted in a wide-ranging and fruitful interview that will be published shortly by Global Research and Cuba Debate. The following message by Fidel against Nuclear War was recorded on October 15. Below is the text of this brief and forceful message as well the video recording. This important message is based on Fidel Castro’s analysis and understanding of the dangers of military escalation including the threats (confirmed by statements of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton) to use tactical nuclear weapons on a pre-emptive basis against Iran.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 21, 2010

The use of nuclear weapons in a new war would mean the end of humanity. This was candidly foreseen by scientist Albert Einstein who was able to measure their destructive capability to generate millions of degrees of heat, which would vaporize everything within a wide radius of action. This brilliant researcher had promoted the development of this weapon so that it would not become available to the genocidal Nazi regime.

Each and every government in the world has the obligation to respect the right to life of each and every nation and of the totality of all the peoples on the planet.

Today there is an imminent risk of war with the use of that kind of weapon and I don’t harbour the least doubt that an attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran would inevitably evolve towards a global nuclear conflict.

The World’s peoples have an obligation to demand of their political leaders their Right to Live. When the life of humankind, of your people and your most beloved human beings run such a risk, nobody can afford to be indifferent; not one minute can be lost in demanding respect for that right; tomorrow will be too late.

Albert Einstein himself stated unmistakably: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. We fully comprehend what he wanted to convey, and he was absolutely right, yet in the wake of a global nuclear war, there wouldn’t be anybody around to make use of those sticks and stones.

There would be “collateral damage”, as the American political and military leaders always affirm, to justify the deaths of innocent people.

In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity.

Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 15, 2010

United States of America is considered as the backbone of Israel and the mother of many evils in Middle East. With the presence of various pro-Israeli lobbies and pressure groups rallying around the corridors of power in Washington to press their case, they have been highly successful not only in setting the agenda in favour of Israel, but also makes sure that the Palestine voice is not heard. Many believe that this is a typical phenomenon in Washington and hence an internal issue of the United States. But the pro-Israeli lobbies are a decisive factor in most European countries and its influence is felt manifold in Britain.

These pro-Israeli lobbies are a coalition of wealthy individuals and organizations who actively work to shape British foreign policy in a pro-Israeli direction. Though the percentage of British Jews who wholeheartedly support the pro-Israeli lobby in very minimal, they have been highly successful in portraying their cause to be of great concern to the majority of the Jewish community. The lobbies has got great influence and access to all major parties including the Labour and Conservative to the extent that they shape the foreign policy the United Kingdom, much as their counterparts in the United States.

Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is one of the most active lobbying groups in UK with major stakes in the Conservative Party. In 2009, few months after Israel’s brutal Operation Cast Lead that saw more than 1200 Palestinians killed and many thousands injured, Conservative Friends of Israel held its Annual Lunch for its Conservative politicians and businessmen. David Cameroon who was star speaker for the day made no reference to the widespread killing of innocent civilians and massive destruction in Gaza that happened six months earlier. Instead he praised Israel and commented that Israel strives to protect innocent life. Thanks to the estimated £10 billion bankrolled in the last eight years to the Conservative Party, Mr. Cameroon continued to say that ‘if I became Prime Minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on Israel.’

This is not something particular to the Conservatives, but is in line with the Labour Friends of Israel stance that UK shall continue to foster strong relationship with Israel as it is being a close ally of the UK with regular warm and productive exchanges at all levels. Back in the nineties pop music millionaire Michael Levy was made the special envoy to the Middle East under Tony Blair in return for the estimated £15 billion he had raised for the Labour Party in the prior elections campaign. As he was not part of any ministry he had a free hand at doing whatever he intended to do on behalf of the pro-Israeli lobby. An unelected friend of the Prime Minister having so much influence over British policies in the Middle East did damage the reputation of Britain in the Middle East and hence the negotiations he had with Israel and its Arab neighbors on behalf of Britain are still kept secret.

Money plays a big part in the lobbying game and millions of pounds in donations from businessmen and others are flown into the bank accounts of these politicians and political parties. Besides from raising cash, some of the pro-Israeli lobbies in parliament also pay for and arrange trips to Israel. They have send almost as many MPs and candidates on trips to Israel as have been made by all MPS to the United States and Europe combined over the last eight years. These MPs get enormous donations to their party funds and it would be stupid to believe that these contributions come with no strings attached. These MPs then become passionately concerned about Israel and that is reflected in the foreign policies of the United Kingdom. Moreover, financial pressures are also exerted by these lobbies to coerce any dissent within these parties to fall in line to the Israeli policy.

The influence of these lobbies is not restricted to bankrolling political parties and favours extracted in return. They also try to define the debate in order to limit the options that British politicians can choose when it comes to issues pertaining to Middle East. The hand of CFI in shaping up the British opposition against the UN resolution following judge Goldstone’s Report criticizing Israeli human right abuses in Gaza is a classic example of their clout.

There are various other pro-Israeli lobbies including Britain Israel Communication & Research Centre (BICOM), Jewish Leadership Council, Zionist Federation of Great Britain, and Board of Deputies of British Jews. Their activities include, but not restricted to, getting the Israeli message across the British Universities, silencing any criticism of the Israeli policies inside Israel and elsewhere and engaging in successful Public Relations campaign to shape the media coverage of Middle East conflict. High profile members of these pro-Israeli lobbies even own business units in the Occupied Palestinian territory that is considered as illegal under international law. This would tend to indicate in which direction the message of these lobbies are going.

Israel is really fighting the war on two fronts, the first is the military campaign being waged in the occupied territories against the Palestinian people and the second is the Public Relations (PR) Campaign being waged throughout the world media to ensure continuous support for Israel’s military occupation. In addition to the military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is also involved in an attempt to ideologically occupy the world media and these lobbies are the key functionaries in that respect. Sophisticated media outlets in UK including The Guardian and the BBC have been at the receiving end of these censorships. These have gone to the extent that the journalist get to the feeling that it’s not worth the trouble and better stay away from reporting the truth about Middle East. BBC who had previously run emergency appeals for disasters around the world including Palestine past, declined to air a humanitarian plea for Gaza victims in the 2009 January Israeli invasion under the pressure of pro-Israeli lobby.

These institutional frame works of Israeli lobbies and their political interest in combination with Israeli Public Relations department shape media coverage of the Middle East. At the same time progressive Jewish organizations opposing Israeli government policies, let alone scores of Muslim organizations, that strive to bring out the ground reality rarely make it through these institutional filters.

Finally, if any news stories critical of Israeli policy do surface there are hosts of media watch dog groups that monitor and pressure journalists and media outlets, and most important of which is HonestReporting. There are active pro-Israeli organizations that very effectively monitor (read harass) journalist and their editors and try to make sure that the coverage is objective, by which they mean is pro-Israel. There are even pressure groups to write campaigns and letters to editors and news outlets asking to boycott certain news agencies, demanding the stories to be changed or the reporter to be fired. This becomes so twisted, that the dearth of reporting, the absence of images, lack of analysis, the void of voices of describing the experience of Palestinians under occupation is so vast that the people has no idea that a military occupation is going on.

Britain cannot wash her hands off from the plight of Palestinians today for its involvement in creation of the state of Israel. Now Zionism is becoming more pervasive in British politics as is already rampant in the United States. It would need huge amount of mettle both from the British politicians and the media to stand against this high profile pressure group. And the act needs to be done soon, before it would become an obsession and a moral liability for the British parliament to support anything and everything that Israel does according to the whims and fancies of its insane leaders.

By Ershad Abubacker

13 October, 2010

Countercurrents.org

Ershad Abubacker is a Research Analyst based in Chennai. He can be contacted at ershadna@gmail.com