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Food prices have hit record highs due to a string of crop failures together with an upsurge in speculation, resulting in rising living costs.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization recently announced that the food price index has now broken a previous record set in 2008, when food prices nearly doubled over the course of 18 months, leading to popular upheavals in dozens of countries.

Rising food prices, which have shot up 25 percent in the past year, have precipitated riots and demonstrations in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Mozambique and Yemen in recent weeks.

Skyrocketing costs were a contributing factor in the popular upsurge in Tunisia that toppled the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last week. In Algeria, at least three people have been killed in clashes with police after the government slashed food subsidies.

Over the past year, the commodity food price index for corn has risen 52 percent, for wheat 49 percent and for soybeans 28 percent. Non-staple cash crops have also risen dramatically, with coffee up by 53 percent and cotton 119 percent.

The sharp rise in food prices is partly attributable to a bad crop year, exacerbated by a series of natural disasters. Droughts in Argentina and Russia, both major food producers, have decreased output, while recent floods in Brazil and Australia have completely wiped out some crops.

But the rise in commodity prices is not confined to agricultural products, although the increase is most dramatic there. Brent Crude oil hit nearly $100 per barrel last week, and has increased in price by 26.54 percent from a year ago, when it was trading at $75 per barrel. Copper, meanwhile, is up 30 percent over the past year.

Increased energy prices are a factor in rising food prices, as agriculture consumes large amounts of fossil fuels during harvesting and transport, and petrochemicals are the main component of industrial fertilizers. The increasing use of ethanol, a corn-based alcohol, in gasoline in the US and elsewhere has also cut into supplies of corn available on the food and animal-feed markets.

The rising cost of food and fuel have led to declining living standards for masses of working and poor people. In countries like Egypt and Ethiopia, household expenditures on food constitute as much as 50 percent of a family’s budget. In Mozambique, households spend on average 75 percent of their incomes on food. For these people, the 25 percent increase in food prices over the last year means the difference between survival and starvation.

In the United States, rising food and fuel prices are forcing families to live without adequate heat in the wintertime, forego needed medications, and cut back on nourishment, with devastating consequences for the health of children and the elderly.

In some cases, governments have sought to cushion the blow by extending subsidies or announcing export controls.

China and Indonesia have announced measures to curb food prices, and the Indian government said last week that it would “impose controls on exports and ease restrictions on imports, including tariff reduction where necessary, to improve domestic supplies.” Russia recently extended its export ban on grains until July 2011.

Despite these measures, food prices continue to climb, as world markets in food commodities are unregulated.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Committee proposed limits last week on the size of commodity bets taken by speculators, as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. The proposal, which amounts to little more than a public relations exercise, will be voted on after a two-month “comment period.” Two of the four commissioners who voted in favor of the proposal have indicated that they would not vote to put the measure into law, meaning that it will never come into existence.

The world’s major food suppliers are experiencing record profits from the price hikes. Cargill, the largest global trader of food commodities, saw its profits triple in the fourth quarter of last year, up to $1.49 billion from $489 million in 2009.

While unfavorable crop conditions no doubt have played a role in driving up food prices, this cannot explain the fact that the price of crude oil and copper have increased at the same rate, and in some cases faster, than staple foods.

In December, it was revealed that a single anonymous investor controlled 90 percent of the copper supply in the UK, in an attempt to corner the market. Suspicions loomed at the time that the mystery trader was JPMorgan Chase, the US bank, or UK-based HSBC. The firms denied holding the position and the investor remains unknown.

Speculation, which has played a major role in rising food prices, is itself dependent on the supply of ready cash. Thus, a major reason for the surge in global prices is to be found in the Obama Administration’s monetary policy. The US has kept the federal funds interest rate, the rate at which banks charge each other for loans, as close to zero as possible. At the same time, it has undertaken unprecedented moves, called “quantitative easing,” to expand the money supply even further. These measures, which come on top of the vast government bailout that transferred trillions of dollars into US finance companies, have served to flood the market with cash, fueling speculation.

Liberal New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman, writing on his blog, has sprung to the defense of the White House. Last month he insisted that the vast expansion of the money supply, a policy that he supports, has nothing to do with the run-up in speculation. He concludes, “America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story. …[R]ising commodity prices are basically the result of global recovery. They have no bearing, one way or another, on U.S. monetary policy.”

Instead, he argues that the run-up in food prices is driven by “fundamentals” of the global economic recovery. “What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices.”

Krugman’s argument is contradicted by the fact that many potential vehicles for speculation, even those not tied to any recovery, have risen in the recent period. More specifically, US stock values have grown in the recent period, despite the absence of any recovery in production. The US NASDAQ is up by over 20 percent over the past year, and the S&P 500 is up 13.84 percent. Yet this is despite the fact that, over the past year, the US economy has created 500,000 fewer jobs than the amount required to keep up with population growth.

By Andre Damon

19 January, 2011

WSWS.org

He might still be living in the lap of luxury, but make no mistake Tunisia’s former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family are prisoners.

Like birds in a guilded cage, they are languishing in a palace in one of the most exclusive districts of Jeddah but the truth is Ben Ali and his equally odious and corrupt family have nowhere else to hide.

It should signal a warning to all the other despots and dictators in the region – Egypt in particular – that no matter how close you think you are to the West, in times of trouble they will drop you faster than a burning coal.

As one of the cruelest oppressors on the planet scrambled to board a plane to escape what some may consider a well deserved lynching, the truth is he had no idea where he was going.

So fast was his demise.

We were told he was heading for Malta, then France and Dubai and half a dozen other countries but the truth is no one wanted the 74-year-old.

A desperate man, he finally found a bolthole in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah on Friday, arriving around midnight after close ally President Nicholas Sarkozy rejected a request for his plane to land on french soil.

Meanwhile frantic calls to the White House hotline and to Obama rang unanswered.

Once again America has proved itself to be a fickle friend just as the late Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi discovered when he went in to exile after his repressive regime in Iran was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The former Shah spent his exile in Egypt, totally isolated and shunned by the very same leaders in the West who had once supported him.

The Saudi government refuses to say how long he will be their guest but I like to think the many soldiers posted outside the palace’s half dozen or so gates are not there for his protection but there to ensure he remains within the high sided walls.

Quite how this secular leader will settle in the land of the Two Holy Mosques is beyond me. Ben Ali despised Islam to such an extent he made sure his brutal enforcers abused and punished those God-fearing Tunisians who wore hijabs and grew beards.

For instance, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and the Interior and the Secretary-General of Tunisia’s ruling political party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally, stated several years ago that they were so concerned about rise in the use of the hijab by women and girls and beards and the qamis (knee-level shirts) by men, that they called for a strict implementation of decree 108 of 1985 of the Ministry of Education banning the hijab at educational institutions and when working in government.

Police ordered women to remove their head scarfs before entering schools, universities or work places and others were made to remove them in the street. Amnesty International reported at the time that some women were being arrested and taken to police stations where they were forced to sign written commitment to stop wearing the hijab.

Perhaps someone should remind the Saudis about that and have him charged under Shari’a law just for starters.

Ben Ali’s hatred and fear of Islam can also be witnessed in Egypt where Hosni Mubarak rules with an iron fist. The prisons and dungeons of Egypt are jammed full of members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other dissenting voices and political opponents who are rounded up everytime an election is in the offing.

Mubarak’s betrayal of the Palestinian people and his irrational fear of Hamas speaks volumes also about his secular outlook and lifestyle which is at odds with Islam.

I was asked to leave Cairo in December 2009 by his Foreign Ministry after writing an article in which I said Mubarak had turned Egypt into America’s rent boy in the Middle East because of the huge sums of money he willingly took from the US in return for oppressing the people of Gaza and supporting Israel.

But now he must be wondering if bending over a barrel for Uncle Sam is really a price worth paying.

After all, no one grovelled more to America than Ben Ali. In 2005 he was even ordered to extend the hand of friendship to the Zionist State, a country which had bombed his own when Yasser Arafat’s PLO was headquartered in Tunis in 1986.

Did he object? No, in fact Ben Ali went one step further and invited the war criminal Ariel Sharon to visit Tunisia. Well, where has all that craven behaviour got him?

Just like the previous Tunisian tyrant, he happily kissed the rump of Zionists while belly-dancing in front of Western leaders who claimed to be among his closest allies.

Well, just where are his friends now?

He’s friendless, homeless and humiliated.

By Yvonne Ridley

17 January, 2011

Countercurrents.org

British journalist Yvonne Ridley is the European President of the International Muslim Womens Union. She travelled extensively through Tunisia in February 2009 with the Viva Palestina convoy.

The Water Festival is a time of great celebration in Cambodia. It is always celebrated around November but the dates are dependent on the moon. Some say it’s a chance to honour the rivers that replenish the soil for the harvest. Others say it’s to honour the spirits that make the river miraculous change direction and flow in the other direction.  Mostly it’s the time where the people from Cambodia’s countryside take over the capital. Phnom Penh is theirs. They sleep along the streets, they cheer on the boat of their district, they stay up all night and enjoy myriad free entertainment from fireworks to concerts and traditional dancing. It’s a grand celebration of life.

The development of a new island in the river, accessed through such a beautiful bridge decorated with a Naga snake,  was this year such a focal point for the celebration. So many went to Diamond Island over the holiday period for the trade show, the fun park, the free concerts, the displays and because so many other people were there to see. Such a focal point of joy and happiness, among Cambodia’s rural poor.

And therein lies the tragedy. Those that died on the bridge on November 22 were hardly Cambodia’s wealthy. They were yet again the poorest of the poor. Garment factory workers, usually young women out for a good time. Sisters from a tiny village disobeying their mother and running to the capitol to join the fun. They were slum dwellers from a nearby slum soon to be demolished. They were moto-dop drivers, garbage collectors, market sellers, rice farmers. And now 395 such people lay dead in the height of the celebrations.

No doubt there will much discussion and debate by NGOs and human rights groups in weeks to come. How the government could have protected them. How safety standards are not enforced. But this is not the day for such recriminations. Today a Prime Minister weeps openly with his people, and the streets are silent. Outside every home, along every street, there are the traditional offerings, candles and incense for those who have passed. TV channels read the names of those who have died, replay the footage of that fateful night and update the death toll hour to hour.

It is hard to watch the images without comparing them to so many of the images long associated with Cambodia. It is not a publicity stunt that so many of those interviewed by the media, including Hun Sen’s address to the nation, refer back to the Khmer Rouge years. Not since then has there been such a tragedy in our history, they say. One woman wept, I lost everyone to the Khmer Rouge, and now I lost my son in this stampede. Who will take care of me now?

Over the past decade the international community has tried hard to persuade Cambodia that an international tribunal was necessary to heal Cambodia’s past, to reconcile the nation, to bring closure. To date the tribunal has seemed an alien legal process, far the from reality of everyday lives and certainly not a mechanism for healing deep seated pains and loss.

But the events of the past few days have felt very different. In every restaurant, in every market, along the street — people go about their business slowly and silently. People watch TV screens in breakfast shops and cry openly. On Wednesday I watched a military truck slowly make its way down the Monivong, the main road through Phnom Penh, filled with coffins. As it past shops and houses, guards, pedestrians, passersby, all stood, almost to attention, to pay respect and honour those nameless corpses going by.

I drove past the hospital and found people giving out water to the many people camped out there trying to find their family members. A huge billboard displayed the unidentified people still indie the hospital, and people clamber over each other to see if they can find their own.

While this has been a deep and great tragedy for Cambodia, something else is going on here. This country has become united in its grief. People are coming together to put right, something which was very wrong. They are standing together to mourn their country people, fully aware that those who died were the least among them, and now deserve the highest honour for their tragic end. And of course all of us looking on wonder how they can bear more suffering, more grief and more pain.

The late Maha Ghosananda, Cambodia’s peace monk often chanted;

Perhaps Maha understood that it is the yoke Cambodians must bear  on behalf of us all. People who come to Cambodia often comment of the smiles of the children, the happiness of the people. They marvel at the sense of fun, and joy in simple pleasures. They speak of the open-hearted way Cambodians welcome them, embrace them and befriend them. Perhaps this is what Maha speaks of — the joy that is born of suffering. Perhaps Cambodia suffers so much so that compassion can be.

For the past 48 hours  Cambodian television channels have received donations from around the country for the victims’ families and the injured survivors. No amount is too small to announce on the television recognising the contributions of even the poorest people. From this suffering comes great compassion.

One boy told of a man who saw him trapped under the feet of the people on the bridge. He bent down and lift the boy up and put him on his shoulders so he was above the crowd. Later the boy realised he was riding on the shoulders of a dead man. From this suffering comes great compassion.

What we learn through the events of the past few days is that sense of national identity and reconciled togetherness cannot come from outside. It comes from the shared suffering, losses, histories and processes that people experience  for themselves. In many South-East Asian nations those shared histories are days of liberation, celebrating anti colonial struggles and the pride of self determination. Cambodia has no just day of celebration or national unity. Cambodia’s unity seems always to come through her suffering. Piles of shoes belonging to the deceased — in the Khmer Rouge years and again today. The mass graves of the Killing Fields, parallel to lines of bodies along the river bank of the past two days.

Today is Cambodia’s national day of mourning.  Today, one after another Cambodians are laying flowers and burning incense at the fateful bridge. This is their time, where they stand together as a nation and grieve. This is not just grief for those who died in this incident. This is truly a national day of mourning for all the suffering they have endured. This is the time they rally and unite to put right something that went very wrong. This is their moment of national unity. This is the suffering they bear, from which compassion is born. As a Prime Minister weeps with his people, Maha’s words echo over this timeless land;

“Our journey for peace begins today and every day.

Each step is a prayer, each step is a meditation, each step will build a bridge.”

Ironic, yet true. Cambodians will wipe their tears, and continue to build their nation, heal their hearts and show great compassion. Not just to each other, but to the world.

by Emma Leslie,

executive director,

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Phnom Penh, 25 November 2010

When faced with problems, most authoritarian regimes maintain a policy of rigidity when the appropriate response would be flexibility, political wisdom and concessions. This policy gives authoritarian leaders their ability to control their populations to serve the interests of a few individuals and political and military elites. It can also, however, usher their downfall, for populations can only be oppressed, controlled and punished to a point.

President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, who controlled his population with an iron fist since his arrival to the presidential palace in 1987, must have crossed that point. He was forced to flee the country amid the angry chants of thousands of Tunisians, fed up with growing unemployment, soaring inflation, government corruption, violent crackdowns and lack of political freedom. These mounting frustrations led to relentless protests throughout the country. The government’s subsequent crackdowns only stirred emotions beyond any crowd control strategy, and eventually Ben Ali’s plane left to seek refuge outside his own country.

The upheaval in Tunisia is certainly worthy of all the headlines, media commentary and official statements it has generated. But many of these reactions contain generalizations that hype expectations, worsen an already terrible situation and provoke misguided policies. Indeed, the current political storm, dubbed both the “Youth Intifada” and the “Jasmine Revolution”, has inspired many interpretations. Some commentators wished to see the popular uprising as a prelude to an essentially anti-Arab regimes phenomenon that will strike elsewhere as well, while others placed it within a non-Arab context, noting that popular uprisings are growing in countries that struggle with rising food prices. Even al-Qaeda had a take on the situation, trying to score points to find a place in the looming political void.

Many commentators have focused on the Arab identity of Tunisia to find correlations elsewhere. Hadeel al-Shalchi’s Associated Press article “Arab activists hope Tunisia uprising brings change,” presented the uprising within an Arab context. Reporting from Cairo, she wrote of the growing optimism among those whom she dubbed “Arab activists” that other Arab leaders will share the fate of Ben Ali if they don’t ease their grip on power. Hossam Bahgat is one such activist. He told AP, “I feel like we are a giant step closer to our own liberation… What’s significant about Tunisia is that literally days ago the regime seemed unshakeable, and then eventually democracy prevailed without a single Western state lifting a finger.”

True, both Tunisia and Egypt are Arab countries with many similarities, but expecting a repeat of a scenario that was uniquely Tunisian and implicitly suggesting that Western states serve as harbingers of democracy is illusory, to stay the least.

Now that Ben Ali is out of the picture, Western governments are cautiously lining up behind the Tunisian uprising, but hardly with the same enthusiasm of their support of the Iranian riots of June 2009. British Foreign Secretary William Hague merely denounced the unrest, calling for “restraint from all sides.” He stated, “I condemn the violence and call on the Tunisian authorities to do all they can to resolve the situation peacefully.” US President Barack Obama added, “I urge all parties to maintain calm and avoid violence, and call on the Tunisian government to respect human rights, and to hold free and fair elections in the near future.”

Clichéd statements aside, both the US and the UK must fear the repercussions of a popular uprising in an area so close to the heart of American-British interests in the Middle East. Both countries are careful not to appear to oppose democratic reforms, even if they are forced to disown their friends in the region. Their response is largely representative of official responses from many Western capitals – the very capitals that lauded Tunisia as a model for how Arab countries can help win the war on terror.

One must not let confusing media headlines sideline the fact that neither the US nor the UK had Tunisia on their radar for circumventing democracy or violating human rights. Ben Ali was celebrated as an icon of moderation, notwithstanding his atypical Arab stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime was not the type that required much chastising. It was the benign kind that allowed a tiny space for secular opposition while cracking down on any Islamic opposition group. For 23 years, such practice was barely problematic, for it served the interests of both Ben Ali and various Western powers. The countless calls for respect of human rights from international and local organizations were mostly unheeded. Washington and London rarely found that irksome.

Now that the Tunisian people’s fight for rights has taken a sharp turn, many of us find it difficult to examine the specific context of this case without delving into dangerous generalizations. Western governments now speak of democracy in the region – as if there were ever a genuine concern; commentators speak of the next regime to fall – as if every Arab country is a duplication of another; and technology bloggers are celebrating another ‘twitter revolution.’

Perhaps generalizations make things more interesting. Tunisia, after all, is a small country, and most people know little about it aside from the fact that it’s a cheap tourist destination – thus the need to place it within a more gripping context. Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is using the opportunity to read the Tunisian uprising in a unique way. The AQIM leader, Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, has called for the overthrowing of the “corrupt, criminal and tyrannical” regimes in both Tunisia and Algeria and the instatement of al-Sharia law. This call has promoted American commentators to warn of the future Islamization of Tunisia and will likely result in Western intervention to ensure that another “moderate” regime succeeds the one that just fled.

There is no harm in expanding a popular experience to understand the world at large and its conflicts. But in the case of Tunisia, it seems that the country is largely understood within a multilayer of contexts, thus becoming devoid of any political, cultural or socio-economic uniqueness. Understanding Tunisia as just another “Arab regime”, another possible podium for al-Qaeda’s violence, is convenient but also unhelpful to any cohesive understanding of the situation there and the events that are likely to follow.

By Ramzy Baroud

– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com

The ongoing Tunisian Intifada (uprising) cannot yet quite be termed a revolution; Tunisians are still revolting, aspiring for bread and freedom. This Intifada will go in history as a revolution if it gets either bread or freedom and as a great revolution if it gets both. Internally, “the one constant in revolutions is the primordial role played by the army,” Jean Tulard, a French historian of revolutions, told Le Monde in an interview, and the Tunisian military seems so far forthcoming. Externally, the United States stands to be a critical contributor to either outcome in Tunisia, both because of its historical close relations with the Tunisian military and because of its regional hegemony and international standing as a world power, but the U.S. seems so far shortcoming.

While the Tunisian military has made a decision to side with its people, the United States has yet to decide what and whom to support among the revolting masses led by influential components like communists, Pan-Arabists, Islamists, left wingers, nationalists and trade unionists. The natural social allies of U.S. capitalist globalization, privatization and free market have been sidelined politically as partners and pillars of the deposed pro – U.S. Zein al-Abideen Ben Ali’s regime. The remaining pro – U.S. liberalism among Tunisians are overwhelmed by the vast majority of the unemployed, marginalized or underpaid who yearn for jobs, bread, balanced distribution of the national wealth and development projects more than they are interested in upper class western – oriented liberalism. Taken by surprise by the evolving political drama in Tunisia, the U.S. cannot by default contribute to a revolution for bread at a time its economic system is unable to provide for Americans themselves. However, it can play a detrimental role in contributing to a real Tunisian revolution for freedom by making an historic U-turn in its foreign policy.

In June 2005, the then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told an Arab audience at the American University in Cairo that, “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region — and we achieved neither.” But Rice did not elaborate to add that this same policy was and is still the main source of instability and the main reason for the absent democracy. Her successor incumbent Hillary Clinton has on January 13 in Qatar postured as the Barak Obama Administration’s mouthpiece on Arab human rights to lecture Arab governments on the urgent need for democratic reforms, warning that otherwise they will see their countries “sinking into the sand.” But Clinton missed to point out that her administration is still in pursuit of its predecessor’s advocacy of democracy through changing regimes in Arab and Muslim nations by means of military intervention, invasion and occupation, an endeavor that has proved a failure in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories, as well a policy that was and is still another source of regional instability and absence of democracy.

The Tunisian Intifada has proved that democracy and regime change can be homemade, without any U.S. intervention. Ironically any such U.S. intervention now is viewed in the region as a threat of a counterrevolution that would preempt turning the Intifada into a revolution. U.S. hands-off policy could be the only way to democracy in Tunisia. But a hands-off policy is absolutely not a trade mark of U.S. regional foreign policy. However, the United States has a choice now in Tunisia, but it is a choice that pre-requisites a U – turn both in the U.S. approach to Arab democracy and in its traditional foreign policy.

The U.S. risks to loose strategically in Tunisia unless it decides on an historic U – turn, because politically the Tunisian Intifada targeted a U.S. – supported regime and economically targeted a failed U.S. model of development. On November 13, 2007, Georgetown University Human Rights Institute and Law Center hosted a conference to answer the question, “Tunisia: A Model of Middle East Stability or an Incubator of Extremism?” But Tunisia now has given the answer: Tunisia is neither; it is an indigenous Arab way to democracy and moderation.

Indeed the U.S. has now a choice in Tunisia. The Arab country which is leading the first Arab revolution for democracy is now a U.S. test case. Non – U.S. intervention would establish a model for other Arabs to follow; it would also establish a model U.S. policy that would over time make Arabs believe in any future U.S. rhetoric on democracy and forget all the tragic consequences of American interventions in the name of democracy. But this sounds more a wishful thinking than a realpolitik expectation.

A U.S. long standing traditional policy seems to weigh heavily on its decision makers, who are obsessed with their own creation of the “Islamist threat” as their justification for their international war on terror, which dictates their foreign policy, especially vis – a vis Arab and Muslim states, to dictate a fait accompli to their rulers to choose between either being recruited to this war or being condemned themselves as terrorists or terrorism sponsors, and in this process exclusion policies should be pursued against wide spread representative Islamic movements. The U.S. perspective has always been that Arab Democracy could be sacrificed to serve U.S. vital interests and Arab democracy can wait! But the Tunisian Intifada has proved that Arab democracy cannot wait anymore.

Exclusion of popular Islamic movements while at the same excluding democratic reforms until the war on terror is won has proved a looser U.S. policy. The U.S. exploitation of the “Islamist threat” now is not convincing for Arab aspirants for democracy, who still remember that during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union the U.S. exploited the “communist threat,” then “Pan-Arabism threat,” to shore up autocratic and authoritarian Arab regimes. In Tunisia, the prisons of the pro – U.S. regime were always full long before there was an Islamic political movement: “In the 1950s prisons were filled with Youssefites (loyal to Salah Ben Youssef, who broke away from Bourguiba’s ruling Constitutional Party); in the 60s it was the Leftists; in the 70s it was the trade unions; and in the 80s it was our turn,” leader in-exile of the outlawed Islamic Nahda movement, Rachid Ghannouchi, told the Financial Times on January 18.

“When Nahda was in Tunisia … there was no al-Qaeda,” Ghannouchi said, reminding one that in the neighboring Algeria there was no al-Qaeda too before The Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was outlawed. In the Israeli – occupied territories, outlawing and imposing siege on the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas,” which won a landslide electoral victory in 2006, should be a warning that the only alternative to such moderate Islamic movements is for sure the extremist al-Qaeda like undergrounds. Jordan proved wiser than the U.S. decision makers by allowing the Islamic Action Front to compete politics lawfully. Recruiting fake Islamic parties to serve U.S. policies as the case is in Iraq has not proved feasible impunity against al-Qaeda. The United States has to reconsider. Exclusion of independent, moderate and non – violent Islamic representative movements, unless they succumb to U.S. dictates, has proved U.S. policy a failure. U.S. parameters for underground violent unrepresentative Islamists should not apply to these movements.

The U.S. decision makers however still seem deaf to what Ghannouchi told the Financial Times: “Democracy should not exclude communists … it is not ethical for us to call on a secular government to accept us, while once we get to power we will eradicate them.” This is the voice of Arab homemade democracy; it has nothing to do with the U.S. – exported democracy.

By Nicola Nasser

* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

When you do not distinguish between combatants and unarmed civilians during war, then you deserve to be named a ‘terrorist.’ It makes no difference what your religion is!

That is exactly what happened thousands of miles away and two days before last Christmas, when Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian shepherd in the back and injured two others. A 14 year old suffered a serious head injury and another 19 year old was injured in his hand.

The shooting took place in the Northern part of Gaza near the town of Beit Lahia. Israel considered the area a war zone, Palestinians called it home.

An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed the shooting, adding “The soldiers fired warning shot and aimed at the lower body.” Not only was that unprovoked and cold blooded murder, but rather a naked lie by the Israeli spin machine.

It took a quick search on the story to find out what the so-called “most moral army” actually did to the 22 year old Palestinian shepherd, Salamah Abu Hashish. My search reveals shocking and inhumane details. After the Palestinian medics arrived at the seen, they were denied permission by the Israeli soldiers to aid or remove the victims.

A nearby metal scraper was able to move Abu Hashish on the back of his donkey into the Kamal Udwan Hospital in Gaza where he died. Hospital officials said, one bullet went through his kidney.

The sad fact is Abu Hashish’s wife gave birth to their first child the night before, and the couple have not even chosen a name to their child.

He was the 13th Gazan to be killed by Israeli soldiers since last November and the 35 to suffer injuries near the border.

The shooting was condemned by Robert Serry, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. Mr. Serry urged Israel to show “maximum restriant,” andding “I am distressed that incidents such as these continue in the perimeter area of Gaza, and deplore the killing of one apparently unarmed Palestinian civilian and the injuring of a number of others by Israel.”

Despite the UN official appeal, 48 hours later, Israeli troops once again shot a 26-year-old Gaza fisherman twice, once in each foot. He was identified as AZ, and his injures were described by Palestinian medical officials as light. Now you have a young lady who suddenly became a widow with an orphanage to care for and whose child will never know his/her father, a 14 year old boy with his life in the balance and a disabled fisherman who will no longer be able to stand on his feet or help feed his family.

Keep in mind, Israel was able and continues to commit these crimes with our tax-dollars and our government’s total silence. Israel knows exactly who butters her bread! Just when your children abuse their spending money, you will certainly lecture them about how to be responsible and act wisely. Not US officials, though, who are too fearful of Israel to act, even in accordance to their country’s own laws.

It is therefore vital that readers who are incensed by the aforementioned atrocities by Israeli soldiers against unarmed Palestinians to express their concern to the embassy of Israel at our national capitol via email at info@washington.mfa.gov.il.

Israel should cease its war crimes against Palestinians, obey the rules that the rest of the world’s civilized nations follow and end the illegal and inhumane siege of Gaza.

21 January, 2011

Uruknet.info

Unraveling the confusion behind microcredit: how some models help alleviate poverty, while others exploit the poor to make the rich richer

For more than twenty years, microcredit has been widely heralded as the remedy for world poverty. Recent news stories, however, have sullied microcredit’s glowing reputation with reports on scandals, exorbitant compensation to managers, skyrocketing interest rates, and aggressive marketing schemes.

Once praised as a universal panacea, microlenders are now being widely attacked as predatory loan sharks. In December 2010, Sheik Hasina Wazed, the prime minister of Bangladesh and former microcredit advocate, accused microcredit programs of “sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation.”

What happened?

It turns out there are two very different models of microcredit. As Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize, pointed out in his January 15, 2011 New York Times op-ed, one type of microcredit program is designed to serve the poor; another to maximize financial returns to program managers and Wall Street investors.

The differences raise crucial questions for the future directions of microfinance. They also help us see where the banking system here in the United States went off course and how we must restructure it to support prosperous Main Street economies.

Grameen as a Model Community Bank

In 1983 Yunus founded the Grameen Bank, universally cited as the inspiration and model for the global microcredit movement. His purpose was to improve the lives of millions of poor Bangladeshis by making small loans to poor women to fund income-generating microbusinesses.

>> The basis for the Grameen Bank’s worldwide renown lies in a number of key characteristics that are not widely understood.

>> Most local branches are self-funded by deposits of their local members in taka, the Bangladesh national currency.

>> By serving as a depository for its members, Grameen Bank allows the poor to build their own financial asset base.

>> The bank extends loans to its members at a maximum interest rate of 20 percent, a fraction of what many other microlenders charge.

>> Operating on a cooperative model, profits are redistributed to the Grameen Bank’s owner-members or are invested in community projects.

These features root the Grameen Bank in the community it serves and keep money, including interest payments, continuously circulating locally to facilitate productive local exchange and build real community wealth.

Microcredit programs seeking to replicate the Grameen model have spread rapidly across the globe. Most, however, replicate only the loan feature. Few provide their members with depository services or replicate the Grameen Bank’s other defining features, though these features are central to its commitment to community wealth building.

The Turn to Wall Street

As microlending programs became increasingly focused on repayment rates and growing the size of their loan portfolios, they looked for new sources of capital to expand their reach. With encouragement from foreign philanthropists, many turned to foreign commercial equity investors. Since private equity conflicts with the nonprofit model, sometime around 2005 many nonprofit microcredit programs changed their status to for-profit enterprises and converted their philanthropic nonprofit assets into private for-profit assets.

One such micro-finance program was Compartamos in Mexico, which in 2007 launched an initial public stock offering. According to a New York Times article, it charged its borrowers an annual interest rate of near 90 percent, producing a return on equity of more than 40 percent, nearly three times the 15 percent average for Mexican commercial banks. This made Compartamos highly attractive to private equity investors. The public offering brought in $458 million, of which “private Mexican investors, including the bank’s top executives, pocketed $150 million.”

Another example is SKS Microfinance in India, whose initial public offering in August 2010 raised $358 million from international investors and yielded its founders stock options worth more than $40 million.

Yunus describes the consequences of such conversions and public sales:

To ensure that the small loans would be profitable for their shareholders, such banks needed to raise interest rates and engage in aggressive marketing and loan collection. The kind of empathy that had once been shown toward borrowers when the lenders were nonprofits disappeared.

For the groups that turned to Wall Street for financing, the line between social purpose microcredit and predatory loan sharking began to disappear, with some programs charging annual interests rates of more than 100 percent. Programs that had raised philanthropic funding to help put money into poor communities became vehicles for sucking wealth out of them to generate financial profits for already wealthy people.

Follow the Money

Apologists argue that so long as the Wall Street-funded microcredit programs charge interest rates lower than the local money lenders, they still benefit the poor.

Tara Thiagarajan, Chairperson of Madura Micro Finance, a for-profit microcredit program in India, followed the money and challenged this premise in a thoughtful and self-critical blog:

The local moneylender … may charge a higher interest rate, but being local will probably spend most of that income in the village supporting the overall village economy. So potentially, local lending at higher rates could be more beneficial to the village if the money is in turn spent in the village, compared to lower rates where the money leaves the village.

Because foreign private equity investors expect to recover their investment plus a perpetual flow of profits, the contradictions go even deeper than what Thiagrarajan outlined.

Say an equity investor in the United States buys shares in a microcredit program in India. The investor pays for the shares in U.S. dollars and in turn expects to be paid in U.S. dollars. The microlender, however, does business in Indian rupees.

The dollars, therefore, are exchanged for rupees in the foreign exchange market and become part of India’s foreign exchange pool, which funds consumer imports, machinery, foreign scholarships, capital flight, arms imports, foreign travel, and whatever other uses India may have for dollars—virtually none of which benefit the poor.

If the microlender meets its profit projections, this creates claims by the foreign investors on India’s foreign exchange reserves potentially many times the amount of the original investment. To fulfill this obligation, India must produce goods and service for sale abroad or sell or mortgage additional assets to foreigners, which creates still greater claims against future foreign exchange earnings. The community in which the borrowers reside will be dealing only in rupees, but faces a similar external drain on its resources to meet the borrowers’ obligations to the lending organization.

Say the microlending supported an increase in village food production. Rather than improving the diets of the workers who produce it, however, a portion of their additional production must be sold to outsiders to generate the rupees to repay their debts.

In return for a short-term inflow of money, both India and the village bind themselves to a long-term outflow of money and real wealth. It is an insidious dynamic that supports a classic pattern of colonization and wealth concentration long characteristic of foreign equity investment and loan funded foreign aid. A small short-term economic gain can come at a large long-term cost when it is funded with outside debt or equity.

A Lesson for the Rest of Us

The microcredit experience brings to light a larger principle: the institutional structure of a financial system determines where money flows and who benefits. In short, structure determines purpose.

The transformation of microcredit institutions from a model that serves communities to a model that is “sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation” mirrors a similar transformation of the U.S. banking system, which occurred through the process of banking deregulation that began in the United States in 1970s.

Throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s the United States had a system of locally owned and strictly regulated community banks, mutual savings and loans, and credit unions, many of them organized on a cooperative ownership model much like the Grameen Bank. They were organized and managed to serve the financial needs of the communities in which they were located and kept money flowing within the community in service to community needs.

Banking deregulation over the past 30 years led to a wave of banking mergers and acquisitions that created too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks devoted to maximizing financial returns to Wall Street bankers and financiers. Rather than supporting local wealth creation, the system now sucks money and real resources out of the community. Both the microcredit experience and the aftermath of the 2008 Wall Street financial crash vividly reveal that the values and interests of Wall Street stand in fundamental opposition to those of Main Street.

Financial institutions can serve communities in pursuit of a better life for all or they can serve global markets to maximize financial returns to Wall Street bankers and financiers. They cannot serve both.

The world does not need more predatory lenders in service to Wall Street. We all need more local, cooperatively owned community banks on the model of Grameen.

By David Korten

21 January, 2011

YES! Magazine

David Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. David is co-founder and board chair of YES!, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).

During Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit, a US – China Joint Statement said:

“The United States stressed that the promotion of human rights and democracy is an important part of its foreign policy. China stressed that there should be no interference in any country’s internal affairs.”

Washington often chides other nations about their abuses and injustices at home and abroad. In fact, no other nation matches America’s disdain for human and civil rights, yet as Washington Post writers John Pomfret and Scott Wilson said in their January 20 article headlined, “Obama hosts Hu Jintao on state visit, presses China on human rights:”

“President Obama used his summit Wednesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao to place human rights front and center in the US relationship with the world’s preeminent ascending power.”

New York Times writers Helene Cooper and Mark Landler stressed the same theme in their January 19 article headlined, “Obama Pushes Hu on Rights but Stresses Ties to China,” stating:

Obama “prodded China to make progress on human rights,’ quoting him saying they’re a:

“source of tension between our two governments. (Americans) have some core views….about the universality of certain rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly….(T)he world is more just when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being,” ones Washington flaunts globally while pointing fingers at others.

A previous article addressed China’s documentation of US human rights abuses, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/04/chinas-documentation-of-us-human-rights.html

Below are some of its revelations, and while China is no human rights model, America is far more guilty of crimes against humanity and the supreme international crime against peace – waging unjustifiable wars of aggression.

Last November, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) cited others “carried out on the pretext of combating terrorism.” Specific human rights violations were covered, notably torture and other abuses at Guantanamo, ones America won’t address or correct as well as similar practices overseas and in homeland gulag prisons. America notoriously commits the most egregious human rights crimes repeatedly. Pointing fingers at others exposes its gross hypocrisy.

Yet on March 11, 2010, mostly with no source documentation, the US State Department issued its “2009 Human Rights Report: China (including Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau),” calling the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constitutionally is the paramount source of power,” practicing:

On March 13, China’s Information Office of the State Council responded with its own comprehensive report, titled: “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009,” correctly saying America:

“released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009….posing as ‘the world judge of human rights’ again. As in previous years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory (and those of other nations. China’s report) is prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States.”

Countering US misinformation, it presented an accurate account of what US propaganda suppresses, revealing important, substantiated facts about:

Overall, America is a lawless, violent terror state, intolerant of human and civil rights, democratic values, and basic notions of freedom and equal justice.

Hardly a record to extol. Indeed one to suppress, what America’s major media cooperate in doing, assuring more people abroad understand than shamefully few at home.

China’s analysis covered six major topics, using corroborating data from the US Justice Department (DOJ), FBI, other US agencies, state ones, think tanks, and international and US media reports, revealing a far different America than portrayed in the mainstream and by misleading government reports.

It revealed millions of violent and property crimes; systemic civil, human and political rights violations; denial of economic, social and cultural rights; racial discrimination against Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Immigrants of color, and Native Americans; flaunting the rights of women and children; and committing human rights violations globally. It’s a record of shame, not pride, including prison abuse in the world’s largest gulag.

It’s real, accurate and disturbing, not the fiction popularly believed or portrayed daily in films, television, and published reports. It’s an ugly America, not what Obama proclaimed on Human Rights day, December 10, 2010, saying:

“Today, we continue the fight to make universal human rights a reality for every person, regardless of race, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or circumstance….The United States will always speak for those who are voiceless, defend those who are oppressed, and bear witness to those who want nothing more than to exercise their universal human rights.”

Not a word about how many millions America murdered globally since 9/11/01 alone, how many others are persecuted at home, and how many hundreds of political prisoners remain incarcerated – in fact, many thousands including undocumented Latino and other immigrants.

No mention either of the millions of homeless, hungry, deprived and forgotten. Ignored was decades of public wealth transferred to people already with too much, mass poverty and deprivation, targeting the middle class for destruction, America now corporate-occupied territory, planned neoserfdom for working people, the American dream disappearing like smoke, and democratic freedoms more illusion than reality.

Ignored was the real America on a fast track toward tyranny and ruin, its people trashed like yesterday’s garbage. Working men and women experience it daily, more than ever after the maliciously manufactured hard times, ushering in an era of want and need while those with super-wealth get richer under a system benefitting them, no others. The real America must be exposed, denounced and replaced before conditions are so bad it’s too late.

By Stephen Lendman

21 January, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

In the wake of the dastardly killing of Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, for having dared to question the country’s draconian blasphemy law, scores of Pakistani ‘Islamic’ outfits celebrated the crime by showering encomiums on the man’s murderer, insisting that his action was perfectly in consonance with their understanding of Islam. They feted him as an intrepid Islamic hero, a ghazi or warrior of the faith. Across the border, not a single Indian Muslim religious organisation condemned the attack. This might well suggest that they shared the enthusiasm of their Pakistani counterparts, although, for obvious reasons, they were unable to openly express their delight at the deadly event. Probably the only Islamic scholar of note on either side of the border to have condemned the brutal murder in no uncertain terms, and to have insisted that it had no sanction whatsoever in Islam, was the New Delhi-based Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. He immediately responded to the murder in an article published in the Times of India, insisting that the punishment of death for blasphemy, as prescribed in Pakistan’s blasphemy law, had no sanction in Islam at all.

Khan’s views on the appropriate Islamic punishment for blasphemy, particularly for defaming the holy Prophet (PBUH), are diametrically opposed to those of the mullahs and doctrinaire Islamists, which is one reason why the latter so passionately detest him. He does not condone blasphemy, even in the name of free speech, of course, but nor does he agree with those Muslims who insist that Islam prescribes the death penalty for those guilty of it. He first articulated his position on the subject in a book titled Shatim-e-Rasul Ka Masla: Quran wa Hadith aur Fiqh wa Tarikh ki Raushni Mai (Defaming the Prophet (PBUH): In the light of the Quran, Hadith, Fiqh and History). The book, consisting of a number of articles penned in the wake of the massive controversy that shook the world over the publication of Salman Rushdie’s infamous Satanic Verses, was published in 1997. It is a powerful critique, using Islamic arguments, of the strident anti-Rushdie agitation and of the argument that the Islamic punishment for blasphemy is death. Although Khan condemned the Satanic Verses as blasphemous, he argued that stirring up Muslim passions and baying for Rushdie’s blood was neither the rational nor the properly Islamic way of countering the book and its author. Death for blasphemy, he contended, using references from the Quran and the corpus of Hadith to back his stance, was not prescribed in Islam, in contrast to what Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, and, echoing him, millions of Muslims worldwide, ardently believed.

Khan was possibly one of the only Islamic scholars to forcefully condemn the death sentence on Rushdie that Khomeini had announced and that vast numbers of Muslims, Shias and Sunnis, imagined was their religious duty to fulfill. Although his book deals specifically with the issue of blaspheming the holy Prophet (PBUH) in the context of the anti-Rushdie agitation, it is of immediate relevance to the ongoing debate about the blasphemy laws and the violence it engenders in Pakistan today. What is particularly fascinating about the book is that it uses Islamic arguments to counter the widespread belief among Muslims that death is the punishment laid down in Islam for blasphemy as well as for those who, like the late Salmaan Taseer, oppose such punishment. Addressing the issue from within an Islamic paradigm, with the help of copious quotes from the Quran and Hadith, Khan’s case against death for blasphemers would, one supposes, appear more convincing to Muslims than secular human rights arguments against Pakistan’s deadly blasphemy law that has unleashed such havoc in the country.

Like most Muslims, Khan believes that Islam is the only true religion. Muslims, he says, are commanded by God to communicate Islam to the rest of humanity. This work of dawah or ‘invitation’ to the faith is, he says, the hallmark of a true Muslim. Yet, he laments, ‘the Muslims of today are totally bereft of dawah consciousness’. This lack, he contends, is at the very root of the manifold conflicts that Muslims are presently embroiled in with others in large parts of the world. This almost total absence of ‘dawah consciousness’ has made Muslims, so he argues, victims of a peculiar superiority complex that has no warrant in Islam, which drives them on to engage in endless conflict with others. Muslims, he writes, imagine themselves as ‘the soldiers of God, the censors of the morals of the whole of creation, and the deputies of God on earth’, which, he contends, is ‘absurdly un-Islamic’. He insists that this attitude of presumed superiority and the drive for confronting and dominating others that it instigates have absolutely no sanction in the Quran. He quotes the Quran as referring to the holy Prophet (PBUH) as simply as a warner and guide, and not as a ruler over the people he addressed, and rues that Muslims behave in a totally contrary manner in their relations with non-Muslims. ‘They want to rule over others,’ Khan laments. And that, he adds, is ‘their biggest psychological problem’

The Quran, Khan says, exhorts Muslims to be bearers of glad tidings to others and to invite them to God’s path. The work of dawah is not a simple verbal calling. Rather, for dawah to be effective, he says, Muslims must themselves be righteous, including in their dealings with people of other faiths. They must see themselves as dais or missionaries inviting others to God’s path, and regard others as madus or addressees of the divine invitation. Dawah, Khan says, ‘must form the basis of the believer’s personality and must shape his relations with others’. These relations must be fundamentally shaped by the dawah imperative, which means that Muslims must always seek to relate kindly and compassionately with others. A true dai, committed to this principal Islamic duty of dawah, must relate to people of other communities with love and concern for their welfare. They should ‘keep the needs of dawah above all other considerations’, Khan says. They might face all sorts of loss and damage at the hands of others, but at no cost should they allow the cause of dawah to be hampered. This means, Khan insists, that ‘they must not resort to such activities that are opposed to the demands of dawah or that undermine its prospects’. Principally, they must desist from conflicts with people of other faiths, even in the face of grave provocation, for this would certainly further reinforce their prejudices against Islam and Muslims and only sabotage prospects for dawah. Even when confronted with extremely hurtful and provocative situations, such as blasphemy, they must not resort to violent agitation and demand the death of the culprit. There are other, rational and more meaningful, ways to react, Khan says, but to react violently and to call for the death of blasphemers would only further magnify anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiments, harden borders between Muslims and others, and, thereby, place additional barriers in the path of dawah.

Khan is convinced that the Muslims of today have abandoned their divine duty of dawah. This is why, he writes, instead of seeking to relate kindly with people of other faiths, as addressees of the ‘invitation’ to God’s path, they consider the latter as their ‘communal enemies’ and are constantly engaged in seeking to confront them. Muslims, he contends, wrongly imagine that they are ‘God’s deputies on earth’, completely forgetting that the Quran speaks about true believers as being His witnesses to humanity. Because the drive for dawah no longer enthuses them, he goes on, their relations with people of other faiths are conflict-ridden and they ‘engage in such acts as have no sanction at all in Islam’. Their hatred for others, which promotes constant conflict with them, he says, ‘is tantamount to murder of dawah’. Treating others as their ‘political foes’, instead of as ‘potential addressees of God’s message’, they lose no opportunity to drum up opposition and instigate conflicts and agitations directed against them. Such Muslims, Khan minces no words in saying, ‘are murderers of dawah and divine guidance’. They are completely unmindful, he says, that ‘by engaging in such activities that sabotage dawah.

Khan then turns to the issue of blasphemy and the violent agitations unleashed across the globe in the wake of Khomeini’s fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death. He insists that the fatwa and the agitation that it stirred are tantamount to ‘murdering dawah’, and bemoans that ‘it reflects a total lack of dawah consciousness’. Such reactions, he warns, will only further reinforce deeply rooted negative feelings among non-Muslims about Islam and Muslims, which would make the task of dawah even more difficult than it already is. He goes so far as to claim that those engaged in this agitation, whether as leaders or foot soldiers, run the very real risk of ‘being treated as criminals in the eyes of God, notwithstanding the fact that they may label their dawah-murdering agitation as an agitation for the glory of Islam’.

Khan blames what he sees as the Muslims’ total lack of dawah consciousness for what he perceives as their wild emotionalism in the face of even the smallest provocation. If anyone dares says anything, no matter how minor, against their way of thinking, he contends, they immediately get provoked and resort to agitation and even violence. The most sensitive issue in this regard, Khan notes, is the image of the holy Prophet (PBUH). If anyone says or writes anything about the Prophet that does not correspond with how they themselves perceive him, Khan notes, Muslims turn ‘uncontrollably emotional’ and ‘lose all reason.’ Khan believes this is not at all the appropriate Islamic attitude, and traces it to what he perceives as the fact that ‘Muslims have abandoned dawah’. Because of this, he explains, they now ‘see others as their communal enemies’ and consider any such criticism as ‘an attack on their communal pride’, which forces them out on the streets in violent agitation and worse.

Had Muslims maintained their ‘dawah consciousness’, he remarks, they would have responded to the provocation differently: through patience and avoidance of conflict, as he says the Quran advises them to, so that prospects for dawah would not thereby be damaged. But since they have lost the commitment to dawah, he laments, they have fallen victim to what he terms ‘false emotionalism’ that drives them to respond violently to any and every provocation. This stance, he says, is completely un-Quranic, and is bound to reinforce anti-Islamic prejudices that underlie phenomenon such as blasphemy, instead of doing anything at all to resolve them.

In the face of provocations, such as negative statements or writings against Islam, Khan advises Muslims not to give in to the temptation to react with violent agitation. Instead, he advises, they should respond ‘with patience, wisdom, far-sightedness and clear-mindedness’, these being qualities which he identifies with ‘success in this world and in the next’.

By Yoginder Sikand

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk

20 January, 2011

A previous article addressed Lebanon’s turmoil, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/01/turmoil-in-lebanon.html

It discussed Israel’s history of terrorizing Lebanon through decades of belligerent interventions as early as 1954, as well as thousands of terrorist acts against a nonviolent state whose misfortune is being Israel’s neighbor. It also discussed false accusations against Hezbollah, a legitimate part of Lebanon’s government, not a terrorist organization as Israel and America claim.

Targeted Killings, An Israeli Speciality

Not covered was Israel’s history of targeted assassinations, way predating its founding during the Mandatory Palestine period when Jewish terror groups targeted Jews, Brits and Arabs. Involved were paramilitary Hagana members, Irgun headed by future prime minister Menachem Begin, and Lehi (also called the Stern Gang) led by another future prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, rogue killers before entering politics.

In November 1944, Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, Britain’s Middle East minister of state, near his home in Cairo. In September 1948, it also killed UN mediator Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem, five months after Israel was established. Yitzhak Shamir personally approved of shooting him to death.

In July 1946, Irgun bombed the King David Hotel, massacring 92 Brits, Arabs and Jews, wounding 58 others, an operation future prime minister David Ben-Gurion approved as head of the Jewish Agency at the time.

Before and after May 1948, many thousands of targeted killings occurred or were attempted, most little remembered today except to relatives and their descendants.

Little wonder Israel’s history is so bloodstained, involving individual and mass killings, including on April 9, 1948 (during Israel’s “war of independence”) when Irgun, Lehi and complicit terrorists slaughtered well over 120 Palestinian men, women and children in the bloody Deir Yassin village massacre. On April 14, The New York Times reported 254 killed.

Post-1948, Palestinian supporters were targeted regionally and in Europe. Waves of successful and attempted assassinations occurred, notably against high-profile figures. They never stopped, including the murder of Hamas member Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, killed last February in Dubai after two earlier failed attempts. Abu-Dhabi’s the National reported he was poisoned, drugged, and suffocated after previously surviving a failed shooting. Found dead in a Dubai hotel on January 20, 2010, police accused Mossad of murder.

Earlier incidents included Palestinians Abdel Wael Zwaiter, shot 11 times by Israeli agents in Rome after returning home from dinner. It was the first of dozens of retaliatory assassinations against persons suspected of involvement in the Munich summer Olympic killings of Israeli athletes, coaches and officials, allegedly by Black September members, a resistance, not terrorist organization.

On June 14, 1980, Yahia El Meshad, then head of Iraq’s nuclear program, was found bludgeoned to death in his Paris hotel room. No one was arrested, but French authorities named Israeli intelligence.

On August 20, 1983, Mamoun Meraish was shot and killed while driving in Athens. Israeli agents were blamed.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Mossad was implicated in numerous Beirut and other car bombings, one of its specialities.

On September 25, 1997, two Mossad agents with forged Canadian passports attacked Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Jordan, spraying him with an unknown poison. He survived and recovered to explain.

In January 2002, a car bomb killed former Lebanese cabinet minister Elie Hobeika and three bodyguards. In 1982, he was involved in the infamous Sabra and Shatilla camp massacres. Days before his assassination, he expressed willingness to implicate then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s direct role. Clearly, Mossad killed him to prevent it.

In May 2002, Mossad murdered Mohammed Jihad Jibril, son of Ahmed Jibril, founder and head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In August 2003, Mossad assassinated Ali Hassan Saheh, Hezbollah’s top security officer. Prime Minister Sharon ordered Meir Dagan, its head until January 1, 2011, to conduct assassinations abroad. No persuasion was needed for why Mossad exists in the first place, a de facto Murder, Inc. within or outside Israel, making Mafia families seem almost saintly by comparison.

From 2002 – 2006, it was responsible for numerous car bombings, killing Hezbollah, Hamas, and other officials regionally.

On February 12, 2008, a car bomb killed Hezbollah member Imad Hugniyeh in Damascus. Mossad again was responsible.

On August 1, 2008, it killed Muhammad Suleiman, a Syrian army officer close to President Bashar al-Assad, shot by snipers offshore near his vacation villa.

Rafik Hariri’s Assassination

On February 14, 2005, compelling visual and audio evidence revealed real time intercepted Israel aerial surveillance footage of routes former Prime Minister Hariri used on the day his motorcade was attacked. Clearly, Israel was involved.

At the time, New York Times writer Hassan Fattah headlined, “Beirut Car Bomb Kills Ex-Premier; Stability at Risk,” saying:

“An enormous car bomb blasted (Hariri’s) motorcade, (killing) him and 11 others in the most serious blow to (Lebanon’s) stability….in more than a decade. (He) was pronounced dead on arrival at the American University Hospital in Beirut.”

Washington blamed Syria. Al-Assad denied responsibility. Hezbollah was later falsely named. It was a typical Mossad assassination though no one at the time knew for sure. The blast ripped a 30 foot crater in the street, injuring over 100 besides those killed.

An International Court of Justice (ICC) Special Tribunal (STL) investigated Hariri’s killing. On January 17, its sealed indictment was released, Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare saying the next day that the confidential document was important for the people of Lebanon, the international community, and “for those who believe in international justice.”

Clearly, none is planned because of enormous Washington/Israeli pressure to blame Hezbollah and perhaps Iran for a typical Mossad operation. Belgian Judge Daniel Fransen got the indictment to determine if credible evidence warrants trial. Reportedly, without corroboration, one person named is Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for giving instructions to kill Hariri, though like Hezbollah and Syria, the Islamic Republic had nothing to gain from his assassination.

The Netherland’s-based court registrar, Herman von Hebel, said material given Fransen contains “thousands of pages” of documents and DVDs, adding that it will take at least six to 10 weeks to review them before proceeding further, including a possible trial.

On January 17, an Obama released statement said:

“I welcome the announcement by the Office of the Prosecutor for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon today that he has filed an indictment relating to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others. This action represents an important step toward ending the era of impunity for murder in Lebanon, and achieving justice for the Lebanese people.”

Israel wasn’t implicated. Names omitted, Obama suggested others, notably Hezbollah, perhaps Iran or Syria, not Mossad for one of its signature operations, besides kidnappings, shootings, poisonings, and other ways of committing murder, including strong evidence it assassinated Yasser Arafat. In November 2004, he died in a Paris hospital after succumbing to an undiagnosed illness, believed caused by a slow-acting, hard to detect poison.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a US tool, urged Lebanon to form a new government as soon as possible. Explaining his support for the tribunal, he told an Abu Dhabi news conference that it’s “important not to pre-judge the outcome of the investigation, and no one should politicize (its) work….”

In fact, Washington and Israel politicized it from the start to point fingers away from where they belong.

On January 18, Reuters headlined, “Tensions high in Beirut after Hariri indictment,” saying:

“Lebanese security forces deployed in central Beirut on Tuesday and several schools closed in response to tentions surrounding a draft indictment over the 2005 (Hariri) killing….”

Hezbollah no doubt will be named. Its leaders deny involvement, accusing the tribunal of being an “Israeli tool.” Al-Manar television said America was behind the released draft to sabotage efforts to resolve Lebanon’s crisis after Hezbollah pulled out of the government, causing it to dissolve. It accused Washington of “pushing the indictment ahead to light the fuse to blow up the bridges for a solution,” adding that “Americans control the indictment in form and content.”

Joint US/Israeli Interests

For geopolitical reasons, Washington and Israel provoke tensions, strife, and violence, at times erupting in war, including in 2006 against Lebanon, 2008-09 Cast Lead against Gaza, and whatever may be planned ahead, perhaps against Hezbollah and/or Hamas.

On January 16, Hezbollah leader Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah said “We will not allow our reputation and our honor to be touched.” A US embassy spokesman said America “does not interfere in Lebanon’s internal political matters.” In fact, Washington meddles globally, notably with Israel.

Cui Bono?

Not Syria forced to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, substantially reducing though not ending its influence there. Not Hezbollah either with nothing to gain but plenty to lose if, in fact, proved responsible, or unjustifiably convicted for killing Hariri.

After its May 2000 Lebanon withdrawal, two primary Israeli goals were forcing Syria out and weakening or destroying Hezbollah. After Hariri’s assassination, Middle East expert Sam Hamod said:

‘We must do as they do in other criminal cases, look at who had the most to gain from (Hariri’s killing). The Lebanese (including Hezbollah) had a lot to lose, as did the Syrians. No matter where else you look, no one else had anything to gain except Israel and the US. America quickly pointed the finger at Syria, as did Israel, which was tantamount to convicting themselves because they are the only two countries that would gain by creating unrest in Lebanon.”

UK journalist Patrick Seale, writing in the London Guardian, agreed, saying:

“If Syria killed (Hariri), it must be judged an act of political suicide. (Assassinating him would) destroy its reputation and hand its enemies a weapon with which to deliver the blow that could finally destabilize the Damascus regime….The murder is more likely to be the work of one of its many enemies.”

The same reasoning applies to Hezbollah, a close Syrian and Iranian ally. After Damascus was absolved, Hezbollah remained a convenient target, no matter the lack of evidence or motive for acting self-destructively. Israel and Washington want its political influence weakened and military effectiveness destroyed. In 2006, IDF forces tried and failed.

A Final Comment

Whether or not future conflict is planned, current strategy is neutralizing Hezbollah by indictment for Hariri’s killing, a transparent plan fooling no one in Lebanon. As of now, it’s destabilized in limbo under caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri, ahead of attempts to form a new government.

On January 21, Lebanon’s Daily Star reported that:

“After two days of intensive talks with Lebanese leaders and rival factions, including Hezbollah leader Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani, and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, (they) left Beirut at dawn Thursday, saying they were suspending the mediation attempts.”

The previous day, Saudi Arabia also pulled out, warning that Lebanon could be partitioned. On January 20, Davutoglu said Lebanese parties weren’t close to an agreement, adding that he’s willing to help forge a new approach to avoid unrest. Everything so far is in flux, leaving Lebanon stabilized without resolution.

In his January 21 Daily Start op-ed headlined, “What Hezbollah might face once the trial begins,” University of Otago, New Zealand Professor William Harris said:

“We know….almost certainly (persons) aligned with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran” will be named, but unclear whether Syrian or Iranian figures will be indicted.

Individuals, not nations or political groups will be named. Nonetheless, believes Harris, “the consequences for (Hezbollah) longer term may be catastrophic.” If its members are convicted, “it is difficult to see how the party could thereafter take part in Lebanese official business as if nothing had happened….”

It would also raise suspicions for its involvement in other political killings. “Any organization or regime tarred with this brush will be politically finished in any meaningful sense.”

Not everyone shares that view, perhaps including long-time Beirut-based journalist Robert Fisk in his January 18 article headlined, “Names of Hariri killing suspects handed to judge,” saying:

Manipulated false evidence corrupted the tribunal process. A “score of (arrested) Lebanese mobile phone company officials proves Israel tampered with phone records on the day of (Hariri’s) murder, (and) that four ‘false witnesses’ who perjured themselves to the UN should be arrested themselves.” 

Their “evidence” got four Lebanese security generals falsely imprisoned without trial, “the UN, with much embarrassment, forced to release them.” Saad Hariri was involved. A lot of people are talking nonsense, said Fisk, “not least US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, (insisting) that the UN tribunal be ‘respected,’ even though most Lebanese are running a mile from it.”

Though “Nasrallah is obviously worried,” so are “a number of ‘false witnesses’ ” whose testimonies are being used to indict Hezbollah and perhaps others. As for the UN, says Fisk, it “looks like a jackass.” Whoever knows who killed Hariri, an “awful lot of Lebanese are breathless….not to find out.” It’ll be weeks before names are known, but already clear Israel will be absolved despite credible whitewashed evidence.

by Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.