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More than a week after the NATO-led “rebels” invaded the Libyan capital of Tripoli, the city’s 2 million residents are facing a deepening humanitarian crisis, deprived of water, electricity, adequate food supplies and desperately needed medical care.

While the downfall of the 42-year-old regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi has been universally proclaimed, the whereabouts of Gaddafi himself are still not known. The principal leaders of the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC)—recognized by the major powers as the “legitimate” government of Libya—have yet to set foot in Tripoli.

Sporadic fighting continues to be reported in the capital, while NATO and the insurgent forces it has sponsored are preparing for a siege of Sirte, the coastal city of 100,000 that is Gaddafi’s home town and a center of his tribe, the Gaddafas.

NATO warplanes have conducted dozens of air strikes against Sirte, which straddles the highway leading from Tripoli in the west to Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, to the east.

The pretense that this air war is being carried out under the United Nations mandate to protect Libyan civilians has become increasingly ludicrous as US, British and French warplanes are used to pound civilian population centers to prepare the way for invading “rebel” armies.

The head of the self-appointed NTC, Mustafa Abel Jalil, told a meeting of NATO envoys in Qatar Monday that the bombings should continue because “Gaddafi is still capable of doing something awful in the last moments.” He added that the ousted Libyan leader’s “defiance of the coalition forces still poses a danger, not only for Libya but for the world.”

Meanwhile, a United Nations watchdog web site published a leaked document that contains draft plans for a UN “peacekeeping” deployment in Libya, which would involve dispatching several hundred foreign military observers and police. The thrust of the UN mission, according to the 10-page document, would be to “contribute to confidence building and to the implementation of agreed military tasks.” The “confidence building,” it adds, “might be necessary for the troops of the Gaddafi government which will find themselves under the control of hostile forces.”

In other words, the key question perceived by the major powers is resurrecting the repressive apparatus of the Gaddafi regime under new, and presumably more pliant, management. As for the “agreed military tasks,” primary among them would be disarming the population.

The document calls for 200 unarmed military observers and 190 UN police officers to be sent to Libya. The document adds, however, that if the stabilization of Tripoli required more “robust international assistance,” this would be beyond the UN’s capabilities. In that case, it states, “the only viable option to ensure a safe environment in Tripoli are the transitional authorities themselves, with the advice of those who are already assisting or advising them.”

It continues: “The Security Council’s ‘protection of civilians’ mandate implemented by NATO forces does not end with the fall of the Gaddafi government, and there, NATO would continue to have some responsibilities.”

The clear implication is that should NATO see the necessity of deploying ground troops in Libya for the purpose of “restoring order,” it could claim to be implementing the UN Security Council resolution for “protection of civilians,” even as it suppressed civilian opposition to a new Western-backed puppet regime.

Some have suggested that this dirty work be contracted out to Arab regimes, such as Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, likely bolstered by mercenaries hired through military contractors. The CNT’s Jalil has called for any foreign troops to be “Arab or Islamic.” Italy’s defense minister, Ignazio La Russa, recently expressed himself along similar lines, declaring, “We cannot rule out the presence of UN troops, so long as they come from Arab or African countries.”

The Times of London on Monday described the current situation in Tripoli as follows: “Seventy percent of the capital’s homes have no running water… Large parts of the city have little or no electricity. Fresh produce, milk and cooking gas are all but unattainable… At the zoo, keepers are cutting branches from trees to feed the hippopotamuses and monkeys and say they are short of water. ‘The animals are in danger,’ said one, Ali Abdullah Conti.

“Hospitals are running out of oxygen, fixators for treating fractures, and drugs for conditions such as diabetes… The city is filled with the stench of rubbish, and occasional corpses, rotting in the heat. Telephones work only intermittently. Most commercial life ceased months ago. Many people have no money left because the banks are shut and salaries have not been paid.”

The continuing discovery of victims of massacres and summary executions across Tripoli has created an atmosphere of fear and terror in the Libyan capital. Reuters’ Peter Graff described the killings as “a harrowing warning that more carnage may lie ahead.”

“[A]s bodies lay in fetid piles in the streets of the capital this week,” Graff reported, “Libyans faced the prospect that, as in Iraq in 2003, the fall of a dictator could mark the beginning, rather than the end, of the war’s most violent phase.”

Referring to last week’s grim discovery of dozens of bodies of massacred Gaddafi supporters at a traffic circle outside the Libyan ruler’s compound, Graff wrote: “Since then, Reuters and other news organizations have found scores of other bodies in the capital, especially in Abu Salim, home to many Gadhafi government officials and their families. Friday brought the discovery of the abandoned Abu Salim hospital building, full of corpses lying on cots.

“The exact circumstances of the killings are still not clear, but these were not fighters left where they were killed on the battlefield. Gadhafi’s supporters will doubtlessly blame the rebels for carrying out large-scale revenge killings.”

The discovery of dozens more bodies in government jail cells, apparently massacred by Gaddafi’s security forces, has fueled the drive for revenge.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned Monday that the lack of drinking water, which extends well beyond Tripoli—from Misrata to the east and to the Tunisian border to the west—threatens to produce a serious public health crisis.

In addition to providing water, the ICRC has made it a priority to distribute body bags and train volunteers in “dead body management.”

The African Union Monday announced that it would withhold recognition of the National Transitional Council as Libya’s legitimate government because of the widespread killing and abuse of black African workers by the so-called “rebels.”

One of the facets of Tripoli’s crisis, the piling up of trash in the city’s streets, is directly attributable to these criminal pogroms. The overwhelming majority of the city’s sanitation workers are sub-Saharan African immigrants, who are now in hiding, in fear for their lives.

The African Union charged that the NATO-backed forces were indiscriminately rounding up and killing African migrants solely because of their skin color. It warned that the lives of tens of thousands of migrant workers were in danger, as “rebels” were branding people with black skins “mercenaries” and lynching them.

“We need clarification because the NTC seems to confuse black people with mercenaries… They are killing normal workers,” Jean Ping, the chairman of the Commission of the African Union told reporters in Ethiopia Monday. “[The rebels seem to think] all blacks are mercenaries. If you do that it means [that] one-third of the population of Libya which is black is also mercenaries. They are killing people, normal workers, mistreating them.”

The NTC responded with a bald denial that any such killings or cases of abuse have taken place, despite their being confirmed by many news reports from the country. “This never took place,” said an NTC spokesman. “If it happened, it will be the Gaddafi forces.”

As the carnage continued to unfold, major Western energy conglomerates pressed for advantage in what they anticipate will be a profit bonanza from the NATO-led “regime change” in Libya. The National Transitional Council signed an agreement Monday with the state-backed Italian energy firm ENI calling for a “rapid and complete” resumption of the company’s activities in Libya. The memorandum of understanding was procured by the oil firm’s CEO, Paolo Scaroni, who went to Benghazi for the signing.

ENI was the largest producer operating in Libya before the NATO war. The company’s shares rose 3.1 percent on the announcement.

Meanwhile, the French government, the first to recognize the CNT, announced that it has reopened its embassy in Tripoli and a foreign ministry spokesman stressed that “there’s no time to lose” in promoting reconstruction in Libya. The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, which will host a Libyan contact group meeting in Paris Thursday, is widely seen as pressing for advantage, particularly for the French oil giant Total, based on France’s aggressive posture in the war.

A column published in the Italian daily La Stampa on Sunday warned that France was preparing to switch from its military onslaught against Libya to “fighting a cold war to prevent Italian companies from winning back their priority positions in the network of oil wells” set up by ENI.

By Bill Van Auken

30 August 2011

WSWS.org

In all honesty, I really have many other things to do than waste my time commenting on what has to be one of the most inane and counter-productive debates in Malaysian politics today. Yet as the tide of silliness gains strength all around us, I feel it necessary to add my two cents’ worth to this debate, before I get back to my real work which happens to be teaching and research, so here it goes…

It appears that some academics in Malaysia now claim that Malaya (as it was then called) was never colonised by the British after all- or at least that the Malay kingdoms were never colonies in the fullest sense of the word, but rather protectorates. This is, literally, correct and it has to be said that the legal-political status of these states were precisely that: Protectorates rather than colonies. But we need to raise some crucial questions at this point in order to flesh out the debate a little further, and try to understand how and why such an arrangement came about in the first place.

Firstly, it ought to be noted that the use of the term ‘Protectorate’ rather than ‘colony’ offered (then, in the 19th century) a fig-leaf of respectability to what can only be described as a mad scramble for power and domination by the British who were not satisfied with the acquisition of their outright colonies in Penang, Dindings, Malacca and Singapore. By the 1870s, members of the British merchantile community in the colonies were demanding more British intervention into the Malay kingdoms so that the British could have direct access to the tin ore and fertile land for rubber and palm oil production. Simply put, Penang, Malacca and Singapore were too small for their own capital investment and market concerns, and they wished to have more control over resources in the Malay kingdoms. To this end, the so-called ‘Forward Movement’ policy was devised to facilitate British colonial intervention into the Malay lands.

By the time the British – through means both fair and foul – gained control over the kingdoms of Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang, they instituted new treaties that placed the Malay rulers at a tremendous disadvantage. It has to be remembered that before this the Malay kingdoms were independent sovereign states in their own right, and each kingdom was in fact its own country with its own government, economy, courts of law etc. All of this was eroded by the British whose mode of indirect rule meant the introduction of the office of the colonial Resident, whose role and status was that of the de facto administrator of the states; and the Malay rulers were coerced (often at the point of a gun or cannon) to concede control to the British in matters political and economic.

With the arrival of the British in Pahang and the installation of a Resident (John Pickersgill Rodger[1]) at the court in Pekan in 1888, Pahang was ‘opened up’ to the outside world – though the only foreign capital that was henceforth welcomed in the state was British, and not other European capital. British ships began to dock at the ports of Pahang and a bi-weekly ferry service was introduced that brought with it a regular mail service as well.  British commercial investments were initially focused on gold and tin-mining – both of which required the mapping of the territory as well as the importation of manual labour. Coming just a year after the British had installed Sultan Idris Shah as the new British-backed ruler of Perak (after having defeated Sultan Abdullah and sent him into exile), the turn of events in Pahang in 1888 signalled that Sultan Ahmad Shah’s days as the ruler of Pahang were effectively over.

As in the Pangkor treaty that was signed by Sultan Abdullah of Perak with the British, the 1888 treaty between Pahang and the British meant that henceforth Sultan Ahmad al-Mu’azzam Shah would be forced to accept the presence of a colonial Resident appointed to the court of Pekan, and Pahang’s affairs would come under the auspices of the colonial office based in Singapore. Pahang was forced to open itself up to foreign capital and to accept the currency of the Straits Settlements as well, according to the terms of the Pahang treaty – which also stipulated that henceforth the Sultan of Pahang was not even allowed to enter into diplomatic relations with any other state without prior approval from the British government.

The terms of the 1888 treaty between Pahang and the British made it abundantly clear that the latter were about to gain command over the territory and economy of the former. Act 1 of the treaty bound Pahang to the other British states, compelling it to come to their defence when requested to do so. Act 2 of the treaty stated that ‘His Highness the Raja of Pahang undertakes if requested by the government of the Straits Settlements to co-operate in making arrangements for facilitating trade and transit communication overland through the state of Pahang with the state of Johore and other neighbouring states’, while Act 3 stated that ‘If the government of the Straits Settlements shall at any time desire to appoint a British officer as Agent to live within the state of Pahang having functions similar to those of a Consular Officer, His Highness the Raja will be prepared to provide free of cost a suitable site within his territory whereon a residence may be erected for occupation by such officer’.

Act 4 stipulated that the currency of the Straits Settlements will be in use in Pahang, and that henceforth the mint of Pahang would not be allowed to produce coinage and other currency without following the limitations set by the government of the Straits Settlements, while Act 5 noted that ‘The Governor of the Straits Settlements will at all times to the utmost of his power take whatever steps necessary to protect the government and territory of Pahang from external hostile attacks’, and in so doing demanded the same co-operation from the ruler of Pahang.

Crucially, Act 6 of the treaty made it clear that ‘The Raja of Pahang undertakes on his part that he will not, without the knowledge and consent of Her Majesty’s government negotiate any treaty or enter into any engagement with any foreign state’, or ‘interfere in the politics of administration of any native state’. The same act further added that ‘It is further agreed that if occasion should arise for political correspondence between His Highness the Raja and any foreign state, such correspondence shall be conducted through Her Majesty’s government, to whom His Highness makes over the guidance and control of his foreign relations’.

Act 6 thus effectively robbed Sultan Ahmad and any of the future rulers of Pahang of the right to engage in any diplomatic relations with any other Malay or European kingdom. [Re: Treaties and Other Papers connected with the Native states of the Malay Peninsula, Government Printing House, Singapore, 1888. pp. 42-55.]

The terms of the Pahang Treaty of 1888 and the Pangkor Treaty of 1874 were more or less the same, and they implied that henceforth the Malay rulers of Pahang, Perak and the other Malay protectorates would be under the coercive ‘advice’ of the British Resident who was in turn backed by British arms and military power. So while the Malay rulers were allowed to keep their flags and banners, the real power – political and economic – was robbed of them by the British. Now tell me, how is this any different from outright colonialism? Or are we to give lip service to British colonial propaganda that claimed that this sort of intervention was done ‘for the good of the natives’ and to bring development for the Malays?

I am baffled by the recent turn of events in Malaysia where all sorts of characters are now claiming that this charade of colonial intervention was something less than outright colonisation. To aid them in their memory (some of them are close to retirement I think, or should have retired a long time ago.), I end with a quote from Tun Mahathir’s ‘The Malay Dilemma’ (1969/1970) where Mahathir describes the reality of colonial governmentality then:

“Practically all the import-export houses were British or at least European. These firms were protected by the (colonial) government without any need for legislation. The exclusive European clubs all over the country were the places where these protective laws were made and implemented. …

This protectionism was equally comprehensive on the export side. Markets in rubber and tin for example were established by these firms in their own countries, and the markets were not open to any local (Asian) firms.

…As if government protection was not enough, the British controlled the whole of the banking business, especially the portion of it that was concerned with the financing of the import-export sector. …

…Contracts with supplies were almost exclusively through the (British) Crown agents. Local supplies, even when needed, were by contract with British firms. British officials and businessmen formed a close-knit community usually presided over by a local British Adviser or Resident.” (from: Mahathir Mohamad, The Malay Dilemma, 1970, pp. 48-49)

To our esteemed Dons and Doyens of the ivory towers who claim that British Malaya was never truly a colonial construct, I would serious advise a trip to the library, or even a conversation with Tun Mahathir to sort out some of the lingering doubts about the past of the country. Malaysia’s youth may be confused enough today; the least that we – teachers – can and ought to do is to help clarify their understanding a little further; rather than muddy the already murky waters of the past with revisionist obfuscation even further.

Notes:

[1] John Pickersgill Rodget was the first Resident appointed to Pahang in October 1888. (Gopinath, 1996, pg. 103)

By Dr. Farish Ahmad Noor

13 September 2011

Dr. Farish Ahamd Noor is the Senior Fellow for the Contemporary Islam Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Former PM visited Gaddafi during Libyan loan negotiations by JP Morgan, the bank that employs him as an adviser

Tony Blair is facing calls for greater transparency in his role as Middle East peace envoy after it emerged that he visited Muammar Gaddafi in 2009 while JP Morgan, the investment bank that employs Blair as a £2m-a-year adviser, sought to negotiate a multibillion-pound loan from Libya.

Blair also championed two large business deals in the West Bank and Gaza involving telecoms and gas extraction which stood to benefit corporate clients of JP Morgan, according to a Dispatches investigation to be broadcast on Monday night.

Blair, who represents the diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East – the US, European Union, Russia and the United Nations – flew to see the former Libyan leader in January 2009 as JP Morgan tried to finalise a deal for the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) to loan a multibillion-pound sum to Rusal, the aluminium company run by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

LIA was set up by Gaddafi to manage the country’s wealth and was estimated to be worth $64bn (£41bn) last September.

Emails obtained by anti-corruption campaign group Global Witness and seen by the Guardian reveal JP Morgan’s vice chairman, Lord Renwick, invited the then vice chairman of LIA, Mustafa Zarti, to “finalise the terms of the mandate concerning Rusal before Mr Blair’s visit to Tripoli which is scheduled to take place on around 22 January”.

The meeting went ahead, but a spokesman for Blair denied the former prime minister had been involved in the proposed Rusal deal. A spokesman for JP Morgan said Blair had no knowledge of the proposal but could not explain why Blair’s visit to Gaddafi was raised in the email.

“Neither Tony Blair nor any of his staff raised any issue to do with a Russian aluminium company,” Blair’s spokesman said. According to a Rusal presentation obtained by Global Witness, the aluminium company had been seeking a $4.5bn loan in the form of a convertible bond, but the deal never happened.

In Palestine while working as the quartet envoy, Blair persuaded the Israeli government to open radio frequencies so mobile phone company Wataniya could operate in the West Bank. The company’s owner, Qtel, a Qatari telecoms company, is a client of JP Morgan and its deal to buy Wataniya was funded with a $2bn loan that JP Morgan helped arrange.

“I would say his [Blair’s] prime contribution to Wataniya was negotiating the release of the frequencies,” Bassam Hannoun, Wataniya’s chief executive, told Dispatches. “That was a milestone. November 2009 we were nothing … and since then we have done fantastically well. We have captured 23% of the market.”

The second deal saw Blair champion the development of a gas field off the coast of Gaza as a priority for the territory. The owner of the rights to operate the field is BG Group, a client of JP Morgan.

“There seems to be growing evidence that Tony Blair’s business activities across the middle east may be in conflict with his peace envoy role,” said Robert Palmer, a spokesman for Global Witness. “It is time he came clean about all of his interests in the region and who they are benefitting.”

A spokesman for Blair said the former prime minister had no idea JP Morgan had connections with Wataniya or BG Group and said it considered claims of a conflict of interest to be defamatory.

“Tony Blair has advocated for both the Wataniya project and the Gaza gas development at the direct request of the Palestinians,” a spokesman said. “It is his responsibility as Quartet representative to work to build the Palestinian economy and the Wataniya project represented the single largest foreign direct investment there has been into the Palestinian authority. That is good news for the Palestinians. The fact that we have been doing so is hardly a revelation: it is listed on our website. Both were long-standing demands of the international community. “In neither case was Mr Blair even aware JP Morgan had a connection with the company. He never discussed it with them. They never raised it with him.”

JP Morgan stressed it was one of several investment banks who acted as advisers to Qtel and said it had a minor role.

“Mr. Blair is a strategic advisor to our management team on high-level geopolitical issues and trends,” a spokesman said. “We have never raised or discussed with him the two projects mentioned. Any suggestion of a conflict of interest is baseless.”

Since leaving Downing Street in June 2007, Blair has established various structures for his commercial work and good causes. He has established three charities, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the Tony Blair Sports Foundation and the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative. On the commercial side, he runs a consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, and he has paid advisory roles with Zurich, a Swiss insurer, as well as JP Morgan.

 By Robert  Booth

26 September 2011

@ The Gurdian

Firerush Ventures faces fresh scrutiny as chief operating officer Mark Labovitch leaves post after just one year

Tony Blair’s business operations are under scrutiny after the departure from his investment firm of a high-profile banker with connections to some of the world’s richest investors and the revelation that the former prime minister secured big deals in the Middle East.

Mark Labovitch’s resignation as chief operating officer of Blair’s Firerush Ventures, little more than a year after he was appointed to the post, threatens to leave a hole in Blair’s business empire.

Labovitch, 48 – who was appointed at the same time as a former Lehman Brothers banker, Varun Chandra, joined Firerush as an adviser – was seen in financial circles as someone who could open doors for Blair. The Financial News newspaper described him as possessing “an expansive Rolodex of contacts and relationships built up during more than a decade as a senior investment banker”.

Firerush is crucial to Blair’s fortunes, not to mention the 130 people who work for him. Blair explained a couple of years ago, when his staff was much smaller, that he had to “earn £5m a year to pay the wages”. Firerush, which gives its address as a PO box in west London, is licensed by the Financial Services Authority to offer investment advice in a number of countries, including three that have low-tax environments – Gibraltar, Lithuania and Romania.

Records filed at Companies House show that the Oxford-educated Labovitch joined Firerush on 1 June last year. He resigned on 28 July this year.

It is unclear why Labovitch – who is reportedly to become a director at Coventry City football club and has joined Gems, a Dubai-based provider of private education – parted company with Blair. In an email sent to the Observer, he declined to comment. Blair’s spokesman also declined to answer emailed questions regarding Labovitch.

News of his departure comes as a Channel 4 Dispatches programme to be broadcast on Monday reveals Blair’s role in two multi-billion-dollar contracts in Palestine.

The programme shows how, in his role as the Quartet’s representative to the Middle East, Blair helped persuade the Israeli government to open up radio frequencies so that a mobile phone company, Wataniya, could operate in the West Bank.

He also championed the development of a huge gas field off the coast of Gaza operated by British Gas. Both Wataniya and British Gas are major clients of JP Morgan, the US investment bank that pays Blair £2m a year for a role as a senior adviser.

A spokesman for the former prime minister said on Saturday: “Tony Blair has advocated for the both the Wataniya project and the Gaza gas development at the direct request of the Palestinians. It is his responsibility as Quartet representative to work to build the Palestinian economy and the Wataniya project represented the single largest foreign direct investment there has been into the Palestinian Authority.”

The spokesman added that in neither case was Blair aware JP Morgan had a connection with the company.

Blair’s business empire sparked interest in his relationship with the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), the $70bn fund used to invest the country’s oil money abroad. Blair’s close links to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the country’s former leader, are well documented.

Last week a senior executive of the fund suggested that the former prime minister had made representations to Gaddafi on behalf of JP Morgan. It also emerged that, after he stepped down from No 10, Blair wrote to Muammar Gaddafi offering investment advice for projects in Africa.

“You know I am doing a lot of work there and know of good worthwhile projects for investment,” Blair told the despot. A spokesman said Blair never sought payment nor received it from Gaddafi or the LIA.

Since he left office, Blair’s business empire has helped him sustain a jetset lifestyle. The Daily Mail claims he is a regular at Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace hotel, one of the most expensive resorts in the world. He has acquired a £5.75m country house in Buckinghamshire and a £3.7m home in London. Blair and his wife, Cherie, have also bought properties for their children.

In addition to his work for JP Morgan, Blair is on a lucrative contract to advise insurance firm Zurich and is understood to be paid as much as £200,000 a speech. Blair has also been paid for consultancy work by a South Korean oil firm, UI Energy Corporation, which has extensive interests in the US and Iraq, and by the ruling family in Kuwait, from whom he received a reported £1m fee.

Another of his companies, Tony Blair Associates, which offers “strategic advice on both a commercial and pro-bono basis” has a contract with Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi investment fund. Blair also earns a reported £700,000 a year as an adviser to Khosla Ventures, a US venture capitalist firm founded by Indian billionaire Vinod Khosla.

Labovitch’s exit follows that of another Firerush director, former No 10 staffer Jo Gibbons, who was Blair’s director of corporate affairs and left last year. He advised Russian oligarchs during his time at the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and was responsible for stitching together more than $8bn-worth of deals for oil and gas giant Gazprom. He also has strong connections to wealthy investors in the Middle East and was, until recently, an executive of the company that owns the Independent newspaper.

As COO of Firerush, Labovitch was at the centre of a complex web of companies that, due to the way they are structured, have to disclose only a minimal amount of information concerning Blair’s business operations, the profits he makes or indeed how he makes his money.

However, someone familiar with Blair’s business activities suggested he is keen to cultivate closer relationships with Russian oligarchs. Earlier this month he gave a speech at the eighth Yalta annual meeting organised by Yalta European Strategy, which campaigns for Ukraine to join the European Union. The Yalta meetings are promoted by a foundation set up by Victor Pinchuk, one of the world’s richest men, who has an estimated fortune of $3.3bn and owns TV channels and steel plants.

LIFE AFTER GOVERNMENT

Peter Mandelson

The former trade secretary has established his own advisory firm, Global Counsel LLP, with the financial support of advertising company WPP. Also has a senior advisory role at international investment bank Lazard. Rumoured to be a contender to become the next director general of the World Trade Organisation.

Alastair Campbell

Published his diaries four years after resigning from his position as director of communications and strategy. Earlier this month it emerged that he was providing the Kosovan government with advice on how to communicate with its old enemy, Serbia.

Patricia Hewitt

Seven months after leaving government, Hewitt was appointed a special consultant to Alliance Boots, the largest chemist company in the world. In January 2008, the former health secretary was accused of “cashing in on her contacts” when she accepted a £55,000-a-year role as an adviser to Cinven, which paid £1.4bn for Bupa’s 25 UK hospitals. She is also on the board of Eurotunnel and is an adviser to Barclays Capital.

Stephen Byers

After leaving government, the former transport secretary was secretly recorded by Channel 4 boasting how he used his contacts to change policies to the advantage of businesses. Byers was heard offering himself for hire for between £3,000 and £5,000 a day.

 Geoff Hoon

The former defence secretary was also exposed in the “cash for influence” scandal last March. In May, Hoon was given a vice-president’s position by helicopter company AgustaWestland, which had been awarded a £1.7bn contract when he was defence secretary.

By Jamie Doward

24 September 2011

@ The Guardian

Saturday, September 3, was the Saturday of the citizen in Israel. The protest movement brought 460,000 people onto the streets to create a new socio-economic agenda. No government can remain indifferent to that many calling, “The people demands social justice!” The hope is to gain a new social contract, which will overthrow neo-liberal capitalism and create in its place a welfare state.

Tel Aviv, Sept. 3, 2011. The ODA contingent with banner: “The people demands Da’am, the Workers’ Party!”

What is Daphni saying?

Daphni Leef, the natural leader of the tent protest, defines the movement as “political but not partisan.” According to this view, the political system, including the parties and the Knesset, have failed to understand the feelings of the people, who are calling on them to descend from their lofty towers and see that the country is falling apart.

The word “party” terrifies the leaders of the protest. A “party” (in Hebrew, the word has an etymological root meaning split, section or division) requires a worldview and clear ideological agenda, which necessarily causes criticism and draws antagonism from others. Let’s take for example Labor Party candidate Shelly Yechimovich, who has fought tirelessly and fearlessly against the tycoons and enjoyed a wide public consensus. The moment she revealed her political views, declaring she has no problem with the settlements, she attracted antagonism. But if the protest movement avoids “politics” in order to avoid division, it ends up leaving politics to the same deaf politicians who scurry to do the bidding of big capital. It’s a closed circuit.

So what do we have? A political movement without political tools to realize its objectives. And the more support it receives, the greater the internal contradiction. The movement’s problem is its inability to translate popular support to political power, in other words, a political party, which can take responsibility, aim to enter the government, win a majority in the Knesset and anchor in law the social contract which currently enjoys wall-to-wall support.

The protest movement decided that the way to avoid antagonism is to stick with the slogan “social justice,” which has become the new state anthem, and purposefully avoid critical issues such as occupation, settlement, war and peace. According to this approach, the fact that Binyamin Netanyahu (“Bibi”) is an unabashedly rightwing leader needn’t disturb anyone, because nobody’s asking him to make “political” changes, but only “social” changes. Netanyahu can stick with the occupation while working toward “justice” within Israeli society – especially within the Israeli middle classes who serve the state loyally and struggle under the burden of the morally uninhibited tycoons. This is the significance of the slogan, “Let us live in this country!”

However, the chances of Netanyahu meeting these demands are no greater than the chances of him meeting Palestinian demands for “distributive justice” – the two-state solution. Betting on Bibi ensures that the Palestinians remain stateless and Israeli citizens remain without the social justice they demand.

What does ODA say?

The Organization for Democratic Action (ODA)—Da’am in Arabic—has taken part in the protest movement right from the start. For the past five years, we have marched alone along Tel Aviv’s chic boulevards demanding fair employment terms, equality for women, the right to unionize, equality between Arabs and Jews and peace. Thus it was only natural for us to join the thousands of youth who woke up and discovered the flames had reached their door after consuming every last morsel in Yeruham, Hadera, Kufr Qara and Nazareth.

Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka of ODA leading the chants, Tel Aviv, Sept. 3, 2011

The ODA is not a middle-class party. It is a workers’ party, which lives and breathes “social” issues and fights tooth and nail to change the system to serve the workers (including the middle classes) instead of capital. The ODA is not like all the other parties. It is a revolutionary party.

The revolution it aims for is a revolution in consciousness. This too begins with change in the order of priorities, a change which will not be brought by the middle classes but by the working class – because Jews and Arabs meet over their wage slips as they struggle to get by.

This change cannot be limited to an awakening from indifference. This is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Change in consciousness must address Arab workers in Israel, the Palestinian workers under Israeli occupation, and all workers in the Arab world. The ODA does not believe in a fleeting consensus; thus it works fearlessly and without prejudice to generate a new workers’ consensus which crosses national boundaries. It does not shrink from facing reality even when reality is complex and difficult.

What will cause real change in the struggle for social justice is the participation of those millions of workers, the 50% of wage earners who don’t even reach the tax threshold, who have not yet found the strength to break free of their despair. So far, they have been conspicuously absent from the protest movement, but the ODA has not forgotten them. In the fight against worker organization, which the government calls “making the labor market more flexible,” we see a destructive and merciless war – as is evident from the struggles at Haifa Chemicals and the Salit Quarry, or in the plight of the social workers and the medical interns.

The start of a new era

The current social movement is the opening volley of a new era. Despite its shortcomings, it has exposed the nakedness of the distorted social order, clearly pointed out its ills, and formulated a comprehensive agenda which has become a worthy basis for further action.

Despite Netanyahu’s bragging, the neoliberal capitalist system which he so admires has led his beloved US to the edge of the precipice. Israel is marching confidently towards a future without an economy and without peace. The protest movement cannot continue sitting on the fence, expecting our present leaders to save us.

Some will accuse us of seeing only the dark side. To them we reply: Since the USSR collapsed, the world has been unipolar. The American right has been implementing global predatory capitalism. Despite this dark picture, we do not sit idle; we continue to do the hard labor of building up a workers’ party, for we believe it is possible to generate change. To our delight, after 30 years the Arab world and some European states are awakening and challenging the existing social order, just as we do.

Therefore we, workers from all sectors, Arabs and Jews, marched to the square on Saturday with a clear message: Bibi, your time is up, go home! We marched with a socialist worldview, according to which the economy should exist to serve society, not capital. Those who fail to overcome the capitalist brainwashing will remain slaves to the tycoons and their lackeys in the Knesset.

The socialism in which we believe has become more relevant than ever, because the welfare state is a socialist state . This is a state which does justice to its citizens without regard to religion or ethnicity. A state such as this can be integrated into the region and become a partner to the democratic changes sweeping the Arab world. This cannot happen unless the occupation is brought to an end. Those who truly struggle for social justice must seek universal justice. There will be no true welfare state until the occupation is ended!

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

By Yacov Ben Efrat

6 September 2011

Challenge-mag.com

The US, arguing that unilateralism is misguided, hypocritically plans to veto Palestinian statehood at the UN

US President Barack Obama’s decision to use the US’ veto prerogative if the United Nations votes to recognise a Palestinian state will constitute a blow to those seeking peace in the Middle East.

His administration’s claim that peace can only be achieved through dialogue and consent rather than through unilateral moves ignores the complex power relations that constitute peace-making between Israelis and Palestinians. History teaches that peace is achieved only when the conflicting sides believe that they have too much to lose by sustaining the conflict. And, at this point in history, the price Israel is paying for continuing the occupation is extremely small.

But if, for the sake of argument, one were to accept the view expressed by President Obama – that unilateralism is a flawed political approach – then one should survey the history of unilateral moves within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and examine the US response towards them.

A logical place to begin is 1991, when Israelis and Palestinians met for the first time in Madrid to negotiate a peace agreement. United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for Israel’s withdrawal from the land it occupied during the 1967 War in exchange for peace, served as the basis for the Madrid Conference.

Ever since that conference, Israel has carried out numerous unilateral moves that have undermined efforts to reach a peace agreement based on land for peace. These include the confiscation of Palestinian land, the construction of settlements and the transfer of Jewish citizenry to occupied territories, actions that every US administration regarded as an obstruction to the peace process.

Settlement expansion

Consider, for example, the Jewish settler population. At the end of 1991, there were 132,000 Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and 89,800 settlers in the West Bank. Two decades later, the numbers of settlers in East Jerusalem has increased by about 40 per cent, while the settlers in the West Bank, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, have increased by over 300 per cent. Currently, there are about half a million Jewish settlers.

If Israel had arrested its unilateral transfer of Jewish citizens to Palestinian land in 1991 once it had embarked upon a peace process based on the return of occupied territory, the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank would have been less than 50 per cent of what it is today.

Indeed, estimations based on the natural growth rate of the West Bank settler population suggest that this population would have been less than 150,000 people in 2011, while today it is actually over 300,000.

An analysis of settler movement to the West Bank also reveals that settler population growth has not been substantially different when left-of-centre parties have been in power. During periods in which the Labour Party formed the governing coalition, the numbers have been just as high, if not higher, than periods during which Likud or Kadima have been in power. This, in turn, underscores the fact that all Israeli governments have unilaterally populated the contested West Bank with more Jewish settlers while simultaneously carrying out negotiations based on land for peace.

Seeing that the settlers are undermining any future two-state solution, the Palestinians have decided not to wait any longer and are asking the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. This, they intimate, is their last attempt to salvage the two-state route before abandoning it to the dustbin of history.

Their argument is straightforward: If the idea behind a two-state solution is dividing land among the two peoples, how can Israel unilaterally continue to settle the contested land while carrying out negotiations? Israeli unilateralism, in other words, has driven the Palestinians to choose the unilateral path. The only difference is that the latter’s unilateralism is aimed at advancing a peace agreement, while the former’s is aimed at destroying it.

One-sided US veto

The US has never considered using its veto power to stop Israel from carrying out unilateral moves aimed at undermining peace.

Instead, the US has frequently used its veto to prevent the condemnation of Israeli policies that breach international law. Now the Obama Administration wants to use the veto again, with the moral justification that unilateralism is misguided. But the real question is: Why is unilateralism bad when it attempts to advance a solution, yet warrants no response when unilateralism threatens to undermine a solution?

President Obama should keep in mind that the Palestinian appeal to the international community might very well be the last chance for salvaging the two-state solution.

If the Palestinian demand for recognition falls through due to a US veto, then the necessary conditions for a paradigm shift will be in place: The two-state solution will be even less feasible, and the one-state formula will emerge as the only alternative.

By Neve Gordon & Yinon Cohen

20 September, 2011

Countercurrents.org

This first appeared at Al-Jazeera

Neve Gordon is the author of  Israel’s Occupation  and can be reached through his website  www.israelsoccupation.info

Yinon Cohen is Yerushalmi Professor of Israel and Jewish Studies, Department of Sociology, Columbia University, New York

I REFER to the report “World economy in danger” (NST, Sept 16), quoting the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick.

On Sept 13, Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti came out with an even stronger warning — “the threat of a dark age is real” — as a consequence of having “bailed out the most negative part of the banks”.

These high-level warnings over the past week are true — but 40 years too late.

According to American economist Lyndon LaRouche, the world’s most accurate economic forecaster since his first forecast in 1956, the world has been bankrupt since 2008 and is surviving on purely artificial gambling money produced by international bankers without any backing in the productive economy.

LaRouche’s famous forecast of August 1971 stated that the overthrow of Franklin Roosevelt’s post-war Bretton Woods agreement by president Richard Nixon, acting secretly on behalf of British bankers, would turn the whole world into a giant gambling casino and lead to the collapse of the world economy.

This is what is happening today. So why should we listen to half-baked proposals by the world’s financial “experts” who have taken 40 years to wake up to reality?

A new Glass Steagall Act proposed recently by LaRouche to reverse the world economic crisis has the same intention as the Glass Steagall Act introduced by Roosevelt in 1933.

Its opening paragraph, written three generations ago to get America out of the Depression, is the same as LaRouche’s intention today to outlaw speculative banking, not just in America but globally.

“(The 1933 Act) To provide for the safer and more effective use of the assets of banks, to regulate interbank control, to prevent the undue diversion of funds into speculative operations, and for other purposes.”

Roosevelt’s revolutionary banking initiative lifted America out of the Depression and built the greatest economy the world has ever seen, allowing the military defeat of Hitler and Japan and putting men on the moon under president John F. Kennedy.

This simple Glass Steagall Act protects the legitimate banks that society needs for survival but wipes out speculative banks.

Most importantly, Glass Steagall will again permit the introduction of a credit system to finance the rapid scientific reconstruction of the world, particularly water, electricity, housing, modern agriculture and advanced industry and transportation to satisfy the needs of an expanding world population.

The vast improvements in the physical economy promise to end hunger, poverty and misery in the 21st century and unite the human species for the exploration and colonisation of other planets.

Of course, the British, European and American establishments intend to defend their wealth and privilege by any means and will never agree to this revolutionary transformation of their banking system.

LaRouche has devoted his long life (89 years) to bringing back the legacy of Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and the principles of the American Revolution on a worldwide scale.

The solution according to LaRouche is simple. Throw out US President Barack Obama on constitutional grounds; pass Glass Steagalls; negotiate a credit system between America, Russia and China and then extend the credit system to other willing sovereign nations.

If successful, the LaRouche movement internationally will be leading a scientific renaissance to rebuild the world fit for an expanding human population.

Malaysia can play a leading role. For instance, our deep tropical agriculture research for sheep, goats, cattle and milk production is showing how protein food can be increased in underdeveloped tropical countries such as Africa and India and even dry countries if provided with nuclear desalinated water.

By MOHD PETER DAVIS

21 September 2011

letters@nst.com.my

Iran’s President Mahmoud AhmadinejadThe rise of the Arab masses has pushed Iran out of the headlines — for now. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose theatrics rarely pass unnoticed, has lately failed to grab the attention of the U.S. media. America’s attention has instead turned toward Egypt, Syria and Libya.

This is likely to change in the next few months. Not as a result of any particular developments in Iran or between the United States and Iran, but because of the 2012 presidential elections. As the Republican presidential hopefuls turn their criticism toward President Obama and not each other, Iran will likely be one of the few foreign policy issues the Republicans will pursue.

Though their campaigns will center on the economy, there are four factors that will drive the GOP to make Iran one of its main foreign policy issues.

First, Iran unites all factions of the Republican Party (save the Ron Paul contingent) at a time when all other major foreign policy issues tend to divide them. For instance, the Republicans have been all over the map on the most important foreign policy development of the year: the Arab Spring.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee criticized Obama for not standing by Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, for instance, while others argued that Obama had been too slow in supporting the demonstrators. The Republican fault lines were even clearer on Obama’s intervention in Libya.

On Iran, however, there is unity. The Republican remedy is simply to up the ante and get tougher — no matter what. Whatever hawkish line Obama adopts, the Republicans will find a way to “outhawk” him. As the memory of the Iraq invasion slowly fades away, Republican strategists calculate, the American public will return to rewarding toughness over wisdom at the ballot boxes.

Second, just as Iran unites the Republicans, it divides the Democrats. As I describe in my forthcoming book on Obama’s Iran diplomacy, “A Single Roll of the Dice,” part of the reason Obama’s engagement with Iran was so short-lived (beyond all the challenges the Iranians themselves presented) was the pressure he faced early on from the Democrat-controlled Congress to abandon diplomacy and pursue sanctions.

Much of it had to do with Congress’ sensitivity to Israeli concerns. And much of it was a reaction to the Iranian government’s brutal human rights abuses following the 2009 election debacle. As a top Obama administration official explained to me, “skepticism in Congress against our strategy turned to outright hostility” after the 2009 elections. Congress’ honeymoon with Obama had not even begun before Democrats abandoned him on Iran.

Third, the Republicans believe that Iran provides an opportunity to portray Obama as weak. Glossing over the many differences between Iran, on the one hand, and Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya on the other, the Republicans will accuse Obama of abandoning the Iranian people by not taking sides in the 2009 election dispute. But with the developments in the Arab world — and Obama’s more interventionist response to those conflicts — the Republicans will argue (mistakenly) that a similar posture by the U.S. in 2009 would have ensured the downfall of the Iranian theocracy.

Moreover, with Iran’s nuclear program progressing in spite of Obama’s limited diplomacy and his crippling, indiscriminate sanctions, the Republicans will present a narrative that states that diplomacy was tried and failed, sanctions are tough but insufficient, and the only remaining option is some form of military action. Yet, Obama has been too weak to pursue that option. According to this (false) narrative, the president’s weakness jeopardizes not only American interests, but also the security of Israel. This narrative, it must be noted, is not so much to provoke military action but to portray Obama as too weak to order it.

Which brings us to the fourth factor, which permeates all the others: Israel. Beyond dividing the Democrats and portraying Obama as weak, focusing on Iran also enables the Republicans to cast Obama as insensitive to Israel. From the very outset, Israel opposed Obama’s diplomacy with Iran.

“We live in a neighborhood in which sometimes dialogue … is liable to be interpreted as weakness,” then-Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni said during an interview with Israel Radio only 24 hours after congratulating President-elect Obama on his historic election victory in 2008. Asked specifically if she supported discussions between the United States and Iran, she left no room for interpretation: “The answer is no,” she declared.

Once Obama took office, Israel consistently pushed back against his engagement policy by calling for artificial deadlines for diplomacy, by pushing for sanctions before talks had begun and by setting unreachable objectives for the diplomacy.

Though Obama eventually adopted the line on Iran favored by Israel, his many clashes with the Netanyahu government over this issue cast a dark shadow over U.S.-Israeli relations that likely will not be undone in time for the elections. And the Republicans are poised to exploit it. Just this week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry took a jab at Obama in an Op-Ed in the Jerusalem Post. “It was a mistake [by] President Obama to distance himself from Israel and seek engagement with the hostile regimes in Syria and Iran,” Perry wrote.

Most likely, Obama will take the bait. Instead of defending his diplomacy and pointing out that no U.S. president has been closer to resolving the nuclear issue than he has, he will likely adopt the line that his limited diplomatic effort paved the way for far greater international buy-in for crippling sanctions than George W. Bush ever managed to secure.

Though this line of argument is technically correct — Obama’s attempt at diplomacy helped unite the permanent members of the Security Council against Iran and prevented Tehran from taking advantage of divisions within the council -– it suffers from several weaknesses.

First, sanctions have hurt the Iranian economy and likely slowed the growth of its nuclear program, but it has not changed Tehran’s strategic calculations or shifted the trajectory of the program. In short, the nuclear clock has kept ticking. This plays straight into the Republican narrative that neither Obama’s diplomacy nor his sanctions have succeeded. With a few more alarmist reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the White House’s spin on having contained Iran will fall apart.

Second, by seeking to play up the hawkish aspects of his Iran policy, the Obama administration line permits the Republicans to set the metrics for success. However hawkish and pro-Israel the White House portrays its policy, there will always be a Republican willing to up the ante even further. If Obama permits hawkishness to be the criteria for success in the Iran debate, then he will set himself up for failure — even if he is technically right.

Democrats have failed in this game before. In the 1990s, Republicans in Congress dismissed the sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and forced President Bill Clinton to adopt additional measures, including making “regime change” official U.S. policy and providing funding for the now-disgraced Iraqi “opposition” groups through the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Clinton’s attempts to push back against this pressure by out-hawking the Republicans only helped create a false binary choice between accepting a nuclear Saddam and taking military action. The parallels with developments with Iran today are plenty.

In spite of the Republicans’ recent gains, the candidate that stands the greatest chance of defeating Obama 2012 is Obama ’08. Instead of running away from his record and betraying the foreign policy values he promised to bring to the White House in 2008, Obama should restate the case for diplomacy and point out its benefits and virtues, including the superiority of diplomacy in addressing Iran’s flagrant human rights violations. And point to Iraq to remind the American public of the unacceptability of failure when it comes to diplomacy.

As Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told me recently in a sharp reminder of what the end game of the hawks is: “If diplomacy fails and the economic sanctions fail, [then] everybody understands that all options are on the table.”

By Trita Parsi

18 September 2011

@ Salon News

Trita Parsi is the 2010 Recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is the author of the forthcoming book, “A Single Role of the Dice — Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran” (Yale University Press 2012). More: Trita Parsi

Environmental rights groups say internationally backed carbon capture schemes distract from real climate justice needs.

The earth swirls into rising dust as the parched lands of northeast Kenya crack beneath Hassan’s feet. The goat herder makes his way to a nearby water pump, paying a few shillings so his remaining livestock can get a drink of fresh water.

Hassan used to have 130 goats before the drought. Recently, he told Mercy Corps – an aid agency working to provide assistance to drought victims in Kenya – that only 30 goats have survived.

Life in Arbajahan in Kenya’s Wajir County wasn’t always like this, Hassan said.

Wajir once had large stretches of green and fertile land, there was regular rainfall, and people owned herds of healthy livestock. Before the drought, Hassan had enough to provide for two wives, 11 children, and a large herd of goats.

“It is very tough to look after them all [the family] and get by because of the drought. I feel bad that I could not do anything to keep my animals alive. They were the only way to provide for my people,” Hassan said.

Across East Africa, drought and famine, increasingly worsened by the harsh effects of climate change, have displaced thousands from their homes and lands.

While some aid is now available, world bodies like the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) acknowledge that measures have remained largely reactive – even though the crisis did not come as a full surprise.

The FAO has called for investment in rural development, and the reconstruction of sustainable livelihoods, to prevent other similar disasters from occurring.

As part of land based efforts to tackle climate change, promote food security, and help people like Hassan, the FAO and other bodies like the World Bank have rallied behind processes like soil carbon capture.

Soil carbon capture

Carbon dioxide and other green house gases entering the atmosphere are the key culprits exacerbating the change in global temperatures.

With soil carbon sequestration (or capture), excess carbon dioxide is re-invested into the soil in organic form, to counteract the harmful emissions that enter the atmosphere via fossil fuels and other carbon-heavy processes.

The offsets that come from soil carbon capture schemes have been marketed by world bodies as a means to rechannel money back into climate-friendly agriculture.

However, environmental rights groups say the work of offsetting these emissions – and trading credits associated with the process on carbon markets – is where the big business lies.

“Instead of meeting obligations and reducing emissions in their own countries, instead of changing their

lifestyles, [developed countries] are finding it cheaper and easier to put the burden onto poor countries and poor people,” said Harjeet Singh, international climate justice co-ordinator at the non-profit organisation ActionAid.

Through the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), industries in developed countries can “offset” the effects of their own hazardous emissions by paying to implement projects in developing countries.

This has included other carbon capture schemes – such as tree-planting or reforestation projects. Soil carbon capture is not currently part of the CDM, and soil carbon credits are only sold on the voluntary carbon market.

Bodies like the World Bank are trying to get soil carbon capture recognised under CDM and the credits traded on the compliance market.

“The World Bank and its allies want it to be included in CDM so that they have a bigger market,” Singh said.

The World Bank touts soil carbon capture as a “triple win” solution for developing countries, saying that the improved agricultural practice it fosters will have the potential to sequester about 60,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year.

Through improved agricultural processes, it sees soil carbon capture as a means to increase food security for African farmers. It also sees the process as a way of mitigating global warming, by offsetting green house gases; and as a way for African farmers to adapt to climate change, through the investment in climate-friendly agriculture.

Environmental rights groups, however, call it a “triple injustice” for African farmers.

“Soil carbon markets leave poor farmers vulnerable to land grabs, dependent on unpredictable funding from markets, and forced to shoulder the mitigation burden of a climate crisis they did not cause,” Singh said.

Shouldering the burden

A climate change specialist who works closely with African governments, providing advice on sustainability issue, thinks the carbon market is “a mechanism by which the rich countries reduce emissions in developing countries and earn credits for it”.

“It is not really funding for developing countries to reduce their emissions; it is funding for developed countries to transfer the burden of their own emissions elsewhere,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal.

The specialist said that although there is agreement that emissions have to be offset on a global level, the question is who reduces them.

“Is it the poor Ethiopian farmer who lives off the land, or the American with the Hummer who lives on 20 gigatons of emissions a year?” he asked.

“A trivial amount of money goes to farmers involved in the process,” the specialist added. “It is cents really.”

Rights groups have questioned who really reaps the benefit for reducing carbon emissions, when the carbon credits are sold on international carbon markets, a far way away from the farmers who do the actual work offsetting them.

“Most of the money stays in the global North, even though projects themselves are in the South,” said the environmental rights group, the Gaia Foundation, in a statement earlier this year.

“Those that benefit most from carbon trading are financial speculators such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Merryl Lynch, who buy and sell carbon credits like they do any other internationally tradable commodity.”

“These projects are unlikely to deliver any benefits to the communities … They will certainly not benefit the climate. But they will be hugely profitable to financial speculators,” the Gaia Foundation said.

Doreen Stabinsky, a professor of global and environmental politics at College of the Atlantic in the US who consults with international environmental groups, agreed that the amount of money each farmer would make off the scheme is negligible.

“Four dollars a ton is what the World Bank says they will pay farmers per year,” Stabinsky said. Others have estimated that this amount may actually be more like $1 per ton once other costs are factored in.

“The average farmers own 0.6 hectares, and an average estimate is that each farmer will yield half a ton of carbon per hectare per year, so that is not a lot of money,” said Stabinsky.

“And after the World Bank pays farmers those dollars, it can then trade it on the secondary market for a higher amount. [The carbon credits are] theirs; they can do whatever they want with it.”

‘Icing on the cake’

The World Bank says environmental groups are approaching the issue from the wrong perspective.

“Carbon markets and credits are the wrong framing of this,” said Patrick Verkooijen, head of agriculture and climate change at the World Bank.

“The farmers themselves consider this as icing on the cake. The reason they do this is to increase productivity in the soil. Carbon sequestration is for them an add-on. So a few dollars a ton is indeed modest, but nevertheless, it generates additional income.

“With this triple win, they are not just focusing on one thing,” Verkooijen said.

“The long-term implications for smallholder farmers remain to be seen,” he admitted. “But the empirical data that has been gained is that the revenue goes straight to these farmers.”

Although there are, as yet, no formal soil carbon sequestration projects implemented in Africa, the World Bank has initiated the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project, a pilot project in Kisumu in western Kenya, on 45,000 hectares of land and involving 60,000 farmers.

The Kenyan environmental ministry, however, was unavailable to comment when asked about the project.

Agriculture contributes more than 27 per cent to Kenya’s GDP, the World Bank stated. Almost 70 per cent of that agriculture is provided by smallholder farmers, said rights group the African Biodiversity Network (ABN).

Anne Maina, who works with the ABN on issues of climate change and advocacy among smallholder farmers in Kenya, said most farmers there do not understand the issues.

“They come into it thinking they are going to benefit from the carbon credits. But I can’t say I know of one community that has benefited from the credits. It’s the brokers who benefit.

“I see it as immoral that the consultants who don’t do the work get the majority of the money. We need to avoid a situation where a consultant earns $1 million a year and farmers earn just a dollar.”

Maina said governments and world bodies need to support processes to improve agriculture and sustainable development, especially given the drought in the region. By linking to projects that involve carbon markets and credits, “the real issues are not being addressed,” she said.

Land grabs

Soil carbon capture schemes require massive initial investment, because of the technical aspects involved in capturing and measuring carbon in the soil, the Gaia Foundation reported.

“Vast public funds” will actually be used to develop these projects, diverting money away from the actual agricultural needs of subsistence farmers, the group added.

ActionAid’s Singh said that instead of more money going to rural farmers, soil carbon capture “will in fact reduce the amount of public money going into agriculture in general and it is unlikely you will get adaptation money for these farmers”.

ActionAid believes such schemes will also increase the likelihood of land grabs in African countries.

Stabinsky said: “African governments see money; and the picture that the World Bank is painting is a very worthy one. The more land you have, the more soil carbon you can sell. And there is so much land tenure based on customary tenure in Africa; lots of people don’t have private title of their land.

“So if you really can create the need for a verifiable commodity [in carbon], there may be a reason for governments to go in and claim that land. And the government can do it if they want,” she said.

Soil carbon capture schemes also require farmers to sign deals allowing developers to lease their lands for many years, even decades. As part of these agreements, farmers would also be confined to using specific agricultural practices on their lands.

These so-called agro-ecological or “climate smart” farming practices – which include things like non-tilling of the soil, to ensure minimal disturbance of the captured carbon – are central to achieving the “triple win” solutions of climate change adaptation, mitigation and food security, the World Bank said.

However, Stabinsky said: “If you are a farmer dealing with the varies of climate change, you may have to do something different on the soil the next year. The flexibility needed by a small farmer living on the edge may not be the same as what the World Bank needs to be done.”

The climate change specialist who advises African governments said that even though implementing agro-ecological processes has benefits, “you don’t need a carbon market to do that; these are processes that we should be promoting anyway”.

Environmental rights groups say market-led approaches to agriculture and climate change mitigation in Africa only create climate refugees, but do not address the core problems.

Instead of investing in carbon markets and offset schemes that pass the burden to the developing world, farmers and rights groups say that what is needed is public finance based on debt and historical responsibility.

The situation in the Horn of Africa will only increase in frequency and intensity, the climate change specialist said. “African governments should listen first to their farmers, and what we are hearing at least from East African farmers is they are concerned.”

Singh said: “African governments and bodies like the World Bank think that soil carbon capture will be a silver bullet. But when African governments realise it won’t work, they will lose five more years and billions of dollars into setting up these carbon markets, before they can do anything.”

For people in East Africa – like Hassan in Wajir Country – who are losing their homes, livelihoods, cattle, and lands fleeing the harsh effects of drought and climate change, waiting five years for a policy turnaround is five years too long.

*Reporting and information from Wajir, Kenya, provided by Erin Gray/Mercy Corps

By Sumayya Ismail

17 September 2011

@ Al Jazeera

The Arab Spring Will Lead To The Disappearance Of Despotism And Zionism From The Middle East

While the Middle East changing towards the values of democracy and human rights, nothing indicates that Israel is moving towards change. Those people won’t change because the whole Zionist culture is based on war said an Arab writer. This might be the explanation of the inability of the Israeli right wing to see the changes in the region, which makes the opposition leader Tsivi Livni warns that this road leads Israel to self destruction.

Indeed while the question of human rights has become the central issue in the Arab spring, the policy of theft and land grab continues to be the main characteristic of the Israeli policy. And there is no single indication which shows that Israel is ready to change this course.

The late episode of the killing of 6 Egyptian soldiers by Israel and the rejection of Israel to apologies is yet another evidence that Israel is unable to know that Arabs are changing .Israel apparently see that this apology reflects weakness of the state of Israel which suffered lately a heavy loss after the expulsion of its ambassador from turkey as a respond to the Marmara massacre where 9 Turks were killed by Israeli soldiers. And instead of trying to deal diplomatically with it. Israel declares that it will arm the PKK which is the outlaw Kurdish movement in turkey in a defiant step which most Middle East observers think it will worsen even more the Turkish Israeli relation.

In the view of several Egyptian observers the Egyptian popular march towards the Israeli embassy in Cairo was expected from the Egyptian people who felt humiliated and insulted by Israel. “Israel needs to know it is Egypt the Revolution which it deals with now and not Egypt Mubarak” said Wahid abd al majid from al ahram research centre.

It is worthy to remember that the state of Israel was planted by the European colonized powers in the Palestine in a period when most Arab countries were occupied and ruled by dictatorships after the independence. This might explain why Israel succeed end to defeat Arab countries which consolidate the myth in Israel that the small state of Israel defeat all Arabs and that one Jew worthy than one million Arabs etc of the Zionist propaganda of that time. But it is obvious that this myth also belongs to the past which is about to end.

The Egyptian popular march to the Israeli embassy provides solid evidence that Israel will have serious problems with the Arabs masses in the future. And the time of buying an Arab president and making a “peace treaty” with, belongs also to the same past which Israeli belongs to.

On light of these developments two major phenomenons are fading in the Middle East, the first is Arab despotic regimes, the second is Zionism. Both phenomenon are based on theft, oppression and power abuse. And thus both phenomenon are interdependent and the fall of one will necessarily lead to the fall of the other. This does not mean that this will happen tomorrow but the courses of these historical events indicate beyond doubt towards the disappearance of these two phenomenon.

By Salim Nazzal

13 September, 2011

@ Countercurrents.org

The writer is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian in the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region. His writing has been published in various publications and translated into more than 13 languages