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Doctor tells Al Jazeera that at least 70 people were killed during rallies calling for the ouster of long time leader.

18 February, 2011

Crowds have taken to the streets in Libya demanding more representation and the overthrow of Gaddafi

Security forces in Libya have killed at least 70 pro-democracy protesters in the country’s second-largest city  as demonstrations demanding the ouster of Col. Moammar Gaddafi, the long time ruler, increase across the country.

A doctor in Benghazi told Al Jazeera that he saw the bodies at the main hospital on Friday in one of the harshest crackdowns against peaceful protesters thus far.

“I have seen it on my own eyes: At least 70 bodies at the hospital,” said Wuwufaq al-Zuwail, a physician. He added that security forces also prevented ambulances to reach the site of the protests on Friday.

The Libyan government has also blocked Al Jazeera TV signal in the country. And people have also reported that the network’s website is inaccessible from there.

Protesters shot

Marchers mourning dead protesters in Libya’s second-largest city have reportedly come under fire from security forces, as protests in the oil-exporting North African nation entered their fifth day.

Mohamed el-Berqawy, an engineer in Benghazi, told Al Jazeera that the city was the scene of a “massacre,” and that four demonstrators had been killed on Friday.

“Where is the United Nations … where is (US president Barack) Obama, where is the rest of the world, people are dying on the streets,” he said. “We are ready to die for our country.”

Verifying news from Libya has been difficult since protests began, thanks to restrictions on journalists entering the country, as well as internet and mobile phone black outs imposed by the government. But Human Rights Watch has reported that at least 24 protesters have been killed so far, and sources on the ground have said that number could be as high as 70.

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters seeking to oust Gaddafi took to the streets across Libya on Thursday in what organisers called a “day of rage” modelled after similar protests in Tunisia and Egypt that ousted longtime leaders there. Gaddafi has ruled Libya since 1969.

Funerals for those killed, expected in both Benghazi and the town of Bayda on Friday, may be a catalyst for more protests.

Pro-government supporters also were out on the streets early on Friday, according to the Libyan state television, which broadcasted images labelled “live” that showed men chanting slogans in support of Gaddafi.

The pro-Gaddafi crowd was seen singing as it surrounded his limousine as it crept along a road in the capital, Tripoli, packed with people carrying his portrait.

Deadly clashes on Thursday

Deadly clashes broke out in several towns on Thursday after the opposition called for protests in a rare show of defiance inspired by uprisings in other Arab states and the toppling of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

The worst clashes appeared to have taken place in the eastern Cyrenaica region, centred on Benghazi, where support for Gaddafi has historically been weaker than in other parts of the country.

Libya’s Quryna newspaper reported that the regional security chief had been removed from his post over the deaths of protesters in Bayda. Libyan opposition groups in exile claimed that Bayda citizens had joined with local police forces to take over Bayda and fight against government-backed militias, whose ranks are allegedly filled by recruits from other African nations.

Political analysts say Libyan oil wealth may give the government the capacity to smooth over social problems and

reduce the risk of an Egypt-style revolt.

Gaddafi’s opponents say they want political freedoms, respect for human rights and an end to corruption.

Gaddafi’s government proposed the doubling of government employees’ salaries and released 110 suspected anti-government figures who oppose him – tactics similar to those adopted by other Arab regimes facing recent mass protests.

Gaddafi also has been meeting with tribal leaders to solicit their support.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

 

 

16 February, 2011

Al Jazeera

The overt age of grand empires gave way to the age of covert imperial hegemony, but now the edifice is crumbling

At least, overtly, there has been no talk from either Washington or Tel Aviv – the governments with most to lose as the Egyptian revolution unfolds – of military intervention. Such restraint is more expressive of geopolitical sanity than postcolonial morality, but still it enables some measure of change to take place that unsettles, temporarily at least, the established political order.

And yet, by means seen and unseen, external actors, especially the United States, with a distinct American blend of presumed imperial and paternal prerogatives are seeking to shape and limit the outcome of this extraordinary uprising of the Egyptian people, long held in subsidised bondage by the cruel and corrupt Mubarak dictatorship. What is the most defining feature of this American-led diplomacy-from-without is the seeming propriety of managing the turmoil, so that the regime survives and the demonstrators return to what is perversely being called “normalcy”.

I find most astonishing that President Obama so openly claimed the authority to instruct the Mubarak regime about how it was supposed to respond to the revolutionary uprising. I am not surprised at the effort, and would be surprised by its absence – but merely by the lack of any sign of imperial shyness in a world order that is supposedly built around the legitimacy of self-determination, national sovereignty, and democracy.

And almost as surprising, is the failure of Mubarak to pretend in public that such interference in the guise of guidance is unacceptable – even if, behind closed doors, he listens submissively and acts accordingly. This geopolitical theatre performance of master and servant suggests the persistence of the colonial mentality on the part of both coloniser – and their national collaborators.

The only genuine post-colonial message would be one of deference: “Stand aside, and applaud.” The great transformative struggles of the past century involved a series of challenges throughout the global south to get rid of the European colonial empires. But political independence did not bring an end to the more indirect, but still insidious, methods of control designed to protect economic and strategic interests. Such a dynamic meant reliance on political leaders that would sacrifice the wellbeing of their own people to serve the wishes of their unacknowledged former colonial masters, or their Western successors – the United States largely displacing France and the United Kingdom in the Middle East after the Suez crisis of 1956.

And these post-colonial servants of the West would be well-paid autocrats vested with virtual ownership rights in relation to the indigenous wealth of their country, provided they remained receptive to foreign capital. In this regard, the Mubarak regime was a poster child of post-colonial success.

Western liberal eyes were long accustomed not to notice the internal patterns of abuse that were integral to this foreign policy success – and if occasionally noticed by some intrepid journalist, who would then be ignored, or if necessary discredited as some sort of “leftist”. And if this failed to deflect criticism, they would point out, usually with an accompanying condescending smile, that torture and the like came with Arab cultural territory – a reality that savvy outsiders adapted to without any discomfort.

Actually, in this instance, such practices were quite convenient, Egypt serving as one of the interrogation sites for the insidious practice of “extreme rendition”, by which the CIA transports “terrorist suspects” to accommodating foreign countries that willingly provide torture tools and facilities. Is this what is meant by “a human rights presidency”? The irony should not be overlooked that President Obama’s special envoy to the Mubarak government in the crisis was none other than Frank Wisner, an American with a most notable CIA lineage.

There should be clarity about the relationship between this kind of post-colonial state, serving US regional interests – oil, Israel, containment of Islam, avoidance of unwanted proliferation of nuclear weapons – in exchange for power, privilege, and wealth vested in a tiny corrupt national elite that sacrifices the wellbeing and dignity of the national populace in the process.

Such a structure in the post-colonial era, where national sovereignty and human rights infuse popular consciousness can only be maintained by erecting high barriers of fear, reinforced by state terror, designed to intimidate the populace from pursuing their goals and values. When these barriers are breached, as recently in Tunisia and Egypt, then the fragility of the oppressive regime glows in the dark.

The dictator either runs for the nearest exit, as did Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, or is dumped by his entourage and foreign friends so that the revolutionary challenge can be tricked into a premature accommodation. This latter process seemed to represent the one of latest maneuverings of the palace elite in Cairo and their backers in the White House. Only time will tell whether the furies of counterrevolution will win the day, possibly by gunfire and whip – and possibly through mollifying gestures of reform that become unfulfillable promises in due course if the old regime is not totally reconstructed.

Unfulfillable – because corruption and gross disparities of wealth amid mass impoverishment can only be sustained, post-Tahrir Square, through the re-imposition of oppressive rule. And if it is not oppressive, then it will not be able for very long to withstand demands for rights, for social and economic justice, and due cause for solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Here is the crux of the ethical irony. Washington is respectful of the logic of self-determination, so long as it converges with the US grand strategy, and is oblivious to the will of the people whenever its expression is seen as posing a threat to the neoliberal overlords of the globalised world economy, or to strategic alignments that seem so dear to State Department or Pentagon planners.

As a result there is an inevitable to-ing and fro-ing as the United States tries to bob and weave, celebrating the advent of democracy in Egypt,complaining about the violence and torture of the tottering regime – while doing what it can to manage the process from outside, which means preventing genuine change, much less a democratic transformation of the Egyptian state. Anointing the main CIA contact and Mubarak loyalist, Omar Suleiman, to preside over the transition process on behalf of Egypt seems a thinly disguised plan to throw Mubarak to the crowd, while stabilising the regime he presided over for more than 30 years.

I would have expected more subtlety on the part of the geopolitical managers, but perhaps its absence is one more sign of imperial myopia that so often accompanies the decline of great empires.

It is notable that most protesters, when asked by the media about their reasons for risking death and violence by being in the Egyptian streets, responded with variations on the phrases: “We want our rights” or: “We want freedom and dignity”. Of course, joblessness, poverty, food security – and anger at the corruption, abuses, and dynastic pretensions of the Mubarak regime offer an understandable infrastructure of rage that undoubtedly fuels the revolutionary fires. But it is “rights” and “dignity” that seem to float on the surface of this awakened political consciousness.

These ideas, to a large extent nurtured in the hothouse of Western consciousness and then innocently exported as a sign of good will, like “nationalism” a century earlier, might originally be intended only as public relations move, but over time, such ideas gave rise to the dreams of the oppressed and victimised – and when the unexpected historical moment finally arrived, burst into flame. I remember talking a decade or so ago to Indonesian radicals in Jakarta who talked of the extent to which their initial involvement in anti-colonial struggle was stimulated by what they had learned from their Dutch colonial teachers about the rise of nationalism as a political ideology in the West.

Ideas may be disseminated with conservative intent, but if they later become appropriated on behalf of the struggles of oppressed peoples, such ideas are reborn – and serve as the underpinnings of a new emancipatory politics. Nothing better illustrates this Hegelian journey than the idea of “self-determination”, initially proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson after World War I. Wilson was a leader who sought above all to maintain order, believed in satisfying the aims of foreign investors and corporations, and had no complaints about the European colonial empires. For him, self-determination was merely a convenient means to arrange the permanent breakup of the Ottoman Empire through the formation of a series of ethnic states.

Little did Wilson imagine, despite warnings from his secretary of state, that self-determination could serve other gods – and become a powerful mobilising tool to overthrow colonial rule. In our time, human rights has followed a similarly winding path, sometimes being no more than a propaganda banner used to taunt enemies during the Cold War, sometimes as a convenient hedge against imperial identity – and sometimes as the foundation of revolutionary zeal, as seems to be the case in the unfinished and ongoing struggles for rights and dignity taking place throughout the Arab world in a variety of forms.

It is impossible to predict how this future will play out. There are too many forces at play in circumstances of radical uncertainty. In Egypt, for instance, it is widely believed that the army holds most of the cards, and that where it finally decides to put its weight will determine the outcome. But is such conventional wisdom not just one more sign that hard power realism dominates our imagination, and that historical agency belongs in the end to the generals and their weapons, and not to the people in the streets?

Of course, there is a blurring of pressures as the army could have been merely trying to go with the flow, siding with the winner once the outcome was clear. Is there any reason to rely on the wisdom, judgment, and good will of armies – not just in Egypt whose commanders owe their positions to Mubarak – but throughout the world?

In Iran the army did stand aside, and a revolutionary process transformed the Shah’s edifice of corrupt and brutal governance. The people momentarily prevailed, only to have their extraordinary nonviolent victory snatched away in a subsequent counter-revolutionary move that substituted theocracy for democracy.

There are few instances of revolutionary victory, and in those few instances, it is rarer still to carry forward the revolutionary mission without disruption. The challenge is to sustain the revolution in the face of almost inevitable counter-revolutionary projects, some launched by those who were part of the earlier movement unified against the old order, but now determined to hijack the victory for its own ends. The complexities of the revolutionary moment require utmost vigilance on the part of those who view emancipation, justice, and democracy as their animating ideals, because there will be enemies who seek to seize power at the expense of humane politics.

One of the most impressive features of the Egyptian revolution up to this point has been the extraordinary ethos of nonviolence and solidarity exhibited by the massed demonstrators, even in the face of repeated bloody provocations of the baltagiyya dispatched by the regime. This ethos refused to be diverted by these provocations, and we can only hope against hope that the provocations will cease, and that counter-revolutionary tides will subside, sensing either the futility of assaulting history or imploding at long last from the build up of corrosive effects from a long embrace of an encompassing illegitimacy.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).

He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

 

 

 

Last Modified: 18 Feb 2011 16:01 GMT

For Palestinians, Israeli settlements are the very crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [GALLO/GETTY]

It appears that US dealings with the Palestinians have entered a new phase: Bullying.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama telephoned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to urge him to block a UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements. Obama pressed very hard during the 50 minute call, so hard that Abbas felt constrained to agree to take Obama’s request to the PLO executive committee (which, not surprisingly, agreed that Abbas should not accede to Obama’s request).

But what a request it is!

For Palestinians, Israeli settlements are the very crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, it is the gobbling up of the land by settlements that is likely to prevent a Palestinian state from ever coming into being.

Asking the Palestinian leader to agree to oppose a resolution condemning them is like asking the Israeli prime minister to agree to drop Israel’s claim to the Israeli parts of Jerusalem.

In fact, the mere US request for a 90-day settlement freeze (a request sweetened with an offer of $3.5bn in extra aid) outraged the Netanyahu government. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could not even bring himself to respond (probably figuring that he will get the extra money whenever he wants it anyway). The administration then acted as if it never made the request at all, so eager is it to not offend Netanyahu in any way.

But it is a different story with Palestinians for obvious reasons (they have no political clout in Washington). Even when they ask the UN to support them on settlements, the administration applies heavy pressure on them.

But why so much pressure? After all, it is a big deal when the president calls a foreign leader and, to be honest, the head of the Palestinian Authority is not exactly the president of France or prime minister of Canada.

The reason Obama made that call is that he was almost desperate to avoid vetoing the United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning illegal Israel settlements. And it is not hard to see why.

Given the turbulence in the Middle East, and the universal and strong opposition in the Arab and Muslim world to US shilly-shallying on settlements, the last thing the administration wants to do is veto a resolution condemning them.

That is especially true with this resolution, sponsored by 122 nations, and which embodies long-stated US policies. All US interests dictate either support for the resolution or at least abstention.

But the administration rejected that approach, knowing that if it supported the resolution, AIPAC would go ballistic, along with its House and Senate (mostly House) cutouts. (Here are some of them issuing warnings already).

Then the calls would start coming in from AIPAC-connected donors who would warn that they will not support the president’s re-election if he does not veto. And Netanyahu would do to Obama what he did to former President Clinton – work with the Republicans (his favourite is former speaker Newt Gingrich) to bring Obama down.

What was an administration to do? It did not want to veto but was afraid not to.

Earlier in the week, it floated a plan which would have the Security Council mildly criticise settlements in a statement (not a resolution). According to Foreign Policy, the statement: “Expresses its strong opposition to any unilateral actions by any party, which cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations and will not be recognised by the international community, and reaffirms, that it does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, which is a serious obstacle to the peace process.” The statement also condemns “all forms of violence, including rocket fire from Gaza, and stresses the need for calm and security for both peoples”.

Did you notice where settlements are mentioned? Read slowly. It is there.

Reading the language, it is not hard to guess where the statement was drafted. Rather than simply address settlements, it throws in such AIPAC pleasing irrelevancies (in this context) as “rocket fire from Gaza” which has absolutely nothing to do with West Bank settlements. In other words, it reads like an AIPAC-drafted House resolution, although it does leave out the “hooray for Israel” boilerplate which is standard in Congress but which the Security Council is unlikely to go for.

All this to avoid vetoing a resolution which expresses US policy. Needless to say, the US plan went nowhere. Hypocrisy only carries the day when it is not transparent.

As I wrote earlier this week, this is what happens when donors and not diplomats are driving US policy. It is too bad that they do not care that they are making the US look like Netanyahu’s puppet in front of the entire world.

MJ Rosenberg is a senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

Follow MJ’s work on Facebook or on Twitter.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

 

 

 

17 February, 2011

Countercurrents.org

The CIA and Pentagon used “enhanced interrogation techniques”(EIT) on Middle East prisoners knowing they were illegal and considered to be torture by the United Nations, according to an article published in the January issue of the American magazine “Science.”

Tortures including sensory deprivation, forced nudity, and painful body positions were “routinely applied to detainees in U.S. custody in at least three theaters of operation and an unknown number of (CIA) ‘black sites,’” the article states. The U.S. did this “despite the fact that each EIT was considered torture by the United Nations and the United States (had) recognized them as such in its reports on human rights practices.”

Entitled, “Bad Science Used to Support Torture and Human Experimentation,” the “Science” article was written by physicians Vincent Iacopino, Scott Allen, and Allen S. Keller. Dr. Iacopino is a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine; Dr. Keller is director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture; and Dr. Scott Allen, associate professor of medicine and co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Alpert Medical School, Brown University. All three are consultants to Physicians for Human Rights, of Cambridge, Mass.

Dr. Keller has long treated torture victims and in earlier testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence elaborated on the extensive use of enhanced interrogation techniques(EITs) as follows: “While the full spectrum of such techniques used by U.S. authorities including the Central Intelligence Agency has not been disclosed, there have been reports that the ‘enhanced’ interrogation program includes methods such as stress positions, shaking and beating, temperature manipulation, threats of harm to person or loved ones, prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory overload, sensory deprivation, sexual humiliation, exploitation of fears and phobias, cultural or religious humiliation, and water-boarding. From a medical, scientific and health perspective, there is nothing benign about them. Such techniques are gruesome, dehumanizing and dangerous.”

EITs were authorized by the CIA in Jan., 2003, and by the Pentagon two months later. Jay Bybee,

an Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in an official memo, revised the definition of torture to allow for the above-cited cruelties and stated further that any interrogator who inflicted them was blameless unless it was his “specific intent” to torture. Bybee’s definition of “specific intent,” the physicians write, “undermined any meaningful definition of torture for medical personnel charged with recognizing it.”

The article blasted health professionals charged with ensuring detainees’ safety but who were instead “calibrating the harm” inflicted upon them. Also, there is evidence in official detainee medical records that medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the DOD (Defense Department) “neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm.”

“Any scientist or clinician should know that intentional infliction of harm without consent of and/or direct benefit to the individual cannot be construed as ‘ensuring safety’ and that complicity in torture and ill treatment, including by military personnel, can never be justified,” the “Science” article said.

The physicians say the science used to justify the torture did not assess its long-term physical and mental impact. Example: a memo by (Jay) Bybee “explicitly referred to long-term impacts, and thus appears to have been inappropriately used to justify a predetermined conclusion that torture could be safe, legal, and effective.”

Among their many recommendations, the doctors called for requiring military medical personnel to comply “with all civilian medical ethics standards;” for requiring them to be independent “from the security chain of command;” and for making them comply with the Nuremberg Code, the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. As for those who transgress, the physicians recommend “Punitive sanctions in accordance with the law.”

The doctors also said that a health professional who becomes aware of abusive or coercive practices has a duty to report such practices to appropriate authorities. The American Psychological Association has specifically banned its members from participation in the tactics that allegedly make up the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program.

Sherwood Ross is a public relations consultant for good causes and columnist residing in south Florida. He formerly reported for the Chicago Daily News, has contributed extensively to wire services, and worked in a professional capacity in the civil rights movement. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Nidal El-Khairy)

If you think Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is stupid, much less crazy, think twice. He was the first to sense and assess correctly the ripple effects of what happened in Tunisia on 14 January 2011. He was fully cognizant and apprehensive of its implications for Libya and, above all, for his 42-year record of autocratic rule. To understand Gaddafi’s overall manipulative tactics of the Libyan uprising, namely his attempt to deflect its homegrown roots, it is worthwhile to revisit his reaction to the Tunisian revolution.

On 15 January 2011, one day after Tunisians ousted long-time dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, Gaddafi was the first Arab head of state to comment on the Tunisian revolution. Wearing a black shirt, and showing a haggard, pallid face, weighted by anguish, he appeared on the national Libyan TV channel Aljamahiriya and addressed himself directly to the Tunisian people.

As customary of his improvisational style, which literally embodies the absurdities and eccentricities of his entire regime, Gaddafi’s remarks were random, disjointed and unpersuasive even though his warnings to Tunisians were partly right, particularly if judged against the backdrop of the manipulative practices of the current interim government in Tunisia which has shamelessly co-opted the revolution and slighted the spirit of the revolutionaries. Let’s pray and hope, though, that the ongoing, around-the-clock sit-in mass protest in the Qasbah Government Square in Tunis succeeds in putting the revolution back on the right track.

Gaddafi said he was pained by Ben Ali’s unceremonious exit and spoke at length about the shortsightedness of Tunisians who wasted their lives for nothing, just to get rid of a corrupt president. He chided them for being misled by WikiLeaks (which he called “Kleenex”) into destroying their country and putting the future of their children on the line. After expressing his distrust of any form of social media, Gaddafi turned to pay homage to Ben Ali, whom he refers to as “Zine”:

“I do not know anyone from Bourguiba [Tunisia’s first post-independence president] to Zine, but Zine for me is the best for Tunisia. He was the one who gave Tunisia pride of place [in terms of economic growth]; I don’t care whether you like him or not, whether you’re against him or not; I tell you the truth, regardless; do you think that Zine gives me money, glory or any kind of reward for saying this? He gives me nothing, but I tell you the truth. I’m usually candid with the Arab public, pointing out the truth to them. No one is better than Zine at the moment. What I wish is not for Zine to remain in power till 2014 [which is one of the concessions/promises Ben Ali made in his third and last speech before his flight to Saudi Arabia] but for him to remain in power for life, okay! If anyone close to Zine is corrupt or if Zine himself is corrupt, they should stand trial. Bring your evidence and try them; this is usually a normal practice. But it’s inadmissible that whenever there is corruption, we burn our country and kill our children at night. Ala Tunis al-salaam.”

Gaddafi ended his speech by saying ala Tunis al-salaam, which is a pun on “peace upon Tunisia,” but practically means in this context, “Tunisia’s doom is upon us.” Ala Tunis al-salaam is a corruption of ala al-duniya al-salaam, which is a common idiomatic expression that originates in Islamic theology on the end of days and is used to evoke a sense of the approaching end of times. The gist of Gaddafi’s speech is twofold: to debunk the rationale on which the Tunisian revolution hinges and to profess the collapse of Tunisia as a nation state.

Gaddafi’s unsolicited comments on the Tunisian revolution constituted a travesty of the will of the Tunisian people and of the memory of its martyrs; Tunisians felt insulted and angered by what he said and, therefore, vindicated when they saw many Libyans in al-Bayda city taking to the streets the following day to protest against socioeconomic malaises created by his regime and by the decades-long unbalanced distribution of oil revenues. It’s worth noting here that Libyans were indeed the first who felt compelled and inspired by what happened in Tunisia; these early demonstrations, however, were somewhat visceral and hesitant; they lacked the assurance and confidence that the Egyptian revolution brought in its wake.

The importance of Gaddafi’s speech on the Tunisian revolution lies ultimately not in terms of what it said about Tunisia but in terms of what it did not say about Libya. Inversely, what Gaddafi did not say about Libya, he projected on Tunisia. Consider, for instance, his insistence on the exceptionality and exemplarity of Ben Ali: “There is not anyone better than Ben Ali at the moment for Tunisia and if it were up to me I would want him to continue not till 2014 but for life.” What holds the key to this statement is the “if it were up to me” hypothesis that underwrites it. Gaddafi implies that while it is not up to him to appoint Ben Ali president for life in the case of Tunisia, it is certainly up to him in the case of Libya to stay in power for the rest of his life, or so, at least, he hoped to plead with or make clear to Libyans.

The fact that Gaddafi reacted immediately to the overthrow of Ben Ali in ways that contradicted the will of the Tunisian people is expressive of his fear that what happened to Ben Ali might very well happen to him. Thenceforth he was obsessed and bedeviled by what might be called the curse of Ben Ali. He identified with Ben Ali not in order to redeem him but in order to justify his own longevity in power. He trivialized the value of the Tunisian revolution not because he felt Libya is immunized against it but because he reckoned how ripe Libya is for it after 42 years of his rule, almost twice as long as Ben Ali’s. He went on and on discrediting social media and WikiLeaks not because they were negligible and untrustworthy but because they charted new fields of mobilization and dissent that he can neither overcome nor completely disregard.

Gaddafi knew then that he was not immune to Ben Ali’s curse and he did not leave any stone unturned to immunize himself against his fate. His overall strategy revolved initially around the vilification of the Tunisian revolution. He not only undermined its accomplishments but also was proactive in highlighting its negative repercussions. The rumors that swirled around his involvement along with Leila Trabelsi, Ben Ali’s wife, in staging the influx of clandestine migrants to Lampedusa, Italy, have a ring of truth to them. While Trabelsi wanted to create a state of turmoil in Tunisia so as to smuggle the rest of her family out of the country, Gaddafi wanted to show Libyans a fresh example of the ugly byproducts of popular unrest in Tunisia, particularly after the fall of Mubarak.

No wonder, then, that the boats used by the clandestine migrants (who self-identified as political refugees) were sent from Libya; no wonder that most of these refugees were either runaway prisoners or mercenaries who were all asking for political asylum or refugee status in Italy, and no wonder that Gaddafi felt reassured that the psychological war he was waging against his people was effective; at any rate, there were no other protests of note anywhere in Libya since the al-Bayda protests that took place after his speech on Tunisia until widespread protests broke out last week.

Tarnishing the Tunisian revolution went hand-in-hand with his attempt to point to a foreign conspiracy against Tunisia. In an interview on Nessma TV on 25 January, on the very same day that the Egyptian revolution officially started, Gaddafi alluded to certain foreign forces preying on Tunisia but did not give any further specifications; when he was pushed to name names, he pointed out that those should be understood from his allusions. The usual suspects in the case of Tunisia are France and the United States, but that is not the case with Libya. Despite his preemptive campaigning against the contagiousness of the Tunisian revolution, Libya is now swept by the same revolutionary current that transformed both Tunisia and Egypt.

As peaceful demonstrations in Libya continue to spread across the country, Gaddafi is doing exactly what he implied he would do in his speech on Tunisia. First, he’s terrorizing the population, killing as many Libyans as he can, not only because he wants to show he is willing to do this but also because he wants to dare Libyans to willingly pay the price for their revolt. Second, Gaddafi is deflecting the genuine grievances at the origin of the popular uprising and is instead pointing fingers to Tunisians, Egyptians and Palestinians as the architects of the widespread demonstrations.

At the very same time that Libyans were being burned alive by fighter jet rockets and bombs on 21 February, national Libyan TV, Aljamahiriya, was running staged confessions by Tunisians who were involved in circulating leaflets inciting Libyans to rise up against their government or distributing so-called “demonstration pills,” that is, pills that would propel those who take them to engage in demonstrations and to destroy government buildings, etc. Clearly, Gaddafi’s men/mercenaries are preying on foreigners in Libya: they capture them, beat them up and bring them in front of a camera and force them to say what they want them to say. In addition to terrorizing Libyans from the skies, Gaddafi is defusing the legitimate and homegrown forces that are leading Libya’s glorious revolution.

When Gaddafi first commented on the Tunisian revolution, he pointed out the yawning gap between the high price paid for it (the hundreds of men and women killed) and the meager gains brought through it (changing one president for another and appointing one government in place of another). In other words, he questioned whether it was worth it for Tunisians to bring tragedy and grief upon themselves only to reap nothing but a farcical reshuffling of the same old system. Gaddafi’s strategy in Libya is to blur completely the dividing lines between the tragic and the farcical. This holds true even for the latest TV appearances of Gaddafi and son, which add nothing but farcical insult to tragic injury.

To use heavy artillery and fighter jets (Mirage and Rafael) to attack unarmed civilians might seem absurd when you ponder it for a while, yet it is tragic when you see it actually happening. By playing on the constant slide of the tragic under the farcical, Gaddafi does not only want to hold on to his 42-year long omnipotence, but to force Libyans along with the international community to submit to it. To be able to understand and support our Libyan brothers and sisters today, let’s take out the farcical out of Gaddafi. Libya’s tragedy can no longer continue to be Gaddafi’s farce.

Nouri Gana, The Electronic Intifada, 22 February 2011

 

Nouri Gana is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. His book, Signifying Loss: Toward a Poetics of Narrative Mourning, was just published by Bucknell University Press, 2011.

22 February, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Within a week of the launching of the people’s revolution in Bahrain, the number of martyrs has reached eight, all murdered in cold blood by the riot police and soldiers. Since the first peaceful demonstration at sunrise on Monday 14th February (Bahrain’s Day of Rage) led by Abdul Wahab Hussain was mercilessly crushed by the riot police, the situation has escalated and the first martyr fell. Ali Abdul Hadi Mushaime was killed after being hit with shotguns. That killing broke the fear barrier and thousands of Bahrainis participated in his funeral the following day. Once again the arrogant Al Khalifa junta reacted with stupidity (according to Richard Beeston of The Times newspaper) by shooting on the funeral procession and killing the second martyr; Fadhel Matrook . His procession the following day started a new phase in the protest. First came the dictator, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa live on air to give his condolences to the martyrs families and form an inquiry led by one of the regime’s cronies, Jawad Al Urayyedh. The people were so furious that they decided to march to “Pearl Square” in Central Manama to turn it into the revolution’s hotbed. Within few hours their numbers swelled to more than 50 000.

The Al Khalifa regime committed its ultimate crime when it attacked the demonstrators while they were asleep. At around 3 am on Thursday morning the riot police launched their bloodiest attack on Pearl Square, killing and maiming hundreds of people, many of them women and children. More people were martyred: Ali Khudhayyer, Ali Al Mo’men and Mahmood Abu Taki. The people were terrified but many were composed despite the bloody attack. They rushed to the Salmaniyah Hospital where some of the injured and dead were taken. It was a day that would never be forgotten. The ruling family issued orders to the hospital staff not to treat the injured who were already in hospital or ferry those whose bodies were scattered at the Square and on the roads. Instead of heeding these inhumane orders, Bahraini doctors and nurses went on protest against the Health Minister, Faisal Al Hamar who has now become one of the hated figures of the regime for his continued refusal to treat the victims. T hey also made their own makeshift clinic to treat the injured. The Al Khalifa committed further crimes. They attacked the clinic, beat up the specialist doctor, Sadiq Al Ekri to unconsciousness. More atrocities were committed that day. Those attending the casualties were shot. Mr Abdul Hassan was shot with a teargas gun at blank range blowing off his head. He died instantly . A policeman was heard shouting at the killer policeman, Don’t kill him Thawwadi, Don’t kill him Thawwadi. The family of Thawwadi is a known pro-Al Khalifa family. Now the exact identity of the killer is being sought so that he is pursued for war crimes.

On Friday, the people attempted to march back to the Pearl Square at the end of the funeral of the first martyr. Despite their peaceful nature they were viciously attacked by the army whose tanks and armoured carriers had been deployed along the streets of the capital. They were not deterred by the live ammunition round fired on them by the soldiers. It was yet another turning point in the struggle for freedom. The live images shown of the attack forced some western governments to announce their indignation of the behavior of the embattled Al Khalifa. Both France and Britain announced the suspension of export of lethal and crowd control weapons to Bahrain. It was yet another international sanction against the brutal regime.

Now the scene is set for more bloodshed by an increasingly isolated regime as the people become more emboldened to continue their demand that was raised from the beginning of the revolution; the downfall of the Al Khalifa hereditary dictatorship. They have not been deterred by the threats coming from the Saudi dictators whose fate hangs in the balance after decades of dictatorship and suppression. These developments have now hardened the resolve of Bahrainis. The Al Wefaq society announced their withdrawal from the Al Khalifa shura council and calls are being made to try the ruler and his clique for genocide and war crimes. It is a history which is now unfolding in Bahrain. The time for real change has come and the days of the Al Khalifa are numbered.

 

Bahrain Freedom Movement

19th February 2011 

 

Manama – As Bahrainis take to the streets demanding political change, the question of women’s social and political rights must be taken to heart by the current, or any future, government.

Prior to the protests, the 2014 parliamentary elections in the Kingdom of Bahrain were already being discussed as an opportunity for Bahraini women to enhance their presence in politics. In the recent 2010 elections, women ran for parliament and municipal offices, and achieved some positive results. But in order to continue this trend, any ruling government in Bahrain must actively support women’s political and civic engagement before the 2014 elections roll around.

Mariam Al Ruwai, President of the Bahrain Women’s Union, an association representing 12 organisations working towards women’s advancement, is also planning to run in the 2014 elections despite not garnering enough votes to advance past the first round of the last parliamentary elections.

Women in Bahrain have made tremendous strides in a very short period, especially considering that they have been marginalised for most of the country’s history. A year after Bahrain’s independence from Britain in 1971, Bahraini men were granted the right to vote and to have representation in parliamentary councils. Women, however, were excluded from voting or running for office.

Accordingly, women’s organisations launched joint efforts to help women achieve their political rights. A joint committee of women’s organisations was formed in 1972 to meet with the Minister of Justice and Islamic Affairs to study the issue of women’s participation in politics. That same year, female activists formed another committee to submit a petition to the Bahraini King Isa ibn Salman Al Khalifah about women’s political rights.

Members of women’s organisations attended a meeting of the country’s founding council to discuss the first article of the draft constitution, which stated that “citizens have the right to participate in public affairs and to enjoy political rights, such as the right to election.” But women’s participation was postponed until Bahrain’s second constitution was promulgated in 2002.

In 2002, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah launched a reform project granting women the right to participate in municipal and parliamentary councils. Thirty-one women and 306 men ran for municipal elections, but none of the female candidates won. Two of them, however, made it to the second round of voting.

Then came the parliamentary elections on 24 October 2002, which were more significant because they were the first national elections to be held in Bahrain in more than 30 years, due to a long period of emergency law that had been in place from 1975 until 2002. These elections were also the first national elections in which women were able to run as well as vote.

The municipal and parliamentary council elections in 2006 saw Latifa Al-Uqoud, a director in the Ministry of Finance, win by default in the Hiwar district, making her the first woman in the Arab Gulf to be elected to her country’s parliament.

In 2010, 18 women ran for parliament and five women ran for seats in the municipal council. Fatima Salman, who was working at the time with the Red Crescent, won a seat in the municipal council after 35 years of serving her community through charity and voluntary work. She was the first woman to win a municipal council seat and broke male dominance over the council, a momentous victory for Bahraini women.

Bahraini women must not lose sight of their goals amidst the current chaos but instead use the opportunity to set their sights on seats in parliament in 2014. The government must also take steps to promote women’s presence in elected councils by setting quotas for the number of women in parliament. An endorsement of special measures to support women running for office was put forward by the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which was adopted by many Arab and foreign countries. Such measures are necessary in light of the refusal by many religious and political organisations to endorse female nominees and the decision to instead divide up the parliamentary seats amongst themselves.

The best solution is to let civil society organisations support women financially and provide the necessary push toward their political empowerment

The government must also support women’s political organisations, like Awal which carries out awareness campaigns about women’s rights and calls for women’s accession to decision-making positions in all areas of government and civil society.

There is also Fatat Al-Reef, an organisation that seeks to change women’s image in the media, moving away from stereotypical images of women while working to change the idea that a career in politics is only for men.

Supporting women’s projects and endorsing a women’s quota in parliament are two basic steps toward developing women’s rights in Bahrain. Only then will there be hope that Mariam Al-Ruwai – and others like her – could win. Her presence on the political scene in 2010 was a success in itself, after all. Electoral victories for Al-Ruwai and others in 2014 would be a significant victory for all Bahraini women.

Sana’ Mohammad Bou Hamoud

 

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* Sana’ Mohammad Bou Hamoud is a lawyer and activist in the field of women’s rights in the Kingdom of Bahrain. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 22 February 2011, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.

 

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has vowed to fight on and die a “martyr”, calling on his supporters to take back the streets from protesters demanding his ouster, shouting and pounding his fist in a furious speech on state TV.

Gaddafi, clad in brown robes and turban, spoke on Tuesday from a podium set up in the entrance of a bombed-out building that appeared to be his Tripoli residence hit by US air raids in the 1980s and left unrepaired as a monument of defiance.

“I am a fighter, a revolutionary from tents … I will die as a martyr at the end,” he said.

“I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired … when I do, everything will burn.”

He called on supporters to take to the streets to attack protesters. “You men and women who love Gaddafi …get out of your homes and fill the streets,” he said. “Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs … Starting tomorrow the cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them.”

“From tonight to tomorrow, all the young men should form local committees for popular security,” he said, telling them to wear a green armband to identify themselves. “The Libyan people and the popular revolution will control Libya.”

The speech, which appeared to have been taped earlier, was aired on a screen to hundreds of supporters massed in Tripoli’s central Green Square.

Shouting in the rambling speech, Gaddafi declared himself “a warrior” and proclaimed: “Libya wants glory, Libya wants to be at the pinnacle, at the pinnacle of the world”.

At times the camera panned out to show a towering gold-coloured monument in front of the building, showing a fist crushing a fighter jet with an American flag on it – a view that also gave the strange image of Gaddafi speaking alone from behind a podium in the building’s dilapidated lobby, with no audience in front of him.

Fresh violence rages in Libya

Libyan forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are waging a bloody operation to keep him in power, with residents reporting gunfire in parts of the capital Tripoli and other cities, while other citizens, including the country’s former ambassador to India, are saying that warplanes were used to “bomb” protesters.

Nearly 300 people are reported to have been killed in continuing violence in the capital and across the North African country as demonstrations enter their second week.

Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has warned that the widespread attacks against civilians “amount to crimes against humanity”, and called for an international investigation in possible human rights violations.

Witnesses in Tripoli told Al Jazeera that fighter jets had bombed portions of the city in fresh attacks on Monday night. The bombing focused on ammunition depots and control centres around the capital.

Helicopter gunships were also used, they said, to fire on the streets in order to scare demonstrators away.

Several witnesses said that “mercenaries” were firing on civilians in the city, while pro-Gaddafi forces warned people not to leave their homes via loudspeakers mounted on cars.

Residents of the Tajura neighbourhood, east of Tripoli, said that dead bodies are still lying on the streets from earlier violence. At least 61 people were killed in the capital on Monday, witnesses told Al Jazeeera.

‘Indiscriminate bombing’

Protests in the oil-rich African country, which Gaddafi has ruled for 41 years, began on February 14, but picked up momentum after a brutal government crackdown following a “Day of Rage” on February 17. Demonstrators say they have now taken control of several important towns, including the city of Benghazi, which saw days of bloody clashes between protesters and government forces.

There has been a heavy government crackdown on protests, however, and demonstrators at a huge anti-government march in the capital on Monday afternoon said they came under attack from fighter jets and security forces using live ammunition.

“What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead,” Adel Mohamed Saleh said in a live broadcast.

“Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car, they will hit you.”

Ali al-Essawi, who resigned as Libyan ambassador to India, also told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that fighter jets had been used by the government to bomb civilians.

He said live fire was being used against protesters, and that foreigners had been hired to fight on behalf of the government. The former ambassador called the violence “a massacre”, and called on the UN to block Libyan airspace in order to “protect the people”.

‘Genocide’

The country’s state broadcaster quoted Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, and widely seen as his political heir, as saying that armed forces had “bombarded arms depots situated far from populated areas”. He denied that air strikes had taken place in Tripoli and Benghazi.

The government says that it is battling “dens of terrorists”.

Earlier, Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said Gaddafi had started a “genocide against the Libyan people”.

During Monday’s protests, gunfire was heard across the capital, with protesters seen attacking police stations and government buildings, including the offices of the state broadcaster.

Witnesses told the AFP news agency that there had been a “massacre” in Tajura district, with gunmen seen firing “indiscriminately”.

In Fashlum district, helicopters were seen landing with what witnesses described as “mercenaries” disembarking and attacking those on the street.

Mohammed Abdul-Malek, a London-based opposition activist who has been in touch with residents, said that snipers have taken positions on roofs in an apparent bid to stop people joining the protests.

Several witnesses who spoke to the Associated Press news agency said that pro-Gaddafi gunmen were firing from moving cars at both people and buildings.

State television on Tuesday dismissed allegations that security forces were killing protesters as “lies and rumours”.

Benghazi situation dire

Benghazi, Libya’s second city, which had been the focal point of violence in recent days, has now been taken over by anti-government protesters, after military units deserted their posts and joined the demonstrators.

Doctors there, however, say that they are running short of medical supplies.

Dr Ahmed, at the city’s main hospital, told Al Jazeera that they were running short of medical supplies, medication and blood.

He said that the violence in Benghazi had left “bodies that are divided in three, four parts. Only legs, and only hands,”.

While no casualties had been reported in the city on Tuesday, he estimated the number of people killed in Benghazi alone over the last five days to be near 300.

He also said that when military forces who had defected from Gaddafi’s government entered an army base, they found evidence of soldiers having been executed, reportedly for refusing to fire on civilians.

The runway at the city’s airport has been destroyed, according to the Egyptian foreign minister, and planes can therefore not land there.

Possible ‘crimes against humanity’

According to the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR), protesters are also in control of Sirte, Tobruk in the east, as well as Misrata, Khoms, Tarhounah, Zenten, Al-Zawiya and Zouara.

On Sunday, the US-based rights group Human Rights Watch said that at least 233 people were killed in the violence. Added to that are at least 61 people who died on Monday, which brings the toll since violence began on February 17 to at least 294.

Pillay, the UN’s human rights chief, called on Tuesday for an international investigation into the violence in the country, saying that it was possible that “crimes against humanity” had been perpetrated by the Libyan government.

In a statement, Pillay called for an immediate halt to human rights violations, and denounced the use of machine guns, snipers and military warplanes against civilians.

Evacuations

Meanwhile, Royal Dutch Shell, a major oil company, said on Tuesday that all of its expatriate employees and their dependents living in Libya have now been relocated.

Emirates airlines and British Airways suspended all flights to Tripoli on Tuesday, citing the violence in the country, even as Italy, France, Turkey, Greece and several other countries were preparing to send aircraft to evacuate their nationals from the country.

Two Turkish ships that were sent to evacuate citizens were not allowed to dock at Tripoli, and one of them then sailed to Benghazi in an attempt to dock there, Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Istanbul, reported.

Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s became the second agency in as many days to downgrade Libya on Tuesday, as it cut the country’s rating from A- to BBB+.

 

22 February, 2011

 

 

 

23 February, 2011

Al Jazeera

Protesters wrest control of more cities as unrest sweeps African nation despite Muammar Gaddafi’s threat of crackdown

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s long-standing ruler, has reportedly lost control of more cities as anti-government protests continue to sweep the African nation despite his threat of a brutal crackdown.

Protesters in Misurata said on Wednesday they had wrested the western city from government control. In a statement on the internet, army officers stationed in the city pledged “total support for the protesters”.

The protesters also seemed to be in control of much of the country’s east, and an Al Jazeera correspondent, reporting from the city of Tobruk, 140km from the Egyptian border, said there was no presence of security forces.

“From what I’ve seen, I’d say the people of eastern Libya are the ones in control,” Hoda Abdel-Hamid, our correspondent, said.

She said there were no officials manning the border when the Al Jazeera team crossed into Libya.

‘People in charge’

“All along the border, we didn’t see one policeman, we didn’t see one soldier and people here told us they [security forces] have all fled or are in hiding and that the people are now in charge, meaning all the way from the border, Tobruk, and then all the way up to Benghazi

“People tell me it’s also quite calm in Bayda and Beghazi. They do say, however, that ‘militias’ are roaming around, especially at night. They describe them as African men, they say they speak French so they think they’re from Chad.”

Major-General Suleiman Mahmoud, the commander of the armed forces in Tobruk, told Al Jazeera that the troops led by him had switched loyalties. “We are on the side of the people,” he said.

Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, was where people first rose up in revolt against Gaddafi’s 41-year long rule more than a week ago. The rebellion has since spread to other cities despite heavy-handed attempts by security forces to quell the unrest.

With authorities placing tight restrictions on the media, flow of news from Libya is at best patchy. But reports filtering out suggest at least 300 people have been killed in the violence.

But Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, said there were “credible’ reports that at least 1,000 had died in the clampdown.

Defiant Gaddafi

Amid the turmoil, a defiant Gaddafi has vowed to quash the uprising.

He delivered a rambling speech on television on Tuesday night, declaring he would die a martyr in Libya, and threatening to purge opponents “house by house” and “inch by inch”.

He blamed the uprising in the country on “Islamists”, and warned that an “Islamic emirate” has already been set up in Bayda and Derna, where he threatened the use of extreme force.

He urged Libyans to take to the streets and show their support for their leader.

Several hundred government loyalists heeded his call in Tripoli, the capital. on Wednesday, staging a pro-Gaddafi rally in the city’s Green Square.

Fresh gunfire was reported in the capital on Wednesday, after Gaddafi called on his supporters to take back the streets from anti-government protesters.

But Gaddafi’s speech has done little to stem the steady stream of defections from his side.

Libyan diplomats across the world have either resigned in protest at the use of violence against citizens, or renounced Gaddafi’s leadership, saying that they stand with the protesters.

Late on Tuesday night, General Abdul-Fatah Younis, the country’s interior minister, became the latest government official to stand down, saying that he was resigning to support what he termed as the “February 17 revolution”.

He urged the Libyan army to join the people and their “legitimate demands”.

On Wednesday, Youssef Sawani, a senior aide to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons, resigned from his post “to express dismay against violence”, Reuters reported.

Earlier, Mustapha Abdeljalil, the country’s justice minister, had resigned in protest at the “excessive use of violence” against protesters, and diplomat’s at Libya’s mission to the United Nations called on the Libyan army to help remove “the tyrant Muammar Gaddafi”.

A group of army officers has also issued a statement urging soldiers to “join the people” and remove Gaddafi from power.

 

 

 

 

23 February, 2011

Climatestorytellers.org

Biodiverse Ecological Farming is the Answer, not Genetic Engineering

Industrial globalised agriculture is heavily implicated in climate change. It contributes to the three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2) from the use of fossil fuels, nitrogen oxide (N2O) from the use of chemical fertilizers and methane (CH4) from factory farming. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a pre–industrial concentration of about 280 parts per million to 379 parts per million in 2005. The global atmospheric concentration of CH4 has increased from pre–industrial concentration of 715 parts per billion to 1774 parts per billion in 2005. The global atmospheric concentration of N2O, largely due to use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture, increased from about 270 parts per billion to 319 parts per billion in 2005.

Industrial agriculture is also more vulnerable to climate change which is intensifying droughts and floods. Monocultures lead to more frequent crop failure when rainfall does not come in time, or is too much or too little. Chemically fertilized soils have no capacity to withstand a drought. And cyclones and hurricanes make a food system dependent on long distance transport highly vulnerable to disruption.

Genetic engineering is embedded in an industrial model of agriculture based on fossil fuels. It is falsely being offered as a magic bullet for dealing with climate change.

Monsanto claims that Genetically Modified Organisms are a cure for both food insecurity and climate change and has been putting the following advertisement across the world in recent months.

9 billion people to feed.

A changing climate

Now what?

Producing more

Conserving more

Improving farmers lives

That’s sustainable agriculture

And that’s what Monsanto is all about.

All the claims this advertisement makes are false.

GM crops do not produce more. While Monsanto claims its GMO Bt cotton gives 1500 Kg/acre, the average is 300–400 Kg/acre.

The claim to increased yield is false because yield, like climate resilience is a multi–genetic trait. Introducing toxins into a plant through herbicide resistance or Bt. Toxin increases the “yield” of toxins, not of food or nutrition.

Even the nutrition argument is manipulated. Golden rice genetically engineered to increase Vitamin A produces 70 times less Vitamin A than available alternatives such as coriander leaves and curry leaves.

The false claim of higher food production has been dislodged by a recent study titled, Failure to Yield by Dr. Doug Gurian Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was former biotech specialist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and former adviser on GM to the U.S Food and Drug Administration. Sherman states, “Let us be clear. There are no commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield. Similarly there are no GM crops on the market that were engineered to resist drought, reduce fertilizer pollution or save soil. Not one.”

There are currently two predominant applications of genetic engineering: one is herbicide resistance, the other is crops with Bt. toxin. Herbicides kill plants. Therefore they reduce return of organic matter to the soil. Herbicide resistant crops, like Round Up Ready Soya and Corn reduce soil carbon, they do not conserve it. This is why Monsanto’s attempt to use the climate negotiations to introduce Round Up and Round Up resistant crops as a climate solution is scientifically and ecologically wrong.

Monsanto’s GMOs, which are either Round Up Ready crops or Bt toxin crops do not conserve resources. They demand more water, they destroy biodiversity and they increase toxics in farming. Pesticide use has increased 13 times as a result of the use Bt cotton seeds in the region of Vidharbha, India.

Monsanto’s GMOs do not improve farmers’ lives. They have pushed farmers to suicide. 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last decade. 84% of the suicides in Vidharbha, the region with highest suicides are linked to debt created by Bt–cotton. GMOs are non–renewable, while the open pollinated varieties that farmers have bred are renewable and can be saved year to year. The price of cotton seed was Rs 7/kg. Bt cotton seed price jumped to Rs 1,700/kg.

This is neither ecological nor economic or social sustainability. It is eco–cide and genocide.

Genetic engineering does not “create” climate resilience. In a recent article titled, “GM: Food for Thought” (Deccan Chronicle, August 26, 2009), Dr. M.S. Swaminathan wrote “we can isolate a gene responsible for conferring drought tolerance, introduce that gene into a plant, and make it drought tolerant.”

Drought tolerance is a polygenetic trait. It is therefore scientifically flawed to talk of “isolating a gene for drought tolerance.“ Genetic engineering tools are so far only able to transfer single gene traits. That is why in twenty years only two single gene traits for herbicide resistance and Bt. toxin have been commercialized through genetic engineering.

Navdanya’s recent report titled, “Biopiracy of Climate Resilient Crops: Gene Giants are Stealing farmers’ innovation of drought resistant, flood resistant and salt resistant varieties,” shows that farmers have bred corps that are resistant to climate extremes. And it is these traits which are the result of millennia of farmers’ breeding which are now being patented and pirated by the genetic engineering industry. Using farmers’ varieties as “genetic material,” the biotechnology industry is playing genetic roulette to gamble on which gene complexes are responsible for which trait. This is not done through genetic engineering; it is done through software programs like athlete. As the report states, “Athlete uses vast amounts of available genomic data (mostly public) to rapidly reach a reliable limited list of candidate key genes with high relevance to a target trait of choice. Allegorically, the Athlete platform could be viewed as a ‘machine’ that is able to choose 50–100 lottery tickets from amongst hundreds of thousands of tickets, with the high likelihood that the winning ticket will be included among them.”

Breeding is being replaced by gambling, innovation is giving way to biopiracy, and science is being substituted by propaganda. This cannot be the basis of food security in times of climate vulnerability.

Women for Diversity: One of the campaigns of Navdanya. Photo courtesy Navdanya.

While genetic engineering is a false solution, over the past 20 years, we have built Navdanya, India’s biodiversity and organic farming movement. We are increasingly realizing there is a convergence between objectives of conservation of biodiversity, reduction of climate change impact and alleviation of poverty. Biodiverse, local, organic systems produce more food and higher farm incomes, while they also reduce water use and risks of crop failure due to climate change.

Biodiversity offers resilience to recover from climate disasters. After the Orissa Super Cyclone of 1998, and the Tsunami of 2004, Navdanya distributed seeds of saline resistant rice varieties as “Seeds of Hope” to rejuvenate agriculture in lands reentered saline by the sea. We are now creating seed banks of drought resistant, flood resistant and saline resistant seed varieties to respond to climate extremities.

Navdanya’s work over the past twenty years has shown that we can grow more food and provide higher incomes to farmers without destroying the environment and killing our peasants. Our study on “Biodiversity based organic farming: A new paradigm for Food Security and Food Safety” has established that small biodiverse organic farms produce more food and provide higher incomes to farmers.

Biodiverse organic and local food systems contribute both to mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Small, biodiverse, organic farms especially in Third World countries are totally fossil fuel free. Energy for farming operations comes from animal energy. Soil fertility is built by feeding soil organisms by recycling organic matter. This reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Biodiverse systems are also more resilient to draughts and floods because they have higher water holding capacity and hence contribute to adaption to climate change. Navdanya’s study on climate change and organic farming has indicated that organic farming increases carbon absorption by upto 55% and water holding capacity by 10% thus contributing to both mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

Biodiverse organic farms produce more food and higher incomes than industrial monocultures. Mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity and increasing food security can thus go hand in hand.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She has fought for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food, and assisted grassroots organizations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria with campaigns against genetic engineering. In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, which led to the creation of Navdanya in 1991, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The hijacking of the Global food supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

Copyright 2011 Dr. Vandana Shiva