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Before Palestinian politicians go to the General Assembly of the United Nations to ask for recognition of their nominal state, they have to answer this question: Is this what the Palestinian people want?

In a poll conducted by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion, pcpo.org, (poll number 169, published February 1st, 2010) conducted in Gaza, and available in Arabic and English, question 39 asked the following from a representative sample:

There are lots of strategic concepts for the resolution of the conflict in the region and the self-determination of the Palestinian people. What is your evaluation to each of the following?

1. One democratic state on the soil of the whole historic Palestine, in which all its citizens should enjoy the same rights without religious, racial or gender discrimination. 62.5%.

2. Two states, one Palestinian, the other Israeli, live in peaceful coexistence side by side as good neighbours (in conformity with the resolution of the Palestinian National Council of 1988 and the UN Resolution No 242). 36.8%.

3. I don’t know.0.7%.

Another poll was conducted by Middle East Consulting (middleeastconsulting.com) in the West Bank and Gaza and published on their website in February 2007, asked the following question: “Do you support or oppose a one-state solution in historic Palestine where Muslims, Christians and Jews have equal rights and responsibilities?” 70.4% approved and 29.6% opposed.

It is reasonable to expect that refugees and Palestinians in Israel would approve the one-state solution with higher rates for reasons we will elaborate below.

Why do Palestinians Support the One Democratic State?

In our discussions with Palestinians, these are some of the responses we received, they ranged from the pragmatic to the moral, and the importance of each varied from one person to another.

First, most people stated the obvious reality: there is no land to have a viable state. There is the geographic separation of the West Bank and Gaza; settlers control much of the West Bank making it non-contiguous. Furthermore, such a state would be economically controlled by Israel and dependent on outside assistance.

Second, even if all the area of the West Bank becomes available, other sources of tension such as Jerusalem and the other holy places, borders, over five hundred thousand settlers, natural resources including water and coastal natural gas, will persist and continue to be a source of tension that may lead to hostilities.

Third, the “two state solution” legitimizes Israel as a racist supremacist state that will continue to be a source of tension in the region and a supporter of international neo-colonialism.

Fourth, a “Palestinian state” considerably weakens the ability of refugees to return to their original homes. This also exposes the Palestinians in Israel to the possibility of being cleansed out, in order to create a truly Jewish state. This puts us in the difficult position of answering the question: “If you want a state for yourselves, why do you deny the same to the Jew?” In asking for two states, are we not contributing to apartheid?

Fifth, some of the Palestinians we discussed this issue with remembered the aim of the revolution in the 1960’s as the “Liberation of Man and Land” not just the creation of an entity no matter how insignificant that maybe. Some recalled the resolution of the fifth congress of the Palestinian National Council in January 1969 that stated: “to establish a free and democratic society in Palestine for all whether they are Muslims, Christians or Jews.” (See Documents for Palestine 1969, Institute for Palestine Studies, Beirut, 1970, page 589.) This probably was the only action taken proactively and without capitulation to outside pressure or as a reaction to what Israel did.

Sixth, some of the respondents see the diversity of religions and cultures as a source of enrichment for Palestine and the whole region provided all believe in equality and solidarity. They support the concept of a religious and cultural home for Jews. Such a state would be a source of support of a culture of democracy and human rights for the whole region of West Asia and North Africa that includes all Arab countries together with Turkey and Iran.

Seventh, going with the grain of history.The era of the nation-state is passing; it is changing to the multinational state and regional organizations. Humanity has for long known identity, such as ethnicity and religion, as the source of conflict and solidarity. It is now moving to universal values, such as equality and human rights, as the focus of political contention and solidarity. The One Democratic State will shift the struggle from that over territory to a struggle for values.

Eighth, the political, military and economic elites who are calling for separation are continuously working and will continue to cooperate with their Israeli counterparts. This same stratum wants the mainstream Palestinian and Jewish communities to be separate.

In January 2004, Ahmed Qurae, then prime minister of the Palestine Authority, threatened to call for a bi-national state. A leader of the Democratic Front (name withheld) and its current representative on the executive committee of the PLO was interviewed on Al-Jazeera network for his opinion. He replied that he does not agree because the Palestinian elites are not at the level of the Israelis. This gentleman reminds one of the Roman who would rather be first in a small village than be the second in Rome. He wants to continue exercising his authority in an insignificant quasi-state. However, he needs to answer the question: How can the power-imbalance between two peoples destined to share this small land be corrected? The proposed Palestinian entity is by and for the privileged few and does not serve the interests of most Palestinians.

Addressing the International Community

Some of the peoples and governments who are supporting the two-state solution believe that this constitutes Palestinian independence from Israeli colonialism; however, please recognize that our experience is not the colonialism that many of you experienced. The situation of Palestine/Israeli is that of settler-colonialism. Such conflict has never been and cannot be resolved by separating the indigenous population from the colonialists. Separation can only be done artificially and possibly forcefully and will lead to perpetual tension because the physical and human geography of this small piece of land is totally intertwined. Please understand that this presumed entity is a trap with the flag being the bait. What we would like to you to do is boycott and sanction Israel till it agrees to equal political, social, economic and cultural rights to all who live in historic Palestine and also allow all Palestinian refugees to return to their original homes.

We say to the General Assembly of the United Nations: Those 33 members of your assembly, who are mostly Europeans or Latin American countries who were under the control of the United States, who voted to partition Palestine in November 1947 need to acknowledge that their action brought untold misery to the whole region. You should not persist with this disastrous mistake. Instead, you need to vote for one-state in historic Palestine.

The decision to call for one-state or two-states affects all Palestinians, be they living in the West Bank, Gaza, Israel or are refugees. A referendum should be conducted, after a reasonable period of discussion, on the course to be taken. In the meantime, the Palestine Authority should refrain from acting on behalf of Palestinians.

By Mahmoud N. Musa

14 September, 2011

PalestineChronicle.com

Professor Mahmoud N. Musa teaches global politics at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Paris. His most recent book is Contesting Global Values: Transnational Social Movements Confront the Neoliberal Order ( AuthorHouse, 2011).

As global powers become more interested in Africa, interventions in the continent will likely become more common.

“Kampala ‘mute’ as Gaddafi falls,” is how the opposition paper summed up the mood of this capital the morning after. Whether they mourn or celebrate, an unmistakable sense of trauma marks the African response to the fall of Gaddafi.

Both in the longevity of his rule and in his style of governance, Gaddafi may have been extreme. But he was not exceptional. The longer they stay in power, the more African presidents seek to personalise power. Their success erodes the institutional basis of the state. The Carribean thinker C L R James once remarked on the contrast between Nyerere and Nkrumah, analysing why the former survived until he resigned but the latter did not: “Dr Julius Nyerere in theory and practice laid the basis of an African state, which Nkrumah failed to do.”

The African strongmen are going the way of Nkrumah, and in extreme cases Gaddafi, not Nyerere. The societies they lead are marked by growing internal divisions. In this, too, they are reminiscent of Libya under Gaddafi more than Egypt under Mubarak or Tunisia under Ben Ali.

Whereas the fall of Mubarak and Ben Ali directed our attention to internal social forces, the fall of Gaddafi has brought a new equation to the forefront: the connection between internal opposition and external governments. Even if those who cheer focus on the former and those who mourn are preoccupied with the latter, none can deny that the change in Tripoli would have been unlikely without a confluence of external intervention and internal revolt.

More interventions to come

The conditions making for external intervention in Africa are growing, not diminishing. The continent is today the site of a growing contention between dominant global powers and new challengers. The Chinese role on the continent has grown dramatically. Whether in Sudan and Zimbawe, or in Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria, that role is primarily economic, focused on two main activities: building infrastructure and extracting raw materials. For its part, the Indian state is content to support Indian mega-corporations; it has yet to develop a coherent state strategy. But the Indian focus too is mainly economic.

The contrast with Western powers, particularly the US and France, could not be sharper. The cutting edge of Western intervention is military. France’s search for opportunities for military intervention, at first in Tunisia, then Cote d’Ivoire, and then Libya, has been above board and the subject of much discussion. Of greater significance is the growth of Africom, the institutional arm of US military intervention on the African continent.

This is the backdrop against which African strongmen and their respective oppositions today make their choices. Unlike in the Cold War, Africa’s strongmen are weary of choosing sides in the new contention for Africa. Exemplified by President Museveni of Uganda, they seek to gain from multiple partnerships, welcoming the Chinese and the Indians on the economic plane, while at the same time seeking a strategic military presence with the US as it wages its War on Terror on the African continent.

In contrast, African oppositions tend to look mainly to the West for support, both financial and military. It is no secret that in just about every African country, the opposition is drooling at the prospect of Western intervention in the aftermath of the fall of Gaddafi.

Those with a historical bent may want to think of a time over a century ago, in the decade that followed the Berlin conference, when outside powers sliced up the continent. Our predicament today may give us a more realistic appreciation of the real choices faced and made by the generations that went before us. Could it have been that those who then welcomed external intervention did so because they saw it as the only way of getting rid of domestic oppression?

In the past decade, Western powers have created a political and legal infrastructure for intervention in otherwise independent countries. Key to that infrastructure are two institutions, the United Nations Security Council and the International Criminal Court. Both work politically, that is, selectively. To that extent, neither works in the interest of creating a rule of law.

The Security Council identifies states guilty of committing “crimes against humanity” and sanctions intervention as part of a “responsibility to protect” civilians. Third parties, other states armed to the teeth, are then free to carry out the intervention without accountability to anyone, including the Security Council. The ICC, in toe with the Security Council, targets the leaders of the state in question for criminal investigation and prosecution.

Africans have been complicit in this, even if unintentionally. Sometimes, it is as if we have been a few steps behind in a game of chess. An African Secretary General tabled the proposal that has come to be called R2P, Responsibility to Protect. Without the vote of Nigeria and South Africa, the resolution authorising intervention in Libya would not have passed in the Security Council.

Dark days are ahead. More and more African societies are deeply divided internally. Africans need to reflect on the fall of Gaddafi and, before him, that of Gbagbo in Cote d’Ivoire. Will these events usher in an era of external interventions, each welcomed internally as a mechanism to ensure a change of political leadership in one country after another?

One thing should be clear: those interested in keeping external intervention at bay need to concentrate their attention and energies on internal reform.

By Mahmood Mamdani

30 August 2011

Source:

Al Jazeera

Mahmood Mamdani is professor and director of Makerere Institute of Social Research at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, and Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University, New York. He is the author most recently of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and the Roots of Terror, and Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror.

Having achieved regime change in Libya through military intervention, the Western powers and their regional allies now have Syria firmly in their sights as part of their plans for re-dividing the resource-rich Middle East.

They are intent on using the six-month long protests and civil conflict that the Baathist regime of President Bashar al-Assad has brutally suppressed—at least 2,000 people are believed to have been killed and more than 10,000 arrested—to unseat Assad in favour of a more pliant tool of US imperialism.

Such a government would sever its links with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and reach an accommodation with Israel, as part of Washington’s goal of isolating and ultimately overthrowing the government in Tehran.

The US and the European powers have thus far stopped short of threatening military force against Syria, but this could change. Ben Rhodes, the director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, said that Libya provided a model for how the US would use its military power where its interests were threatened, but, “How much we translate to Syria remains to be seen”

“The Syrian opposition doesn’t want foreign military forces but do want more countries to cut off trade with the regime and break with it politically”, he added.

Washington, London, France and Berlin are working together to bring the broadest possible diplomatic and economic pressure to bear on Syria in what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called an “international chorus of condemnation”, to lay the basis for more aggressive action in the future.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced fresh sanctions, banning Americans from doing business with Assad’s foreign minister and two other senior officials, and freezing their assets in the US. The US had earlier imposed sanctions on more than 30 Syrian officials, including Assad, and companies, and banned the import of Syrian oil or petroleum products.

The move was largely symbolic, as the US has no trade relations with Syria, More significant economic sanctions were imposed by the European Union. On Friday, the EU, which takes almost 95 percent of Syria’s oil, banned the import of all oil and gas products from Syria

These sanctions follow condemnations of the Syrian regime and demands for Assad to step down from US President Barack Obama and France, Germany and Britain.

The imperialist powers have been unable to get the UN Security Council to agree on a resolution calling for an arms embargo and financial sanctions against Assad and members of his regime due to opposition from Russia and China, but they are still seeking to get a resolution condemning Syria’s violent crackdown on the protests.

In an ominous move, reminiscent of the bogus claims of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” used as the pretext for regime change, US and Israeli intelligence are claiming that Syria has a cache of chemical weapons and the means to deliver them.

Fox News cited the “belief” of US intelligence services that “Syria’s nonconventional weapons programs include significant stockpiles of mustard gas, VX and Sarin gas and the missile and artillery systems to deliver them.”

Israel’s ambassador to the US stated candidly “We see a lot of opportunity emerging from the end of the Assad regime.”

Turkey, a key US ally in the region, is stepping up the pressure on Assad and could yet act as a Western proxy for a military attack on Syria 

A few weeks ago, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, delivered an ultimatum to Damascus calling for an immediate cessation of violence by Syria’s security forces.

Ankara has threatened to recall its ambassador to Damascus, as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikdoms have already done, as a prelude to open military conflict. The Turkish government also warned that it would freeze all its investment in Syria, believed to be worth some $260 million. The Syrian economy is already reeling under the conflict, the cost of palliative measures announced by Assad earlier in the year, and the loss of tourism that accounts for 15 percent of the economy.

Last week, Turkey’s president Abdullah Gul declared he had “lost confidence” in the Assad regime, “Clearly we have reached a point where anything would be too little too late”, he said.

“Today in the world there is no place for authoritarian administrations, one-party rule, closed regimes”, he continued, threatening Assad that such governments could be “replaced by force” if their leaders did not make changes.

One of Turkey’s concerns is that Damascus has not done enough to suppress the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara believes operates from bases in Syria’s Kurdish northeastern provinces and supplies weaponry and other support to Kurdish oppositionists in Turkey’s southeast. The PKK seeks to establish an autonomous Kurdish state, adjacent to Turkey’s borders with Syria, Iran and Iraq, also home to significant Kurdish minorities.

This year has seen numerous demonstrations and protests in Istanbul, Izmir and the southeast, which security forces have dispersed with lethal force. Ankara has also bombed Kurdish villages in Turkey and Iraq following terrorist attacks on its armed forces, presumed to be the work of the PKK. Turkey also fears that the on-going unrest in Syria will lead to an influx of refugees from Syria, as happened after the 1991 Gulf War when hundreds of thousands of Kurds sought to flee Iraq.

Ankara has thus far been stymied by the lack of credible and united opposition forces to replace the Assad regime. It has therefore hosted several conferences of Syrian dissidents in an attempt to form a unified opposition with which Turkey and the major powers can do business. Last week, Syrian oppositionists meeting in Turkey announced the formation of the Syrian National Council, consisting of 94 members and with Burhan Ghalioun as president.

Ghalioun, an academic at Paris’s Sorbonne University who has lived outside Syria for most of the time since the 1970s, took part in Syria’s short-lived Damascus Spring in 2000-2001, soon after the present president took over from his father.

Syria’s Kurdish oppositionists largely boycotted the conference, accusing Turkey of seeking control of the anti-Assad movement through the medium of the Muslim Brotherhood. Barzan Bahram, a Syrian Kurdish writer, stated, “The Muslim Brotherhood is trying to exploit the change that is about to take place in Syria for their own gain. And the Turkish government is throwing its full support behind the Islamic groups to bring them to the forefront.”

In addition, Saudi Arabia is financing Sunni Salafist armed militants, many of whom returned radicalised by their experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Salafists are cultivating sectarianism against the minority Shia and Alawite sect to which the Assad and top brass in the military belong. Last month saw the discovery of covert arms shipments to Syria by Saudi-backed Lebanese politicians allied to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Syrian opposition figures also plan to visit Egypt September 8, to seek backing from the military junta.

Washington has long had plans to unseat Assad, but has lacked a credible opposition leadership. To this end, it has since 2005 funded external opposition groups, usually secular and often former regime supporters, and begun to train oppositionists. It has also funded the “human rights centres” that have provided the casualty figures and “eyewitness” reports to social network sites and the corporate media. The Damascus Centre for Human Rights is in partnership with the US National Endowment for Democracy while others receive funding from the Democracy Council and the International Republican Institute.

The deposing of Muammar Gaddafi by Western-military intervention has become a signal for the anti-Assad movement to shift openly to military conflict. Previously, the oppositionists denied Assad’s claims of their being armed, despite the fact that Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist oppositionists have been using antitank weapons and heavy machine guns for months, and the deaths of scores of military and security personnel.

On Sunday, Mohammad Rahhal, a leader of the Revolutionary Council of the Syrian Coordination Committees, told the London-based, Saudi-owned As-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper that the Council had decided to arm the Syrian “revolution”. He said, “We made our decision to arm the revolution which will turn violent very soon because what we are being subjected to today is a global conspiracy that can only be faced by an armed uprising.”

“The Arab countries, which are supposed to help and support us, are cowards, and they refuse to act,” he added. “Therefore, we will follow the Afghan example; when the Afghans were asked: Where will you get the weapons? They answered: As long as the United States is here, there will be weapons.”

Syrian protesters now carry banners calling for a no-fly zone over Syria, like that imposed in Libya. One banner read, “We want any [intervention] that stops the killing, whether Arab or foreign.”

The threats are being taken seriously by Tehran. On August 28, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told the official IRNA news agency, “Syria is the front-runner in Middle Eastern resistance (to Israel) and NATO cannot intimidate this country with an attack … If, God forbid, such a thing happened, NATO would drown in a quagmire from which it would never be able to escape.”

By Jean Shaoul

05 September, 2011

WSWS.org

During recent weeks, evidence has piled up that U.S. and European economies, far from recovering, are swirling back into recession. Failure of American politicians to address the federal debt crisis, the U.S. credit rating downgrade, and increasing fragility of European economies have investors running for the hills.

Richard Heinberg is Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute. He is the author of ten books, including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and the soon-to-be-released The End of Growth. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels.

By Richard Heinberg

8 September 2011

@ Post Carbon Institute

TRIPOLI, Libya — The United States formally reopened its embassy in Libya on Thursday as the returning ambassador said that his government was cautiously optimistic about the country’s future and already trying to help American companies exploit business opportunities here.

Speaking to reporters after the ceremonial flag-raising over a makeshift post that was once his residence, Ambassador Gene A. Cretz said that about two weeks ago — roughly a week after forces loyal to the deposed Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, were driven out of Tripoli — he participated in a State Department conference call with about 150 American companies hoping to do business with Libya.

“We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources, but even in Qaddafi’s time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things” after the country had begun opening up to the West six years ago, he said. “If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.”

His remarks were a rare nod to the tacit economic stakes in the Libyan conflict for the United States and other Western countries, not only because of Libya’s oil resources but also because of the goods and services those resources enable it to purchase.

Oil was never the “predominant reason” for the American intervention, Mr. Cretz said, but his comments — which came at a moment when the fighters who chased out Colonel Qaddafi have not yet caught him or fully vanquished his forces — underlined the American eagerness for a cut of any potential profits.

Elsewhere on Thursday, Tripoli’s new leaders continued to inch forward toward their twin goals of subduing the old government and building a new one. Officials of neighboring Tunisia said Thursday that on the previous night their security forces had arrested the last of Colonel Qaddafi’s figurehead prime ministers, Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, for crossing its border illegally while fleeing Libya. A Tunisian court immediately sentenced him to six months in prison for illegal entry, the government said.

The Libyan provisional government said that anti-Qaddafi fighters continued to battle loyalist forces in the area around Colonel Qaddafi’s southern stronghold and onetime childhood home of Sabha. Anti-Qaddafi fighters also remained locked in standoffs with Qaddafi forces in his other two remaining bastions, Surt on the Mediterranean coast and Bani Walid in the desert south of Tripoli.

Libya’s provisional government has already said it is eager to welcome Western businesses, although both Mr. Cretz and the Libyan leaders acknowledged that addressing the rampant corruption of the Qaddafi era remains a potential hurdle.

In a news conference last week, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, chairman of Libya’s Transitional National Council — the civilian leadership of the former rebels — said the new government would even give its Western backers some “priority” in access to Libyan business.

There had been no promises to its Western supporters, he said, “But as a faithful Muslim people we will appreciate these efforts and they will have priority within a framework of transparency.”

But he also acknowledged that the “framework of transparency” could be a significant qualification, at least as far as the many contracts with Western companies signed under the Qaddafi government. While the provisional government had respected “all legitimate contracts” from the Qaddafi period, it was undertaking a systematic review “for whatever financial corruption may have tainted them.”

Cleaning up the former government’s habitual corruption was all the United States hoped for, Mr. Cretz said, but he acknowledged it was a tall order. “The stench of corruption affected everything that the Qaddafi regime did with respect to commercial entities,” he said. “The bureaucracy was rife with it because that was the way it was done, and the family was at the top. Every deal involved a payoff to the Qaddafi family or a crony.”

Still, Libya’s new leaders, he said, appeared “willing to accede to international standards of transparency and accountability, and I think that is a good thing.”

In the final years of the Qaddafi government, Mr. Cretz wrote vividly of its rampant corruption in diplomatic cables released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, including a 2009 dispatch titled “Al-Qadhafi: The Philosopher-King Keeps His Hand In.” After the release of those cables late last year, he said Thursday, he had been “physically threatened” and “I had to leave immediately.”

The United States abandoned its embassy when the uprising began in February, and on May 1, the empty building was ransacked by Qaddafi forces, ostensibly in retaliation for the death of Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Arab, in a NATO bombing.

Reviewing the situation he found on his return, Mr. Cretz cited several factors for concern, including the challenge of disarming the newly armed populace and many autonomous militias; the many fissures within the anti-Qaddafi forces along regional or other lines; and the potential for militant or at least anti-Western Islamists to take control.

But so far, he said, the Islamists were emphasizing moderation, democracy and pluralism, and the Libyan leaders deserved a chance to overcome their differences. “Don’t underestimate the Libyan people because they have shown for the last six months what a truly heroic people is,” he said.

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

22 September 2011

@ The New York Times

More Americans are living in poverty than at any time since records began more than 50 years ago as a weak economic recovery has failed to lift incomes.

In 2010, 46.2m people fell below the poverty line, calculated as an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four and $11,139 for an individual, according to the Census Bureau.

The increase lifted the poverty rate to 15.1 per cent of the US population, the highest since 1993 and almost 1 percentage point higher than the year before, according to the US census bureau. It will add to pressure on Barack Obama to stimulate the jobs market, where unemployment stands at 9.1 per cent.

“To have hit 15.1 per cent is truly extraordinary,” said Alice O’Connor, a professor who studies poverty at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“We are entering territory which looks like the period before we even started fighting a ‘War on Poverty’ in the 1960s. It’s quite stunning. This is a terrible statement about the depths of the Great Recession but, even more, about the recovery, which has clearly left the poorest out completely.”

The aftermath of the recession has seen a “two-speed” recovery for Americans, as the wealthiest maintain their spending habits and lifestyles while a record number of their fellow citizens are mired in poverty.

The median household income of Americans dropped 2.3 per cent in 2010 from the previous year, hit by increasing long-term unemployment which has depressed wages and left many without income. Median wages peaked in 1999 and are still 7 per cent below that level, suggesting that incomes have never fully recovered from the downturn the followed the dotcom bust.

The number of Americans without health insurance also rose by nearly 1m people to 49.9m. “Income down, poverty up, health insurance coverage down or flat. The news on economic well-being in the US is not good,” said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Nearly a quarter of American children are living in poverty. Their number increased for the fourth year in a row to 22 per cent, the highest since 1993. Child poverty was the fourth highest in 2010 since the mid-1960s, when the federal “War on Poverty’ was launched by President Lyndon Johnson.

Analysts do not expect a turnround any time soon. “Given the widely accepted projections that both unemployment and, in particular, long-term unemployment will continue at high rates for the next several years, we can expect this pattern of continuing low income and high poverty rates for many years,” Mr Haskins added.

Meanwhile, on the same day as the poverty figures were announced, Ipsos Mendelsohn, the media research group, released figures that show things are apparently looking up for the top tier of US earners.

The group’s annual survey of affluent Americans found that the number of households making more than $100,000 a year was 44.2m in 2011, compared with 44.1m the previous year. Their spending held steady at $1,400bn after previously falling.

“Their life has stabilised,” said Bob Shullman, Ipsos Mendelsohn president. “Everyone feels it when their income falls but, when you have less discretionary income, you feel it more. It doesn’t hurt [the rich] as much.”

The survey, which polled 14,405 wealthy adults, found “almost all affluents are planning a wide range of activities in the next year, with travelling, remodelling, and investing topping this list”.

However, the latest census figures underscore the difficulties facing the US federal and state governments as they seek to reduce deficits and help growing numbers of the poor. Republicans in Washington have targeted programmes that subsidise healthcare for the poor and elderly, Medicaid and Medicare, as well as Social Security benefits for the elderly.

If planned cutbacks take effect and unemployment remains high, analysts predict that life for the poor and middle class will become even harder.

According to Brookings, the poverty rate will continue to rise and hit 16 per cent in 2014. If that happens, nearly 10m Americans will have sunk into poverty since the recession began in 2007. The latest figures showing the divergence between the recovery of the rich and poor come as Mr Obama pushes the $447bn jobs plan unveiled last week. The White House has said it wants to fund most of the package through curbing tax breaks for the richest.

At the same time, the growing income gap is worrying policymakers who are concerned about the effects on aggregate demand if wages continue to stagnate.

In 2009, the median full-time male worker aged 25-64 was earning $48,000 – roughly the same as in 1969 in real terms. Meanwhile, in the same 40-year period, the income of the top 2 per cent of working age men has jumped 75 per cent.

By Matt Kennard and Shannon Bond

13 September 2011

@ Financial Times

US eyes Asia from secret Australian base

SYDNEY, Sept 19, 2011 (AFP) – Deep in the silence of Australia’s Outback desert an imposing American spy post set up at the height of the Cold War is now turning its attention to Asia’s growing armies and arsenals.

Officially designated United States territory and manned by agents from some of America’s most sensitive intelligence agencies, the Pine Gap satellite station has been involved in some of the biggest conflicts in modern times.

But its role in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, and in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, had been little recognised until one of its most senior spies broke ranks recently to pen a tell-all account.

Intelligence analyst David Rosenberg spent 18 years at the base, 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) south of Alice Springs, working with top-secret clearance for the National Security Agency (NSA), home to America’s code-cracking elite.

Formally known as the “Joint Defence Space Research Facility”, Pine Gap is one of Washington’s biggest intelligence collection posts, intercepting weapons and communications signals via a series of satellites orbiting Earth.

Australia has had joint leadership at the post and access to all intercepted material since 1980, but the base’s history is not without controversy.

Former prime minister Gough Whitlam was sensationally sacked by the British monarchy — allegedly at American urging — not long after he threatened to close Pine Gap in 1975, although other domestic political issues were also involved in his removal.

Its futuristic domes were originally built as a weapon in America’s spy war with Russia, officially starting operations in 1970, but Rosenberg says it is now targeting the US-led “war on terror” and Asia’s military boom.

“There’s a large segment of the world that are weapons-producing countries who have programmes that the United States and Australia are interested in, and obviously a lot of Asia encompasses that area,” Rosenberg told AFP.

The career spy is under a lifetime secrecy agreement with the NSA, meaning he cannot reveal classified information and is limited in what he can say about his time at Pine Gap, but said North Korea and China were among its targets.

“I think any country that has a large military, is a large weapons producer, is always going to be a focus for the intelligence community and China of course is growing and it’s growing rapidly,” he said.

“There are developments there that we are looking at.”

India and Pakistan were also “very much of a concern”, he added, with a surprise nuclear test by New Delhi in 1998 catching Pine Gap’s analysts “blind”.

The latter half of his time at the mysterious station known to locals as the “Space Base” was dominated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an intense focus on Al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Rosenberg recalls that day as his most sombre in the job, with analysts scouring the region for clues on what was going to happen next, knowing instantly that Al-Qaeda was responsible and fearing they would strike again.

“While these attacks were happening we of course were thinking how many other simultaneous or near-simultaneous actions are going to happen?” he said.

“We didn’t know how many other attacks had been planned that day.”

It was also a huge wake-up call to the fragmented spy community, he added, who soon realised all the signs had been there of an impending attack but they had failed to piece them together to perhaps prevent 9/11.

Delays also allowed Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders to escape into hiding, a “significant intelligence failure” which left agents with a 10-year hunt Rosenberg was not around to see completed — one of his few regrets.

It was “certainly possible” that Pine Gap was involved in the US mission which ultimately saw Bin Laden killed in Pakistan in May, he added.

He sees “cyber-warfare” such as state-endorsed hacking and increasingly portable technology allowing, for example, the remote detonation of a bomb with a mobile phone, as the next big front for the intelligence community.

Rosenberg’s book offers a rare insight into the mysterious world of military espionage, discussing widespread doubts amongst spies about the since-debunked claims of weapons of mass destruction that presaged the invasion of Iraq.

It was screened 16 times before publication by four intelligence agencies — three American and one Australian — and has been altered or blacked out in sections through an arduous censorship process which saw him, at one point, taken into a vault in Canberra for interrogation.

Defence officials were also due to seize and destroy his computer hard-drive to ensure classified elements of the original manuscript were wiped out.

But the self-confessed “Mission: Impossible” fan said he had no regrets about telling his story.

“Imagine being in a job where secrecy surrounds everything you did for 23 years — it’s kind of like letting the cork out of a champagne bottle, all the secrets come flowing out,” he said.

“It was quite a liberating experience for me.”

ANKARA, Turkey — A newly assertive Turkey offered on Sunday a vision of a starkly realigned Middle East, where the country’s former allies in Syria and Israel fall into deeper isolation, and a burgeoning alliance with Egypt underpins a new order in a region roiled by revolt and revolution.

The portrait was described by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey in an hourlong interview before he was to leave for the United Nations, where a contentious debate was expected this week over a Palestinian bid for recognition as a state. Viewed by many as the architect of a foreign policy that has made Turkey one of the most relevant players in the Muslim world, Mr. Davutoglu pointed to that issue and others to describe a region in the midst of a transformation. Turkey, he said, was “right at the center of everything.”

He declared that Israel was solely responsible for the near collapse in relations with Turkey, once an ally, and he accused Syria’s president of lying to him after Turkish officials offered the government there a “last chance” to salvage power by halting its brutal crackdown on dissent.

Strikingly, he predicted a partnership between Turkey and Egypt, two of the region’s militarily strongest and most populous and influential countries, which he said could create a new axis of power at a time when American influence in the Middle East seems to be diminishing.

“This is what we want,” Mr. Davutoglu said.

“This will not be an axis against any other country — not Israel, not Iran, not any other country, but this will be an axis of democracy, real democracy,” he added. “That will be an axis of democracy of the two biggest nations in our region, from the north to the south, from the Black Sea down to the Nile Valley in Sudan.”

His comments came after a tour last week by Turkish leaders — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Mr. Davutoglu among them — of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the three Arab countries that have undergone revolutions this year. His criticism of old allies and embrace of new ones underscored the confidence of Turkey these days, as it tries to position itself on the winning side in a region unrecognizable from a year ago.

Unlike an anxious Israel, a skeptical Iran and a United States whose regional policy has been criticized as seeming muddled and even contradictory at times, Turkey has recovered from early missteps to offer itself as a model for democratic transition and economic growth at a time when the Middle East and northern Africa have been seized by radical change. The remarkably warm reception of Turkey in the Arab world — a region Turks once viewed with disdain — is a development almost as seismic as the Arab revolts and revolutions themselves.

Mr. Davutoglu credited a “psychological affinity” between Turkey and much of the Arab world, which was ruled by the Ottoman Empire for four centuries from Istanbul.

The foreign minister, 52, remains more scholar than politician, though he has a diplomat’s knack for bridging divides. Cerebral and soft-spoken, he offered a speech this summer to Libyan rebels in Benghazi — in Arabic. Soon after the revolution in Tunisia, he hailed the people there as the “sons of Ibn Khaldoun,” one of the Arab world’s greatest philosophers, born in Tunis in the 14th century. “We’re not here to teach you,” he said. “You know what to do. Ibn Khaldoun’s grandsons deserve the best political system.”

That sense of cultural affinity has facilitated Turkey’s entry into the region, as has the successful model of Mr. Davutoglu’s Justice and Development Party, whose deeply pious leaders have won three consecutive elections, presided over a booming economy and inaugurated reform that has made Turkey a more liberal, modern and confident place. Mr. Erdogan’s defense of Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel — relations between Turkey and Israel collapsed after Israeli troops killed nine people on board a Turkish flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza in 2010 — has bolstered his popularity.

Last week, Mr. Erdogan was afforded a rapturous welcome in Egypt, where thoroughfares were adorned with his billboard-size portraits. (“Lend us Erdogan for a month!” wrote a columnist in Al Wafd, an Egyptian newspaper.)

Mr. Davutolglu, who accompanied him there, said Egypt would become the focus of Turkish efforts, as an older American-backed order, buttressed by Israel, Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, prerevolutionary Egypt, begins to crumble. On the vote over a Palestinian state, the United States, in particular, finds itself almost completely isolated.

He also predicted that Turkey’s $1.5 billion investment in Egypt would grow to $5 billion within two years and that total trade would increase to $5 billion, from $3.5 billion now, by the end of 2012, then $10 billion by 2015. As if to underscore the importance Turkey saw in economic cooperation, 280 businessmen accompanied the Turkish delegation, and Mr. Davutoglu said they signed about $1 billion in contracts in a single day.

“For democracy, we need a strong economy,” he said.

Other countries — Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel — would undoubtedly look upon an Egyptian-Turkish axis with alarm. Just a year ago, Egypt’s own president, Hosni Mubarak, viewed Turkey, and Mr. Erdogan in particular, with skepticism and suspicion. But in the view of Mr. Davutoglu, such an alliance was a force for stability.

“For the regional balance of power, we want to have a strong, very strong Egypt,” said Mr. Davutoglu, who has visited the Egyptian capital five times since Mr. Mubarak was overthrown in February. “Some people may think Egypt and Turkey are competing. No. This is our strategic decision. We want a strong Egypt now.”

The phrase “zero problems” is a famous dictum written by Mr. Davutoglu, who served as Mr. Erdogan’s chief foreign policy adviser before becoming foreign minister. By it, he meant that Turkey would strive to end conflicts with its neighbors. Successes have been few. Problems remain with Armenia, and Turkey was unable to resolve the conflict in Cyprus, still divided into Greek and Turkish zones. Turkey’s agreement to host a radar installation as part of a NATO missile defense system has rankled neighboring Iran.

Most spectacularly, its relations with Israel collapsed after the Israeli government refused a series of Turkish demands that followed the attack on the boat: an apology, compensation for the victims and a lifting of Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip.

“Nobody can blame Turkey or any other country in the region for its isolation,” he said of Israel. “It was Israel and the government’s decision to isolate themselves. And they will be isolated even more if they continue this policy of rejecting any proposal.”

Caught by surprise by the Arab revolts — as pretty much everyone was — Turkey staggered. At least $15 billion in investments were lost in the civil war in Libya, and Turkish diplomats initially opposed NATO’s intervention. For years, Turkey cultivated ties with Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, seeing Syria as its fulcrum for integrating the region’s economies. Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Assad counted themselves as friends.

Syria’s failure to — as Mr. Davutoglu put it — heed Turkey’s advice has wrecked relations, and Turkey is now hosting Syrian opposition conferences and groups.

Last month, in meetings that lasted more than six hours, Mr. Davutoglu said Mr. Assad agreed on a Turkish road map — announcing a specific date for parliamentary elections by year’s end, repealing a constitutional provision that enshrined power in the ruling Baath Party, drafting a constitution by the newly elected Parliament and then holding another election once the constitution decided between a presidential or a parliamentary system. Despite face-to-face assurances, Mr. Assad did not follow through.

“For us, that was the last chance,” Mr. Davutoglu said.

Asked if he felt betrayed, he replied, “Yes, of course.”

Mr. Davutoglu accused Mr. Assad of “not fulfilling promises and not telling the truth.”

“This is the illusion of autocratic regimes,” he said. “They think that in a few days they will control the situation. Not today, but tomorrow, next week, next month. They don’t see. And this is a vicious circle.”

By ANTHONY SHADID

18 September 2011

@ The New York Times

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).