Just International

Obama’s Hot Feeler Triggers More Confusion

 

21 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

President Obama has again come out with yet another hot-feeler. The ‘Arab spring’ speech he delivered on 19 May—viewed by many as a possible breakthrough in the American policy towards the Middle East—is yet another ‘strategic’ ploy to masquerade Washington’s’ long-term goals in the region. Think-tanks may initiate a debate whether it is the ‘beginning’ of a ‘new end’ in the US policy, but Obama’s disorientated analysis of the ‘Arab spring’ offered hardly anything substantial. The most sensitive aspect of his speech came when he referred to the 1967 lines to be the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations over final borders, adding that negotiated land swaps would also be needed. His call for negotiations based on this ‘line’ could be yet another attempt to place himself as an able international negotiator and honest ‘broker‘ but his constraints and compulsion are even more palpable.

In his speech, President Obama had stressed the need for negotiations “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” His statement on Palestine came in the background of the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to US. Hours before the visit of Netanyahu, Obama’s formula apparently sought to set in a new framework for Washington’s finesse. The New Right in the US has already seized on this statement saying it amounts to a ‘betrayal’ of Israel. A senior Israeli official said that “Washington does not understand the reality, doesn’t understand what we face.” Israeli daily Haaretz wrote that tensions between the two reached fever pitch following Obama’s speech and ahead of Netanyahu’s planned address to American Congress. New York Times reported that Obama had told his close aides that he did not believe that Netanyahu would be able to make the concessions necessary to strike a peace deal that would even the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In a statement after Obama’s speech outlining his new policy, Netanyahu said before leaving for Washington that “the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of Israel’s existence.” Can Obama cross the Rubicon?

After talks with Netanyahu in Washington, Obama reiterated that “a true peace can only occur if the ultimate resolution allows Israel to defend itself against threats, and that Israel’s security will remain paramount in U.S. evaluations of any prospective peace deal.” He also underlined the American goal, ie., “a secure Israeli state, a Jewish state, living side by side in peace and security with a contiguous, functioning and effective Palestinian state.”

Earlier, it may be recalled, Obama made no condemnation of the illegal settlements nor did he demand a freeze on settlement activity, which is sharply accelerating with plans for building 1,550 new homes in the occupied territories around Jerusalem. Curiously, Obama’s speech referred to Israelis living in fear of their children being killed and Palestinians’ “suffering and humiliation” under occupation. It is hardly surprising that the Israeli occupation has claimed 100 Palestinian lives for every Israeli killed in the conflict or that just days before, Israeli troops had shot to death 16 unarmed Palestinian protesters who sought to assert their right to return to their homeland by scaling borders into Israeli occupied territory. That these demonstrations, which were joined by many thousands who marched on the borders from the refugee camps, are part of the revolutionary wave sweeping the region was missing in Obama’s speech.

Eventually, Obama’s speech offered hardly anything new in terms of US policy and expressed the US commitment to militarism, economic domination to assert its control over the region’s strategic energy resources. At the same time, however, the absence of substantive initiatives and inability to make any credible appeal to the Arab masses express the decline of US influence in the region and the increasing frustration of the American ruling elite as it attempts to repel the threat of revolutionary upheaval.
It was natural that the speech was received with scepticism and contempt in the Arab world. Despite Obama’s repeated references to ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ nearly two dozen times in his address, there was no reference at all in the speech that anything has changed in the policy of a government that has backed dictatorships and monarchies in the region and given unqualified support for six decades to Israel’s suppression of the Palestinian people.

Obama went on to boast of the US killing of Osama bin Laden as a major ‘blow’ to al-Qaeda, while acknowledging that the former CIA ally had lost his ‘relevance’ in the face of the upheavals in the region over the past several months. He tried to call the US as the model to be emulated and the benevolent power whose role it is to guide the Arab peoples to democracy. He said that the US would continue to pursue its “core interests” in the region, which he defined as “countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region, standing up for Israel’s security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.” Obviously missing from this list and indeed from the entire speech was the subject of American interest in oil. Its omission is certainly glaring. The US, Obama said, would continue to pursue the ‘core interests’ with “the firm belief that America’s interests are not hostile to people’s hopes; they are essential to them.” What Washington’s proposed economic policies amount to is an attempt to use the changes brought about by the mass upheavals to open the region up even more fully to the exploitation of American capitalism and US-based transnationals. He said that US policy would “focus on trade, not just aid; and investment, not just assistance.” Its aim, he said, would be opening up the region’s markets, while “ensuring financial stability.” Obama is obviously in the ‘businesses’ of furthering Washington’s goals in the region with a heavy-load of rhetorics.

Obviously, the presidential election due next year could be a major factor for Obama to take ‘new’ initiatives. But it is certain to trigger more confusion than consolation. Many eyebrows were raised when Obama made a U-turn in his Middle East Policy particularly when Dennis Ross—Obama’s chief adviser—is Israel’s most trusted man’ in the White House and one of the most influential pro-Jewish figures in the country. Naturally, the position of the Jewish lobby in the US is very crucial in the emerging scenario.

(Prof. K.M. SEETHI is Dean of Social Sciences and Director of Research in Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He is also Professor of International Relations and Chairman, Centre for Cross-National Communication in South Asia, School of International Relations and Politics(SIRP) in Mahatma Gandhi University. He has been the General Editor of Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations a biannual of the SIRP and currently the Editor of South Asian Journal of Diplomacy, published by the KPS Menon Chair for Diplomatic Studies. Prof. K.M. SEETHI can be contacted at kmseethimgu@gmail.com)

 

 

Obama’s Middle East Hypocrisy

 


21 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Since taking office in January 2009, Obama broke every major campaign promise, including relevant ones to his May 19 Middle East speech; namely:

— “hope;”

— “change;”

— peace;

— democratic values;

— closing Guantanamo in one year;

— ending torture, illegal spying, and detention without trial;

— “a new era of openness;”

— willingness to meet individually with Iranian, Syrian, Venezuelan, Cuban, and North Korean leaders;

— supporting Israeli and Palestinian efforts to “fulfill their national goals: two states living side by side in peace and security;” and

— on Afghanistan saying (October 27, 2007): “I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this (and the Iraq) war(s). You can take that to the bank,” and by implication not begin new ones.

Instead, his rhetoric belied his policy, spurning democracy, civil liberties, human rights, and rule of law principles. He doubled down George Bush with:

— imperial Iraq and Afghan wars;

— two others against Pakistan and Libya;

— another allied with Israel against Palestine;

— regional support for subservient despots; as well as

— anti-populist proxy wars in Somalia, Central Africa, Yemen, Bahrain, Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working Americans.

Make no mistake. People across the Middle East aren’t fooled, unlike many Americans no matter how many times they’re betrayed.

Ahead of his speech on May 18, Washington Post writer Scott Wilson headlined, “Obama faces pressure from allies on eve of speech Thursday on Middle East policy,” saying:

US allies want more decisive action “on several volatile issues in the Middle East and North Africa, including the armed rebellion in Libya, the uprising in Syria, and the moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.”

On May 19, New York Times writer Michael Shear headlined, “Obama’s Middle East Speech Has Many American Audiences,” saying:

He aimed at a domestic and global audience, trying “to construct a cohesive narrative for American voters about his administration’s (unsuccessful) efforts in the region,” notably:

— the stalled peace process;

— continuing Bush-era policies; and

— failure to address Arab uprisings constructively.

As a result, Obama’s Middle East speech was “designed to be the first in a series of rhetorical opportunities for the president,” ahead of a Friday Netanyahu meeting in Washington.

Then over the weekend, he’ll address the annual AIPAC conference, affirming his unwavering support for Israel, expressed Thursday saying:

“As for Israel, our friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums,” adding:

“Israel must be able to defend itself – by itself – against any threat (with) robust enough (efforts) to prevent a resurgence of terrorism; to stop the infiltration of weapons; and to provide effective border security.”

In fact, Israel is a global menace, nuclear-armed with other super-weapons ready and able to use them. Terrorizing Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, it’s belligerent on the slightest pretext or none at all.

As a result, it threatens world peace and security because US administrations partnered in its militarism, repression, and other high crimes for decades, a testimony to the Israeli Lobby’s power in America.

Commenting on his speech, New York Times writers Steven Myers and Mark Landler headlined, “Obama Sees ’67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal,” saying:

Obama “declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war – adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank – should be the basis of a deal.”

In fact, that notion has been on the table for years, based on isolating Palestinians in cantonized bantustans situated on worthless scrubland with few or no resources – a proposal no legitimate leader would accept.

Notably, Haaretz reported that “Obama has granted Netanyahu a major diplomatic victory” by leaving undefined the size or locations of a Palestinian state. It also quoted Netanyahu saying:

“Israel appreciates President Obama’s commitment to peace,” adding that he expects Obama to refrain from demanding Israel withdraw to “indefensible (1967 borders) which will leave a large population of Israel in Judea and Samaria and outside Israel’s borders.”

Moreover, core Israel/Palestinian issues remain to be negotiated, no matter that Washington and Israel spurn diplomacy and concessions.

As a result, Palestine is still occupied. Gaza remains isolated under siege, its legitimate government vilified as a terrorist organization. Moreover, the peace process was stillborn from inception, what journalist Henry Siegman once called “the most spectacular deception in modern” times.

Obama’s speech dripped with hypocrisy, another example of policy belying rhetoric, exposing America’s longstanding alliance with Israel for regional dominance. Saying “(i)t will be the policy of the US to support reform throughout the region” is code language for business as usual.

Adding that “(w)e face a historic opportunity (to) show that America values the dignity of a street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator” ignores a belligerent policy, as well as disdain for human rights and civil liberties. It also conceals a determination to divide, conquer, colonize, exploit and control the entire region, giving no quarter to populist aspirations anywhere, including in America, let alone Israel, Palestine, Egypt, or elsewhere in the region.

Important also is that if America had a legitimate regional policy, Obama wouldn’t have to make speeches affirming one.

Post/911, in fact, it was easier than ever for America to declare war on Islam, abroad and at home – a policy no different under Obama than Bush. Empty rhetoric changes nothing.

Around 1.5 billion Muslims want change, peace and the basic respect they deserve. They’re sick and tired of Western dominance, colonization, exploitation, and oppression, supportive of homegrown dictatorships.

On June 4, 2009, Obama addressed Muslims in Cairo, “seek(ing) a new beginning….based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, or need be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

It was hypocritical boilerplate. He decried the “killing of innocent men, women, and children,” yet US forces slaughter them daily in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. In addition, America supplies Israel with billions of dollars and the latest weapons and technology to commit slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians, deny their legitimate self-determination, and right of their refugees to return home as international law demands.

Moreover, America is a serial aggressor and human rights abuser. High-sounding rhetoric changes nothing. Yet Obama claimed America “did not go (to Afghanistan) by choice, we went of necessity….we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there….Iraq was a war of choice (but) I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.”

“Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq’s sovereignty is its own.”

In fact, secret provisions in the Pentagon’s 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) indicate otherwise. They flagrantly violate Iraqi sovereignty, authorizing permanent US bases, camps, and prisons. Moreover, they immunize US forces, civilian security, and private contractors from criminal prosecution. They assure Iraqi “democracy” is illusory.

Afghanistan’s occupation is similar. Officials in both countries have no say over US operations, including incursions into other countries. They require Washington’s approval before concluding any agreements with other countries. Their leaders and key ministries are US-controlled.

Moreover, no timeline is stipulated for America’s withdrawal beyond disingenuous rhetoric affirming it, returning sovereign power to Iraqis and Afghans. Instead, occupation is permanent. America came to stay, allied with proxy security forces to maintain hardline control.

Since Cairo 2009, Obama’s declared support for democracy, peace, human rights, mutual understanding, and social justice brought none to the region where Washington backs its most ruthless tyrants.

His “unbreakable” bond with Israel ignored Palestinian’s six decade ordeal and 44-year occupation. He said nothing earlier or now about Cast Lead slaughter, besieged Gaza, land theft, home demolitions, mass arrests, torture, targeted assassinations, legitimate Palestinian self-determination, and the right of diaspora refugees to return.

In Cairo, he came, saw, spoke, made empty gestures, no clear promises, and followed it with more of the same yesterday, concealing America’s intention to exploit this resource-rich part of the world.

Unlike easily fooled Americans, Arabs have no illusions. They’ve heard it all before, this time responding with popular uprisings for change they know only they can achieve by staying resolutely committed for it.

So far, it’s nowhere in sight, but maybe, just maybe this time is different. In the fullness of time, we’ll know.

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

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

 

Earth Has Entered A New Geological Age

 

The Stockholm Memorandum

22 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

The Stockholm Memorandum concludes that the planet has entered a new geological age, the Anthropocene. It recommends a suite of urgent and far-reaching actions for decision makers and societies to become active stewards of the planet for future generations.

The verdict from the trial of humanity, which opened the 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium, has been incorporated into the Stockholm Memorandum: Tipping the Scales towards Sustainability .In particular, the jury of Nobel Laureates concluded that humans are now the most significant driver of global change, and that our collective actions could have abrupt and irreversible consequences for human communities and ecological systems.

“We are the first generation with the insight of the new global risks facing humanity, that people and societies are the biggest drivers of global change. The basic analysis is not in question: we cannot continue on our current path and need to take action quickly. Science can guide us in identifying the pathway to global sustainability, provided that it also engages in an open dialogue with society, ” says Professor Mario Molina, who acted as judge and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995.

Some of the other key messages of the Stockholm Memorandum are:

– Environmental sustainability is a precondition for poverty eradication, economic development, and social justice.

– With almost a third of the world living on less than $2 per day, we must, as a priority, achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

– Develop new welfare indicators that address the shortcomings of GDP.

– Keep global warming below 2oC, implying a peak in global CO2 emissions no later than 2015 and carrying with it a very high risk of serious impacts and the need for major adaptation efforts.

– Foster a new agricultural revolution where more food is produced in a sustainable way on current agricultural land.

– Inspire and encourage scientific literacy especially among the young.

The Stockholm Memorandum will be signed by Nobel Laureates on May 18th and handed over in person to the UN High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, which is preparing the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro (Rio +20).

“The Nobel Laureate Symposium has answered this emergency call from the future: environment and development must go hand in hand. Human pressures are challenging the resilience of the planet, while inequalities remain high. The only way to move towards fair and lasting prosperity for present and future generations is along a pathway of environmental sustainability. The time for procrastination is over. We cannot afford the luxury of denial, ” says Professor Johan Rockström, Symposium chairperson and Executive Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI).

The Stockholm Memorandum

Tipping the Scales towards Sustainability

3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium* on Global Sustainability, Stockholm, Sweden, 16-19 May 2011

*The Nobel Laureate Symposium Series on Global Sustainability was initiated in 2007 at Potsdam and continued by the St James’s Palace Symposium in spring 2009. This Symposium series unites Nobel Laureates of various disciplines, top-level representatives from politics and NGOs, and renowned experts on sustainability.

I. Mind-shift for a Great Transformation

The Earth system is complex. There are many aspects that we do not yet understand. However, we are the first generation with the insight of the new global risks facing humanity. We face the evidence that our progress as the dominant species has come at a very high price.

Unsustainable patterns of production, consumption, and population growth are challenging the resilience of the planet to support human activity. At the same time, inequalities between and within societies remain high, leaving behind billions with unmet basic human needs and disproportionate vulnerability to global environmental change.

This situation concerns us deeply. As members of the Symposium we call upon all leaders of the 21st century to exercise a collective responsibility of planetary stewardship. This means laying the foundation for a sustainable and equitable global civilization in which the entire Earth community is secure and prosperous.

Science makes clear that we are transgressing planetary boundaries that have kept civilization safe for the past 10,000 years. Evidence is growing that human pressures are starting to overwhelm the Earth’s buffering capacity.

Humans are now the most significant driver of global change, propelling the planet into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. We can no longer exclude the possibility that our collective actions will trigger tipping points, risking abrupt and irreversible consequences for human communities and ecological systems.

We cannot continue on our current path. The time for procrastination is over. We cannot afford the luxury of denial. We must respond ationally, equipped with scientific evidence.

Our predicament can only be redressed by reconnecting human development and global sustainability, moving away from the false dichotomy that places them in opposition.

In an interconnected and constrained world, in which we have a symbiotic relationship with the planet, environmental sustainability is a precondition for poverty eradication, economic development, and social justice.

Our call is for fundamental transformation and innovation in all spheres and at all scales in order to stop and reverse global environmental change and move toward fair and lasting prosperity for present and future generations.

II. Priorities for Coherent Global Action

We recommend a dual track approach:

1. emergency solutions now, that begin to stop and reverse negative environmental trends and redress inequalities within the current inadequate institutional framework, and

2. long term structural solutions that gradually change values, institutions and policy frameworks. We need to support our ability to innovate, adapt, and learn.

1. Reaching a more equitable world

Unequal distribution of the benefits of economic development are at the root of poverty. Despite efforts to address poverty, more than a third of the world’s population still live on less than $2 per day. This needs our immediate attention. Environment and development must go hand in hand. We need to:

>> Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, in the spirit of the Millennium Declaration, recognising that global sustainability is a precondition of success.

>> Adopt a global contract between industrialized and developing countries to scale up investment in approaches that integrate poverty reduction, climate stabilization, and ecosystem stewardship.

2. Managing the climate – energy challenge

We urge governments to agree on global emission reductions guided by science and embedded in ethics and justice. At the same time, the energy needs of the three billion people who lack access to reliable sources of energy need to be fulfilled. Global efforts need to:

>> Keep global warming below 2oC, implying a peak in global CO2 emissions no later than 2015 and recognise that even a warming of 2oC carries a very high risk of serious impacts and the need for major adaptation efforts.

>> Put a sufficiently high price on carbon and deliver the G-20 commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, using these funds to contribute to the several hundred billion US dollars per year needed to scale up investments in renewable energy.

3. Creating an efficiency revolution

We must transform the way we use energy and materials. In practice this means massive efforts to enhance energy efficiency and resource productivity, avoiding unintended secondary consequences. The “throw away concept” must give way to systematic efforts to develop circular material flows. We must:

>> Introduce strict resource efficiency standards to enable a decoupling of economic growth from resource use.

>> Develop new business models, based on radically improved energy and material efficiency.

4. Ensuring affordable food for all

Current food production systems are often unsustainable, inefficient and wasteful, and increasingly threatened by dwindling oil and phosphorus resources, financial speculation, and climate impacts. This is already causing widespread hunger and malnutrition today. We can no longer afford the massive loss of biodiversity and reduction in carbon sinks when ecosystems are converted into cropland. We need to:

>> Foster a new agricultural revolution where more food is produced in a sustainable way on current agricultural land and within safe boundaries of water resources.

>> Fund appropriate sustainable agricultural technology to deliver significant yield increases on small farms in developing countries.

5. Moving beyond green growth

There are compelling reasons to rethink the conventional model of economic development. Tinkering with the economic system that generated the global crises is not enough. Markets and entrepreneurship will be prime drivers of decision making and economic change, but must be complemented by policy frameworks that promote a new industrial metabolism and resource use. We should:

>> Take account of natural capital, ecosystem services and social aspects of progress in all economic decisions and poverty reduction strategies. This requires the development of new welfare indicators that address the shortcomings of GDP.

>> Reset economic incentives so that innovation is driven by wider societal interests and reaches the large proportion of the global population that is currently not benefitting from these innovations.

6. Reducing human pressures

Consumerism, inefficient resource use and inappropriate technologies are the primary drivers of humanity’s growing impact on the planet. However, population growth also needs attention. We must:

>> Raise public awareness about the impacts of unsustainable consumption and shift away from the prevailing culture of consumerism to sustainability.

>> Greatly increase access to reproductive health services, education and credit, aiming at empowering women all over the world. Such measures are important in their own right but will also reduce birth rates.

7. Strengthening Earth System Governance

The multilateral system must be reformed to cope with the defining challenges of our time, namely transforming humanity’s relationship with the planet and rebuilding trust between people and nations. Global governance must be strengthened to respect planetary boundaries and to support regional, national and local approaches. We should:

>> Develop and strengthen institutions that can integrate the climate, biodiversity and development agendas.

>> Explore new institutions that help to address the legitimate interests of future generations.

8. Enacting a new contract between science and society

Filling gaps in our knowledge and deepening our understanding is necessary to find solutions to the challenges of the Anthropocene, and calls for major investments in science. A dialogue with decision-makers and the general public is also an important part of a new contract between science and society. We need to:

>> Launch a major research initiative on the earth system and global sustainability, at a scale similar to those devoted to areas such as space, defence and health, to tap all sources of ingenuity across disciplines and across the globe.

>> Scale up our education efforts to increase scientific literacy especially among the young.

We are the first generation facing the evidence of global change. It therefore falls upon us to change our relationship with the planet, in order to tip the scales towards a sustainable world for future generations.

 

“Every 30 Minutes”: Crushed By Debt And Neoliberal Reforms, Indian Farmers Commit Suicide At Staggering Rate

 


22 May, 2011

Democracy Now!

A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years—an average of one suicide every 30 minutes. The crisis has ballooned with economic liberalization that has removed agricultural subsidies and opened Indian agriculture to the global market. Small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. We speak with Smita Narula of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School, co-author of a new report on farmer suicides in India.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the issue of farmer suicides in India, where a quarter of a million farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years. On average, that figure suggests one farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes.

Today, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law School will release a report called “Every Thirty Minutes: Farmer Suicides, Human Rights and the Agrarian Crisis in India.”

The agricultural sector in India has become more vulnerable to global markets as a result of economic liberalization. Reforms in the country have included the removal of agricultural subsidies and the opening of Indian agriculture to the global market. These reforms have led to increased costs, while reducing yields and profits for many farmers.

As a result, small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. The rate of suicide is highest among cotton farmers. Like other cash crops in India, the cotton industry is increasingly dominated by foreign multinational corporations that tend to promote genetically modified cottonseed and often control the cost, quality and availability of agricultural inputs.

To discuss this issue, we’re joined by Smita Narula, faculty director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

SMITA NARULA: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this report that you are just releasing today.

SMITA NARULA: Our major finding for this report is that all the issues that you just described are major human rights issues. And what we’re faced with in India is a human rights crisis of epic proportions. The crisis affects the human rights of Indian farmers and their family members in extremely profound ways. We found that their rights to life, to water, food and adequate standard of living, and their right to an effective remedy, is extremely affected by this crisis. Additionally, the government has hard human rights legal obligations to respond to the crisis, but we’ve found that it has failed, by and large, to take any effective measures to address the suicides that are taking place.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this number is unbelievable. Thirty—every 30 minutes, an Indian farmer commits suicide?

SMITA NARULA: And that’s been going on for years and years. And what these intense numbers don’t reveal are two things. One is that the numbers themselves are failing to capture the enormity of the problem. In what we call a failure of information on the part of the Indian government, entire categories of farmers are completely left out of the purview of farm suicide statistics, because they don’t formally own title to land. This includes women farmers, Dalit, or so-called lower caste farmers, as well as Adivasi, or tribal community farmers. In addition, the government’s programs and the relief programs that they’ve offered fail to capture not only this broad category, but also fail to provide timely debt relief and compensation or address broader structural issues that are leading to these suicides in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the issue of globalization and how it’s affecting these farmers.

SMITA NARULA: Sure. So, basically, ultimately, the proximate cause for a number of these suicides is farmer indebtedness. What lies behind that indebtedness is two decades of market liberalization in India, which have resulted in two simultaneous processes. First, the government has withdrawn significantly from the agricultural sector. It has reduced subsidies. It has decreased access to rural credit. Irrigation is insufficient and doesn’t reach most farmers who need it. And at the same time, it has encouraged a switch over to cash crop cultivation, of which cotton is one example.

Simultaneously, the market has been opened up to global competitors, which makes Indian farmers extremely vulnerable. And at the same time, foreign multinationals now dominate industries, such as the cotton industry, including dominating the key inputs that are needed for cotton. In the case of cotton, in particular, the genetically modified Bt cottonseed has been promoted so effectively in India that it now dominates the entire sector, and between its cost, quality and availability, has an enormous impact on farmer costs and profits and yields to the point that it’s landing them in enormous debt. And many of them, ironically, are actually consuming the very pesticide that they went into debt to purchase, to kill themselves when they can’t escape that cycle of debt.

AMY GOODMAN: They’re consuming the pesticide.

SMITA NARULA: That’s correct. And behind each and every one of these numbers—the statistics are, appalling as they are, every 30 minutes—it’s hard to get our heads around it—but something else that the report tries to do is to put a human face on these numbers and tragedies. So, take two stories to put that humanity back into it. There are farmers in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, which is seen as an epicenter of this crisis, and an epicenter of cotton production in the country. Farmers now address their suicide notes to the prime minister and to the president, hoping that their last words, before they kill themselves, will reach an audience that’s going to take action.

Then you have farmers like Nanda Bhandare, who is a widow, and she lost her husband in 2008. As a result, she had to pull her 10- and 12-year-old children out of school to work the farm. They own seven acres of land, and after toiling every day on that land for a year, she likely won’t earn more than $250 for the entire year. She may have received compensation from the government, but that’s certainly been eaten up by the private moneylenders who her husband took out loans from, because there’s no rural credit in the country. And now she is struggling to afford basic needs for her family.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about genetically modified seeds and U.S. multinational corporations.

SMITA NARULA: So, genetically modified seeds. Bt cottonseed is the cottonseed input that dominates the cotton industry now. And what the genetic modification promises to do is to produce a toxin within the seed that kills a very common pest that affects the cotton crop in India. The Bt cottonseed, which is—has been marketed by Monsanto, among other multinationals, requires two resources that are already scarce for most Indian smallholder farmers. That’s money and water. Bt cottonseeds cost anywhere from two times to 10 times as much as regular cottonseed, and they also require a great deal more water in order to yield successful crops. The farmers often go to private moneylenders, who charge exorbitant interest rates, to purchase the seeds, on the promises and based on aggressive marketing that they will bring greater financial security. But then, because 65 percent of cotton farms in India are rain-fed and don’t have access to irrigation, the crops inevitably fail. And also, increasing drought has made that the case for many farmers. So they’ve gone into insurmountable debt to purchase the inputs. They don’t have the yields. They repeat this cycle for a couple of seasons. And by the end of it, they’re simply trapped in a cycle that they can’t get out of, and they consume the very pesticide that they purchased, in order to kill themselves. And—

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what needs to be done?

SMITA NARULA: There are many things that the government can do and should do. The first is to address the failure of information. The government has failed to adequately capture the scope of the problem, as I described before. There is a failure of intervention. The debt relief program, that the government proudly boasts about to human rights committees, doesn’t reach most farmers, leaves many out of their purview, and provides too little. And there are structural issues. The government needs to put human rights at the center of its agricultural policies, and it needs to regulate multinational corporations, which it’s not doing, rather than approving more and more GM crops in the country, when so many have already devastated farmers’ lives.

AMY GOODMAN: Smita Narula, I want to thank you for being with us. We’ll link to your study at our website, from the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law School.

 

Obama’s Reset Rhetoric Is Unlikely To Translate Into Meaningful Policy Change In The Middle East

 


22 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

President Barack Obama delivered a major foreign policy speech Thursday on historic changes in the Middle East. This was his second major address about America’s relationship with the Muslim world which may be dubbed as Cairo-2.

There were at least two parts to the president’s speech. In the first part he outlined his administration’s response to the “Arab Spring.” The president promised to forgive a billion dollars in loans to Egypt and said the United States would work to create enterprise zones to encourage private investment. “It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region and to support transitions to democracy,” he said.

His speech was perhaps a belated response to extraordinary events in the Middle East following the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings that toppled or unsettled many US-backed autocratic rulers throughout the region. Repeating the slogans of the youth in Yemen, Tunisia, Syria and Egypt was just Obama jumping on the bandwagon.

According to Ian Black, Middle East editor of the Guardian, Obama lavished praise on the spirit of people power that has animated this year’s “Arab spring” but also made clear that direct US involvement in the region would remain selective. Strikingly, Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive countries in the Arab world and a key US ally and oil supplier, got not a single mention in the 5,400-word speech.

Nor did Obama offer any really new ideas on the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, reiterating the “unshakeable” US commitment to Israel’s security, Black said adding: But he did clearly oppose the “symbolic” recognition by the UN of an independent Palestinian state in September, an idea for which momentum has been growing internationally in the absence of any peace negotiations.

Obama had harsh words for Bashar al-Assad of Syria, where hundreds have been killed by the security forces, but he did not address the reason why Libyan logic did not apply, and why Syria’s dictator should not also be removed, Black argued.

Arab-Israeli conflict

The most important part of the speech dealt with borders as a key element of “reset strategy” will involve prodding Israel and the Palestinians to re-engage in negotiations on a two-state solution to the six-decade Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet the basis for a solution he offered — a settlement based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders, with negotiated land swaps — is well over a decade old.

“The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine,” said Obama.

Obama did call for a permanent Palestinian state along 1967 borders, with Palestinian control over its external borders and, most importantly, a contiguous Palestinian state. But all of these points were undermined by the insistence on security as the metric of progress, and a commitment to a 30-year old negotiations process that will lead nowhere.

The President reaffirmed an unshakable U.S. commitment to Israel’s security and condemned what he called “symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations,” referring to the Palestinians’ plan to seek General Assembly recognition for statehood in September.

September 2011 is the target date for completion of institutional readiness for statehood set by the Palestinian Authority and supported by the diplomatic grouping known as the Quartet – which comprises the UN, European Union, Russia and the United States. The World Bank’s assessment in September 2010, noted by the Quartet, was that ‘if the PA maintains its current performance in institution-building and delivery of public services, it is well positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future’.

On April 12, 2011 a new United Nations report highlighted progress made by the Palestinian Authority in building institutions necessary for a functioning State, while stressing the need for Israel to roll back “measures of occupation” and for an urgent resumption of negotiations between the two sides. “In the limited territory under its control and within the constraints on the ground imposed by unresolved political issues, the PA has accelerated progress in improving its governmental functions,” states the report, entitled “Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period.” Prepared by the office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), the report notes that in the six areas where the UN is most engaged, governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a State.

The diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state is gathering momentum, particularly in Latin America. Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and a number of other nations in that region have recognized the independence of Palestine. On December 6, 2010 the Brazilian Foreign Ministry announced that Brasilia recognizes the Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. By early 2011 a dozen countries in the Caribbean basin and Africa were about to do the same. If more countries announce a recognition of the independence of Palestine, the Palestinians can push a resolution on the creation of a new state through the UN General Assembly.

On January 19, 2011 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stressed during a visit to the West Bank that Moscow recognized an independent Palestinian state in 1988 and is not changing that position. Speaking at a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in Jericho, Medvedev said: “We made our decision then and we have not changed it today.”

U.S. policy is to oppose the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, to withhold diplomatic recognition of any Palestinian state that is unilaterally declared, and to encourage other countries and international organizations to withhold diplomatic recognition of any Palestinian state that is unilaterally declared.

To borrow Robert Fisk, renowned journalist, Obama’s speech was “the same old story… Israel cannot be deligitimised… No peace can be imposed on either party… It sounded like his pro-Israeli speech to AIPAC.”

Arab disappointment with Obama’s “reset policy” is best reflected in the comment by a Beirut student Anthony Haddad: ” Obama’s rhetoric won’t consistently be met with action. … Obama’s rhetoric only has teeth where America’s unchanged interests lie. [Even with insisting on] 1967 borders … a strong-willed speech from Obama without the will to twist a few Israeli arms along the way will do nothing to fix the Israeli-Palestinian question.”

According to Nick Turse, the associate editor of TimDispatch.com, all signs indicate that the Pentagon will quietly maintain antithetical policies, just as it has throughout the Obama years. Barring an unprecedented and almost inconceivable policy shift, it will continue to broker lucrative deals to send weapons systems and military equipment to Arab despots. Nothing indicates that it will be deterred from its course, whatever the president says, which means that Barack Obama’s reset rhetoric is unlikely to translate into meaningful policy change in the region.

Jeff Mason of Reuters believes it was Obama’s election campaign speech:

“It may not have been a campaign speech, but President Barack Obama’s foreign policy address on Thursday sent a series of political messages that could resonate in his 2012 race to retain the White House. Standing in front of a row of American flags at the State Department, Obama directed his comments on U.S. policy to populations throughout the Middle East and North Africa, offering economic and political support for democratic reform. But the president had another target audience: voters at home. By spelling out U.S. positions on the war in Libya, violence in Syria, and roadblocks in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Obama addressed specific interest groups and crucial independent voters who use foreign policy as a criteria at the ballot box. Obama also bolstered his case for being a strong leader by citing the successful operation to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.”

Why the world’s Muslims are so mad at America?

President Obama spoke at a time when U.S. influence in the region is at an all-time low in modern history.

A new PEW survey, released two days prior to Obama’s speech, finds that the rise of pro-democracy movements has not led to an improvement in America’s image in the region. Instead, in key Arab nations and in other predominantly Muslim countries, views of the U.S. remain negative, as they have been for nearly a decade. Indeed, in Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan, views are even more negative than they were one year ago.

With the exception of Indonesia, Obama remains unpopular in the Muslim nations polled, and most disapprove of the way he has handled calls for political change roiling the Middle East. Moreover, many of the concerns that have driven animosity toward the U.S. in recent years are still present – a perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally, opposition to the war on terror, and fears of America as a military threat. And in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Pakistan, most say their own governments cooperate too much with the U.S.

As Obama tries to “reset” relations with a Muslim world another survey released on Wednesday highlighted one of the most fundamental questions about U.S. involvement there.

Why are Muslims, by and large, so mad at America?

The survey published in the form of a new book Feeling Betrayed: The Roots of Muslim Anger at America, reflecting five years of research on the ground by political psychologist Steven Kull, suggests a pair of startling explanations. Kull performed polls and focus groups throughout the Middle East, North Africa and the Asian Pacific from 2006-2010.

“Out of this process, we identified a widespread Muslim narrative of why they are mad at America,” he said, presenting his findings Wednesday at the Brookings Institution.

“It was really striking to me how common this was. All the way from Morocco to Indonesia, they were singing off the same song sheet. The closer you get to the Middle East, there’s more intensity, but the themes are really very much the same.”

Kull recounts four themes common to Muslim complaints of oppression:

1. The US as Coercively Dominating

The United States seeks to and largely succeeds in coercively dominating the Muslim world, using the threat of military force to shape it in ways that serve its interests.

Large majorities of people polled throughout the region told him that they believe the U.S. coercively dominates the Muslim world – often through the threat of military aggression — to shape it in America’s interests.

“How much of what happens in the world today would you say is controlled by the U.S.?” he asked. Majorities throughout the Muslim world went with “nearly all” or “most” of what happens. Fifty-nine percent of Egyptians (pre-Arab uprising) said “nearly all.”

“That the U.S. is really this 800-pound gorilla in the minds of people in this part of the world, and they feel threatened by it,” Kull pointed out.

2. The US as Hostile to Islam

The United States is hostile to Islam and seeks to undermine it and to impose a secular social order or even Christianity. They frequently cited American support for Israel as an illustration of the fear that the U.S. dislikes Islam and maneuvers to dominate the region.

3. Support for Israel

Driven by anti-Islamic prejudice and seeking regional domination, the United States supports and enables Israel in its victimization of the Palestinian people.

4. The US as Undermining Democracy

The United States undermines democracy in the Muslim world so as to preserve its control and to ensure that Islamism is kept under wraps.

Majorities in every country but the United Arab Emirates said they believe democracy is not a real U.S. objective in the region. They argued that the U.S. favors democracy in Muslim countries, but only if the government is cooperative with the U.S.

People frequently told Kull that they admired the values America once embodied — fairness, equality, self-determination, respect for human rights — but that at some point in a linear timeline, the U.S. had abandoned those values, and on its responsibility as a world superpower to promote them abroad.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com email: asghazali2011(@)gmail.com

 

The Unholy Alliance Of Blackwater Mercenaries With The UAE Rulers

 


23 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Remember Blackwater USA, the private military group, which worked as contractors for the U.S. State Department? Since June 2004, it has been paid more than $320 million out of State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protective Service, which protects U.S. officials and some foreign officials in conflict zones. Inside Iraq alone, at one time, it employed no less than 20,000 armed security forces. In the post-Saddam Iraq, they drew much notoriety for their trigger-happy, gung ho attitude. Between 2005 and September 2007, Blackwater security staffs were involved in 195 shooting incidents; in 163 of those cases, Blackwater personnel fired first.

On March 31, 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah attacked a convoy containing four Blackwater contractors. According to Iraqi accounts, the men broke into homes and raped some women. The four contractors were attacked and killed with grenades and small arms. Later their bodies were hung from a bridge crossing the Euphrates. In April 2005 six Blackwater independent contractors were killed in Iraq when their Mi-8 helicopter was shot down.

On February 16, 2005, four Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. State Department convoy in Iraq fired 70 rounds into a car. An investigation by the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service concluded that the shooting was not justified and that the Blackwater employees provided false statements to investigators. The false statements claimed that the one of the Blackwater vehicles had been hit by insurgent gunfire, but the investigation found that one of the Blackwater guards had actually fired into his own vehicle by accident. However, John Frese, the U.S. embassy in Iraq’s top security official, declined to punish Blackwater or the security guards because he believed any disciplinary actions would lower the morale of the mercenary group.

On February 6, 2006 a sniper employed by Blackwater Worldwide opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry, killing three guards working for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network. Many Iraqis at the scene said that the guards had not fired on the Justice Ministry. On Christmas Eve 2006, a security guard of the Iraqi vice president was shot and killed while on duty outside the Iraqi prime minister’s compound by an employee of Blackwater USA. Five Blackwater contractors were killed on January 23, 2007 when their helicopter was shot down on Baghdad’s Haifa Street. In late May 2007, Blackwater contractors opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days, one of the incidents provoking a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos. On May 30, 2007, Blackwater employees shot an Iraqi civilian who was said to have been “driving too close” to a State Department convoy that was being escorted by Blackwater contractors.

The Iraqi Government revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq on September 17, 2007, because of the death of seventeen Iraqis. The fatalities occurred while a Blackwater Private Security Detail (PSD) was escorting a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with USAID officials. As in many other previous cases, here again, it was found that Blackwater’s guards had opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. The incident sparked at least five investigations, and an FBI probe found that Blackwater Employees used lethal force recklessly. The license was reinstated by the American government in April 2008, but in early 2009 the Iraqis announced that they have refused to extend that license.

Documents obtained from the Iraq War document leak argue that Blackwater employees have committed serious abuses in Iraq, including killing civilians. In the fall of 2007, a congressional report by the House Oversight Committee found that Blackwater intentionally “delayed and impeded” investigations into the contractors’ deaths (of March 31, 2004).

So negative was the public perception of the mercenary group, it had to change its name twice – first in October 2007 to Blackwater Worldwide and then to Xe Services LLC in February of 2009.

After all those serious incidents of unprovoked murderous orgy of unarmed civilians in Iraq by the trigger-happy mercenaries working as contractors for the U.S. State Department in the post-Saddam era, we thought that we had seen the last of Blackwater and its CEO Erik Prince. But we were wrong. Utterly wrong! We forgot that evil sells big time! An ugly monster is more preferable to a Mafia Don than an attractive good hearted man.

Erik Prince has settled in Abu Dhabi, and has opened a mercenary wing there. It goes by the name Reflex Responses. The company, often called R2, was licensed last March. Outside Americans, Brits, French and some Colombians, R2 has recruited a platoon of South African mercenaries, including some veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African company notorious for staging coup attempts or suppressing rebellions against African strongmen in the 1990s.

Last week the New York Times (NYT) had a detailed report on this mercenary group which is employed by – who else this time but – the oil-soaked Emirates prince Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi to protect the sheikdom from threat. The lucrative deal is worth $529 million. R2 spends roughly $9 million per month maintaining the battalion, which includes expenditures for employee salaries, ammunition and wages for dozens of domestic workers who cook meals, wash clothes and clean the camp.

Emirati law prohibits disclosure of incorporation records for businesses, which typically list company officers, but it does require them to post company names on offices and storefronts. Over the past year, the sign outside the suite has changed at least twice — it now says Assurance Management Consulting.

We are told that the foreign military force was planned months before the so-called Arab Spring revolts that many experts believe are unlikely to spread to the U.A.E. People involved in the project and American officials of R2 told the NYT reporters that the Emiratis were interested in deploying the R2 battalion to respond to terrorist attacks and put down uprisings inside the country’s sprawling labor camps, which house the Pakistanis, Filipinos and other foreigners who make up the bulk of the country’s work force.

It is worth pointing out that the UAE is the abysmal bottom of today’s Arab world without democracy. Through its unfathomable wealth it has transformed itself into a new high-tech federation that is lived by two low-life communities – a body of modernist Arab (21% of population) and western capitalists (8%) in total play-mode, who have very little touch with the great deen of Islam, and a body of foreign migrant workers (totaling 71%) — 27% Indians, 20% Pakistanis, 8% Bangladeshis, and 16% other Asians — unpaid or underpaid, without papers or their own (confiscated) passports, working all-day in any heat without medical aid or supervision. Like the Egyptian slaves of the Biblical times, these migrant workers – denied their basic human rights — are the modern-day slaves that have built the Burj Khalifah (the tallest building in the world) and continue to build a playground for the world’s capitalist elite – a zone without rules and without fear of recourse to law. As noted recently by Shaykh Abdal Qadir as-Sufi, “There are no suicide-bombers in the U.A.E.; only the weekly suicide of a worker in despair of his salary, his work conditions, his foul dormitory and his future.”

The UAE, like many of the Gulf states, has a highly discriminatory pay-scale that is based on one’s nationality. For example, the top wage earners are white westerners (from the USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand) followed by the GCC nationals, East Asians (from Japan, Korea), South-east Asians (from Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand), South Asians (from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh) and other African countries (in that order).

While the corrupt princes and sheiks live an opulent life of parasites drawing benefits from God’s gift to the nation – the oil and natural gas resources — and the fruit of the labor of their ‘slave’ workers that work in those oil and natural gas fields, the construction industry and the shops or malls, these workers are paid some of the lowest salaries imaginable. The building workers work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and are paid around 370 AED ($100) per month. The ‘workers’ are bound by the Kafala System not to move from their job to another one, and are ‘tied’ to their employer. Employers house workers in dormitories known as labor camps, usually on the edge of urban zones. In Al-Quoz and in Sonopar in Dubai the typical dwelling for an average construction worker is a small room (120 sft) which must take up to eight workers. Al-Quoz Camp has 7,500 migrant workers sharing 1,248 rooms. Withholding of wages, in total disregard of the Islamic ruling, is commonplace. The greedy employers don’t like their Muslim workers to fast during the month of Ramadhan, fearing that their labor efficiency would go down.

In May 2010 hundreds of workers marched from their Sharjah Labour Camp to the Ministry in Dubai demanding to be sent home. They claimed they were unpaid for over six months and were kept in squalor. The authorities finally sent home 700 stranded from Sharjah’s Al-Sajar Labor Camp.

So, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand the rationale behind the deployment of R2 in the UAE. The authorities are afraid of these low paid workers and their legitimate rights of which they are robbed. The unholy alliance with a hated trigger-happy murderous group like Blackwater has much to do about containing potential labor unrest, and thus avoiding catastrophes like the ones visited by the former Shah of Iran, and Zine ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. But as history has shown so many times when the time comes no mercenary group can protect an unpopular regime.

In recent years, the Emirati government has showered American defense companies with billions of dollars to help strengthen the country’s security. A company run by Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser during the Clinton and Bush administrations, has won several lucrative contracts to advise the U.A.E. on how to protect its infrastructure.

Emirati military officials had promised that if Erik Prince’s first battalion of R2 was a success, they would pay for an entire brigade of several thousand men. The new contracts would be worth billions, and would help with Mr. Prince’s next big project: a desert training complex for foreign troops patterned after Blackwater’s compound in Moyock, N.C.

In a recent spring night after months stationed in the desert, the R2 mercenaries boarded an unmarked bus and were driven to hotels in central Dubai. There, some R2 executives had arranged for them to spend the evening with prostitutes. Where else in the Arab world but UAE can one find such displays of sexually immoral acts?

In a well-known hadith, Muhammad (S), the Prophet of Islam, said, “Allah the Most High says: ‘There will be three persons against whom I shall fight on the Day of Judgment: (1) the person who makes a promise with an oath in My name and then breaks it, (2) the person who sells a free man as slave and appropriates his sale proceeds, and (3) the person who engages a workman and having taken full work from him fails to pay him his dues.’” [Bukhari: Abu Hurayrah (RA)]

Muhammad (S) also said, “Give the laborer his wages before his sweat dries.” [Ibn Majah: Abdullah b. Umar (RA)]

Something has gone profoundly wrong in the Arab world. The once camel-riding and tent-dwelling, and now jet-flying and high-rise-dwelling modern-day Arabs of the desert had been so busy taking on the modalities and values of modern techno-society that they had completely lost the Deen in all its civic and spiritual identity. They forgot that the best security comes not from mercenaries but from a satisfied workforce that are treated fairly and humanly.

Dr. Habib Siddiqui is a peace activist based in USA.He blogs at http://www.drhabibsiddiqui.blogspot.com/

Some Thoughts on the IMF, Global Injustice, and a Stranger on a Train

23 May, 2011

Tomdispatch.com


How can I tell a story we already know too well? Her name was Africa. His was France. He colonized her, exploited her, silenced her, and even decades after it was supposed to have ended, still acted with a high hand in resolving her affairs in places like Côte d’Ivoire, a name she had been given because of her export products, not her own identity.

Her name was Asia. His was Europe. Her name was silence. His was power. Her name was poverty. His was wealth. Her name was Her, but what was hers? His name was His, and he presumed everything was his, including her, and he thought he could take her without asking and without consequences. It was a very old story, though its outcome had been changing a little in recent decades. And this time around the consequences are shaking a lot of foundations, all of which clearly needed shaking.

Who would ever write a fable as obvious, as heavy-handed as the story we’ve just been given? The extraordinarily powerful head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a global organization that has created mass poverty and economic injustice, allegedly assaulted a hotel maid, an immigrant from Africa, in a hotel’s luxury suite in New York City.

Worlds have collided. In an earlier era, her word would have been worthless against his and she might not have filed charges, or the police might not have followed through and yanked Dominique Strauss-Kahn off the plane to Paris at the last moment. But she did, and they did, and now he’s in custody, and the economy of Europe has been dealt a blow, and French politics have been upended, and that nation is reeling and soul-searching.

What were they thinking, these men who decided to give him this singular position of power, despite all the stories and evidence of such viciousness? What was he thinking when he decided he could get away with it? Did he think he was in France, where apparently he did get away with it? Only now is the young woman who says he assaulted her in 2002 pressing charges — her own politician mother talked her out of it, and she worried about the impact it could have on her journalistic career (while her mother was apparently worrying more about his career).

And the Guardian reports that these stories “have added weight to claims by Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian-born economist, that the fund’s director engaged in sustained harassment when she was working at the IMF that left her feeling she had little choice but to agree to sleep with him at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2008. She alleged he persistently called and emailed on the pretext of asking questions about [her expertise,] Ghana’s economy, but then used sexual language and asked her out.”

In some accounts, the woman Strauss-Kahn is charged with assaulting in New York is from Ghana, in others a Muslim from nearby Guinea. “Ghana — Prisoner of the IMF” ran a headline in 2001 by the usually mild-mannered BBC. Its report documented the way the IMF’s policies had destroyed that rice-growing nation’s food security, opening it up to cheap imported U.S. rice, and plunging the country’s majority into dire poverty. Everything became a commodity for which you had to pay, from using a toilet to getting a bucket of water, and many could not pay. Perhaps it would be too perfect if she was a refugee from the IMF’s policies in Ghana. Guinea, on the other hand, liberated itself from the IMF management thanks to the discovery of major oil reserves, but remains a country of severe corruption and economic disparity.

Pimping for the Global North

There’s an axiom evolutionary biologists used to like: “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” or the development of the embryonic individual repeats that of its species’ evolution. Does the ontogeny of this alleged assault echo the phylogeny of the International Monetary Fund? After all, the organization was founded late in World War II as part of the notorious Bretton Woods conference that would impose American economic visions on the rest of the world.

The IMF was meant to be a lending institution to help countries develop, but by the 1980s it had become an organization with an ideology — free trade and free-market fundamentalism. It used its loans to gain enormous power over the economies and policies of nations throughout the global South.

However, if the IMF gained power throughout the 1990s, it began losing that power in the twenty-first century, thanks to powerful popular resistance to the economic policies it embodied and the economic collapse such policies produced. Strauss-Kahn was brought in to salvage the wreckage of an organization that, in 2008, had to sell off its gold reserves and reinvent its mission.

Her name was Africa. His name was IMF. He set her up to be pillaged, to go without health care, to starve. He laid waste to her to enrich his friends. Her name was Global South. His name was Washington Consensus. But his winning streak was running out and her star was rising.

It was the IMF that created the economic conditions that destroyed the Argentinian economy by 2001, and it was the revolt against the IMF (among other neoliberal forces) that prompted Latin America’s rebirth over the past decade. Whatever you think of Hugo Chavez, it was loans from oil-rich Venezuela that allowed Argentina to pay off its IMF loans early so that it could set its own saner economic policies.

The IMF was a predatory force, opening developing countries up to economic assaults from the wealthy North and powerful transnational corporations. It was a pimp. Maybe it still is. But since the Seattle anti-corporate demonstrations of 1999 set a global movement alight, there has been a revolt against it, and those forces have won in Latin America, changing the framework of all economic debates to come and enriching our imaginations when it comes to economies and possibilities.

Today, the IMF is a mess, the World Trade Organization largely sidelined, NAFTA almost universally reviled, the Free Trade Area of the Americas cancelled (though bilateral free-trade agreements continue), and much of the world has learned a great deal from the decade’s crash course in economic policy.

Strangers on a Train

The New York Times reported it this way: “As the impact of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s predicament hit home, others, including some in the news media, began to reveal accounts, long suppressed or anonymous, of what they called Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s previously predatory behavior toward women and his aggressive sexual pursuit of them, from students and journalists to subordinates.”

In other words, he created an atmosphere that was uncomfortable or dangerous for women, which would be one thing if he were working in, say, a small office. But that a man who controls some part of the fate of the world apparently devoted his energies to generating fear, misery, and injustice around him says something about the shape of our world and the values of the nations and institutions that tolerated his behavior and that of men like him.

The United States has not been short on sex scandals of late, and they reek of the same arrogance, but they were at least consensual (as far as we know). The head of the IMF is charged with sexual assault. If that term confuses you take out the word “sexual” and just focus on “assault,” on violence, on the refusal to treat someone as a human being, on the denial of the most basic of human rights, the right to bodily integrity and corporeal safety. “The rights of man” was one of the great phrases of the French Revolution, but it’s always been questionable whether it included the rights of women.

The United States has a hundred million flaws, but I am proud that the police believed this woman and that she will have her day in court. I am gratified this time not to be in a country which has decided that the career of a powerful man or the fate of an international institution matters more than this woman and her rights and wellbeing. This is what we mean by democracy: that everyone has a voice, that no one gets away with things just because of their wealth, power, race, or gender.

Two days before Strauss-Kahn allegedly emerged from that hotel bathroom naked, there was a big demonstration in New York City. “Make Wall Street Pay” was the theme and union workers, radicals, the unemployed, and more — 20,000 people — gathered to protest the economic assault in this country that is creating such suffering and deprivation for the many — and obscene wealth for the few.

I attended. On the crowded subway car back to Brooklyn afterwards, the youngest of my three female companions had her bottom groped by a man about Strauss-Kahn’s age. At first, she thought he had simply bumped into her. That was before she felt her buttock being cupped and said something to me, as young women often do, tentatively, quietly, as though it were perhaps not happening or perhaps not quite a problem.

Finally, she glared at him and told him to stop. I was reminded of a moment when I was an impoverished seventeen-year-old living in Paris and some geezer grabbed my ass. It was perhaps my most American moment in France, then the land of a thousand disdainful gropers; American because I was carrying three grapefruits, a precious purchase from my small collection of funds, and I threw those grapefruits, one after another, like baseballs at the creep and had the satisfaction of watching him scuttle into the night.

His action, like so much sexual violence against women, was undoubtedly meant to be a reminder that this world was not mine, that my rights — my liberté, egalité, sororité, if you will — didn’t matter. Except that I had sent him running in a barrage of fruit. And Dominique Strauss-Kahn got pulled off a plane to answer to justice. Still, that a friend of mine got groped on her way back from a march about justice makes it clear how much there still is to be done.

The Poor Starve, While the Rich Eat Their Words

What makes the sex scandal that broke open last week so resonant is the way the alleged assailant and victim model larger relationships around the world, starting with the IMF’s assault on the poor. That assault is part of the great class war of our era, in which the rich and their proxies in government have endeavored to aggrandize their holdings at the expense of the rest of us. Poor countries in the developing world paid first, but the rest of us are paying now, as those policies and the suffering they impose come home to roost via right-wing economics that savages unions, education systems, the environment, and programs for the poor, disabled, and elderly in the name of privatization, free markets, and tax cuts.

In one of the more remarkable apologies of our era, Bill Clinton — who had his own sex scandal once upon a time — told the United Nations on World Food Day in October 2008, as the global economy was melting down: “We need the World Bank, the IMF, all the big foundations, and all the governments to admit that, for 30 years, we all blew it, including me when I was President. We were wrong to believe that food was like some other product in international trade, and we all have to go back to a more responsible and sustainable form of agriculture.”

He said it even more bluntly last year: “Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did.”

Clinton’s admissions were on a level with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s 2008 admission that the premise of his economic politics was wrong. The former policies and those of the IMF, World Bank, and free-trade fundamentalists had created poverty, suffering, hunger, and death. We have learned, most of us, and the world has changed remarkably since the day when those who opposed free-market fundamentalism were labeled “flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions, and yuppies looking for their 1960’s fix,” in the mortal words of Thomas Friedman, later eaten.

A remarkable thing happened after the devastating Haitian earthquake last year: the IMF under Strauss-Kahn planned to use the vulnerability of that country to force new loans on it with the usual terms. Activists reacted to a plan guaranteed to increase the indebtedness of a nation already crippled by the kind of neoliberal policies for which Clinton belatedly apologized. The IMF blinked, stepped back, and agreed to cancel Haiti’s existing debt to the organization. It was a remarkable victory for informed activism.

Powers of the Powerless

It looks as though a hotel maid may end the career of one of the most powerful men in the world, or rather that he will have ended it himself by discounting the rights and humanity of that worker. Pretty much the same thing happened to Meg Whitman, the former E-Bay billionaire who ran for governor of California last year. She leapt on the conservative bandwagon by attacking undocumented immigrants — until it turned out that she had herself long employed one, Nickie Diaz, as a housekeeper.

When, after nine years, it had become politically inconvenient to keep Diaz around, she fired the woman abruptly, claimed she’d never known her employee was undocumented, and refused to pay her final wages. In other words, Whitman was willing to spend $140 million on her campaign, but may have brought herself down thanks, in part, to $6,210 in unpaid wages.

Diaz said, “I felt like she was throwing me away like a piece of garbage.” The garbage had a voice, the California Nurses Union amplified it, and California was spared domination by a billionaire whose policies would have further brutalized the poor and impoverished the middle class.

The struggles for justice of an undocumented housekeeper and an immigrant hotel maid are microcosms of the great world war of our time. If Nickie Diaz and the battle over last year’s IMF loans to Haiti demonstrate anything, it’s that the outcome is uncertain. Sometimes we win the skirmishes, but the war continues. So much remains to be known about what happened in that expensive hotel suite in Manhattan last week, but what we do know is this: a genuine class war is being fought openly in our time, and last week, a so-called socialist put himself on the wrong side of it.

His name was privilege, but hers was possibility. His was the same old story, but hers was a new one about the possibility of changing a story that remains unfinished, that includes all of us, that matters so much, that we will watch, but also make and tell in the weeks, months, years, decades to come.

Rebecca Solnit is the author of 13 books, including A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters and Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. She is, from kindergarten to graduate school, a product of the California public education system now being decimated.

Copyright 2011 Rebecca Solnit

 

Obama’s Surrender At AIPAC – God Save America From Israel

 

23 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

For all those Israeli’s who believed that Obama had introduced a new element into the rather stagnant peace process by mentioning the forbidden words “The 1967 Borders”, were well placated by Obama, who in sentence after sentence recieved thunderous applause from an fanatical audience braying for Palestinian blood.

Obama challenged every UN resolution & International law, that auctaully provide a basis for the solution of the Palestine-Israel conflict. He clearly restated Netanyahu’s position that “the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years, including the new demographic realities on the ground” need to be taken into account. He clearly stated that the two sides will negotiate a border “that is different from the one that existed on June 4, 1967.”

This is the precise position & words that Netanyahu has been scripting. Thus Obama has accepted the fact that the illegal Settlements that house 500,000 armed extremist settlers, that continue to be built on the Palestinian lands of 1967 & are to be part of a future Jewish state of Israel.

Thus we have Obama negating UN Resolution 242, which calls upon Israel to withdraw from the Occupied territories of the war of 1967 & for a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict so that a durable & just peace is ensured for all. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_242 ). This is true to his recent form at the UN, where the US vetoed the resolution condemning the Israeli Settlements as illegal ( http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37572&Cr=palestin&Cr1 ).

This is also in direct contravention of UN resolution 446 adopted on March 22, 1979  that stated “that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East”. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_446 )

There is a method to Obama’s seeming madness, where we see how he has undermined the UN & International Law to launch his very own war on Libya & the expansion of the conflict in Pakistan.

Obama went into his mundane ramble on Israel’s security & the total commitment of America, who despite a financial crunch have raised support & that the US will guarantee that Israel maintain the military edge with the latest weaponary ensured . . . to kill & maim more Palestinians, should have been added for good measure.

The next round of applause was guaranteed when Obama vilified Iran & said that the sanctions regime on Iran ensured it’s international isolation & the matter that Iran would be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. Then came the demonization of Hamas & the Hezbollah & the crowd was on its feet.

Not once did Obama have the humanity (or is that too big a word for him) to even mention the 1.5 million Palestinians under siege in a Nazi-prison-cum-concentration camp called Gaza. Not once did he mention how US made, Israeli war planes & tanks killed thousands civilans (in a ratio of 1000:1), when he mentioned the Hamas rockets that killed Israeli civilains. He demanded that Gilad Shalit be freed, but never once though it right to mention the 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails be freed as well. He mentioned how the Jews had a longing for their homeland, but never once mentioned that similarly, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees, who were ethnically cleansed from their country in 1948 & who have both the moral & the legal “Right of Return” to their homes & hearths. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_194 ).

Obama then shamelessly went through his AIPAC report card & said that his administration have gone to all lengths to defend Israel within the international arena. He proudly stated as to why he boycotted the Durban Conference against racism, then as to how he vetoed both the Goldstone Report (that dealt with the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza) & also how he recently vetoed the UN resolution on the Settlements & said that “Israel’s legitimacy is not up for debate”. Here Obama seems blissfully unaware & oblivious of the increasing levels of the pariah status that Israel is viewed upon by the overwhelming nations of the world.

Not once while he tried to speak eloquently about the Two-States living side-by-side, did he mention the core issue of Jerusalem, not once. Nor did he mention the issue of the Refugees, or the fact that the monstrous Aparthied Wall should be demolished, or that the 550 Check-points should be dismantled, or that the control of the water resources should not be used as an instrument of coersion, or that the Olive trees should not be uprooted & farms destroyed, or that the assassination & torture should end. That due to Obama’s own record in Guantanamo & Abu Gharaib, as well as the daily murder of civilans by the killer drones, we well understand.

He ended with two ominous warnings.

The first was that he rejected the participation of Hamas in the dialogue process & called upon Fatah to end the unity with Hamas. Here Obama is basically again trying to drive a wedge between the unity arrived at, so as to weaken the resistance movement, as well as the unity of the masses at the grass-roots & we have seen the disastrous consequences of that since 2007.

He never once mentioned that Hamas is willing to negotiate a 10 year truce in an offer by Khalid Mishal to Jimmy Carter in a meeting in Damascus. The political leader of Hamas made the offer along the same principles of the “1967 borders” & the “Right of Return”. Thus every peaceful overture by the Hamas leadership has been rejected by the Israeli junta. ( http://www.haaretz.com/news/meshal-offers-10-year-truce-for-palestinian-state-on-67-borders-1.244339 ).

The second was when he stated that “No vote at the UN will create an Independent Palestinian state”, which is scheduled for September. Here he once again reiterated Netanyahu’s position by stating that “only direct negotiations” can achive the same.

President Mahmud Abbas is confident that “We have more than 130 nations set to recognize the Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and even if we make no further efforts, that number could be increased to 140 or 150” ( http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/abbas-britain-and-france-would-recognize-palestinian-state-1.356814 ). Both Obama & Netanyahu have clearly threatened President Mahmud Abbas with dire consequences, from following this path to the UN. It is utterly futile to belive that the US is an honest broker.

It is utterly futile to believe that independence can be won by only negotiations. And it is good that the chimera of Obama stands shattered for ever.

But the Arab Revolution presents new possibilities & the epic 94 year old struggle of the Palestinian people, a proud & ancient nation, which has inspired the world for generations, will finally see a new awakening & with it, a new hope, a new Intifada, the Third Intifada!!

It is only the resistance on the ground, within Palestine, across the Palestine diaspora, across the Arab nations & then across the entire world, will we finally witness the rebirth of a nation.

The people across the world are on the march. The millions at the Tahrir Square have inspired humanity to march again. And the teeming millions of Palestinians are on their way to the borders of the Holy Land & we will be marching with them, shoulder to shoulder, holding their hands as we walk to Jerusalem.  Freedom is nigh.

Feroze Mithiborwala is a peace activist in Mumbai. He led the Asia to Gaza peace flotilla.

 

Spain Spins By Farooque Chowdhury

 

23 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

The slogans and the signs say the Spain-reality:

“ Liberty , Equality and Corruption. Do we know who our politicians are working for? It’s called democracy and it’s not it!”

“Real Democracy Now”

“We have the right to dream, and for it to become true”

“Be Indignant”

“For A True Democracy”

“No Corrupt Politicians, Businessmen, Bankers”

“Take the Streets”

“Less Policing, More Education”

“They Call It Democracy, But It Isn’t”

Slogans cited above reveal a reality, a reality of indignation and aspiration, and this has put neoliberalism on the dock in Spain . This is a reality neoliberalism is facing in countries. In Spain , the neoliberalism is being implemented under the stewardship of the socialists.

Tens of thousands of protesters, young, old, pensioners, university students, civil servants, immigrants, campaigners for local languages, filled the main squares of about 50 cities including Madrid , Barcelona , Seville , Bilbao , Zaragoza , Valencia for about a week. They are los indignados , the indignant.

Protesters rallied against the country’s economic crisis, against its superhigh jobless rate. In a wave of outrage over economic stagnation and government austerity marking a shift after years of patience they took to the streets. They protested against politicians, bankers and authorities’ handling of the economic crisis. They defied a ban, the Supreme Court upheld, on political protests, but police was not active to enforce it. The apparent inaction was a political move by the authority. The government feared that an enforcement of the ban order could provoke clashes that in turn could hurt the Socialists. The protest took a political character.

The week-long protest “marks a shift in Spain where up to now people have scarcely protested.” This is the strongest outburst of spontaneous protests since Spain plunged into recession that followed the collapse of the 2008 property bubble. The protesters, known as M-15 as the protests began on May 15, lamented the economic crisis Spain is experiencing. They protested against the indifference of mainstream politicians, who ran Sunday’s elections in 13 of the 17 regions and its more than 8,000 municipalities. The ruling Socialist Party is going to digest a big loss in the elections, a political price for following neoliberalism.

The protesters expressed determination to stand against the crisis wrought by capital creating bubbles with illusions. They expressed solidarity by raising arms in an assembly even after midnight in the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid . A protester put a sticker on his boot denouncing the existing democracy. The youth hang banner with the sign “Indignant” on the top of a building in Madrid . They painted caricatures of the main political figures. More caricature is in the wings.

These tell the strong sentiment of the citizens against job insecurity and government spending cuts. Their demands include jobs, better living standards, a fairer system of democracy and changes to the austerity plans. Actually, the demand is for state’s enhanced role and responsibility in providing education, health and employment. The educated unemployed are demanding their rightful role in society and production. They are also, according to the BBC, calling for an end to domination of the political system by the two main parties. The demonstrations turned political.

A news agency report said: “ With tents, mattresses, a kitchen, a workshop and even a pharmacy, a protest camp in Madrid has grown into a real ‘urban village’ for thousands of young people. Under blue plastic tarpaulins, demonstrators have gathered in the landmark Puerta del Sol square in the centre of the Spanish capital. Many of them have spent several days and nights there, to decry politicians who left Spain with a 21.3% unemployment rate.” There were tents with food, tents for political debates, even a tent for childcare. These were not Don Quixotic exercises.

The Spanish unemployment rate, highest in the eurozone, was in the highest level in the first quarter of the year in fourteen years. A government estimate said on April 21, 2011 that about five million persons were out of work. It is unprecedented. A gift of neoliberalism! The youth unemployment rate is 40%. Some sources cite it as 45%. In areas, it has jumped to 50%. The youth are angry; they are qualified, but there is no work. In terms of employment, it is a Tunisia-situation.

Spaniards’ demonstrations crossed borders. News agency reports said: Expatriate Spaniards organized demonstration in London on May 18, 2011. The movement was coordinated through social media and Twitter. Now, it seems clear that it is not only foreign powers that use social media to foment discontent in countries they like to intervene. Protesting people also use it.

Prior to the present demonstration, on April 17, demonstrators made a human barricade in front of police. Their t-shirts bore the sign: “We still got no home”. Their posters said: “no house, no job, no pension”. At that time there were flats for sale in Madrid . But that is beyond the reach of the unemployed. The demonstration was followed by clash with police, injury and arrest of demonstrators.

In the movement, there is no flag or affiliation to any party. The protest, as it appears from the demands and slogans, are also against the unfair political situation that Spain ‘s ruling class has built up and nourishes. The demonstrators were “asking for a change in the political system.” Some of the protestors wrote to BBC: “We have no option but to vote for the two biggest parties in Spain , who are more or less the same. They are unable to solve any problem, it is just a nest of corruption. We are tired. In short, we want a working democracy. We want a change.” They view the political system that exists as unfair. So, they protest “against the political situation that allows more than 100 people who are accused of corruption across the country to stand in the next elections.” The electoral law in Spain has also turned controversial. It is alleged that the vote computing system benefits the big political parties while leaves the smaller ones without any possibility of achieving any success.

A number of protesters consider their movement as “anti-big political parties, both the one in power and the main ones in opposition. It’s an anti-capitalism, anti-market ruled society, anti-banks, anti-political corruption, anti-failed democracy, anti-degraded democracy and pro-real democracy protest.” “The economy and unemployment are key to the protest because that binds all of us together,” said Jon Aguirre Such, a spokesman for the Real Democracy Now, which is one of the organizers of the movement.

The movement took serious political character as the demonstrating youth called on people not to vote on Sunday for the two main parties, the Socialists and the centre-right opposition Popular Party. The rich-poor question has also been raised.

Spain has “built more homes than England , France and Germany combined, of which too many now stand empty. Much of the financing for these superfluous homes was done through still seemingly healthy large Spanish banks like Santander and BBVA. … Santander is connected to the entire global financial system.”

The Spanish movement will not announce neoliberalism’s last journey and will not herald emergence of a new politics. But it will widen and deepen political lessons, help emergence of new politics.

Farooque Chowdhury, a freelancer from Dhaka , Bangladesh , contributes on sociopolitical issues. One of his edited books is The Age of Crisis .

 

The Obama-Netanyahu Perfidy And The Third Palestinian Intifada

 

Obama’s call for the exclusion of Hamas from the talks is unacceptable and he is clearly following Netanyahu’s diktat’s. And he also refers to Hamas as a terrorist organization, once again toeing the parameters as set by Tel Aviv.

And pray tell, which Israel is the Hamas supposed to recognise is the simple question they are asking. Do we have a map of the state of Israel? None till date. Israel has not submitted a map to the UN till date. So will it be the Israel that was founded by the UN on the basis of Res 181 that gave 56% of the most fertile parts of Palestine to 30% of the migrant European Jewish population? Will it be the Israel prior to 1967, or on the borders of 1967 or with the Apartheid Wall & Settlements? Which Israel? No answers here.

Obama has also called for a “demilitarized state” to guarantee Israel’s “security”. And with the dubious record, who will guarantee a rogue Israel from running amok & invading an undefended Palestine, is something that does not bother Mr. Smart Speechmaker Obama.

There had been no progress when Fatah had taken the same position of isolating Hamas. The very fact that George Mitchell (Obama’s ME negotiator) resigned just prior to this new phase of Obama’s supposed initiative is telling sign, for the discerning.

The Settlements carried on & even the worst set of PA compromises were refused by Netnayahu as was evident from the Palestine Papers. Obama’s position on opposing the UN recognition of an Independent Palestine state (on the ’67 borders, as per UN resolutions & International Law) in September, is another example of his perfidy.

Netanyahu’s non-offer is the following. The facts have changed, the demographics have changed since 1967, so forget that option. Jerusalem will remain as the eternal capital. The Settlements will be part of the larger Israeli state. Israeli troops will continue to occupy the Jordan-West Bank border within the so-called state of bantustan Palestine. As for the Right of Return of the Refugees & UN Resolution 194, he just says, forget it. That is never going to happen

Basically we are now into the 2012 election mode & the US political system is at its weakest & most vulnerable state of affairs, as both parties queue up for election funds with their begging bowls.

And after the mid-term election of 2010, where Obama was taken apart, he has already struck a deal with the all-powerful & pervasive Zionist Power Configuration, of which the AIPAC is the most powerful lobby in the world. Obama’s is one of the weakest US presidents ever & despite his recent Rambo act, he fools nobody.

As for the Palestinian resistance, the unity agreements between the Fatah-Hamas has given a big boost to the morale of the masses within Palestine & all across the world.

The only way ahead is the Third Intifada. The only path by which any nation has achieved independence has been resistance. The negotiations with the Zionist Occupier have to be in coordination with the resistance on the ground. That is the only way & succeed we will. It’s only a matter of time before Palestine is free, before Jerusalem is free.


21 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org