Archives: Articles

Cambridge, United Kingdom – Modern macroeconomics often seems to treat rapid and stable economic growth as the be-all and end-all of policy. That message is echoed in political debates, central-bank boardrooms and front-page headlines. But does it really make sense to take growth as the main social objective in perpetuity, as economics textbooks implicitly assume?

Certainly, many critiques of standard economic statistics have argued for broader measures of national welfare, such as life expectancy at birth, literacy, etc. Such appraisals include the United Nations Human Development Report, and, more recently, the French-sponsored Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, led by the economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi.

But there might be a problem even deeper than statistical narrowness: the failure of modern growth theory to emphasise adequately that people are fundamentally social creatures. They evaluate their welfare based on what they see around them, not just on some absolute standard.

The economist Richard Easterlin famously observed that surveys of “happiness” show surprisingly little evolution in the decades after World War II, despite significant trend income growth. Needless to say, Easterlin’s result seems less plausible for very poor countries, where rapidly rising incomes often allow societies to enjoy large life improvements, which presumably strongly correlate with any reasonable measure of overall well-being.

In advanced economies, however, benchmarking behaviour is almost surely an important factor in how people assess their own well-being. If so, generalised income growth might well raise such assessments at a much slower pace than one might expect from looking at how a rise in an individual’s income relative to others affects their welfare.

And, on a related note, benchmarking behaviour may well imply a different calculus of the tradeoffs between growth and other economic challenges, such as environmental degradation, than conventional growth models suggest.

To be fair, a small but significant literature recognises that individuals draw heavily on historical or social benchmarks in their economic choices and thinking. Unfortunately, these models tend to be difficult to manipulate, estimate or interpret. As a result, they tend to be employed mainly in very specialised contexts, such as efforts to explain the so-called “equity premium puzzle” (the empirical observation that over long periods, equities yield a higher return than bonds).

Growth vs sustainability

There is a certain absurdity to the obsession with maximising long-term average income growth in perpetuity, to the neglect of other risks and considerations. Consider a simple thought experiment. Imagine that per capita national income (or some broader measure of welfare) is set to rise by one per cent per year over the next couple of centuries. This is roughly the trend per capita growth rate in the advanced world in recent years. With annual income growth of one per cent, a generation born 70 years from now will enjoy roughly double today’s average income. Over two centuries, income will grow eight-fold.

Now suppose that we lived in a much faster-growing economy, with per capita income rising at two per cent annually. In that case, per capita income would double after only 35 years, and an eight-fold increase would take only a century.

Finally, ask yourself how much you really care if it takes 100, 200 or even 1,000 years for welfare to increase eight-fold. Wouldn’t it make more sense to worry about the long-term sustainability and durability of global growth? Wouldn’t it make more sense to worry whether conflict or global warming might produce a catastrophe that derails society for centuries or more?

Even if one thinks narrowly about one’s own descendants, presumably one hopes that they will be thriving in, and making a positive contribution to, their future society. Assuming that they are significantly better off than one’s own generation, how important is their absolute level of income?

Perhaps a deeper rationale underlying the growth imperative in many countries stems from concerns about national prestige and national security. In his influential book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1989), the historian Paul Kennedy concluded that, over the long run, a country’s wealth and productive power, relative to that of its contemporaries, is the essential determinant of its global status.

Kennedy focused particularly on military power, but, in today’s world, successful economies enjoy status along many dimensions, and policymakers everywhere are legitimately concerned about national economic ranking. An economic race for global power is certainly an understandable rationale for focusing on long-term growth, but if such competition is really a central justification for this focus, then we need to re-examine standard macroeconomic models, which ignore this issue entirely.

Of course, in the real world, countries rightly consider long-term growth to be integral to their national security and global status. Highly indebted countries, a group that nowadays includes most of the advanced economies, need growth to help them to dig themselves out. But, as a long-term proposition, the case for focusing on trend growth is not as encompassing as many policymakers and economic theorists would have one believe.

In a period of great economic uncertainty, it may seem inappropriate to question the growth imperative. But, then again, perhaps a crisis is exactly the occasion to rethink the longer-term goals of global economic policy.

By Kenneth Rogoff

8 January 2012

@ Al Jazeera

Kenneth Rogoff is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and was formerly chief economist at the IMF.

A version of this article was first published on Project Syndicate.

REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL: The fruit which did not fall

(Taken from CubaDebate)

CUBA was forced to fight for its existence facing an expansionist power, located a few miles from its coast, and which was proclaiming the annexation of our island, which was destined to fall into its lap like a ripe fruit. We were condemned not to exist as a nation.

Within the glorious legions of patriots who, during the second half of the 19th century, fought against the abhorrent colonial status imposed by Spain over 300 years, José Martí was the man who most clearly perceived such a dramatic destiny. He confirmed it in the last lines that he wrote, the night before the anticipated difficult combat against a battle-hardened and well equipped Spanish column, when he declared that the fundamental objective of his struggle was, “…to prevent the United States from spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and from overpowering with that additional strength our lands of America. Everything that I have done up until now, and everything that I will do, is to this end.”

Without understanding this profound truth one cannot today be either a patriot or a revolutionary.

Without any doubt, the mass media, the monopoly of many technical resources and the substantial funds directed at dehumanizing the masses constitute considerable but not invincible obstacles.

Cuba demonstrated – starting from its position as a colonial yankee trading post, together with the illiteracy and generalized poverty of its people – that it was possible to confront the country which was threatening the definitive absorption of the Cuban nation. Nobody can even affirm that there was a national bourgeoisie opposed to the empire; the bourgeoisie developed in such close proximity to it that, shortly after the triumph, it sent 14,000 totally unprotected children to the United States, although that act was associated with the perfidious lie that parental custody was to be suppressed. This is what history recorded as Operation Peter Pan, described as the largest maneuver of child manipulation for political ends recalled in the Western Hemisphere.

National territory was invaded, barely two years after the revolutionary triumph, by mercenary forces – comprising former Batista soldiers and the sons of landowners and the bourgeoisie – armed and escorted by the United States with warships from its naval fleet, including aircraft carriers with equipment ready to enter into action, and which accompanied the invaders to our island. The defeat and capture of virtually all the mercenaries in less than 72 hours and the destruction of their aircraft operating from bases in Nicaragua and their naval transportation, constituted a humiliating defeat for the empire and its Latin America allies, which had underestimated the Cuban people’s fighting capacity.

In the face of the termination of oil supplies on the part of the United States, the subsequent total suspension of the historic sugar quota in that country’s market, and the prohibition of trade established over more than 100 years, the USSR responded to each one of these measures by supplying fuel, buying our sugar, trading with our country and finally, supplying the weapons that Cuba could not acquire in other markets.

The idea of a systematic campaign of CIA-organized pirate attacks, sabotage and military actions by armed bands created and supplied by the United States before and after the mercenary attack, and which would culminate in a military invasion of Cuba by this country, gave rise to events which placed the world on the brink of a total nuclear war, which neither of the parties involved nor humanity itself could have survived.

Without any doubt, those events resulted in the removal from the presidency of Nikita Khrushchev, who underestimated his adversary, disregarded opinions presented to him and did not consult with those of us in the front line concerning his final decision. What could have been an important moral victory thus turned into a costly political setback for the USSR. For many years the worst of crimes against Cuba continued and more than a few of them, like the U.S. criminal blockade, are still being committed.

Khrushchev made exceptional gestures to our country. On that occasion, I unhesitatingly criticized the non-consulted agreement with the United States, but it would be ungrateful and unjust not to acknowledge his exceptional solidarity at difficult and decisive moments for our people in their historic battle for independence and revolution in the face of the powerful empire of the United States. I understand that the situation was extremely tense and he did not wish to lose any time when he made the decision to withdraw the missiles and the yankees, very secretly, agreed to give up the invasion.

Despite the decades gone by, already half a century, the Cuban fruit has not fallen into yankee hands.

News reports currently coming in from Spain, France, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, the United Kingdom, the Malvinas and countless other points on the planet are serious, and all of them augur a political and economic disaster as a result of the stupidity of the United States and its allies.

I will confine myself to a few subjects. I must note that, going by what everyone is saying, that the selection of a Republican candidate to aspire to the presidency of this globalized and far-reaching empire is, in its turn – I am serious – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that I have ever heard. As I have things to do, I cannot devote any time to the subject. I already knew it would be like that.

Some news agency cables better illustrate what I wish to analyze, because they demonstrate the incredible cynicism generated by the decadence of the West. One of them, with amazing tranquility, talks of a Cuban political prisoner who, it states, died after a hunger strike lasting 50 days. A journalist with Granma, Juventud Rebelde, radio news or any other revolutionary organ might be mistaken in any interpretation of any subject, but would never fabricate an item of news or invent a lie.

A Granma informative note affirms that there was no hunger strike; the man was an ordinary prisoner sentenced to four years for attacking and injuring his wife in the face; that his own mother in law asked authorities to intervene; family members were kept fully abreast of all procedures used in his medical treatment and were grateful for the effort made by medical specialists who treated him. He received medical attention, as the note states, in the best hospital in the eastern region, as is the case with all citizens. He died from secondary multi-organic failure related to a severe respiratory infection.

The patient had received all the medical attention administered in a country which has one of the finest medical services in the world, provided free of charge in spite of the blockade imposed on our homeland by imperialism. It is simply a duty that is fulfilled in a country where the Revolution is proud of always having respected, for more than 50 years, the principles which give it its invincible strength.

It would be more worthwhile for the Spanish government, given its excellent relations with Washington, to travel to the United States and inform itself as to what is taking place in yankee jails, the ruthless conduct meted out to millions of prisoners, the policy of the electric chair and the horrors perpetrated on detainees in the country’s jails and those who are protesting in its streets.

Yesterday, January 23, a strong Granma editorial titled “Cuba’s truths,” which occupied an entire page of the newspaper, explained in detail the unprecedented shame of the campaign of lies unleashed against our Revolution by certain governments “traditionally committed to anti-Cuba subversion.”

Our people are well aware of the norms which have governed the impeccable conduct of our Revolution since the first battle and which has never been stained over more than half a century. They also know that it can never be pressured or coerced by enemies. Our laws and norms will be respected unfailingly.

It is worth noting this with clarity and frankness. The Spanish government and the shaky European Union, plunged into a profound economic crisis, must know what should guide them. It is pitiful to read news agency reports of the statements of both utilizing their barefaced lies to attack Cuba. First concern yourselves with saving the euro if you can, resolve the chronic unemployment from which young people are increasingly suffering, and respond to the indignados, constantly attacked and beaten by the police.

We are not ignorant of the fact that Spain is now being governed by admirers of Franco, who dispatched members of the Blue Division, together with the Nazi SS and SA, to kill Soviets. Close to 50,000 of them participated in the cruel aggression. In the most cruel and painful operation of that war: the siege of Leningrad, where one million Russian citizens died, the Blue Division was among the forces attempting to strangle the heroic city. The Russian people will never pardon that horrific crime.

The fascist right of Aznar, Rajoy and other servants of the empire, must know something about the 16,000 casualties of their predecessors in the Blue Division and the Iron Crosses which Hitler awarded to officers and soldiers from that division. There is nothing unusual about what the Gestapo police are doing now to the men and women demanding the right to work and bread in the country with the highest unemployment in Europe.

Why are the mass media of the empire lying so barefacedly?

Those who manipulate the media are striving to deceive and dehumanize the world with their crude lies, possibly thinking that it constitutes the principal resource for maintaining the global system of domination and plunder imposed, particularly upon victims in close proximity to the headquarters of the metropolis, the close to 600 million Latin American and Caribbean people living in this hemisphere.

The sister republic of Venezuela has become the fundamental objective of this policy. The reason is obvious. Without Venezuela, the empire would have imposed its Free Trade Treaty on all the peoples of the continent who inhabit it from the south of the United States, a region where the greatest reserves of land, fresh water and minerals of the planet are to be found, as well as large energy resources which, administered in a spirit of solidarity toward other peoples of the world, constitute resources which cannot and must not fall into the hands of transnationals imposing a suicidal and infamous system on them.

For example, it is enough to look at the map to comprehend the criminal dispossession signified by stripping Argentina of a little piece of its territory in the extreme south of the continent. There, the British deployed their decadent military apparatus to murder rookie Argentine recruits wearing summer clothing in the middle of winter. The United States, and its ally Augusto Pinochet, shamelessly supported them. Now, just before the London Olympics, its Prime Minister David Cameron is also proclaiming, as did Margaret Thatcher, his right to use nuclear submarines to kill Argentines. The government of this country is unaware of the fact that the world is changing, and the scorn of our hemisphere and that of the majority of the peoples for the oppressors is increasing every day.

The case of the Malvinas is not the only one. Does anyone know how the conflict in Afghanistan is going to end? Just a few days ago U.S. soldiers desecrated the corpses of Afghani combatants, killed by NATO drone bombings.

Three days ago a European agency reported, “Afghani President Hamid Karzai has given his backing to a negotiated peace with the Taliban, emphasizing that this issue must be resolved by the citizens of his country.” It went on to add, “…the process of peace and reconciliation belongs to the Afghani nation and no country or foreign organization can take away this right from the Afghanis.

For its part, a cable published by our press communicated from Paris, “France today suspended all its training and aid operations in Afghanistan and threatened to expedite the withdrawal of its troops, after an Afghani soldier shot four French soldiers in the Taghab valley, in Kapisa province… Sarkozy instructed Defense Minister Gérard Longuet to travel immediately to Kabul, and indicated the possibility of an early withdrawal of the contingent.”

After the disappearance of the USSR and the socialist bloc, the U.S. government imagined that Cuba would be unable to sustain itself. George W. Bush had already prepared a counterrevolutionary government to govern our country. On the very same day that Bush initiated his criminal war on Iraq, I asked our country’s authorities to end the tolerance afforded the counterrevolutionary capos who, in those days, were hysterically demanding the invasion of Cuba. In real terms, their attitude constituted an act of treason against the homeland.

Bush and his stupidities prevailed for eight years and the Cuban Revolution has already lasted for more than half a century. The ripe fruit has not fallen into the empire’s lap. Cuba will not be one more possession with which the empire spreads through the lands of America. Martí’s blood will not have been spilled in vain.

Tomorrow I will publish another Reflection to complement this one.

Fidel Castro Ruz

January 24, 2012

7:12 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

 

 

WORLD PEACE HANGING BY A THREAD

Yesterday I had the satisfaction of having a pleasant conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I had not seen him since 2006, more than five years ago, when he visited our country to participate in the 14th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement of Countries in Havana. During the summit, Cuba was elected for the second time as president of the organization for a three-year term.

I had become gravely ill on July 26, 2006, a month and a half prior to the summit, and could barely sit up in bed. Many of the most distinguished leaders who participated in the event were kind enough to visit me. Chavez and Evo visited me several times. One afternoon four visitors came by whom I will always remember: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; an old friend, Abdelaziz Buteflika, the president of Algeria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran; and the vice minister of Foreign Affairs and current Foreign Minister of China, Yang Jiechi, on behalf of the leader of the Communist Party and the president of China, Hu Jintao. It was really an important time for me; I was in the midst of intense physiotherapy on my right hand that I had seriously injured when I fell in Santa Clara.

With all four I spoke about some of the difficulties facing the world at the time; problems that have become progressively more complex.

During our meeting yesterday, I noted that the Iranian president was absolutely calm and tranquil, completely unconcerned about the Yankee threats and, fully confident in the capacity of his people to confront any aggression and in the effectiveness of their arms —which, in large part, they produce themselves— to inflict an unpayable price on its aggressors.

In reality, we hardly spoke about the topic of war. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was focused on the ideas he had presented at the Main Hall of the University of Havana during his conference on the struggle of humankind: “Moving towards reaching and achieving peace, security, respect and human dignity as a fundamental desire of all human beings throughout history.”

I am convinced that Iran will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a war. If a war were to be unleashed, it would inevitably be completely as a result of the recklessness and congenital irresponsibility of the Yankee Empire.

I believe that the political situation surrounding Iran and the associated risks of a nuclear war that involves us all —regardless of whether one possess nuclear weapons— are extremely delicate because they threaten the very existence of our species. The Middle East has become the most troubled region on the planet, the same region that produces the energy resources vital for the world’s economy.

The destructive power and the mass sufferings caused by some of the weapons used in World War Two led to a strong movement to ban weapons such as asphyxiating gas and others. Nevertheless, conflicting interests and the huge profits made by arms manufacturers led to the production of crueler and more destructive weapons; modern technology has now added the means and material to build weapons that if used in a world war would lead to extinction.

I support the opinion, undoubtedly shared by all those with a basic sense of responsibility, that no country big or small has the right to possess nuclear weapons.

They never should have been used to attack two defenseless cities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and irradiating with horrible and long-lasting effects hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, in a country that had already been militarily defeated.

If fascism indeed forced the allied nations against Nazism to compete with this enemy of humanity in the production of such weapons, once the war ended and the United Nations was created, the first duty of this organization should have been to prohibit nuclear weapons without exception.

However, the United States, the strongest and richest power, forced the rest of the world to follow its lead. Today, they have hundreds of satellites that spy and monitor the entire world from outer space. Their naval, air and land forces are equipped with thousands of nuclear weapons; and they control the world’s finances and investments at their whim via the International Monetary Fund.

Analyzing the history of each Latin American nation, from Mexico to Patagonia, by way of Santo Domingo and Haiti, one can observe that each and every country, without exception, have suffered for 200 years, from the beginning of the 19th century up until today. And, in one way or another, they are increasingly suffering the worst crimes that power and force can commit against the rights of a people. Brilliant Latin American writers are emerging in an increasing number. One of them, Eduardo Galeano, author of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent that describes the aforementioned, has just been invited to open the prestigious Casa de Las Americas Awards as a recognition to his outstanding body of work.

Events happen incredibly fast; but technologies report them to the public even faster. On any given day, like today, important news comes out a dizzying pace. A cable report dated from January 11 states: “The Danish presidency of the European Union confirmed on Wednesday that a new series of more severe European sanctions against Iran, because of its nuclear program, will be discussed on January 23. The new sanctions will not only target the oil industry but also the Central Bank.”

During a meeting with international journalists, Danish Foreign Minister Villy Soevndal said that “We will increase sanctions against the oil industry in addition to sanctions against financial structures.” This clearly demonstrates that, in order to impede nuclear proliferation, Israel can go on accumulating hundreds of nuclear warheads while Iran is not allowed to produce 20% enriched uranium.

Another article, from a respected British news agency, states that “China gave no hint on Wednesday of giving ground to U.S. demands to curb Iran’s oil revenues, rejecting Washington’s sanctions on Tehran as overstepping …”

The sheer tranquility with which the United States and civilized Europe carry out this campaign with incredible and systematic acts of terrorism is enough to shock anybody. Just look at these lines reported by another important European news agency: “The murder on Wednesday of Iranian nuclear specialist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan [a scientist at the Natanz nuclear plant] was the fourth attack to kill a leading scientist in the country in almost exactly two years.”

On January 12, 2010: “Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at Tehran University is killed when a booby-trapped motorcycle explodes outside his home in the capital. “

On November 29, 2010: “Two attacks target leading Iranian nuclear scientists on the same day. Majid Shahriari, a key member of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, is killed in Tehran by a limpet bomb attached to his car. His colleague Fereydoon Abbasi Davani is also targeted by a bomb attached to his car, but escapes.” The car was parked in front of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran where both men worked as professors.

On July 23, 2011: “Gunmen shoot dead Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, a senior scientist who is reportedly associated with the defense ministry, and wound his wife as they waited for their child outside a Tehran kindergarten.”

On January 11, 2012 —the same day that Ahmadinejad travelled from Nicaragua to Cuba to give a conference at the University of Havana—, scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, “a deputy director at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, is killed in a car bomb blast outside the [Allameh Tabatabai] University in east Tehran.” As in previous years “Iran once again accused the United States and Israel.”

The killings represent a systematic and selective slaughter of brilliant Iranian scientists. I have read articles by known Israeli sympathizers who write about crimes carried out by Israeli intelligence services in cooperation with the United States and NATO as if they were the most normal occurrence.

At the same time, Moscow news agencies report that “Russia warned that in Syria a similar scenario is developing as to that in Libya, and added that this time the attack will be launched from neighboring Turkey.

“The secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, said the West wants to ‘punish Damascus not as much for repressing the opposition, but because it is unwilling to sever ties with Tehran.’”

“…NATO members and some Persian Gulf states, operating according to the Libya scenario, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syrian affairs to direct military intervention…This time the main strikes forces will not be provided by France, the U.K. or Italy, but possibly by neighboring Turkey.”

“Washington and Ankara are now assumed to be negotiating a “no-fly” zone over Syria, where Syrian armed insurgents can be trained and concentrated, added Patrushev.”

News is not only coming out of Iran and the Middle East, but also from other parts of Central Asia near the Middle East. These reports show the great complexity of the problems that can arise from this dangerous region.

The United States has been led by its contradictory and absurd imperial policy to get involved in serious problems in countries such as Pakistan, whose borders with Afghanistan were drawn up by the colonialists without taking into account culture or ethnicities.

In Afghanistan, which defended its independence against English colonialism for centuries, drug production has multiplied in the wake of the Yankee invasion. Meanwhile, European soldiers, supported by drone airplanes and armed with sophisticated US weapons, carry out deplorable massacres that increase the people’s hatred and ward off any possibilities of peace. All this and other dirty actions are also reported by Western news agencies.

“WASHINGTON, January 12, 2012 – US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called the actions of four U.S. marines who urinated on corpses in Afghanistan “utterly deplorable” The video of the act was circulated in the Internet.

“’I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable…’

“’This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards of values our armed forces are sworn to uphold…’”

In reality, Panetta neither confirms nor denies the action, and anyone, including the Secretary of Defense himself, may harbor doubt.

But it is also extremely inhumane that men, women and children, or an Afghani combatant fighting against the foreign occupation, be murdered by bombs dropped by drone planes. Another very serious incident: dozens of Pakistani soldiers and officials who safeguarded the country’s borders have been killed by these bombs.

Afghani President Karzai stated that the outrage committed against the bodies was “simply inhumane.” He asked for the US government “to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

Meanwhile Taliban spokespersons declared that “over the last ten years, hundreds of similar acts have been carried out that were not reported…”

One even feels sorry for those soldiers, thousands of kilometers away from their family, friends and country, sent to fight in countries that they might not have even heard of during their school days, where they are assigned the task of killing or dying to enrich transnational companies, arms manufacturers and unscrupulous politicians who each year squander funds needed to feed and educate the uncountable millions of hungry and illiterate people around the world.

Many of these soldiers, victims of the trauma suffered, end up taking their own lives.

Is it an exaggeration to say that world peace is hanging by a thread?

Fidel Castro Ruz

January 12, 2012

9:14 p.m.

 

After months of intense and feverish coverage of Syria, it is high time that we ask: how bad has the coverage been? How much have we been served as readers by the coverage? To what extent has the Arab (Saudi and Qatari) media converged with Western media? And why do Western media toss out all token adherence to minimum standards of professional journalism when the coverage targets an enemy of the US (and Israel)? I keep waiting for an article in the Columbia Journalism Review to no avail.

Thus far, Western media has been playing games in its coverage about Syria. For the first few months, Western media insisted (against claims to the contrary by the repressive regime) that the Syrian uprising was peaceful: that is, it was part of the touted “Arab spring.”

Western media insisted that all claims about armed elements of the opposition were mere fabrications by the regime. Yet, when an opposition “army” was announced, and when news of armed clashes in Homs and other places appeared, there were no explanations in the Western press. There was no attempt to reconcile the claims and the later reportage.

But what is also curious is that Western media was desperate to deliver propaganda services to the cause of the Syrian National Council (there is opposition in Syria beyond the council, of course). Western media have been mere cheerleaders for the Syrian National Council. (This criticisms also applies to the news media of the Saudi and Qatari ruling dynasties). Every demonstration is massive, and every strike is successful, and every Friday has topped the previous Friday in the size of protesters. But how true is that? Has there been a demonstration that was not massive? Has there been one Friday that has not been successful?

Of course, in Arab media it is even worse: demonstrations are declared a success even before they take place. Thus, Aljazeera and Al Arabiya declare a demonstration massive the day before it starts. Not once, have the media stated that a particular demonstration was not massive, or that protests this week were less intense than last week, when protests—naturally—go through ups and downs.

Furthermore, Western media rarely covers demonstrations in support of the regime: and those protests have often been rather massive. Western media felt that it would be useful to the regime to admit the obvious: that the regime has some bases of support.

Western media’s propaganda (not coverage) has been so useless from the information point of view that there was no explanation provided for the resilience that has characterized the regime thus far. How does one explain that there has been not one diplomatic defection and no major government defection (notwithstanding the defection of an inspector general in an accounting department of the Syrian government.)

Why is it difficult for the media to even inform the readers of what is happening? Why are they insisting that the token Christian representative in the executive body of the Syrian National Council is a true representative of all Syrian Christians. Why do they view their mission as primarily political and propagandistic?

Of course, one does not expect the truth from the Syrian regime media. But, would one expect any better from the Saudi and Qatari regime media? Are we now to trust the propaganda outlets of the ruling dynasties of Qatar and Saudi Arabia? Have the rules changed and are we to follow the thrust of Saudi media that only Arab republics are undemocratic and that the Gulf kingdoms, princedoms, sheikhdoms, and sultanates are an oasis of freedom?

There are attempts at telling the truth. In Arabic, New TV of Lebanon tries to cover both sides and has snuck its correspondent into Syria. New TV has been criticized by both sides in Syria. In the US, Anthony Shadid and Nir Rosen have tried to cover aspects of the uprisings that are not covered in the mainstream press. The coverage is largely lazy: the unverified claims and wild exaggerations of the pro-Saudi Syrian Observatory for Human Rights basically fill in the space in all Western articles on Syria.

The regime has stayed in power thus far, at great cost to the Syrian people. But the story about Syria is not being told. We don’t have an explanation. People are afraid of defying the will of Syrian National Council and its propaganda message. But the readers are not being served. It is understandable that the Syrian regime and the Qatari-run Syrian National Council are lying. But it is less so that the media partake in the lying charade.

By As’ad AbuKhalil

10 January 2012

@ Al Akhbar English

 

An Israeli defence consultancy is assisting with dirty work in Colombia previously monopolised by the United States.

Much fuss has been made in recent years in neoconservative circles in the US and among Israeli foreign ministry officials, regarding the danger to global security posed by an alleged Islamist infiltration of Latin America.

A pet factoid wielded by self-appointed experts on the matter is that it is currently possible to travel by air from Caracas to Tehran with only one stop in Damascus. Lest policymakers and the general public fail to respond with adequate alarm to such news, the severity of the threat is underscored via invented links between Muslims in Latin America and every potentially unfavourable regional trend, resulting in a spectre of Islamo-narco-socialist crime cartels menacing the southern border of the US.

In a WikiLeaks cable from the US embassy in Bogota dated December 1, 2009, a rather unexpected entity joined the usual lineup of Latin America-based threats. The cable discusses the manoeuvres in Colombia of the Israeli firm Global Comprehensive Security Transformation (Global CST), founded by Major General (Res) Israel Ziv – former head of the Operations Directorate of the Israeli military – and contracted to aid in the fight against both criminal organisations and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as to evaluate potential perils emanating from Ecuador and Venezuela:

“Over a three year period, Ziv worked his way into the confidence of former [Colombian] Defense Minister [Juan Manuel] Santos by promising a cheaper version of USG [US government] assistance without our strings attached. We and the GOC [government of Colombia] learned that Global CST had no Latin American experience and that its proposals seem designed more to support Israeli equipment and services sales than to meet in-country needs”.

It is not clear why the US government should express surprise at the apparent failure to address “in-country needs” when its own Latin American experience includes the multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia, inaugurated more than a decade ago ostensibly as a means of curbing drug production and trafficking. In 2009, I spoke with farmers in the southern department of Putumayo who outlined in-country effects of the plan, such as repeated airborne fumigation of their subsistence crops, livestock, water supplies and children.

A substantial portion of Plan Colombia funds went to US-based private security contractors. Today, 97 per cent of cocaine that reaches the US reportedly hails from said country.

As for the strings that are allegedly attached to official US assistance, Amnesty International has objected to the fact that “the State Department continues to certify military aid to Colombia, even after reviewing the country’s human rights record” – which happens to hold the distinction of being the worst in the hemisphere.

Global CST’s experience

Ziv’s contention regarding the international relevance of his background in the Israeli military – “We felt that our experience could contribute tremendously to the world security and the world peace [sic]” – is, meanwhile, challenged by the following passage from the Bogota cable:

 

“In February 2008, [Colombian National Police] sources reported that a Global CST interpreter, Argentine-born Israeli national Shai Killman, had made copies of classified Colombian Defense Ministry documents in an unsuccessful attempt to sell them to the [FARC] through contacts in Ecuador and Argentina. The documents allegedly contained high value target (HVT) database information. Ziv denied this attempt and sent Killman back to Israel”.

Colombia’s new scheme to reach reconciliation

Ziv’s denial becomes less compelling in light of the fact that Global CST has lent its services to both the armed forces of the nation of Georgia as well as to Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia. The firm’s peaceable aims are furthermore called into question by the arms and training it reportedly provided to the Guinean military junta responsible for massacring pro-democracy protesters in Conakry in 2009.

Present on the board of Global CST is former Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh, whose recent efforts on behalf of peace have included defending the mass slaughter of Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead because Hamas had failed to “bring… investors to Gaza”. The former minister did not explain how investors were expected to navigate an Israeli military blockade when smaller items such as pasta and pencils were not permitted passage.

‘The Israelites of Latin America’

The encroachment of Global CST into the imperial realm of the US government was facilitated by Juan Manuel Santos, current president of Colombia, who has explained that the firm was recommended to him during his term as defence minister by his friend, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami.

In a promotional video for Global CST, Santos characterises the company as follows: “They are people with a lot of experience; they have been helping us to work better. It’s like the person who is in the gym, and when you go and you do the exercise he tells you how to do it better.”

More effusive praise is offered on behalf of the athletic trainers in a video for an Israeli television programme – in which Santos announces: “We’ve even been accused of being the Israelites [sic] of Latin America, which personally makes me feel really proud.”

This pronouncement occurs shortly after the programme’s narrator has described Colombia’s 2008 raid into Ecuador and assassination of FARC second-in-command Raul Reyes. The narrator’s Hebrew assessment of the operation is transcribed with English subtitles: “All of a sudden, the methods that proved efficient in Nablus and Hebron begin speaking Spanish.”

In addition to a shared pride in illegal extraterritorial targeted killings, there are other reasons Colombia might qualify as the Israel of Latin America. For starters, the late Carlos Castano Gil – father of modern Colombian paramilitarism – acknowledged copying the paramilitary concept from the Israelis during a training excursion to Israel in the 1980s.

In matters requiring the displacement of human beings from land, the Zionist example is undoubtedly invaluable, though the Colombians unfortunately lack the option of citing Biblical endorsement of territorial claims. In both locales, the liberal application of the term “terrorist” provides convenient justification for the elimination of excess sectors of the populace, be they Palestinians in refugee camps or Colombian peasants whose existence infringes on the designs of international corporations vis-a-vis area resources.

That the death and destruction wrought by the Jewish state and the paragon of military-paramilitary collusion that is the state of Colombia quantitatively and qualitatively outweighs that wrought by their respective nemeses has meanwhile not jeopardised their positions as top recipients of US military aid.

Military creativity

The necessity of casting victims in the role of aggressors has resulted in a range of creative military performances in both the original Israel and its Latin American apprentice. In 2008, Colombian soldiers were revealed to have murdered possibly thousands of civilians and then dressed the corpses in FARC attire in order to receive bonus pay and extra holiday time.

Juan Manuel Santos was serving as defence minister under President Alvaro Uribe when the “false positives” scandal broke. Despite this and other details – such as that, since Uribe’s assumption of office, more trade unionists have been assassinated in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined – Santos managed to comment on the aforementioned Israeli television programme that fear “no longer exists” in Colombia and that “now we feel free”.

As for Israeli military creativity, spokeswoman Avital Leibovitch explained in the aftermath of the 2010 massacre on the Mavi Marmara – part of the Freedom Flotilla endeavouring to break the Gaza siege – that the victims of the incident were not the nine slain Turkish humanitarian activists – but rather the commandos who had shot them.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry dutifully uploaded a Flickr photo set entitled “Weapons found on Mavi Marmara”, which underscored the violent tendencies of the seafarers and consisted of images of water bottles, kitchen knives, screwdrivers, keffiyehs, and a slingshot decorated with pink and purple stars and the word “Hizbollah”. That the slingshot was not actually “found on Mavi Marmara” but rather resurrected from an irrelevant archive is suggested by the label accompanying the image, according to which “This photo was taken on February 7, 2006 using a Nikon D2Xs”.

Colombians were given the opportunity to defend their position as the Israelites of Latin America when, upon completion of Uribe’s presidential term in 2010, he was recycled into the post of Vice-Chairman of the UN panel tasked with investigating the flotilla massacre. The resulting report – which determined that a group of flotilla activists had engaged in an “extreme level of violence”, and which upheld the validity of the Israeli siege of Gaza in spite of the UN’s own classification of the siege as illegal – presumably benefited from Uribe’s professed notion that human rights organisations often serve as fronts for terrorists.

The peace community of San Jose de Apartado

Defending her position as de facto Colombian paramilitary of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, meanwhile, Mary O’Grady reported an alliance between FARC terrorists and “peaceniks” in a 2009 article about the Colombian peace community of San Jose de Apartado, affiliated with various NGOs.

The peace community, which I visited that same year, was founded in 1997 in the Uraba region in northwestern Colombia as a response to decades of armed conflict. Employing a system of collective work groups dedicated to the cultivation of crops ranging from miniature bananas to cacao, the community rejects collaboration with all armed actors: military, paramilitary and FARC guerrillas alike. Nevertheless, as of its twelfth anniversary in 2009, it had suffered 184 assassinations out of a population of approximately 1,500.

Twenty-four assassinations have been attributed to the FARC, while the remainder is attributed to the armed forces and/or paramilitary formations. Such calculations render all the more ludicrous O’Grady’s advertisement of the claim that “the peace community helped the FARC in its effort to tag the Colombian military as a violator of human rights”.

Community co-founder Maria Brigida Gonzalez – whose 15-year-old daughter Elisena was murdered in her sleep in 2005 by members of the Colombian Army’s 17th Brigade, which claimed Elisena was a FARC combatant – speculated to me that the ultimate purpose of such attacks was “to sow terror so that we all flee and the land’s resources can be exploited”.

Colombia as regional security model

In a WikiLeaks cable from March 2009, the US embassy in Bogota specified that the region of Uraba was one of “17 strategic focus areas” within one of “two key swathes of territory” in Colombia where Global CST was assisting the Uribe government in “achiev[ing] irreversibility” in the battle against the FARC. Nine months later, the same embassy sounded the alarm that the firm had infringed on US territory.

It is doubtful, of course, that the Israelis will usurp the US legacy in Colombia, one ironic manifestation of which was contained in the email update I received last year from the peace community listing recent instances of harassment and killing of area residents: “John Kennedy was assassinated the afternoon of Wednesday, May 11 when he left his house to meet some neighbours for a game of soccer.”

Whether or not Colombians start naming their offspring David Ben-Gurion, the fact that the country has been applauded by the US State Department and the Inter-American Development Bank as a regional role model in confronting security threats ensures the fortification of a system in which profits depend on the perpetuation of insecurity.

By Belen Fernandez

8 January 2012

@ Al Jazeera

Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, released by Verso in Nov. 2011. She is an editor at PULSE Media, and her articles have appeared in the London Review of Books blog, Guernica Magazine, and many other publications.

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

 

On a rare visit to the Pentagon, Mr Obama said the US needed to rethink its military strategy, placing a greater emphasis on naval and air power while reducing the size of the army, because of both the fiscal crisis and the drawdown of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are now turning the page on a decade of war,” he said. “We have to renew our economic strength here at home, which is the foundation of our strength in the world.” However, he noted that the US would still spend more on its armed forces than the next 10 biggest military powers combined.

The new strategy underlines the Obama administration’s focus on the Asia-Pacific region in the coming decades, alongside the Middle East. While Mr Obama and other officials did not mention China by name, a strategy paper was more blunt in describing potential military threats from Beijing, at one stage listing it alongside Iran as one of the principal challenges.

“States such as China and Iran will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projections capabilities,” the document says. It also notes: “Over the long-term China’s emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the US economy and our security in a variety of ways.”

Defence chiefs rejected suggestions that the US was abandoning a strategy of being able to fight two large ground wars at the same time, saying that the new strategy would allow response to any threats that might emerge. But they reaffirmed that ground forces will not be structured to conduct the sort of long-term counterinsurgency campaigns unleashed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The subsequent scaling back of the army and parts of the marine corps could have big implications for the continuing US military presence in Europe, which Leon Panetta, defence secretary, said would “adapt and evolve”.

The new military strategy is based around $487bn in cuts from planned spending that the Pentagon will have to make over the next decade. A further $500bn in cuts could be forced on the Pentagon if Congress cannot agree on other deficit reduction plans. Mr Panetta said that these extra cuts would threaten “core US national security interests”.

Aware of the likely criticisms from Republicans, Mr Obama cited advice from Dwight Eisenhower, the late Republican president, that defence spending should be balanced against other important national programmes.

But Buck McKeon, Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, described the changes as “a lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America”.

By Geoff Dyer in Washington

5 January 2012

@ Financial Times

Peace for Life

An Islamic Response to Kairos Palestine

Preface

An Islamic Response to Kairos Palestine is an initiative of the Muslims in Peace for Life (PFL), a global solidarity network of peace advocates rooted in faith communities engaged in various forms of resistance to state terrorism and Empire and committed to interfaith, South-South and South-North solidarity and progressive faith-based responses to the urgencies of justice and peace.

The Kairos Palestine – a Moment of Truth1 is a declaration issued in 2009 and signed by most Palestinian Christian leaders. Its signatories described the document, drawn up after “prayer, reflection and an exchange of opinion,” as a cry from within the suffering in our country, under the Israeli occupation, with a cry of hope in the absence of all hope, a cry full of prayer and faith in a God ever vigilant, in God’s divine providence for all the inhabitants of this land. Inspired by the mystery of God’s love for all, the mystery of God’s divine presence in the history of all peoples and, in a particular way, in the history of our country, we proclaim our word based on our Christian faith and our sense of Palestinian belonging – a word of faith, hope and love.

Kairos Palestine has resonated across the world and numerous communities and religious leaders have responded to it. It is a heartfelt call from our oppressed Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters to the world to act in the face of their daily humiliation and dispossession. PFL is deeply committed to intensifying the solidarity of the global religious community against Israeli Apartheid, and the PFL Muslim members feel a particular moral duty to respond to Kairos Palestine from an Islamic perspective. We say to our Christian sisters and brothers in Palestine: “We hear your cries; you are not alone. We need each other now more than ever before and we commit ourselves to walking the journey towards freedom and justice in Palestine side by side with you.”

In responding to Kairos Palestine we respond to the Islamic imperative to identify with the oppressed and the marginalized. We do so in a manner that a) reflects our inadequacies as Muslims; b) rejects attempts to co-opt our faith for the agenda of Empire; and c) offers a vision of Islam that is just, compassionate and recognizes the sacredness of all of humankind while maintaining a particular bias for those whom the Qur’an refers to as the marginalized in the earth (mustad`afin fil-ard).

Muslims across the globe are invited to sign this document.

1 Kairos Palestine – a Moment of Truth is available online http://www.kairospalestine.ps/?q=content/document

An Islamic Response to Kairos Palestine

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Dispenser of Grace

Oh you who have attained to faith, rise as witness-bearers for Allah, with regard to Justice, though this may be against yourselves […] Do not follow your own desires lest you swerve from justice; for if you distort the truth, God is indeed aware of all that you do. (Al-Nisa, ayah 135)

We are Muslims – religious leaders, scholars, activists and ordinary believers struggling to live out our faith in fidelity to the Noble Qur’an and the demands of justice. We hail from different parts of the world and represent diverse tendencies within the House of Islam.

For decades we have witnessed the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people – Muslims, Christians and others – of their land and watched as they were stripped of their human rights and treated as sub-human outsiders in their ancestral land. We have regularly lamented this and protested against their ongoing persecution and marginalization. We acknowledge that our responses could have been stronger and that we have not adequately articulated the Islamic imperative to stand in solidarity with the oppressed.

Kairos Palestine – A Moment of Truth has awakened in us a keenness to speak truth to power – even if that power may reside within us. In the words of the Qur’an, ‘wa law ‘ala anfuskim” (“even if this may be against yourselves”, Al-Nisa, ayah 34).

Our statement in response to Kairos Palestine document is addressed to a) the Muslim ummah (global community), b) the Christians of Palestine, c) the Jewish community and d) the international community.

Our Message to the Muslim Ummah

We affirm the often heroic actions of many in our community who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian and other oppressed people, making huge sacrifices in order to remain true to the Islamic demand for justice and dignity. At the same time, we stand in humility in front of Allah for our collective and individual failures to support vigorously the struggle of the Palestinian people. In the face of the daily humiliation and injustices visited upon Palestinians, we have been guilty of living a pretence of normalcy and of often inadequate responses. The rulers and governments in many of our countries have offered half-hearted public condemnation of Zionism and the occupation of Palestinian land and lives, on the one hand, while having actively or passively collaborated with the Israeli regime to contain their populations’ solidarity with the Palestinian people.

We are proud of the many parts of the ummah who have, recently, compelled their rulers to yield to their cries for freedom and justice. We call on our people to be vigilant to ensure that that their victories not be usurped by those Western powers who have been deeply complicit in the oppression of the Palestinian people.

We acknowledge our responsibility to work for peace. We do so not in response to the demands of imperialists and Islamophobes who insist that Muslims must eschew any form of resistance to occupation and imperial adventures in pursuit of oil and other natural resources. Our struggle for peace responds to the invitation of the Almighty “to the abode of peace” (Yunus, ayah 25). This bears no resemblance to the “peace” of the Empire, which is one of silence and acquiescence in the face of dispossession and occupation. Theirs is a peace which trades in death; ours is one that seeks justice.

The peace that the Qur’an calls us to is one of life, justice and dignity. We are mindful of the Qur’anic obligation to disrupt the established order (even if presented in the garb of “peace”) if it is based on injustice and dispossession, as is clearly the case in Palestine.

“Allah has created the heavens and the earth in truth; so that every person may be justly compensated for what she [he] had earned and none may be wronged” (Al- Jathiyah, ayah 22). This verse, as well as Al-Zumar, ayah 69, equates justice with truth. “God (himself) bears witness that He is the Upholder of justice” (Al-Nisa, ayah 18). The Qur’an exhorts the faithful to uphold justice as an act of witness unto Him (Al-Nisa, ayah 135 and Al-Ma’idah ayah 6) and those who sacrifice their lives in the path of establishing justice are equated with those who achieve martyrdom in “the path of God” (Ali Imran, ayah 20).

The Most Gracious has imparted this Qur’an. He has created humankind; He has imparted unto him [her] speech. The sun and the moon follow courses computed; the stars and the trees submit; and the skies He has raised high; and He has set up the balance of justice in order that you may not transgress the measure. So, establish weight with justice and fall not short in the balance. It is He who has spread out the earth for [all] His creatures. (Al- Rahman, ayahs 1-10)

The Qur’an places humankind and the task of doing justice within the context of their responsibility to the Creator, on the one hand, and the order which runs through the cosmos on the other. It is within this overall context that human beings are being warned against “transgressing the measure” and exhorted to “weigh [your dealings] with justice” (Al-Rahman, ayahs 7-9). “God has sent His Messengers and revealed His Books so that people may establish justice” (Al-Hadid, ayah 25).

The Qur’an posits a universe based on a foundation of justice. The natural order is one rooted in justice; deviation from it is disorder (fitnah). The status quo, irrespective of how long it has survived or how stable it has become, does not enjoy intrinsic legitimacy in Islam. Injustice is a deviation from the natural order and even though it might stabilize over decades by establishing new facts on the ground, it is, nonetheless, regarded as a disruption of “the balance”. In the Qur’anic paradigm, justice and the natural order based on it are values to be upheld, while sociopolitical stability per se is not. When confronted with this disturbance in the natural order through the systematic erosion of human rights, the Qur’an imposes an obligation on the faithful to challenge such a system until it is eliminated and society is again restored to its natural state – that of justice.

The Qur’an offers itself as an inspiration and guide for comprehensive insurrection against an unjust status quo. It, furthermore, asks to be read through a commitment to destroy oppression and aggression and to establish justice. We call on all Muslims to deepen and intensify our resistance to all forms of oppression and to strengthen our solidarity with the Palestinian people. Our Message to the Christians of Palestine Our dear brothers and sisters, we salute the courage and steadfastness displayed by you in resisting the occupation and the theft of your homes, olive groves and lands. We are deeply humbled by your persistent refusal to succumb to the divide and rule games of the occupiers. Your religious leaders’ commitment to freedom and their prophetic voices reflected in Kairos Palestine is nothing short of inspirational. We are touched to read in it your bearing witness to the oppression and indignity suffered by Palestinians of all persuasions. Your role in articulating the truth that this is not a battle between Jews and Muslims but one between occupier and occupied cannot be expressed by any of us with the same integrity as you have done.

We acknowledge that we, the Muslim ummah, have often been indifferent to your presence in Palestine – a presence that pre-dates the coming of Islam. We have not been adequately mindful of the absolute centrality of Palestine as sacred space in the Christian tradition, and as the place where Christ (may the blessings and peace of Allah be upon him and upon his pure mother) was born and ended his sojourn on earth, and many of us have been ignorant of your sacrifices for freedom and justice.

We acknowledge that we have sometimes articulated a vision for a post-apartheid Palestine that appears to be one where one form of ideological domination – Zionism – might be supplanted by another – Islamic domination. Often in our resistance to the ideological domination of Zionism we have come across as wanting more of the same, to become the evil that we abhor. In doing so, we have been unfaithful to the pluralism of our faith and the Qur’anic vision of a single people. Addressing all the prophets, the Qur’an declares: “Oh Prophets, consume of the good, and [remember] that these, your people, are a single people” (Al- Mu’minun, ayat 51-52).

We appreciate the message that you convey to the world in Kairos Palestine where you say that “Muslims are neither to be stereotyped as the enemy nor caricatured as terrorists, but rather to be lived with in peace and engaged with in dialogue.” We support your call for the post-apartheid Palestinian state to be one for “all citizens, with a vision constructed on respect for religion but also equality, justice, liberty, and respect for pluralism and not on domination by a religion or a numerical majority.’’

We will work with our co-religionist Palestinians to create a society wherein all people, regardless of religious or sectarian affiliation will be treated equally. A second class citizenship for any Palestinian will diminish the worth of all Palestinians and will be a betrayal of your sacrifices. Our call to Muslims to ensure justice is not only about justice for Muslims but for all.

A Message to our Jewish Brothers and Sisters

Our dear brothers and sisters, we are ashamed of those of our co-religionists who routinely engage in the blanket demonizing of you and your religion. Much of their rhetoric is racist and anti-Semitic and too often fails to distinguish between the diverse tendencies among you. This is in conflict with the Qur’anic principle “No one shall bear the burden of [the crimes committed by] another.” It is true that Jews have historically fared much better when they lived in Muslim majority societies than what they did in others. It is also true that anti-Semitism accelerated in the Muslim world after the Nakba (Catastrophe) visited upon the Palestinians by the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. These facts, however, cannot serve as rationalizations for anti-Semitism or for the dismissal of all Jews because of the crimes of some. Our own religious tradition require critical scrutiny and we struggle to find ways of reading our texts that will deepen our sense of the interconnectedness of all human beings – and all forms of life – and the requirements of justice.

We pledge ourselves to work against all forms of racism and discrimination – including anti-Semitism. Some among you have, at great personal cost, stood up against injustices meted out to the Palestinian people, while others have called for and engaged in ethnic cleansing. You have insisted that such crimes against humanity cannot be committed in your name. Your solidarity inspires us and your presence in the trenches of struggle helps ensure that the Palestinian struggle for justice is not reduced to an anti-Jewish one.

Some of you lived in Palestine for centuries, pre-dating even Christians; others recently arrived from Cape Town, New York, Dar as Salaam or Moscow. In many cases those arriving in a land that they had only an ideological attachment to led to the displacement of numerous other people who inhabited the land for centuries. It is impossible for us to regard them as anything but usurpers.

They premised the idea of their entitlement to the land on a supposed unbroken conversation between God and Jews and a “perpetual enlistment in the divine army” in the words of Donald H. Akenson. The Zionist belief in the chosenness of a particular people (the Jewish people) who are granted a land by God is not unique. In South Africa, for example, Afrikaner children were taught to sing about “die land uitgegee op gesag van die Hoogste se hand ” (the land given to us on the authority of the Almighty).

We reject the notion that the Eternally Transcendent and Almighty God is like a tribal chief or a dishonest realtor who parcels out land to His favourites, and we reject the idea our sacred texts can be abused as if they were title deeds of land ownership.

Many of you regard the State of Israel as a product of a Jewish struggle for selfdetermination and emancipation from the discrimination that Jews experienced primarily in Christian Europe, and also in Muslim North Africa and the Middle East. Neither the tragedy of unspeakable horror and genocide visited upon Jews by Nazi Germany, nor the ongoing attempts to manipulate this tragedy for narrow racist and ideological ends – thus creating new victims – must be allowed to be forgotten. Palestinians should not have to pay the price for Jewish “liberation”. An injury inflicted on others invariably also dehumanizes the perpetrators. It is not possible to tear at another’s skin and not have one’s humanity also diminished in the process. To defend the Palestinians against the daily humiliation imposed by Israeli settlers, colonists, soldiers, the Israeli state and Zionism itself is to defend the best in what Jews have to offer the world. An injury to one is an injury to all. The distinguished Jewish Liberation theologian, Marc Ellis, wrote: “It is no longer possible to raise the banner of revolution for one people only.” You cannot build your security on the insecurity of others. In the freedom of and justice for the Palestinian people are the seeds of your own liberation, security and humanity.

A Message to the Global Community

We are astonished at how ordinary decent people equivocate when it comes to the State of Israel and the dispossession and suffering it has imposed on the Palestinian people. Is ‘moderation’ in matters of manifest injustice a virtue? Do both parties deserve an ‘equal hearing’ because the oppressor had been oppressed some time previously? Those who opt for illusionary neutrality are, by this “neutrality” being acquiescent to the dominant and oppressive party. We Muslims call on you seriously to consider the Qur’anic idea of a God of all people (rabb al-nas) Who makes clear that “We wished to be gracious to those who had been oppressed in the earth” (Al- Qasas, ayah 5), Who emphasizes that Divine Favour is for the oppressed and against the oppressor.

The notion of some people that “both sides have a story to tell” is a way of their evading responsibility for their complicity in the perpetration of injustices. Not only does such a position hallow the abuser with a mantle of respectability, the silence draws us all into a web of complicity. In the case of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, only those who refused to turn a blind eye and refused to be silent can be regarded as having been civilized. All others were guilty of having Jewish blood on their hands. Talking about the “Jewish-German conflict” when referring to the holocaust against Jews, or the “Black-White situation” when referring to apartheid in South Africa, or “marital problems” when referring to domestic violence is not virtuous; it is the path of acquiescence and complicity.

We call on you to identify with the calls made in the Kairos Palestine, and to join the growing international Palestine solidarity movement. Ordinary people throughout the world contributed in numerous ways to the struggle to end South African apartheid. We can also contribute to ending Israeli Apartheid. We call on you to hold your lawmakers to account for the way way they spend your taxes and ensure that none of it supports the oppression of the Palestinian people and the occupation of their land; to demand that your local grocer does not sell products that originate from Israel; to monitor the foreign policies of your countries and demand that ethics and morality be inserted into their decisions on economic partnerships; to visit Palestine and to see it from the eyes of the least, the broken and the dispossessed, from the eyes of those courageous human beings who resist oppression in order to struggle for their own humanity and that of their oppressors..

Let us all join together, keeping the Palestinian people in our prayers and seeking concrete ways to be and act in solidarity with them.

Wa ma tawfiq illa billah

To sign this document, please click this link to visit the signing webpage.

The declaration, Kairos Palestine – a Moment of Truth, is available online.

“Not even a drop of oil will flow through the Persian Gulf,” Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned, according to the state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). Washington quickly dismissed the threat as mere bluster. But energy markets react not just to the credibility of threats and warnings, but on the general level of tensions.

While Iran is unlikely to act on its warning in the short term – closing the Straits would after all also choke of Iran’s own ability export oil and potentially pit it against Russia and China – these threatening statements do fill one important function: They cause oil prices to rise due to the increased risk premium. Higher oil prices are good for Iran but bad for the U.S. and the European Union. The euro is already risking collapse and the Obama administration cannot afford higher gas prices (and the negative impact that will have on job creation) in an election year.

It is likely to get worse. As the Obama administration – pushed by domestic political forces – continues to ratchet up pressure on Iran in the elusive hope that the government in Tehran will cry uncle and give up its nuclear program, the Iranians will respond to escalation with escalation.

If the name of the game is to harm the other side, then both countries can clearly play this game.

Initially, threats of closing the Straits of Hormuz were made by mid-ranking members of the Iranian parliament. Now Vice Presidents in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s cabinet make them. If the current trajectory remains, we will likely see more senior Iranian government figures make even more specific warnings with even greater frequency.

Along side the heightened rhetoric, we will likely see more Iranian military exercises in the Persian Gulf, potential provocations between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps navy and EU and U.S. navies by heightening the level of “testing the other side,” perhaps even “intentional accidents” at strategic targets throughout the region. These measures will at a minimum help push the risk premium of oil to even higher levels.

Even more aggressive measures will likely be pursued by Iran in the next phase of this standoff with the West.

Such is the logic of pressure politics – pressure begets pressure and along the way, both sides increasingly lose sight of their original endgames. As this conflict-dynamic takes over, the psychological cost of restraint rises, while further escalatory steps appear increasingly logical and justified. At some point – and we may already be there – the governments will no longer control the dynamics. Rather, the conflict dynamic will control the governments.

Though neither side may have intended to drive this towards open war, but rather to merely deter the other side or compel it to change its policies, pressure politics in the absence of real diplomacy has a logic of its own. This formula simply drives us towards confrontation, whether we intend it or not.

But all hope is not lost. Contrary to common perceptions, diplomacy has not been exhausted. In fact, it didn’t even fail – it was prematurely abandoned. As I describe in A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, Barack Obama’s political maneuverability for diplomacy with Iran was limited – and whatever political space he had, it was quickly eaten up by pressure from Congress, Israel, Saudi Arabia and most importantly, by the actions of the Iranian government itself in the fraudulent 2009 elections.

By the time diplomacy could be tried in October 2009, Obama’s political maneuverability had become so limited that its entire Iran policy – in the words of a senior Obama administration official – had become “a gamble on a single roll of the dice.” It either had to work right away, or not at all. And diplomacy rarely works instantaneously.

The Iranians did not come to a “yes,” as Obama had hoped, during the October talks. Only weeks later, the Obama administration activated the pressure track and abandoned diplomacy in all but name. Ironically, Brazil and Turkey managed through their diplomacy to get Iran to a “yes” only six months later. But by that time, Obama had committed himself to sanctions and the pressure track. Between a sanctions resolution at the United Nations and a diplomatic breakthrough based on the benchmarks of the original October deal, Obama rejected the diplomatic opening and opted for sanctions and pressure politics.

Diplomacy cannot work under such constrained circumstances. It needs time, patience, perseverance and a clear understanding that the cost of abandoning diplomacy is greater than the cost of sustaining it – because of the catastrophic repercussions of the military confrontation that will follow collapsed talks. While this might have escaped decision makers in Washington and Tehran earlier, there should be little doubt about its veracity today.

By Trita Parsi

28 December 2011

@ CNN World

The views expressed in this article are solely those of Trita Parsi.

Trita Parsi is the author of the newly released book A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (Yale University Press, 2012).

The military strategy unveiled by President Barack Obama Thursday keeps massive spending on the US war machine largely intact, while shifting its focus decisively toward China.

Obama made an unprecedented appearance at the Pentagon Thursday, marking the first time that a US president has personally participated in the presentation of such a defense strategic guidance document, which presents in broad strokes the priorities and direction for the US armed forces.

In presenting the document, entitled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” Obama insisted that the US military budget would remain higher than those of the next 10 military powers combined. Preemptively responding to right-wing claims he was “cutting” military spending, he pointed out, “The growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.”

The guidance calls for a fundamental re-orientation of American military power toward the Asia-Pacific region, while affirming its commitment to maintaining US military control over the oil-rich Persian Gulf. “All trends are shifting to the Pacific,” stressed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. “Our strategic challenges will largely emanate out of the Pacific region.”

In its blunt and provocative portrayal of China as an enemy, the document reflects the steady buildup toward a confrontation over dominance of the Asia Pacific region, the scene of the world’s greatest economic growth.

The guidance document asserts that “US economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments” in this region and, while Washington will continue its interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere across the globe, “we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” [emphasis in original].

The document stresses US efforts to forge a series of military alliances ranging from Japan and South Korea to the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, while singling out India for the role of an “anchor” for US security interests in the Indian Ocean region.

“The growth of China’s military power,” the document warns, “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.”

In a section entitled “Project power despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges,” the guidance document lumps together China and Iran as countries that “will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projection capabilities,” citing “electronic and cyber warfare, ballistic and cruise missiles, advanced air defenses, mining and other methods.” The Pentagon has grown increasingly concerned over China’s development of torpedoes capable of attacking US aircraft carriers, which were previously seen as impregnable means of deploying massive US military power off China’s shores.

The document also includes multiple assertions of US determination to uphold the “free flow of goods” and “access to the global commons,” which are primarily thinly veiled references to Washington’s increasingly bellicose intervention in regional disputes over the South China Sea.

In surrounding himself with the uniformed members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as civilian Pentagon officials, Obama was undoubtedly attempting to cast himself as a hands-on commander-in-chief and to insulate himself from criticism from the Republican right. Republican presidential candidates, leading Republican members of Congress and sections of the right-wing media all seized upon the document’s budgetary implications, portraying them as a gutting of the American military.

The strategic guidance represents nothing of the sort. As Obama himself boasted, the administration’s proposal to trim around $450 billion in projected expenditures over the next ten years will still leave the Pentagon’s base budget higher than the last one implemented by the George W. Bush administration.

The cuts being proposed by the Obama administration are not to the current budget, but rather to the projected spending over the next decade, which factored in an assumed steady increase in funding for Washington’s bloated armed forces. The past decade, dominated by the “global war on terror” and the simultaneous wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, saw military spending in the US soar by more than 80 percent. The plan being implemented by Obama will maintain military spending at this unprecedentedly high level, even as the White House and the US Congress prepare to take a meat ax to core social programs and benefits, including Medicare and Social Security.

Media reports on the presentation of the strategic review have included claims that the document unveiled Thursday represented Obama putting his “personal stamp” on US military policy. This is even more absurd than the claims about crippling budget cuts. The outline presented in the strategic guidance has been worked out within the US armed forces command and the military-industrial complex, with Obama serving as little more than a political spokesman for these powerful interests.

In its broad outlines, the guidance presents proposals that are remarkably similar to those pushed by Bush’s first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who entered the Pentagon pushing for a “revolution” in military policy. Like Rumsfeld’s proposals, the guidance presented Thursday advocates streamlining the ground forces, particularly the Army, while relying more heavily on Special Operations troops and hi-tech weaponry, including unmanned attack drones.

While the document provides no specific numbers relating to budgets and manpower, it has been reported that with the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and the drawdown from Afghanistan, the Army’s ranks will be thinned from the current 570,000 to 490,000. Similar reductions in force are reportedly in store for the Marine Corps, meaning that tens of thousands of troops returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be thrown onto America’s long unemployment lines.

While undoubtedly the senior brass in the Army and Marines are chafing at these cuts, their concerns are outweighed by powerful corporate interests that are pleased with the guidance’s promise of continued spending on a new stealth bomber, submarines, star wars technology and other air and sea weapons systems that are seen as the most efficient means of aggressively projecting US military might. During Thursday’s press conference, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta directly addressed these interests, declaring the Pentagon’s commitment to “preserving the health and viability of the nation’s defense industrial base.”

In his appearance at the Pentagon, Obama repeated his assertion that, based on the withdrawal from Iraq and the minimal troop reductions in Afghanistan, “the tides of war are receding.”

On the contrary, the defense strategic guidance demonstrates that US imperialism remains committed to the use of armed force to assert its hegemony over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia, even as it gears up its war machine for an armed confrontation with China.

Giving a cynical tip of the hat to the “Arab Spring”, the guidance affirms US reliance on the despotic monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council in preparing for a military confrontation with Iran.

Defense Secretary Panetta provided a glimpse of what is on the horizon, assuring the assembled media that the US military is prepared to wage “a land war in Korea” while simultaneously defeating Iran in a confrontation over the Straits of Hormuz.

China issued a strong reaction to the defense guidance document. “China must make the US realize that its rise cannot be stopped,” Global Times, a state-run Chinese newspaper declared. Insisting that Beijing must not “give up its peripheral security,” the paper added that “China needs to enhance its long-distance military attack ability and develop more ways to threaten US territory in order to gradually push outward the front line of its ‘game’ with America.”

Confronting the relative decline of American capitalism and the rise of China, Washington is turning toward the reckless use of military might to defend its position of global dominance, threatening a conflagration that would eclipse the wars of the past decade.

By Bill Van Auken

7 January 2012

WSWS.org

 

The Pentagon document, “Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defence,” represents a major reorientation of the US military forces globally, particularly toward the Asia-Pacific region. It insisted that China’s military expansion “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.”

In fact, China is under threat by the US. Through Obama’s efforts to strengthen alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines, as well as build new partnerships with India, Indonesia and Vietnam—not to mention the US-led occupation of Afghanistan on China’s western flank—Beijing is being encircled on every front.

China has increased military spending by an estimated 200 percent over the past decade. But the US military still dwarfs that of China on any indicator, from spending (six times bigger) to the size of its nuclear arsenal (35 times larger), and maintains a vast technological superiority in virtually every field.

The initial official Chinese response to the Pentagon document was cautious. The state-owned Xinhua news agency called on the US to “abstain from flexing its muscle.” At the same time, it stated that “if fulfilled with a positive attitude and free from a Cold War-style zero-sum mentality,” the new US strategy “would not only be conducive to regional stability and prosperity, but be good for China, which needs a peaceful environment to continue its economic development.”

Chinese Defence ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng was more critical, declaring on Monday that “the accusations levelled at China by the US in this document are totally baseless.” He hoped the US would “deal with China and the Chinese military in an objective and rational way, be careful in its words and actions, and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries.”

Writing in the People’s Liberation Daily on Tuesday, Major General Luo Yuan bluntly warned that the US was targetting China. “Casting our eyes around, we can see that the United States has been bolstering its five major military alliances in the Asia-Pacific region, and is adjusting the positioning of its five major military base clusters, while also seeking more entry rights for military bases around China. Who can believe that you are not directing this at China?” he asked.

The differing responses reflect a debate in Beijing that intensified after last year’s NATO intervention in Libya, which caused losses of billions of dollars of Chinese investment in that country. One camp advocates a continuation of the present cautious policy of avoiding a confrontation with the US. The second calls for a shift to a more aggressive policy to defend China’s growing economic and strategic interests around the world.

Those advocating a low-key approach argue that China is in no position to challenge the US. Their concerns reflect the vulnerability of the Chinese economy, which is heavily dependent upon the advanced Western countries for investment, technology and markets, and would be severely disrupted by any open confrontation with Washington.

In a commentary in China Newsweek on January 3, academic Zheng Yongnian warned against “a new Cold War” with the US and its allies, in particular over North Korea. He argued that such a confrontation would be “very unfavourable to China” because China was no match for the US, whose international dominance “is all-dimensional, including in politics, economy and military, whereas China’s is still predominantly economical.”

Zheng indicated that China could weather a new Cold War, explaining: “If East Asia is divided into two blocs, with China losing the space in the east, it must strive to expand into the west. This scenario is not only possible, but has already begun, which is to develop ties with Arab countries.” However, he argued that the best option for China was to cooperate with the US, in line with Beijing’s chosen “road to integrate into the West-dominated international community” since its rapprochement with America in the 1970s.

The critics of Beijing’s present policy of a “peaceful rise” point to the impact that US aggression has already had on China’s investments and carefully cultivated diplomatic influence. The US not only supported the ousting of the Libyan regime but is now threatening Iran, upon which China relies as a major source of oil. In South East Asia, the Obama administration has encouraged the Philippines and Vietnam to assert their claims in the South China Sea against China’s and undermined China’s influence in regional bodies.

Dai Xu, a researcher at Peking University’s Chinese Centre of Strategic Studies, argued in the Global Times last week that China “must draw a line.” He argued against the stance of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping who advocated that the country “keep a low profile,” focus on economic development and avoid joining or forming alliances or any international grouping.

Dai is known for his 2009 book, C-shaped Encirclement, which warned that the US was seeking to contain China in the Asia-Pacific. Now he is calling for an end to appeasement with the US, pointing to the supposed historical lessons of the Song Dynasty 1,000 years ago. It faced a military threat from the nomadic kingdoms to the north and responded by offering concessions and abandoning military preparedness, only to be annihilated.

In his Global Times article, Dai said the US had “a clear roadmap and timetable to ‘conquer’ the world,” stretching from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, with the ultimate aim of taking on China and Russia. In the face of the escalating US threat against Iran, which could lead to a war involving America, Israel and Russia, Dai called for China to prepare accordingly.

The debate highlights the fact that the Chinese ruling elite has little room to manoeuvre. “Cooperation” with the US would mean making concessions to Washington’s economic demands, such as revaluing the yuan, which in turn would bankrupt sections of Chinese industry and foment wider social unrest.

Washington’s aggressive stance against China has strengthened the position of those who advocate an end to appeasement, which in turn heightens the danger of war.

By John Chan

13 January 2012

@ WSWS.org