Archives: Articles

Sarkozy And Cameron In Tripoli: Scramble For Libya Is On

With their surprise visit to Tripoli Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron signaled that the scramble by the major powers for control of Libya’s oil wealth is in full swing.

The visit was unannounced and conducted under a massive security blanket. It included a brief visit to a Tripoli hospital and a joint press conference with Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the former Gaddafi justice minister who heads up the NATO-backed National Transitional Council, and Mahmoud Jibril, the US-trained economist and former Gaddafi official designated as the NTC’s “prime minister”.

Afterwards, the Sarkozy, Cameron and the chiefs of the NTC all left the Libyan capital under heavy guard for the eastern city of Benghazi, where the NTC leaders have said they will stay until the fighting with Gaddafi loyalists in several key cities is over.

The hasty departure from Tripoli suggested that neither NATO nor its Libyan clients are confident about security in the capital under conditions in which battles are still raging for control of the coastal city of Sirte and Bani Walid, about 90 miles southeast of the capital.

Undoubtedly even more troubling for Cameron’s and Sarkozy’s security details is growing evidence that the NTC’s control of Tripoli is tenuous at best. Islamist elements leading militias patrolling the capital’s streets have denounced the NTC leadership, calling for its resignation.

In his speech in Tripoli, Cameron stressed that the NATO war on the country would continue. “There are still parts of Libya under Gaddafi’s control, Gaddafi is still at large, and we must make sure this work is completed,” said Cameron. “We must keep up with the NATO mission until civilians are all protected and this work is finished.”

The pretense that the “NATO mission” is protecting civilians becomes more absurd each day. As Cameron spoke, NATO warplanes bombed the towns of Sirte and Bani Walid. NATO’s massive fire power is being used to enable the “rebels” to carry out the kind of siege of these population centers that the Western alliance initially claimed it was intervening to stop pro-Gaddafi forces from carrying out in Benghazi.

Cameron added that Britain would release some $948 million in Libyan assets held in Britain—a fraction of the total—and deploy a team of British military “advisers” to assist the NTC.

For his part, Sarkozy insisted that France had no ulterior economic motives in attacking Libya.

“We have done what we did, because we thought it was the right thing to do,” he claimed. He insisted that there had been no “behind the scenes deals on oil or reconstruction and that “we have asked for no preferences.”

In his own remarks, however, Jalil made it clear that precisely such preferences were in the works. “Our friends will have a preferential role, in accordance with their efforts to help Libya,” he said. While the NTC has stated that it would honor all previous contracts concluded by the Gaddafi government, Jalil indicated that this was by no means assured.

“We will accept the existing contracts as long as they are clean and transparent—but as a previous member of government, I know that some are not and must be reviewed,” he said. Other NTC officials have flatly threatened that China and Russia would be frozen out of Libyan deals because of their opposition to the United Nations resolution authorizing a “no-fly” zone to protect civilians, which the NATO powers used as a pretext to wage a war for regime change.

There has been widespread speculation in the media that the Sarkozy government would cash in on being the first to recognize the NTC and the first to begin bombing Libya, with the French oil giant Total emerging as the number one beneficiary.

Libya’s National Oil Corporation announced Wednesday that Libyan oil exports will resume within 10 days. Production could reach 1 million barrels per day within six months.

Jeffrey Feltman, the US assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, arrived in Tripoli the day before the Sarkozy-Cameron visit. He came to secure American interests in the impending imperialist carve-up of Libya.

He also used the occasion to dismiss concerns that Islamist elements, some of them tied to Al Qaeda, have gained significant political power as a result of the NATO war to topple Gaddafi. “We are not concerned that one group is going to dominate the aftermath of what has been a shared struggle by the people of Libya,” Feltman said in response to a question on the rising power of the Islamists.

That such concerns are growing, however, was made unmistakably clear with the publication Thursday of articles in both the New York Times and the Washington Post reporting on the rise of the Islamists, and growing struggles between them and the former Gaddafi officials and Western-connected émigrés backed by Washington and NATO. Both pointed to the increasing power of two Islamist figures: Ali Sallabi, who directs an Islamist umbrella group known as Etilaf; and Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who had collaborated with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and is now Tripoli’s military commander.

This week Sallabi issued a statement demanding that NTC chairman Jibril resign, charging members of the council with monopolizing decision-making to reap personal fortunes for themselves. He warned that the NTC officials were preparing “a new era of tyranny and dictatorship.”

Sallabi’s statement provoked a demonstration by NTC supporters in Tripoli against the Islamists.

The New York Times quoted an aide to Belhaj as saying, “Jibril will be gone soon.” The warning is ominous, given the fate of the NTC’s former military commander and ex-Gaddafi interior minister, Gen. Abdel Fateh Younes. His burned body was dumped outside Benghazi last July, after he apparently fell afoul of Islamist militiamen.

The London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi warned in an editorial Wednesday that the political tensions could turn into “bloody clashes between the two warring parties.”

Though fighting continues in Libya and there are signs that the NATO-sponsored regime change may produce a new civil war, both Sarkozy and Cameron suggested in their speeches Thursday that the Libyan war provided a new model for imperialist interventions.

In his remarks, Sarkozy issued a veiled threat that Syria could be the next target. “I dream that one day young Syrians will be as lucky as the young Libyans today, that one day they will also be able to say: ‘democracy and a peaceful revolution are for us.’”

Meanwhile, the commander of the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) made it clear that the US military sees the Libyan war as the prelude to new imperialist wars in the region. Gen. Carter Ham indicated that AFRICOM’s role in the Libyan intervention had been something of a baptism by fire for a command that had been largely dedicated to military assistance missions and attempts to find bases for US military forces on the African continent.

“Dropping bombs and Tomahawks, those kind of things, was not something the command had practiced to the degree we were required to do” in Libya, he said. “The question for us now is how do we sustain that so that if we would have to do this again, we’d start at a higher plateau.”

Ham also said that he wanted to secure more special operations forces for AFRICOM to conduct “counterterrorism” operations in Africa. He pointed to three groups that he said posed a threat: Al-Shabab in East Africa, the Nigeria-based Boko Haram and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

This last group, AQIM, had merged in 2007 with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group from which much of the leadership of the NATO-backed rebel forces in Libya are drawn.

Ham voiced concern about reports that portable surface-to-air missiles from the Gaddafi regime’s stockpile had gone missing as a result of the US-NATO war. He also said that Washington and NATO had to ensure that the Islamist elements that they have armed and supported do not “reemerge to be part of the interim government or subsequent government.”

16 September 2011, @ WSWS.org

Tripoli: As part of its 7th set of US sanctions against Syria, which began in June, 2011, the Obama administration has targeted a messenger, a sometime spokeswoman, a positive image of Syria, someone people of all religions and cultures have easily identified with over the past several years, Dr. Bouthainia Shaaban. The US administration acted thus for the sole purpose of pressuring the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but has succeeded in undermining American values of freedom of expression much more.

On August 28, 2011, the US Treasury and State Departments targeted Dr. Bouthainia Shaaban, and froze any assets she might have in the US.

According to State Department spokesman, Victoria Nuland, who two US Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers speculate may view Dr. Shaaban as a rival of sorts given their job descriptions, and Dr. Shaaban’s stellar performances during meetings with US officials both in the US and Syria, the explanation for blacklisting a Syrian nationalist and media advisor remains: “She (Dr. Shaaban) has served as the public mouthpiece for the repression of the regime.”

No US official to date has stepped forward to defend the sanctions against Dr. Shaaban with any more substantive or detailed complaint or supporting evidence.

Theodore Kattouf, former US ambassador to Syria was reportedly astonished to see Dr. Shaaban’s name on the latest sanctions list and he expressed on television his regret for such a bad decision. Former Ambassador Kattouf explained that sanctioning Dr.Shaaban was a serious mistake because Dr. Shaaban is well known of her positive and constructive attitudes and positions against wars and injustices and bloodshed.

True, Dr. Shaaban, among several others, is a trusted advisor to the Syrian administration. She presumably offers counsel and insights; perhaps much like Theodore Sorenson did for President John Kennedy, and Bill Moyers for Lyndon Johnson. But she is not and has never been a decision maker. Presumably her advice is considered, but who knows to what degree. Which advisor is also a key decision maker?

Surely the Obama administration knows well that when any person occupies a position as media advisor or even press secretary, he/she speaks for and explains the policy of the administration he’s working for. To sanction them violates American notions and values of freedom of expression and immunity from harassment for performing a vital job that benefits all by way of clear understanding and communication of a country’s position on political, social, and economic issues of the day.

Dr. Shaaban’s background is well known to recent US administrations and also much appreciated according to Washington sources. She is known as an independent thinker, reformer, writer, University Professor (she taught in Eastern Michigan for two years and earned her PhD from Warwick University in the UK and was a Fulbright Scholar at Duke University (1990-1991) and received prestigious McCandless Professorship at Eastern Michigan University for 2000. She is known for her ability and willingness to take a minority position, if her evaluation of the facts of a case or issue leads her there, and is never reluctant to speak truth to power. Her writings, many of which have appeared in the left of center Counterpunch (counterpunch.org) always advance positions against wars, violence and occupation.

The Obama administration knows that Dr. Shaaban has no account in the US, earns a modest salary, is the wife of the manager of the Syrian Estabishment for Food Indurstry and this ‘sanction’ is designed solely to harm her excellent reputation that she has earned during the past couple of decades. When pressed for details of her assets both the US Treasury, and State Department spokeswoman Nuland only offered: “Let’s just leave it at that.”, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Dr. Shaaban’s office avers that she has very few assets at all and certainly none in the US.

“Bouthainia connects with people” according to a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer who has met with her: “Whether with Hamas or Saudi Princes, and both know her views on full rights for women and justice for Palestinians, and with American officials too she is effective.”

For some of these reasons the US treasury and State departments have targeted her and the Obama administration, largely it appears, out of ignorance, according to Congressional sources, said, “Ok, if you think is a good idea go ahead.”

It was not a good idea. Attacking Mrs. Shabaan is a low blow and disgraceful by any standards and especially for one who is a very positive force helping bridge several divides between East and West.

President Obama erred in signing off on this mistake.

On losing her father last May, Dr. Shabaan wrote to an American friend, words that reflect both Syrian and American values and says something about this scholar and humanist.

“Dear Franklin,

“I was so touched with your message of condolences; it was so kind of you. Thank you very much. I was fortunate enough to look after my ailing mother for 7 years and after my father for the same period and then for a year and a half before the passing away of my father. I would like to say this is the most important and the most valuable and pleasurable thing I have ever done.

As Muslims we are requested in the Holy Quran to look after our aging parents and never to say a word to them that may hurt their feelings and this comes as second in importance only to believing in God and worshipping Him. In this sense I believe no parents should be sent to senior homes as their most desperate need is for love and affection and not only for food and bread I am so comforted that they lived happily and with integrity and I was an instrument to that. I want to write more about this very important aspect of human life in the future.

Thank you so much again and hope to see you soon in Syria.

Best wishes,

Bouthaina Shaaban”

The White House attacked a friend of America and of all people of good will. It needlessly assaulted a symbol of the great country of Syria, the great Syrian people, their history, culture, resistance values, profound dignity, and their decency.

In so doing the Obama Administration sullied American values and doubtless does not represent American values or the will of the American people. It did undermine American values of freedom of expression and compromised American notions of fair play and American legal norms of substantial justice.

Would that President Obama will immediately reverse this ill-considered action.

By Franklin Lamb

05 September, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Franklin Lamb is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

The African National Congress, once a bastion of non-racism, has recently descended into racial politics.

The recent court judgment in a South African court declaring the singing of a popular liberation struggle song, “Shoot the Boer”, as hate speech has brought renewed attention to the racial dynamics that are so pervasive in this society. While no one should be surprised that race informs so much of the political discourse in a country with a history such as South Africa’s, the increasingly antagonistic nature of this discourse should be a matter of concern to all South Africans – as well as to those who seek to hold the South African “miracle” as an example of a country dealing successfully with the trauma of more than 300 years of colonialism and apartheid.

The “miracle” transition that South Africa experienced in the mid-1990s was extraordinary, in the sense that an oppressed population, having suffered the brutality of an inhuman system of apartheid and colonialism since 1652, felt not the slightest need for revenge, wide-scale violence or the expulsion of their white compatriots. This is especially notable – bordering on miraculous – given the fact that the transition itself was marked by a level of violence against black communities not even seen at the height of apartheid rule.

And yet we are now witnessing a racialisation of South African politics that is extremely dangerous and threatens to take us down a route of racial antagonism, the outcome of which we are unable to predict. Needless to say, history is replete with examples of miraculous transitions gone horribly wrong. It is about time that South Africans are liberated from their false exceptionalism – the idea that we are really different from all those other countries where the potential for fundamental transformation was swept away by the discourse of race, ethnicity, and tribe.

The relatively peaceful nature of the political transition in South Africa has been variously ascribed to the greatness of the political leaders of the two principled political formations, the African National Congress’ Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk, the leader of the apartheid National Party. While Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded to great men such as Mandela and De Klerk, the real motive force behind the peaceful transition, and the absence of a race war in South Africa, was the African National Congress.

While it has become fashionable for everyone to preach non-racialism in contemporary South Africa, the ANC was the only major political party, together with its communist allies, that preached an unflinching non-racism for most of its 100-year history. Its adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 cemented the non-racialism of the ANC and provided the political platform on which the organisation challenged the apartheid system in the ensuing four decades. During its long years in exile, the ANC expelled prominent black members who preached a racially-defined struggle, suffered a significant breakaway with the formation of the Pan-Africanist Congress by disenchanted Africanists, and had to explain to thousands of angry youth, fresh from the battles of Soweto in 1976, why the struggle against apartheid was not a struggle of black against white.

Although race has been one of the fundamental contradictions of South African society, and its most apparent one at that, the ANC never based its political programme on pitting one race against another. The presence of white, coloured and Indian leaders in the ANC was never a token presence. Anyone who witnessed the reverence with which Joe Slovo, the white chief of staff of the ANC’s military wing, was received in South Africa’s townships would easily dispel that notion.

“What has thus far been a blessing to South Africans, and the main factor in preventing a racial polarisation, might now become a part of the racialisation of South African politics.”

Traumatised and divided societies often have one institution that commands the respect of a vast majority of the populace. These institutions are key centres around which transformative political projects can coalesce. In Latin America, the church often played this role in the struggle against the right-wing dictatorships; likewise, the monarchy in Spain after the death of Franco, the military in Egypt, and the clergy in Iran during the 1979 revolution provided the institutions and legitimacy that profound changes in these countries required. In South Africa, the ANC has historically played this role without wavering. The cohesion of the South African political system remains dependent on the cohesion of the ANC, and the continued commitment of the ANC to its legacy of non-racialism. Whatever opposition parties or the chattering classes say, there is no institution that commands the level of historical loyalty and legitimacy as this organisation.

What has thus far been a blessing to South Africans, and the main factor in preventing a racial polarisation, might now become a part of the racialisation of South African politics. The fact that most opposition parties represent the interests of particular racial groups, despite their protests to the contrary, means that they can never have the impact of a party such as the ANC. It is in this light that the emergence of an openly racial discourse within the ANC, and the organisation’s increased use of racial categories, becomes disconcerting.

The utterances by the ANC government’s chief spokesman Jimmy Manyi earlier this year, targeting the minority coloured community, and the ruling party’s subsequent attack on cabinet minister Trevor Manuel for defending the non-racism of the ANC against Manyi’s ethnic politicking, is indicative of at least a tolerance for racial politics within the organisation.

The ANC’s knee-jerk response to any criticism, blaming white interests or parties, and an automatic defence of ministers, party leaders or judicial candidates because they are black, intensifies this polarisation. Of course there are lots of white racists in South Africa, and race clearly remains a fundamental factor in the distribution of resources and opportunity in the country. This does not mean that all criticism of the ANC is based on race, or that our defence against such racism must mimic the very racial categories we are trying to defeat. Certainly, black South Africans also deserve competent ministers, judges and civil servants. Even in the Western Cape province, where the ANC lost power to the opposition Democratic Alliance, the organisation is attempting to regain power by adopting the principles of ethnically-based mobilisation by focusing its efforts on the coloured community, which constitutes a majority of the population in this province. Non-racism has been overtaken by political expediency and the rush for power.

A non-racial South Africa cannot be built without a non-racial ANC, and the recent history of the organisation indicates that this dream is in danger of being washed away by a combination of populist Africanist rhetoric, ill-considered defence of whomever is black in government or the civil service – simply because they are black, and the adoption of racial mobilisation tactics. It remains to be seen whether an ANC that has lost its political moorings and its firm foundations of non-racism – and instead has become a battleground for factional and material interests – can reposition itself at the vanguard of the struggle for a non-racial society.

Let no one be fooled that this mantle can simply be picked up by any of the myriad of opposition forces. The death of non-racism in the ANC means the withering away of this dream for the country as a whole.

By David Africa

23 September 2011

@Al Jazeera

David Africa is an independent security analyst based in South Africa. He has previously worked in counter-terrorism intelligence and research, and served in the underground of the then-banned African National Congress in South Africa.

 

The poverty rate in the US soared to 15.1 percent in 2010, its highest level since 1993, according to a report released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday. Household incomes continued to fall sharply, amidst the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the number of people without health insurance increased.

The bureau’s report documents a shocking decline in the living standards of millions of people, a devastating indictment of the policies of the Obama administration and the entire political establishment. The new figures cover conditions one year after the supposed beginning of the recovery in June 2009.

The poverty rate increased nearly a full percentage point, from 14.3 percent in 2009. It was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate and the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people living in poverty. Last year, there were 46.2 million people living in poverty, defined at the absurdly low level of about $22,000 a year for a family of four and $11,000 a year for an individual.

The number of people earning less than twice the poverty rate (about $44,000 for a family of four) stood at 103 million in 2010, or about 34 percent of the population.

The percentage of children under 18 living in poverty increased from 20.7 percent to 22.0 percent. A total of 16.4 million children live in poverty, equivalent to the population of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston combined.

The total number of people in poverty is equivalent to the combined population of the 50 largest cities in the United States. There are more people in poverty in the US in 2010 than during any year on record going back to 1959.

Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased from 12.5 percent to 15.1 percent, or 2.6 percentage points.

The poverty rate for African-Americans increased at a particularly rapid rate, from 25.8 percent in 2009 to 27.4 percent in 2010.

Millions of people live in what is known as “deep poverty,” with incomes less than 50 percent of the official poverty level (or less than about $11,000 a year for a family of four). The deep poverty rate increased from 6.3 percent in 2009 to 6.7 percent in 2010, an increase of 1.5 million to a total of 20.5 million people.

While children under 18 represent 24.4 percent of the overall population, they make up 36 percent of the population (7.5 million individuals) living in deep poverty.

The absolute number of people living in deep poverty and the deep poverty rate are both at the highest level since the government began tabulating these figures in 1975.

The Census report also documented a continued decline in income for working people, with the real median household income falling to $49,445 in 2010, down 2.3 percent ($1,154) from 2009. Since 2007, the report notes, “real median income has declined 6.4 percent and is 7.1 percent below the median household income peak that occurred in 1999.”

These averages mask the enormous inequality that has become the central feature of American society. The lowest 20 percent of households, with incomes of $20,000 or less, saw their share of total income fall from 3.4 percent to 3.3 percent. The top 20 percent took home more than 50 percent of all money income.

A report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes that since 1999, real income “has fallen 12.1 percent for those at the 10th income percentile but only 1.5 percent for those at the 90th percentile. The income gap between those at the 10th and 90th percentile was this highest on record.”

Since 1999, real household income has fallen 5.5 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 14.6 percent for African Americans, 8.9 percent for Asians and 10.1 percent for Hispanics, according to the Census report.

For men with full-time, year-round jobs, the real median income is about the same today as it was in 1973, having remained largely flat for three decades.

Mass unemployment is a major driving force behind the decline in living standards, as corporations utilize the jobs crisis to push through wage and benefit cuts for those who are able to find work. Since 2007, the number of year-round, full-time workers fell by 9.4 million, a fall without parallel since the Great Depression.

These conditions have continued into 2011. Official unemployment stands at 9.1 percent, with the most recent jobs report from the Labor Department showing zero net job growth last month. The level of long-term unemployment is at a historic high. The percent of the population unemployed increased from 16.1 percent to 16.3 percent.

The number of people without health insurance in the United States was 49.9 million in 2010, an increase of nearly one million over 2009. The rise in the uninsured is a particularly damning exposure of the fraud of Obama’s health care “reform,” which was in fact an opening shot in a drive to reduce health care costs for corporations and the government.

The rise in poverty is a product of the long-term decline of American capitalism, combined with the ferocious class war waged by the ruling class, now led by the Obama administration. Mass impoverishment is the outcome of a deliberate policy that has resulted in a vast transfer of wealth into the hands of a small corporate and financial aristocracy.

These indices of mass social distress come at a time of record profits, with corporations sitting on a cash hoard estimated at more than $2 trillion. The government has handed over trillions of dollars to the banks, inflating the stock market while bailing out the wealthy. Far from leading to an economic revival, the conditions for the vast majority of the population have suffered a catastrophic decline.

Amidst clear signs of a world economy sinking into a depression, the response of the ruling class is to push for massive austerity. States and local governments throughout the country are implementing cuts in the most basic programs to prevent poverty. The Michigan state government, for example, passed a measure this month that will cut 41,000 people from welfare assistance, including nearly 30,000 children, beginning October 1.

Meanwhile, after outlining a phony jobs proposal that will do nothing to address the unemployment crisis, the Obama administration is set to propose trillions of dollars in cuts to health care and retirement programs.

The administration has made a point of insisting that a proposal being worked on by a bipartisan budget deficit committee must include deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, the main federal health care programs.

To fight against these conditions, the working class must enter into industrial and political struggle.

The Socialist Equality Party calls for emergency measures to eliminate poverty, including a multi-trillion dollar public works program to employ tens of millions of workers in high-paying, productive jobs rebuilding infrastructure and meeting other critical social needs. A livable income to meet all basic needs is a social right that must be guaranteed to everyone.

To pay for this program, the SEP fights for a radical redistribution of wealth, including a 90 percent tax on all incomes over $500,000. Corporations, currently engaged in a hiring strike, must be taken over by the working class and run democratically in the interests of social need.

The implementation of these measures is impossible outside of a direct attack on the interests of the wealthy and on the capitalist two-party system, through the building of a mass socialist political movement of the working class.

By Joseph Kishore

14 September 2011

@ WSWS.org

 

 

 

So there I was, on the Via Dolorosa of course, chatting to a middle-aged guy in a red T-shirt and just a wisp of a beard with a prayer rug under his left arm.

And I asked him, of course, what he thought about Barack Obama’s speech. He grinned at me like he knew I had already guessed what he was going to say. “What did you expect?” he asked. Correct guess. After all, Haaretz had already referred this week to “President Barack Netanyahu” while the racist Israeli foreign minister said he would sign the speech with both hands. Maybe, I reflected in Jerusalem yesterday, Obama really is seeking election – to the Israeli Knesset.

But what was so striking about the streets of Jerusalem yesterday was the sense of resignation, of weary acceptance. The Israeli papers had warned of mass violence, but the crowds who turned up for morning prayers at Al-Aqsa simply laid out their prayer rugs on the highway outside the Damascus Gate or in the laneways behind the mosque and showed scarcely any interest in talking about Obama. Maybe America’s UN veto will rouse them to passion, but I have my doubts.

It’s a bit like the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib torture pictures, when the Americans restricted the number of photos to be released because they feared the pictures would enrage Iraqis. But I was in Baghdad that day and no one expressed any particular rage. What did I expect? After all, the Iraqis knew all about Abu Ghraib already – they were the ones who had been tortured there. So, too, Jerusalem yesterday. The Palestinians have watched America’s uncritical acceptance of Israeli occupation – the longest in the world – for 44 years. They knew all about it. It is only we Westerners who are horrified by torture pictures and by Obama’s hypocrisy.

The Palestinians even accepted the Israeli rule on morning prayers. No one under the age of 50 would be allowed to worship on the Al-Aqsa esplanade. Which is why those who could not enter simply spread their rugs on the tarmac and flagstones outside – in effect enlarging the forbidden holy esplanade over the traffic islands and pavements. Even the Israeli border guards and cops treated the thing as routine. There was, shall we say, a normality about it, a bit of shouting from a young man at the barricade on the main highway, a lot of shrugging by the Israelis. There were even some nicely groomed police horses which watched the proceedings with big, tired eyes.

On the iron barrier, the police captain didn’t even bother to ask for my press pass; he just flicked his head and pulled the barrier aside. The television crews dutifully filmed the Israelis holding their assault rifles and truncheons. And – since I am a believer in the Department of Home Truths – I have to add that in other Middle East nations right now, I doubt if armed policemen would be quite so indifferent to the cameras. Needless to say, the more aggressive of Israel’s colonisers in the West Bank are not so keen to be filmed. Hence the scarves over their faces when they attack Palestinians. And daubing “Mohamed is a pig” in Hebrew on the wall of the mosque at Qusra, 30 miles from Nablus, wasn’t going to improve Arab-Israeli relations. The Palestinians have painted out “is a pig”, but naturally left the name of the Prophet untouched. You can see the same stuff on the walls of the Jewish colony at Hebron.

But again, it’s acquired its own normality, like the massive Israeli wall that scrapes across the landscape above Jerusalem, a terrible, hateful scar on the politics of this place which should blight the eye of every Palestinian or Israeli who sees it. Oddly, we Westerners seem to have stopped talking about it; maybe that’s why we like calling it a “security barrier” rather than a wall, something that is a problem to be solved – to quote Obama – “by the parties themselves.” And there was one little incident yesterday which illustrated this rather well.

Prayers had ended at the Al-Aqsa mosque and the police were ready to go home and the shopkeepers were reopening their stalls when an old Palestinian woman in black came hobbling down some steps with two large, empty cardboard boxes. They were the “legs” to a table upon which she started arranging a set of tawdry children’s clothes and plastic shoes decorated with stars.

But a soldier told her to move the boxes three feet further down the street. There was no reason to – he was bored, I suppose, and in the mood for a bit of fun – but the old lady started shouting in Arabic that “It’s all over”. I think she meant that it was “all over” for the Palestinians – or maybe for the Israelis. But the soldier laughed and repeated her words in Arabic. “Yes, it’s all over,” he said, and maybe he was talking about the morning prayers.

And as he went on taunting the old woman and kicking the cardboard boxes, a trail of tourists came winding their way up the laneway from the Via Dolorosa. The woman was shrieking away and the tourists, light-coloured hair, blue eyes, speaking German, were all too aware of what was happening.

Their eyes flicked to the side of the road where the woman was shouting and the soldier was still kicking the boxes, but their heads didn’t move. They still faced forward, as if the whole wretched scene was a normal part of Jerusalem life. They wouldn’t directly look at the woman or the soldier. They certainly wouldn’t intervene. And so they passed by on the other side.

By Robert Fisk

24 September 2011

@ The Independent

The struggle for Palestinian nationhood is entering yet another new phase in its decades long history.

Failure to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel’s 40-year occupation, in the words of UN former Secretary General Kofi Annan, would “continue to hurt the reputation of the United Nations and raise questions about its impartiality”.

No cause has consumed as much UN paper work as the plight of the displaced and occupied Palestinians. But hundreds of its resolutions on Palestine have not been respected let alone applied for over half a century.

Nowhere has the UN ideals and mechanisms been more mired in power politics than in Palestine. The efforts to neutralise UN intervention have been championed mainly by the United States. This week’s efforts by the Obama administration working on behalf of Israel took advocacy into a whole new level.

Washington has vetoed more than 40 UN Security Council resolutions critical of its policies some of which were drafted by its European allies. A quick look at today’s Middle East makes it clear that such obstructions worked for the interest of neither party, nor for peace and security in the region.

Cold-War rivalries have also contributed to UN paralysis in the Israeli Palestinian-Arab conflict, which explains why more than half of the 690 resolutions adopted by the General Assembly from 1947-1990 have been ignored.

But what justifies sidelining the UN ever since, while keeping it at an arm’s length from a two decades of Peace Process?

The short answer is a double standard.

All major post-Cold War conflicts have seen direct UN involvement including, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and of late, Lebanon, South Sudan. Not the Palestine problem. It was deferred to the US sponsored diplomatic process even though Washington’s close relations with Israel rendered it anything but an impartial broker.

Not only was Palestinian Israeli conflict snatched out of the world body, most relevant US resolutions critical of Israel were ignored by the US sponsors.

Only after the peace process failed to yield a solution a decade later, did the Bush administration allow the United Nations to join, and even then, only as a junior partner in a newly formed International Quartet that includes the European Union and Russia, all of whom are members of the UN!

Meanwhile, Israel has disregarded tens of resolutions, “censuring”, “calling”, “urging”, “recommending”, or “condemning” its attacks, settlement, deportations, occupation, etc.

Likewise, all pleas and demands for humanitarian and political interventions fell on deaf ears. The only time the UN was allowed to act, was in 1997 when it sent few international unarmed observers to the occupied city of Hebron. Alas, they weren’t mandated to speak publicly about the ongoing violations.

For the past four decades, Israel has violated all relevant UNSC council resolutions such as the resolution 465 of 1980 that strongly deplored all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure of status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.

It also rejected Resolution 476, which reaffirmed the necessity to end the Israeli occupation of Arab territories ongoing since the 1967 war. The only UN Security Council Resolution that was accepted by the US and Israel as the basis of the diplomatic process, i.e. 242 of 1967, was also systematically violated. Israel has been expanding its settlement activity when the resolution notes the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force”.

Paradoxically, Israel was created by a UN recommendation for Partitioning Palestine in 1947, and was accepted as a new UN member on the basis of its commitment to respect its resolution, and specifically UNGA 194 regarding the return of the Palestinian refugees.

Now that all other venues have been tried and failed, including 18 years of bilateral negotiations, the UN Security Council must carry its responsibilities by demanding that Israel carry its obligations under UN charter and by recognising the Palestinian right for self-determination in a state of their own. Period.

Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst.

He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs.

By Marwan Bishara

21 September 2011

@ Al Jazeera

Islamophobic parties in Europe have established a tight network, stretching from Italy to Finland. But recently, they have extended their feelers to Israeli conservatives, enjoying a warm reception from members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Some in Israel believe that the populists are Europe’s future.

Anders Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto is nothing if not thorough. Pages and pages of text outline in excruciating detail the ideological underpinnings of his worldview — one which led him to kill 76 people in two terrible attacks in Norway last week.

It is a document which has led many to question Breivik’s sanity. But it has also, due to its myriad citations and significant borrowing from several anti-immigration, Islamophobic blogs, highlighted the deeply entwined network of right-wing populist groups and parties across Europe — from the Front National in France to Vlaams Belang in Belgium to the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).

But recently it has become clear that Europe’s populist parties aren’t merely content to establish a network on the Continent. They are also looking further east. And have begun establishing tight relations with several conservative politicians in Israel — first and foremost with Ayoob Kara, a parliamentarian with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party who is also deputy minister for development of the Negev and Galilee districts.

The reason for the growing focus on Israel is not difficult to divine. “On the one hand,” Strache told SPIEGEL ONLINE in a recent interview, “we are seeing great revolutions taking place in the Middle East. But one can’t be totally sure that other interests aren’t behind them and that, in the end, we might see Islamist theocracies surrounding Israel and in Europe’s backyard.”

In other words, in the battle against what right-wing populists see as the creeping Islamization of Europe, Israel is on the front line.

‘More Sensitive to the Dangers’

Many in Israel see it the same way. Eliezer Cohen, known in Israel by his nickname “Cheetah,” says that leftist parties in both Europe and Israel have lost their way. Cohen, a decorated Israeli air force colonel now in retirement, is a former member of the Knesset with Yisrael Beiteinu, the hardline nationalist party led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that currently governs together in a coalition with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

“Right-wing politicians in Europe are more sensitive to the dangers facing Israel,” Cohen, who gave a keynote address during Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders’ visit to Berlin last October, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “They are talking the exact same language as Likud and others on the Israeli right. I’m too old for bullshitting — we hope the right wing wins out in Europe.”

Kara sounds no different. “I am looking for ways to lessen the Islamic influence in the world,” Kara told the Israeli daily Maariv in June. “I believe that is the true Nazism in this world. I am the partner of everyone who believes in the existence of this war.”

At first glance, the European populists’ relationship with Israel would hardly appear to be a marriage built on love. Many see the FPÖ as being just one tiny step away from classic neo-Nazi groups and the same holds true for their partners throughout Europe. While such parties insist that they are not anti-Semitic — Strache claims that he takes a close look at populist parties’ stances toward Israel and Jews before he enters into partnerships with them — it is not difficult to find indications of extreme, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic vitriol from within the populist party membership rolls.

Andreas Mölzer, for example, a member of the European Parliament for the FPÖ who has recently changed his tune to defend Strache’s approaches to Israel, edits a weekly called Zur Zeit which is replete with attacks on Israel. Following its incursion into the Gaza Strip in late 2008, the paper accused Israel of acting in “the Talmudic spirit of annihilation” and that it was trying to “finally annihilate the open-air concentration camp of the Gaza Strip in the spirit of the Old Testament.”

‘Neo-Nazi Millionaire’

Indeed, when it comes to the FPÖ, observers of the party say the embrace of Israel, however far to the right it is taking place, is an insincere effort to establish foreign policy credibility. “The strategy is clearly that of normalizing itself, of becoming socially acceptable,” Heribert Schiedel, an expert on the FPÖ with the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance, a foundation which monitors right-wing extremism, wrote in an e-mail. “We presume that anti-Semitism remains a fundamental part of the party’s ideology.”

Many in Israel would tend to agree. And Kara was blasted in the Israeli press for a recent meeting in Berlin he held with Patrick Brinkmann, a German right-wing populist. “Deputy Minister Meets Neo-Nazi Millionaire,” read a headline in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth earlier this month, noting that Brinkmann, while now insistent that he is not anti-Semitic, once had close ties with the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). Following a visit to Vienna in December to meet with Strache, Vienna Jewish community leader Ariel Muzicant published an open letter in which he demanded that Netanyahu fire Kara.

The primary focus of the FPÖ’s political message, however, is — like that of populist parties from the True Finns in Finland to the Lega Nord in Italy — one of extreme skepticism of Muslim immigration. The groups are opposed to the construction of minarets, convinced that Europe’s future is threatened by high Muslim birth rates and certain that the Christian West must defend itself from Islam.

“For decades, politicians in Europe have ignored demographic developments and we are now in a situation where we have to warn that we are experiencing the Islamification of Europe,” Strache says. “We don’t want to become an Islamic society.”

Geert Wilders, who hit the headlines in 2008 with his virulently anti-Muslim film “Fitna” in 2008, pioneered the European populist-Israeli connection that same year. He has been back to visit Israel several times since.

Allied with the Settlers

Broader relations began in earnest late last year. Strache, together with Vlaams Belang party boss Filip Dewinter, Kent Ekeroth from the Swedish Democrats and René Stadtkewitz, who founded a German Islam-critical party called “Freedom” last October, traveled to Israel in December. The visit was quickly reciprocated with a trip by Kara and others to Vienna at the very end of December. Other exchanges, including Kara’s visit with Brinkmann in July, have followed.

The partners that the European right-wing has sought out in Israel are, perhaps not surprisingly, well to the right of center. Kara himself, a member of the minority Druze religious community who enjoys close ties with Netanyahu, opposed the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and is a loyal supporter of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Gershon Mesika, a settler leader in the West Bank, received the populist delegation in December. Hillel Weiss and David Ha’ivri, both proponents of “neo-Zionism,” a movement which holds the belief that it is impossible to live in peace with Arabs, traveled to Germany last April for a conference hosted by the small, German right-wing populist movement Pro-NRW.

Their hope is that a pan-European platform will begin to emerge that values Israel as an important bastion in resisting the advancing tide of Islam. And they think, with the populist right making electoral gains across Europe in recent years, the smart bet is on Strache and Co.

‘Europeans Cannot Sleep’

“The reasonable right parties have their roots at home. The Germans in Germany, the Swedes in Sweden and so on,” says David Lasar, a member of the Vienna city government for the FPÖ. “I think that Israel is also a country that says this is our homeland and we can’t open the borders and let everyone in as happened in Europe. That is a reason that Israel today has more trust in the right-wing parties in Europe than in the left-wing parties.”

Lasar himself is Jewish and is one of the key players in ongoing efforts to tighten relations between Israel and the Europeans. And his view on Israel is one which would seem to be at odds with his party’s past positions on the Middle East. Whereas Lasar is skeptical of peace negotiations which would require Israel to give up East Jerusalem or to withdraw from the settlements, the FPÖ has traditionally been allied with Arab leaders such as Moammar Gadhafi and remained skeptical of America’s hard-line position on Iran.

That, though, Strache made clear, is changing. “There are areas where we Europeans cannot sleep, where we can’t remain silent,” says Strache. “Israel is in danger of being destroyed. Were that to happen, it would also result in Europe losing its foundation for existence.”

29 July 2011

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2011

“So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/Multiculturalists”. Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto

“. . . two more cells exist in my organization”. . . Ander Behring Breivik in police custody (Reuters 7/25/11)

Introduction:

The July 22, 2011, bombing of the office of the Norwegian Prime Minister, Labor Party Jen Stoltenberg, which killed 8 civilians, and the subsequent political assassination of 68 unarmed activists of the Labor Party Youth on Utoeya Island, just 20 minutes from Oslo, by militant neo-fascist Christian-Zionists, raises fundamental questions about the growing links between the legal Far-Right, the ‘mainstream media’, the Norwegian police, Israel and rightwing terrorism.

The Mass Media and the Rise of Rightwing Terrorism:

The leading English language newspapers, The New York Times (NYT), the Washington Post (WP), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Financial Times (FT), as well as President Obama, blamed “Islamic extremists”, upon the first police reports of the killings, publishing a series of incendiary (and false) headlines and reports, labeling the event as ‘Norway’s 9-11’,in terms, which echoed the ideological motivation and justifications cited by the Norwegian Christian-Zionist political assassin, Anders Behring Breivik himself. The July 23/24 front page of the Financial Times (of London), read “Islamist extremism fears: Worst Europe strike since 2005”. Obama immediately cited the terrorist attack in Norway to further justify his overseas wars against Muslim countries. The FT, NYT, WP and WSJ trotted out their self-styled “experts” who debated over which Arab/Islamic leaders or movements were responsible – despite Norwegian press reports of ‘the arrest of a Nordic man in police uniform’.

Clearly, the US mass media and political elite were eager to use the bombing and assassinations to justify ongoing overseas imperial wars, ignoring the burgeoning domestic extremist rightwing organizations and violent individuals who are the outgrowth of official Islamophobic hate propaganda.

When Anders Breivik, a known neo-fascist extremist, handed his weapons over to Norwegian police without resistance and claimed credit for the bombing and massacre, the second phase of the official cover-up took place: He was immediately described as “a lone wolf assassin”, who “acted alone” (BBC July 24, 2011) or as mentally deranged, downplaying his political networks, his American, European and Israeli ideological mentors and commitments, which led to his acts of terrorism. Even more outrageous, the media and officials ignored the fact that this complex, multiphase terrorist attack was beyond the capacity of one ‘deranged’ person.

Anders Behring Breivik had been a dues-paying member of a Far-Right political party, The Progress Party and a collaborator and contributor to an overtly neo-Nazi web site. He frequently focused his hatred on the ruling Labor Party for its relative tolerance of immigrants. He despised immigrants especially, Muslims, and was an ardent Christian-Zionist supporter of Israeli repression and terror against the Palestinian people. His criminal action was political in essence and embedded in a much wider political network.

The political elite and media have scrambled to deny the overlapping links between ‘legal’ ideological Islamophobes, like the American Zionists Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the Dutch far-right Party of Freedom led by the hate-monger Geert Wilders and their counterparts in the Norwegian Progress Party who rail against the “Muslim threat”. The “direct action” terrorists take their cues from electoral parties, like the Progress Party, who recruit and indoctrinate activists, like Behring Breivik, who then leave the ‘electoral road’ to carry out their bloody carnage, allowing the ‘respectable’ hate-mongers to hypocritically condemn him… after the outrage.

The Lone Assassin: A Fascist Superman Travels Faster than a Speeding Bullet Versus the Police Moving Slower than an Arthritic Turtle

The case for the “lone wolf terrorist” defies credence. It is a tissue of lies used to cover up state complicity, intelligence malfeasance, and the sharp right-turn in the domestic and foreign policies of NATO countries.

There is no basis to accept Breivik’s initial claim that he acted alone for several outstanding reasons: First, the car bomb, which devastated downtown Oslo, was a highly complex weapon requiring expertise and coordination – the kind available to state or intelligence services, like the Mossad, which specialize in devastating car bombs. Amateurs, like Breivik, with no training in explosives, usually blow themselves up or lack the skill required to connect the electronic timing devices or remote detonators (like the unsuccessful ‘shoe’, ‘underpants’ and ‘Times Square’ bombers have proved) . Secondly, the details of (a) moving the bomb, (b) obtaining (stealing) a vehicle, (c) placing the device at the strategic site, (d) successfully detonating it and (e) then gowning up in an elaborate special police uniform with an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of ammunition and driving off in another vehicle to Utoeya Island, (f) waiting patiently while armed to the teeth for a ferry boat, g) crossing with other passengers in his police uniform, (h) rounding up the Labor youth activists and commencing the massacre of scores of unarmed youth and finally (i) finishing off the wounded and hunting for those trying to hide or swim away – cannot accord with the activity of a lone zealot. Even the combination of Superman, Einstein and a world class marksman could not perform those tasks.

The media and NATO leaders must view the public as passive morons to expect them to believe that Anders Behring Breivik “acted alone”. He is willing to take a 20 year prison sentence if it means, as he maintains, that their collective action is the spark that ignites his comrades and advances the agenda of the violent and legal far rightwing parties. Facing a Norwegian judge on July 25, he publically declared the existence of “two more cells in my organization”. According to witness testimony on Utoeya Island shots from two distinct weapons were heard from different directions during the massacre. The police say they are… “investigating”. Needless to say the police have found nothing; instead they put on a “show” to cover their inaction by raiding two houses far from the massacre and quickly released the suspects.

The most serious political implication of the terrorist action, however, is the conspicuous complicity of top police officials. The police took 90 minutes to arrive at Utoeya Island, located less than 20 kilometers from Oslo, 12 minutes by helicopter and 25 to 30 minutes by car and boat. The delay allowed the right wing assassins to use up the ammunition, maximizing the death toll of young, anti-fascist activists and devastating the Labor youth movement. The police chief, Sveinung Sponheim, made the feeblest excuse and cover-up, claiming “problems with transport”. Sponheim argued that a helicopter “wasn’t on standby” and they “could not find a boat” (Associated Press, July 24, 2011). Yet a helicopter was available; it managed to fly to Utoeya and film the ongoing slaughter, and over half of Norwegians, a seafaring people for millennia, own or have access to a boat. A police force, faced with what the Prime Minister calls the ‘worst atrocity since the Nazi occupation’, moving at the pace of an arthritic turtle to rescue youth activists, raises the suspicion of some level of complicity. The obvious question arises as to the degree to which the ideology of right wing extremism – neo-fascism – has penetrated the police and security forces, especially the upper echelons? This level of “inactivity” raises more questions than it answers. What it suggests is that the Social Democrats only control part of the Government – the legislative, while the neo-fascists influence the state apparatus.

The plain fact is that the police did not save a single life. When they finally arrived, Anders Behring Breivik had run out of ammunition and surrendered turning himself over to the police. The police literally did not fire a single shot; they did not even have to hunt or capture the assassin. An almost choreographed scenario: Hundreds wounded, 68 unarmed, peaceful activists killed and the Labor youth movement decimated.

The police can claim “crime solved” while the mass media prattles about a “lone assassin”. The far right has a “martyr” to mask a further advance in their anti-Muslim, pro Israel crusade. (It is reminiscent of the celebrated Israeli-American fascist mass murderer, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered dozens of unarmed Palestinian men and boys at prayer in 1994).

Only two days before the political murders, the head of the Labor Party Youth Movement, Eskil Pederson, gave an interview to the Dagbladet, Norway’s second largest tabloid, in which he announced a “unilateral economic embargo of Israel from the Norwegian side” (Gilad Atzmon, July 24, 2011).

The fact of the matter is that the Norwegian military has no problem promptly dispatching 500 troops to Afghanistan, half way around the world and providing six Norwegian Air Force jets and pilots to bomb and terrorize Libya. And yet they can’t find a helicopter or a row boat to transport their police a couple hundred

 

 

yards to stop a domestic right wing terrorist – whose murderous rampage was being described second by second by the terrorized young victims on their cell phones to their frantic parents?

The Imperial Roots of Domestic Fascism: Conclusion

Clearly, the decisions of Norway and other Scandinavian nations to participate in the US imperial crusades against Muslim and especially Arab people in the Middle East have aroused and energized the neo-fascist right. They now want to “bring the war home”; they want Norway to go further, to ‘cleanse the nation’ by expelling Muslims. They want to “send a message” to the Labor Party: Either it must accept a full neo-fascist pro-Israeli agenda or expect more massacres, more elected fascists, more followers of Anders Behring Breivik.

The “Progress Party” is now the second largest political party in Norway. If a “conservative” coalition defeats Labor, neo-fascists will probably sit in the Government. Who knows, after a few years of good behavior, they might find an excuse to commute their ex-comrades sentence . . . or proclaim him mentally rehabilitated and freed.

Clearly what is needed is the immediate withdrawal of all troops from imperial wars and a systematic, coherent and organized fight against domestic right-wing terrorists and their intellectual godparents, in America, Israel and Europe. Labor youth must go press on with their demand that the Labor Government, under Prime Minister Jen Stoltenberg, recognize the nation of Palestine and implement a total boycott of Israeli goods and services. A national and international political-educational campaign must be organized to expose the links between respectable electoral fascists and violent terrorists. The Labor Youth martyrs of Utoeya Island should be cherished and their ideals taught in all the schools. Their far-right enemies and supporters whether overt, covert or directly complicit, should be exposed and condemned. The best weapon against the renewed neo-fascist onslaught is a political and educational offensive, taking up the anti-fascist, anti-Quisling (Norway’s notorious Nazi collaborator) fighting traditions of their grandparents’ era. It’s not too late – if the Labor Party, the Norwegian trade unions and the anti-fascist youth act now before the flood of resurgent fascism.

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. His publishers have included Random House, John Wiley, Westview, Routledge, Macmillan, Verso, Zed Books and Pluto Books. He is winner of the Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association’s Marxist Sociology Section, the Robert Kenny Award for Best Book, 2002, and the Best Dissertation, Western Political Science Association in 1968. His most recent titles include Unmasking Globalization: Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century (2001); co-author The Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2000), System in Crisis (2003), co-author Social Movements and State Power (2003), co-author Empire With Imperialism (2005), co-author)Multinationals on Trial (2006).

31 July, 2011

Countercurrents.org

 

The march towards democracy proceeds amid suspicions that generals and Islamists are trying to slow it down

DURING the Egyptian summer tempers rise along with temperatures. Street fights erupt with alarming regularity. Purple faces, bulging veins and blood-curdling threats seem to portend carnage. Yet much of this is theatre, played out in the confidence that passers-by will intervene, separate combatants and make them reconcile.

Emerging from decades in a deep freeze of authoritarianism, Egyptian politics is showing a similar propensity to grow dangerously heated, then subside into calm as cooler heads intervene. In recent weeks the political scene, occupied by scores of passionate new actors produced by the big bang of revolution, has looked frighteningly polarised. It pits mostly secular forces, impatient for sweeping change, against wary conservatives who are backed by the ruling army high command and bolstered, ironically, by Islamist groups that faced repression under the pre-revolutionary regime. The tension has at times risen beyond rhetoric. On July 23rd pro-army vigilantes attacked a protest march in Cairo, leaving more than 300 people injured.

Yet fears that opposing forces may descend on Tahrir Square en masse, provoking open battles in the heart of Egypt’s capital, were quickly allayed. Islamists, led by puritan Salafist parties that have emerged as a powerful alternative to the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood, were quietly advised to withdraw a threat to call a million-man counter-march to assert Egypt’s “Islamic identity”. Politicians parlayed a truce, calling instead for a big joint demonstration on July 29th to deliver a short list of common demands to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the body of 19 generals that serves as a collective presidency.

Some of those generals had earlier raised eyebrows by accusing the April 6th Movement, a youth group that played a key part in mobilising thousands of followers during the revolution, of being an agent for foreign powers. The army’s annoyance was understandable. April 6th spearheaded a reoccupation of public squares in several cities in early July to push for speedier adoption of revolutionary reforms. Joined by a motley coalition of activists, including Salafist splinters and Muslim Brotherhood factions, the activists have increasingly targeted the generals as obstacles to change.

Their most bitter complaint is that, whereas some 10,000 civilians have been served harsh jail terms by military courts since the revolution, most officials of the former regime have so far escaped justice for decades of corruption and abuse of power, including the widespread use of torture and the killing of more than 800 people during the revolution. The toppled president, Hosni Mubarak, has languished in a fancy hospital in the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, hidden from view pending his trial on the feeble charge of having paid too little for a beach house.

Considering that the ruling generals have nurtured an image as neutral guarantors of revolutionary goals, their sudden hostility to one of the revolution’s primary instigators has jarred. Some attribute sinister motives to the army, pointing to evidence of attempts to plant plain-clothes agitators in protests and to mute the thriving independent press while encouraging state-owned media to portray protesters as hooligans. There are even whispers of a quiet alliance between the army and Islamist parties, aimed at securing a “Caesar option” whereby military rule will eventually be acclaimed by a weary people as a welcome alternative to chaos.

Such fears are overblown. Egypt’s military has little experience or understanding of civilian life, and even less preparation for its current role. Being by nature conservative, xenophobic and more disciplined than Egypt’s fissiparous secularists, Islamist groups may seem natural partners in keeping order. Unlike most other parties, the Islamists laud the generals’ plan to postpone forging a new constitution until after the election of a parliament, which would then be asked to form a 100-strong constitutional congress. Yet their support does not reflect love for the army. Rather, it stems from confidence that elections will produce an Islamist parliamentary bloc big enough to prevent the adoption of a constitution they would deem too secular.

Such tactics are worrying to the many Egyptians, not just the 8% Coptic Christian minority, who would prefer some separation of religion and state. Still more anxiety stems from the fact that rules for the poll, now set for November, are extremely complex, mixing party lists and individual candidacies. With the army set to ban foreign election monitors, the risk of a flawed or contested outcome has grown.

Despite all this, opinion polls suggest that Egyptians remain broadly hopeful of the future. The government under prime minister Essam Sharaf, a pious professor of traffic management, has generally responded to the revolutionary clamour. It has promised to speed trials of former officials, including Mr Mubarak, and open them to the public. Successive cabinet changes have replaced unpopular ministers. Further purges are expected, including policemen, provincial governors and university administrators. Perhaps, as with Egypt’s theatrical street fights, the mood of suspicion and recrimination will prove a prelude to lasting reconciliation.

 

 

30 July 2011

PARIS – It is difficult not to be struck by the contrast between the “Asian”-like energy of Israel’s economy and civil society and the purely defensive nature of its approach to political change, both within and outside the country. A recent law bars Israeli citizens from supporting Western boycotts aimed at reversing the country’s settlement policies and at backing an independent Palestinian state. While Israel has never been so affluent, dynamic, and confident, it also has never been so isolated internationally.

Israel could have embraced the Arab Spring as an opportunity, rather than as a profound risk. If Arab citizens could transform their culture of humiliation into a culture of hope, perhaps they would be able to reconcile themselves with Israel’s existence. But Israeli leaders reacted purely negatively to the Arab upheavals. In their estimation, a complex regional environment has now become even more dangerous, making prudence even more urgent.

For Israel, yesterday’s despots, like Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, were much more predictable than the “Arab masses.” While some of the demonstrators might be inspired by democratic ideals, let’s have no illusions, the Israelis seem to be saying: Islamist forces will emerge as the only winners, and they are much more hostile to Israel and the West than their predecessors were.

Of course, with the Syrian regime’s massacres of its own citizens, some in Israel say that the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants pales in comparison, and thus fails to attract the same sympathy as it did last year. But this should not obscure the overall diplomatic picture for Israel, which remains essentially negative.

One of the more ironic results of the region’s changing political configuration is that Israel now perceives a strategic convergence with Saudi Arabia. Despite their political systems’ deep differences, they both favor the regional status quo, and they share an obsessive suspicion of Iran.

But why not dream of a new strategic triangle comprising Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, just as Israelis once dreamed of a non-Arab triangle between Israel, Turkey, and the Shah’s Iran? The Turks’ appalled reaction to the Syrian regime’s brutal behavior creates an opportunity that Israel should use to try to restore the privileged relationship with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government that existed before the Gaza blockade. But that would presuppose a small gesture towards the Palestinians, whom Israelis regard as being so deeply divided among themselves that no progress toward a peace settlement seems possible.

Israel’s leaders seem intent on gaining time both tactically, by resisting the soft pressure of US President Barack Obama’s administration, and strategically, by preparing the country for a new world in which emerging powers such as China play an increasingly important role.

That world, however, will be one in which Israel can no longer count on feelings of Holocaust guilt to influence major powers. It is a world in which monotheistic rivalries will be diluted in an ocean of polytheist faiths, and in which Israel will be able to depend only on its comparative merits in the eyes of cynical, realistic actors who will judge it solely on the basis of their own national interests.

Israel may be “of Europe,” and its main ally may well remain the United States for many years to come, but Israeli leaders must start thinking of how their country can thrive in a post-Western world. The most recent “President’s Conference,” held in June in Jerusalem under the patronage of Israeli President Shimon Peres, was highly symbolic of this evolution. In the opening session, Obama’s special envoy, Denis Ross, was greeted with resounding silence when he conveyed to the participants his boss’s warm wishes. By contrast, China’s culture minister was welcomed very warmly when he spoke, in typical fashion, of the growing need for global “harmony.”

In the minds of a few Israeli strategic thinkers, Israel must resist firmly for two or three more generations in order to become an irreversible reality in the region and a legitimate “accomplished fact” of the international system. At that point, who would want to boycott a country whose technological prowess is needed all over the world?

In this context, the idea of a peace settlement with the Palestinians seems more abstract than ever. Indeed, it makes the current status quo seem comfortable. The gap between Israel’s rich and poor nowadays may recall Brazil, but who remembers the original Zionists’ social-democratic ideals?

The country’s prosperity is simply overwhelming. From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, luxurious penthouses are multiplying. Are we in Singapore, Hong Kong, or São Paulo? Why challenge the certainties of the present with the uncertainties of the future?

Moreover, Israel has not only become much more prosperous; it has also moved decisively to the right. The second Intifada may very well have proven fatal to the Israeli left. Triumphant capitalism, idolatry of the land, and the comforts of the status quo produce a heady cocktail. But, high on the benefits of globalization, and waiting with a mixture of excitement and apprehension for the coming of a new post-Western world order, Israelis are dancing on the rim of a volcano.

2011-07-27

@ Project Syndicate

Dominique Moisi is the author of The Geopolitics of Emotion.