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This time last week the diplomatic world was on tenterhooks, as President Mahmoud Abbas prepared to make Palestine’s claim to recognition at the UN General Assembly. Seven days on, his historic demand languishes in a vague limbo, as Americans and Europeans try to pre-empt an ill-tempered stand-off in the Security Council and the US veto that would surely follow. The idea seems to be to try to deflect the Palestinians with a promise of revamped peace talks with Israel.

Whether or not this tactic works, however, there can be little doubt that one day, sooner rather than later, a fully fledged Palestinian state will come into being. There have been many mis-starts, including the 2006 elections that much of the West rejected retrospectively when Hamas emerged as the biggest party. But the momentum is inexorable. The Arab Spring, better described as the Arab awakening, can only speed the process along.

The bigger and longer-term question relates not to the existence, or even the viability of a Palestinian state – which should be a given. The demographics, economics and politics all point the same way. It relates to the future, and long-term survival, of Israel. In short, will Israel, as the Jewish state, still be around to celebrate its centenary in 2048?

Let me make it absolutely clear: the question is not whether Israel should continue to exist. That is beyond doubt. It is a legally constituted state with full UN recognition. It is a stable, albeit fractious, democracy and has survived more than 60 years in a distinctly hostile neighbourhood. It has created a thriving economy, with intensive agriculture and advanced industry, from almost nothing. It has a rich cultural life. It is not alone in having borders that are not finally demarcated and are regarded by some as illegal. The fact that it has enemies who withhold recognition does not negate its legitimacy.

No, the question is not whether Israel should survive, but whether it can and will survive. And here there must be room at the very least for doubt. A string of recent developments contains hints that the state of Israel, as currently constituted, may not be a permanent feature of the international scene.

One is the new porousness of its borders. Despite massive spending on security and recent, controversial, efforts to erect physical barriers along what Israel defines as its border with the Palestinian Authority, its other frontiers have become, or threaten to become, porous. On several weekends in May and June, Palestinians in Syria breached the border with Israel. They did not use overwhelming force. Numbers were enough, against Israeli troops – rightly – reluctant to mow down dozens of young people.

The incursions appeared to be encouraged, if not actually incited, by the Syrian authorities seeking a diversion from their own difficulties. They have since ceased; but the threat remains, and could soon escalate were the situation in Syria to deteriorate. If, in the worst case, Syria descended into civil war, chaos could present an even greater danger to Israel because there would be no one in Damascus with the authority to call the crowds of frustrated young Palestinians back.

Something similar, perhaps even less tractable, applies in the south, on Israel’s border with Egypt. Sinai is a vast territory and hard to patrol. Security on the Egyptian side has already deteriorated as a by-product of the fall of the Mubarak regime, and there have been attacks on Israeli convoys in the Negev. If unrest in Syria and Egypt were to extend to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, the consequences for Israel’s security could be even worse.

Add to these growing security problems the demographics – very young and fast-increasing populations in the countries all around – and it is clear that present trends will not easily be reversed. It is just about possible to imagine Israel resorting to the sort of impenetrable fortifications that extend along stretches of the US frontier with Mexico, but the investment would be huge, the message one of isolation, and the effect on daily life in Israel almost entirely negative.

A second reason why Israelis might be justified in having qualms about their future relates to the political aftermath of the Arab Spring. For a long time the fear was that any change in Arab countries would bring Islamist regimes to power, with fiercely anti-Israel agendas. That still cannot be ruled out. But what has happened so far could have more insidious consequences for Israel. Not only is the Jewish state losing its kudos as the sole democracy in the region, but those Arab leaders who actively supported peace have lost, or are losing, power, and the US is giving up on intervention.

One hope was that the emergence of more democratic regimes around Israel might foster a climate of normalisation and mutual respect. That may yet happen. But another effect is that leaders will have to be more responsive to the wishes of their people. As can already be discerned with Egypt, this may not bode well for stability in Arab-Israel relations. With the Arab Spring also bolstering the self-confidence of the Palestinians – a factor in Mr Abbas’s decision to take his case to the UN last week – the political balance in the region is shifting.

A third reason for doubt about Israel’s future lies within the Jewish state itself. With the early pioneering spirit fading, and even the Holocaust – dare one hazard – less of a unifying force, Israel is not the same country it was 60, 30, even 10 years ago. And demography means that it will continue to change, with the Arab, Orthodox Jewish and second-generation Russian populations increasing much faster than other groups. The Israel of the next 30 years is likely to be more divided, less productive, more inward-looking and more hawkish than it is today – but without the financial means and unquestioning sense of duty that inspired young people to defend their homeland by force of arms.

Recent mass protests against inequality and the cost of middle-class living also suggest that the social solidarity that has prevailed hitherto could break down. In such circumstances, it must be asked how much longer Israel can maintain the unity it has always presented against what it terms the “existential threat”.

An Israel whose borders are leaky, which is surrounded by states that are at once chaotic and assertive, and whose citizens are less able or willing than they were to fight, could face real serious questions about its viability. The choice then might be between a fortress state, explicitly protected by nuclear weapons, and a state so weak that association, or federation, with the burgeoning independent Palestine would become plausible: the so-called one-state solution by other means.

In either event, those with other options – the younger, more educated, more cosmopolitan sections of the population – might well seek their future elsewhere, leaving the homeland of their ancestors’ dreams a husk of its former self. The emotive call, “Next year in Jerusalem” would be the wistful vestige of a noble ambition overtaken by cruel demographic and geopolitical reality.

Mary Dejevsky

Friday, 30 September 2011

 

Saudi Arabia’s political paradoxes mean that a woman can be elected to parliament – but she’ll need a man to drive her there

What’s it like being a Saudi woman? A common question I’ve come to expect from outsiders – even fellow Arabs. The restrictiveness of the guardianship system, gender segregation and a persistently sexist culture add up to create an exotic and mysterious lifestyle that is difficult to not only explain but also to comprehend.

How do you explain the ingrained paradox of the driving ban on women? The point of the ban is that women avoid situations that lead to them mixing with and meeting men. However, the ban then leads to the necessity of hiring a strange man and getting into the car with him on a daily basis.

How do you explain the huge amounts of money the government spends on educating and training women, so much so that 60% of college graduates in Saudi are women – educating and training all these women, despite the fact that gender segregation laws makes employing them virtually impossible.

How do you explain that this is the way of life that the average Saudi wants for his or her country, when anyone getting on a plane leaving Saudi cannot help but notice how quickly the Saudi passengers abandon their abayas and conservative mannerisms?

A country of contradictions; Saudis have coined an Arabic phrase to explain the unexplainable that translates into “Saudi exceptionality”. This past week Saudi exceptionality did not disappoint.

After years of Saudis campaigning and petitioning the king to lift the women driving ban and ease the restrictiveness of the guardianship system, King Abdullah decreed last week that women would be allowed as full members of the Saudi parliament and would be allowed to vote and run in future municipal elections. In bafflement, we celebrated the decree.

Then, within a couple of days of the decree, a Saudi woman was sentenced to 10 lashes for driving her own car. Although women are banned from driving, they have never been sentenced to physical punishment for it. The usual is signing a pledge and in extreme cases paid suspension from their jobs and prison sentences that are never more than a few days.

Local political analysts believe that this lashing was some sort of reaction from the judicial courts to the king’s decree. A national and international outcry soon followed and the woman was later pardoned but the contradiction still stands. So in 18 months’ time a Saudi woman can be a member of parliament providing that her male guardian allows her to and she finds a man to drive her there.

How do Saudis explain that? It depends on where they stand concerning women’s rights issues. Those for women’s rights commend the wisdom of empowering women at the highest levels of decision-making so that their voices will trickle down to create real change in the everyday life of the average Saudi woman.

Women members on the Shura council will help bring issues such as child marriages and the unemployment rate for women to the forefront. However, those who oppose the decision see it as the government bending to international pressure. To them, the recent campaigns by organisations such as Amnesty International and Change.org have pushed the government to go against the will of the people.

Either way, the end result is the same, another paradox. Another item to add to the list of things that make explaining what it’s like being a Saudi woman difficult; another illogical milestone in Saudi history. The only consistency is “Saudi exceptionality”.

Eman Al Nafjan

29 September 2011

@ The Guardian

 

 

Life Among the 1% …a letter from Michael Moore

27 October 2011

Friends,

Twenty-two years ago this coming Tuesday, I stood with a group of factory workers, students and the unemployed in the middle of the downtown of my birthplace, Flint, Michigan, to announce that the Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., had purchased the world rights to distribute my first movie, ‘Roger & Me.’ A reporter asked me, “How much did you sell it for?”

“Three million dollars!” I proudly exclaimed. A cheer went up from the union guys surrounding me. It was absolutely unheard of for one of us in the working class of Flint (or anywhere) to receive such a sum of money unless one of us had either robbed a bank or, by luck, won the Michigan lottery.

On that sunny November day in 1989, it was like I had won the lottery — and the people I had lived and struggled with in Michigan were thrilled with my success. It was like, one of us had made it, one of us finally had good fortune smile upon us.

The day was filled with high-fives and “Way-ta-go Mike!”s. When you are from the working class you root for each other, and when one of you does well, the others are beaming with pride — not just for that one person’s success, but for the fact thatthe team had somehow won, beating the system that was brutal and unforgiving and which ran a game that was rigged against us.

We knew the rules, and those rules said that we factory town rats do not get to make movies or be on TV talk shows or have our voice heard on any national stage. We were to shut up, keep our heads down, and get back to work.

If by some miracle one of us escaped and commandeered a mass audience and some loot to boot — well, holy mother of God, watch out! A bully pulpit and enough cash to raise a ruckus — that was an incendiary combination, and it only spelled trouble for those at the top.

Until that point I had been barely getting by on unemployment, collecting $98 a week. Welfare. The dole. My car had died back in April so I had gone seven months with no vehicle. Friends would take me out to dinner, always coming up with an excuse to celebrate or commemorate something and then picking up the check so I would not have to feel the shame of not being able to afford it.

And now, all of a sudden, I had three million bucks! What would I do with it? There were men in suits making many suggestions to me, and I could see how those without a strong moral sense of social responsibility could be easily lead down the “ME” path and quickly forget about the “WE.”

So I made some easy decisions back in 1989:

1. I would first pay all my taxes. I told the guy who did my 1040 not to declare any deductions other than the mortgage and to pay the full federal, state and city tax rate. I proudly contributed nearly 1 million dollars for the privilege of being a citizen of this great country.

2. Of the remaining $2 million, I decided to divide it up the way I once heard the folksinger/activist Harry Chapin tell me how he lived: “One for me, one for the other guy.” So I took half the money — $1 million — and established a foundation to give it all away.

3. The remaining million went like this: I paid off all my debts, paid off the debts of some friends and family members, bought my parents a new refrigerator, set up college funds for our nieces and nephews, helped rebuild a black church that had been burned down in Flint, gave out a thousand turkeys at Thanksgiving, bought filmmaking equipment to send to the Vietnamese (my own personal reparations for a country we had ravaged), annually bought 10,000 toys to give to Toys for Tots at Christmas, got myself a new American-made Honda, and took out a mortgage on an apartment above a Baby Gap in New York City.

4. What remained went into a simple, low-interest savings account. I made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn’t understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not believe in investing in a system I did not agree with).

5. Finally, I believed the concept of making money off your money had created a greedy, lazy class who didn’t produce any product, just misery and fear among the populace. They invented ways to buy out companies and then shut them down. They dreamed up schemes to play with people’s pension funds as if it were their own money. They demanded companies keep posting record profits (which was accomplished by firing thousands and eliminating health benefits for those who remained). I made the decision that if I was going to earn a living, it would be done from my own sweat and ideas and creativity. I would produce something tangible, something others could own or be entertained by or learn from. My work would create employment for others, good employment with middle class wages and full health benefits.

I went on to make more movies, produce TV series and write books. I never started a project with the thought, “I wonder how much money I can make at this?” And by never letting money be the motivating force for anything, I simply did exactly what I wanted to do. That attitude kept the work honest and unflinching — and that, in turn I believe, resulted in millions of people buying tickets to these films, tuning in to my TV shows, and buying my books.

Which is exactly what has driven the Right crazy when it comes to me. How did someone from the left get such a wide mainstream audience?! This just isn’t supposed to happen (Noam Chomsky, sadly, will not be booked on The View today, and Howard Zinn, shockingly, didn’t make the New York Times bestseller list until after he died). That’s how the media machine is rigged — you are not supposed to hear from those who would completely change the system to something much better. Only wimpy liberals who urge caution and compromise and mild reforms get to have their say on the op-ed pages or Sunday morning chat shows.

Somehow, I found a crack through the wall and made it through. I feel very blessed that I have this life — and I take none of it for granted. I believe in the lessons I was taught back in Catholic school — that if you end up doing well, you have an even greater responsibility to those who don’t fare the same. “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” Kinda commie, I know, but the idea was that the human family was supposed to divide up the earth’s riches in a fair manner so that all of God’s children would have a life with less suffering.

I do very well — and for a documentary filmmaker, I do extremely well. That, too, drives conservatives bonkers. “You’re rich because of capitalism!” they scream at me. Um, no. Didn’t you take Econ 101? Capitalism is a system, a pyramid scheme of sorts, that exploits the vast majority so that the few at the top can enrich themselves more. I make my money the old school, honest way by making things.

Some years I earn a boatload of cash. Other years, like last year, I don’t have a job (no movie, no book) and so I make a lot less. “How can you claim to be for the poor when you are the opposite of poor?!” It’s like asking: “You’ve never had sex with another man — how can you be for gay marriage?!” I guess the same way that an all-male Congress voted to give women the vote, or scores of white people marched with Martin Luther Ling, Jr. (I can hear these righties yelling back through history: “Hey! You’re not black! You’re not being lynched! Why are you with the blacks?!”).

It is precisely this disconnect that prevents Republicans from understanding why anyone would give of their time or money to help out those less fortunate. It is simply something their brain cannot process.”Kanye West makes millions! What’s he doing at Occupy Wall Street?!”

Exactly — he’s down there demanding that his taxes be raised. That, to a right-winger, is the definition of insanity. To everyone else, we are grateful that people like him stand up, even if and especially because it is against his own personal financial interest. It is specifically what that Bible those conservatives wave around demands of those who are well off.

Back on that November day in 1989 when I sold my first film, a good friend of mine said this to me: “They have made a huge mistake giving someone like you a big check. This will make you a very dangerous man. And it proves that old saying right: ‘The capitalist will sell you the rope to hang himself with if he thinks he can make a buck off it.'”

Yours,

Michael Moore

MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com

@MMFlint

MichaelMoore.com

P.S. I will go to Oakland tomorrow afternoon to stand with Occupy Oakland against the out-of-control police.

China’s rapid economic development over the past two decades is something to celebrate. But after the display of horrifying indifference that some Chinese showed toward a bleeding two-year-old girl – in a video watched by millions around the world – the country’s leaders acknowledged Tuesday that the country’s “cultural development” lags behind its other accomplishments.

The official report released by the Xinhua news agency at the end of the annual gathering of the powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party made no mention of Wang Yue, the toddler who was run over twice and ignored by 18 passersby as she lay in a pool of her own blood in a Guangdong market last week. But it was hard not to see a connection between the jarring incident – which has provoked widespread soul-searching among Chinese Internet users – and the Central Committee’s call for a shift in focus from the country’s booming economy to addressing the voids that success has created.

After a four-day closed-door meeting, the 200-plus member Central Committee issued a communiqué calling for the country to build a “powerful socialist culture” that would involve “significantly improving the nation’s ideological and moral qualities.” Earlier, senior Politburo member Li Changchun was quoted as saying “venality, lack of integrity and moral anomalies” were on the rise in Chinese society.

Little Yueyue, as the girl is known here, remained in intensive care in a Guangzhou hospital yesterday, clinging to life, breathing with the help of a respirator. Local media quoted the hospital’s head of neurosurgery as saying the girl will likely remain in a vegetative state if she survives.

The Central Committee decided on cultural development as its main theme for this year’s plenum (last year’s focused on the five-year economic plan) well before the shocking video started an emotional discussion on the Chinese Internet about why people seem to have so little compassion for each other. Yueyue’s case was just the latest scandal in a country that has become increasingly accustomed to astonishing stories of wanton corruption, Internet scams, tainted baby food, and even child abductions with official involvement.

Many see the Communist Party as having created the vacuum it now seeks to fill. Religion was crushed following the country’s 1949 Revolution, and the ideology that was supposed to replace it – Maoism – went out the window when the country undertook its economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.

“The Central Committee knows there’s something very, very seriously wrong with the Chinese value system. Officially, they say that they do have a socialist value system, but no one knows what that means,” said Bo Zhiyue, an expert on Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore. “No one believes in Marxism any more, Confucianism is not being revived, and the so-called Western universal values are not being accepted.”

What the government can do about it is unclear. A statue of Confucius was briefly erected on the edge of Tiananmen Square early this year, signalling what some saw as a campaign to resurrect the great scholar’s values as something of a moral code for the country. However the statue’s placement raised the ire of Maoists, and it was later moved to a less prominent spot inside the nearby National Museum.

The communiqué issued by the Central Committee suggested the Ministry of Culture and the Propaganda Department will lead the push to create a more ethical “socialist” culture, following the long-standing Communist tradition of trying to lead the masses through media and propaganda campaigns. But many Chinese believe that little can change unless the country’s widely distrusted legal system is overhauled.(Many Internet commentators admitted they understood the reaction of those who walked by injured Yueyue, since getting involved in another’s business can often have unpredictable consequences.)

With President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao set to retire next year, the debate over the country’s direction will almost certainly fall to the next generation of China’s leaders to resolve. Not mentioned in the communiqué was the behind-the-scenes jockeying for posts in the next Standing Committee of the Politburo, the Party’s top decision-making body.

While Vice-President Xi Jinping and Vice-Premier Li Keqiang are seen as virtual locks to succeed Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen next year, there could be as many as seven other spots available on the nine-person Politburo.

A taste of the campaigning taking place behind the sealed doors of the Great Hall of the People drifted onto the pages of the People’s Daily newspaper, which on the eve of the Central Committee meeting devoted a 3,000-word front-page article to the accomplishments of Bo Xilai, the charismatic boss of the megacity of Chongqing.

Mr. Bo has made himself the hero of the Party’s “new left” through his campaigns in Chongqing – which have included a harsh crackdown on crime and an effort to restore “Red culture” by encouraging the singing of Mao-era songs – and the prominent article was seen as a sign that he and the leftists might be in ascendance.

But on Monday, the Party’s liberals – often seen as the weaker grouping – got their moment in the People’s Daily, which devoted only slightly less prominent front-page coverage to Wang Yang, the reformist Party boss of coastal Guangdong province.

Mr. Wang recently launched a campaign known as “Happy Guangdong,” arguing that the region’s development needs to be measured by factors other than the pace of economic development. Citizens need to be “both rich of pocket and rich of brain,” the People’s Daily quoted him as saying.

By MARK MacKINNON

18 October 2011

@ Globe and Mail

NAIROBI, Kenya — The Kenyan government revealed on Wednesday that its extensive military foray into Somalia this month to battle Islamist militants was not simply a response to a wave of recent kidnappings, as previously claimed, but was actually planned far in advance, part of a covert strategy to penetrate Somalia and keep the violence in one of Africa’s most anarchic countries from spilling into one of Africa’s most stable.

For several years, the American-backed Kenyan military has been secretly arming and training clan-based militias inside Somalia to safeguard Kenya’s borders and economic interests, especially a huge port to be built just 60 miles south of Somalia.

But now many diplomats, analysts and Kenyans fear that the country, by essentially invading southern Somalia, has bitten off far more than it can chew, opening itself up to terrorist reprisals and impeding the stressed relief efforts to save hundreds of thousands of starving Somalis.

Somalia has been a thorn in Kenya’s side ever since Kenya became independent in 1963, and the two countries have followed wildly different paths. Somalia has become synonymous with famine, war and anarchy, while Kenya has become one of America’s closest African allies, a bastion of stability and a favorite of tourists worldwide.

Kenyan officials said it was becoming impossible to coexist with a failed state next door. They consider the Shabab, a ruthless militant group that controls much of southern Somalia, a “clear and present danger,” responsible for piracy, militant attacks and cross-border raids.

When Kenya sent troops storming across Somalia’s border on Oct. 16, government officials initially said that they were chasing kidnappers who had recently abducted four Westerners inside Kenya, two from beachside bungalows, and that Kenya had to defend its tourism industry.

But on Wednesday, Alfred Mutua, the Kenyan government’s chief spokesman, revised this rationale, saying the kidnappings were more of a “good launchpad.”

“An operation of this magnitude is not planned in a week,” Mr. Mutua said. “It’s been in the pipeline for a while.”

Many analysts wonder how Kenya will be able to defy history and  stabilize Somalia when the United Nations, the United States, Ethiopia and the African Union have all intervened before, with little success. They argue that the Kenyan operation seems uncoordinated and poorly planned, with hundreds of troops bogged down in the mud from rains that fall at this time every year.

Kenyan military officials also publicly said the United States and France were helping them, but both countries quickly distanced themselves from the operation, insisting that they were not taking part in the combat.

“The invasion was a serious miscalculation, and the Kenyan economy is going to suffer badly,” said David M. Anderson, a Kenya specialist at Oxford.

The Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, have killed hundreds in suicide attacks in Somalia and are now vowing to punish Kenya, much as they struck Uganda last year for sending peacekeepers.

There have already been two grenade attacks in Nairobi, which Kenyan officials said were the work of Shabab members, and this usually laid-back capital city has shifted into war mode. Security guards peer into purses at supermarkets, shopping centers are deserted because many Kenyans are now scared to congregate in public, and the American government has warned of “an imminent threat of terrorist attacks” at malls and nightclubs.

Despite their close relationship with Kenyan security services, which receive millions of dollars in American aid each year, American officials said they had been caught off guard by the incursion.

“The United States did not encourage the Kenyan government to act, nor did Kenya seek our views,” said Katya Thomas, a spokeswoman at the American Embassy in Nairobi. “We note that Kenya has a right to defend itself.”

Pentagon officials are now watching cautiously. “This is not something that’s coordinated with us at all, so it’s not something we have much knowledge about,” a senior Pentagon official. “We want to see how this develops.”

Pentagon officials said the immediate impact of dispersing Shabab fighters was good. But without knowing much about the overall Kenyan strategy or long-term plan, they are a bit wary.

“It’s difficult to discern what’s the next step,” the official said.

Kenyan officials say the next step is marching to Kismayu, a port town controlled by the Shabab, who derive tens of millions of dollars a year in taxes from it.

But Lazarus Sumbeiywo, a former leader of Kenya’s army, said the Kenyans were erring tactically. “It should have been surgical strikes,” Mr. Sumbeiywo said, arguing for small teams of special forces to hunt down militants and eliminate them quietly.

In 1990, before he became chief of staff, Mr. Sumbeiywo said, he ran special operations to kill Somali gunmen who had infiltrated Kenya. He said that his men had worked in small units —   tracker, sharpshooter, translator —   and that Kenya had been bedeviled by Somalia for decades. “It was like that all the way from the beginning,” he said, describing how Kenyan forces fought Somali militants in the 1960s and 1970s, losing hundreds of men.

Kenya has tried to use proxy militias in Somalia to push out the Shabab and create a buffer zone stretching to Kismayu. But the militias have been struggling, and Kenyan officials said their plans for a major port in Lamu, near Somalia’s border, were imperiled by the instability pouring out of southern Somalia.

“This isn’t about tourism,” said a senior Kenyan official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “This is about our long-term development plan. Kenya cannot achieve economically what it wants with the situation the way it is in Somalia, especially Kismayu.”

“Just imagine you’re trying to swim,” he added. “If someone is holding your leg and your arm, how far can you swim?”

Somali officials, despite being enemies of the Shabab, have been furious about the Kenyan incursion. Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, called it an “inappropriate” encroachment on Somali sovereignty

The dispute has left Western diplomats to mediate between the two sides, but Mr. Mutua said that “a lot has been lost in translation” and that the Kenyans and the Somalis were still close.

Still, aid organizations are deeply concerned that the military operations will affect efforts to reach starving people in Somalia’s famine-stricken interior. The United Nations has said that tens of thousands of Somalis have died and that 750,000 could starve to death. The Shabab control many of the hardest-hit areas, and have blocked most Western aid groups from entering.

“Some of the drought-affected people who arrived from other parts of the country are now facing multiple displacements in the wake of the military activities,” a United Nations report said Wednesday. “Movement of humanitarian personnel and supplies are also likely to be restricted, subsequently affecting the timely delivery of assistance.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Josh Kron from Nairobi.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

26 October 2011

@ The New York Times

Wars are constructed as a ‘Masculine’ concept where in only men are interested. Whatever women have done as warriors or ideologues or revolutionaries seems to be a deviation or aberration from the ‘norm’. The recognition of norm which is ‘War is Masculine’ is coming from none other than the women who challenge the norms of patriarchy. Feminists believe that ‘women’ are the enormous populaces who get crushed are helpless when there is a conflict between two ‘armed masculinities’. Therefore the one stop solution of the problem is ‘if there is a conflict women must ‘Build Peace’. The idea we are entering is not women are peaceful or women ignore the conflict and stay peaceful but “women build peace”. As can be pointed out by even a non intellectual movement ‘all women are not peaceful’ or thinking women to be peaceful alone is another essentialist argument that needs to be condemned.

What is peace building? When questioned about the process, an Indian feminist’s response is “please do not think it is a situation where women are standing with a white flag” but it is a very political process. Although she did not explain how it was a political process, we are here amidst the Kashmir conflict left to wonder.

Being peaceful is a virtue and we all struggle to attain peace through out our lives. In a ravaging conflict situation, peace has many meanings, for some it is the absence of the conflict, for many it is to be able to live in their dwellings without much worry of outer space and for most it is the ultimate resolution of the conflict. In this imagination, resolution of the conflict comes across as a situation which would leave way for others to have their understanding of peace eventually. Women in traditional societies, see the need of peace in the place where they struggle which most often is the dwelling. They strive hard to maintain an amiable living condition inside the house while completely ignoring the outer conflict. Emancipated women in traditional societies are the ones who are ‘political’ who believe in achieving peace in the society by nonconformist standpoints fetch for their localities whatever they need without have to realize their right’s independent of the community. But their rights as embedded as much are the rights of non-warring men, children and old aged.

In Kununposhpora, Bakhiti is a local activist who fought with the army personals to save women of her village from ‘sexual assaults’ and the men from the ‘physical beating’. Not only did women run to her even men never shied away from taking her help and governance as a local leader.

At the level of armed struggle, women if convinced about the struggle that would get the peace they have visualized women have taken part in the armed struggle as well. The LTTE in Srilanka or the Palestinian women in the Intifada movement are important examples.

But here the question is ‘peace building’ as a political process. The women of the ‘oppressor community’ want to create women’s ‘peaceful groups’ in a community which is oppressed.

Women of oppressor’s have easy access to the women of the oppressed community, since when women of oppressed community are discouraged from being political who is benefiting from this association? Where patriarchy is breathing its last when the oppressed community’s men are ‘Emasculated’, indeed ‘peace building’ is a very political process for oppressors. Women should not take part in the protests of the oppressed because their men oppress them? Then why should Indian feminists feed into the back channel of its masculine army? Why should this distinction fall as void or invalid?

The Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation (CDR) in collaboration with Srinagar based NGO—Women for Peace (WFP)—organized the conference titled—Women’s Roles in Society: Issues of Mutual Concern. In Kashmir valley where Indian feminists are raising the slogans in the name of women are doing an oppressed community more harm than good. Kashmiri woman prefers her helpless oppressed man that the backchannel of her husband’s oppressor. In these peace groups seldom is the patriarchal and communal out lash of the oppressors acknowledged or evaluated.

When asked about her son’s death, Maugel says “My husband and my two sons were martyred while fighting the Indian Rule. I am 70 years old now, have no energy in my ailing bones, but if I had (I swear by God) I would give the last inch of it for my people to be relieved of a tyranny’

Women visualize peace in much different way than the ones in the seminars. Peace for Zainab who lives in front of the army camp and her daughters move through the surveillance of army and have to hear sexual remarks as usual, is nothing but “AZADI”

By Inshah Malik

03 October 2011

Countercurrents.org

Inshah Malik is scholar from Tata Institute of Social Sciences

 

 

 

Israeli museum not so tolerant, group of archaeologists say

REPORTING FROM JERUSALEM — A group of prominent international archaeologists are among the latest people to publicly denounce plans to build a museum on the site of a centuries-old Muslim cemetery not far from Jerusalem’s historic Old City.

In a letter addressed to the board of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, the mayor of Jerusalem and the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, all of whom are backing the controversial project, 84 archeologists argued that construction of the museum would desecrate the sanctity of the site, known to be the location of the Mamilla Cemetery, or Ma’man Allah, the sanctuary of God.

The site is “one of the most historically renowned and ancient Muslim cemeteries in the world,”  said the group, which includes American, European, Arab and Israeli architects. “Such insensitivity towards religious rites, towards cultural, national and religious patrimony, and towards families whose ancestors lay buried there causes grave concern from a scientific and humanitarian standpoint.”

The project is slated for 33 acres of land in the heart of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Municipality gave the property to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

However, the project has been dogged by lawsuits filed by opponents who say not only would it defile a sacred site, but it’s also too large. Differences over architectural design and a turnover of architects have also slowed the project’s launch.

The archaeologists contend that such treatment of the burial site would not have occurred if were a Jewish burial site, and they quoted an Israeli official from the Ministry of Religious Affairs as saying that excavations would immediately stop “if one Jewish skeleton were found.”

But the Wiesenthal Center has defeated legal challenges in Israeli courts and has vowed to press ahead with the museum.

By Maher Abukhater

24 October 2011

@ Los Angeles Times

Many people, especially women, ask me if family planning is permissible in Islam. They say the imams and ulama say Qur’an prohibits family planning and quote a verse which says, “And kill not your children for fear of poverty – We provide for them and for you. Surely the killing of them is a great wrong.” (17:31). In no way this verse refers to family planning because it is talking of ‘killing’ and you kill one who exists. No law in the world will permit killing one who is already born and hence Qur’an rightly condemns killing of children.

Some people suggest that it refers to the practice of burying the girl child alive and when asked they would say we cannot provide for them and hence Allah says We provide for them and for you. But, as Imam Razi suggests it refers to both male and female children being kept ignorant. Thus killing them has not been used killing the body but mind which is as bad as killing the body. The word used here is ‘*awlad’* i.e. children which include both male as well as female and not only female.

Imam Razi’s suggestion seems to be quite reasonable and in fact large family means children cannot be properly educated by poor parents and hence parents kill them mentally by keeping them ignorant. They cannot even cloth them properly nor can provide proper space for lining. In such circumstances one cannot have good quality Muslims and mere quantity does not matter much. Better quality is more desirable than mere quantity.

First of all we should understand that in those days the problem of family planning did not exist nor that of population control. It is very much modern problem which has arisen in nation states. Most of the nation states in third world do not have economic means to support large population and when we say supporting large population it does not mean only feeding it but it also includes to educate them and also to provide proper health services. These are basic duties of modern nation states.

In fact in view of paucity of resources it has become necessary to adopt family planning. When Qur’an was being revealed there was neither any properly organized state nor education or health services being provided by any state agency. It is important to note that Qur’an which shows eight ways to spend zakat, does not include education or health which is so essential for the state to provide today. Thus what Imam Razi suggests is not only very correct and also enhances importance of family planning in the modern times as small family can support better education and health services.

It would be interesting to note that as for verse 4:3 (which is used by Muslims for justification of polygamy) Imam Shafi’I interprets rather differently. It ends with the words *alla ta’ulu which is generally translated as ‘you may not do injustice’ i.e. * do not marry more than one so that you may not do injustice. But Imam Shafi’I renders it as ‘so that you do not have large family’ Qur’an has already mentioned that ‘if you fear injustice then marry only one’ and so there was no need to repeat it. That is why Imam Shafi’I feels it should be translated as ‘so that you do not have large family’.

It can be seen that in understanding Qur’an even very eminent imams and great scholars differed from each other. One should not impose one single meaning of a verse on all Muslims. It could be interpreted differently by different people in their own context and circumstances. Family planning being a modern need one should not reject it out of hand and quote Qur’anic verses out of context.

In fact family planning does not mean killing children after they are born but to plan birth of children in a way that parents can bear all the expenses for their education, health, living space etc. in a proper manner. Qur’an also suggests that a child be suckled at least for two years and it is well known that as long as mother suckles she would not conceive. Thus indirectly Qur’an also suggests spacing of a child.

Even in hadith literature we find that the Prophet (PBUH) permitted prevention of conceiving in certain circumstances. When a person asked Prophet for permission for *‘azl* (coitus interrupts) as he was going for a long journey along with his wife and he did not want his wife to conceive while travelling the Messenger of Allah allowed him. In those days ‘azl * *was the only known method for planning of birth of a child. Today there are several methods available like use of condoms.

Imam Ghazzali, a very eminent theologian and philosopher allows even termination of pregnancy if mother’s life is in danger and shows several methods for termination. He even allows termination of pregnancy on health grounds or if mother’s beauty is in danger provided it is in consultatio with her husband.. Some scholars referring to the verse 23:14 conclude that one can terminate pregnancy up to three months as Qur’an, in this verse describes stages of development of sperm planted in mother’s womb and it takes three months for life to begin.

However, many ulama oppose termination of pregnancy. Whatever the case one cannot declare family planning as prohibited in Islam as it in no way amounts to killing a child already born or even termination of pregnancy but to plan birth of a child by preventing pregnancy for spacing birth of a child according to ones financial resources.

By Asghar Ali Engineer

13 October 2011

In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans millions of Muslims in six countries, all in the name of the “war on terror.” Washington’s attacks on the countries constitute naked aggression and impact primarily civilian populations and infrastructure and, thereby, constitute war crimes under law. Nazis were executed precisely for what Washington is doing today.

Moreover the wars and military attacks have cost American taxpayers in out-of-pocket and already-incurred future costs at least $4,000 billion dollars–one third of the accumulated public debt–resulting in a US deficit crisis that threatens the social safety net, the value of the US dollar and its reserve currency role, while enriching beyond all previous history the military/security complex and its apologists.

Perhaps the highest cost of Washington’s “war on terror” has been paid by the US Constitution and civil liberties. Any US citizen that Washington accuses is deprived of all legal and constitutional rights. The Bush-Cheney-Obama regimes have overturned humanity’s greatest achievement–the accountability of government to law.

If we look around for the terror that the police state and a decade of war has allegedly protected us from, the terror is hard to find. Except for 9/11 itself, assuming we accept the government’s improbable conspiracy theory explanation, there have been no terror attacks on the US. Indeed, as RT pointed out on August 23, 2011, an investigative program at the University of California discovered that the domestic “terror plots” hyped in the media were plotted by FBI agents. http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-terror-report-plot-365-899/

FBI undercover agents now number 15,000, ten times their number during the protests against the Vietnam war when protesters were suspected of communist sympathies. As there apparently are no real terror plots for this huge workforce to uncover, the FBI justifies its budget, terror alerts, and invasive searches of American citizens by thinking up “terror plots” and finding some deranged individuals to ensnare. For example, the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York city subway plot, the plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago were all FBI brainchilds organized and managed by FBI agents.

RT reports that only three plots might have been independent of the FBI, but as none of the three worked they obviously were not the work of such a professional terror organization as Al Qaeda is purported to be. The Times Square car bomb didn’t blow up, and apparently could not have.

The latest FBI sting ensnared a Boston man, Rezwan Ferdaus, who is accused of planning to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes packed with C-4 explosives. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz assured Americans that they were never in danger, because the FBI’s undercover agents were in control of the plot. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-09-28/DC-terrorist-plot-drone/50593792/1

Ferdaus’ FBI-organized plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes has produced charges that he provided “material support to a terrorist organization” and plotted to destroy federal buildings–the most serious charge which carries 20 imprisoned years for each targeted building.

What is the terrorist organization that Ferdaus is serving? Surely not al Qaeda, which allegedly outwitted all 16 US intelligence services, all intelligence services of America’s NATO and Israeli allies, NORAD, the National Security Council, Air Traffic Control, Dick Cheney, and US airport security four times in one hour on the same morning. Such a highly capable terror organization would not be involved in such nonsense as a plot to blow up the Pentagon with a model airplane.

As an American who was in public service for a number of years and who has always stood up for the Constitution, a patriot’s duty, I must hope that the question has already popped into readers’ minds why we are expected to believe that a tiny model airplane is capable of blowing up the Pentagon when a 757 airliner loaded with jet fuel was incapable of doing the job, merely making a hole not big enough for an airliner.

When I observe the gullibility of my fellow citizens at the absurd “terror plots” that the US government manufactures, it causes me to realize that fear is the most powerful weapon any government has for advancing an undeclared agenda. If Ferdaus is brought to trial, no doubt a jury will convict him of a plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes. Most likely he will be tortured or coerced into a plea bargain.

Apparently, Americans, or most of them, are so ruled by fear that they suffer no remorse from “their” government’s murder and dislocation of millions of innocent people. In the American mind, one billion “towel-heads” have been reduced to terrorists who deserve to be exterminated. The US is on its way to a holocaust that makes the terrors Jews faced from National Socialism into a mere precursor.

Think about this: Are not you amazed that after a decade (2.5 times the length of WW II) of killing Muslims and destroying families and their prospects in six countries there are no real terrorist events in the US?

Think for a minute how easy terrorism would be in the US if there were any terrorists. Would an Al Qaeda terrorist from the organization that allegedly pulled off 9/11–the most humiliating defeat ever suffered by a Western power, much less “the world’s only superpower”–still in the face of all the screening be trying to hijack an airliner or to blow one up?

Surely not when there are so many totally soft targets. If America were really infected with a “terrorist threat,” a terrorist would merely get in the massive lines awaiting to clear airport “security” and set off his bomb. It would kill far more people than could be achieved by blowing up an airliner, and it would make it completely clear that “airport security” meant no one was safe.

It would be child’s play for terrorists to blow up electric sub-stations as no one is there, nothing but a chain link fence. It would be easy for terrorists to blow up shopping centers. It would be easy for terrorists to dump boxes of roofing nails on congested streets and freeways during rush hours, tying up main transportation arteries for days. Before, dear reader, you accuse me of giving terrorists ideas, do you really think that these ideas would not already have occurred to terrorists capable of pulling off 9/11?

But nothing happens. So the FBI arrests a guy for planning to blow up America with a model airplane. It is really depressing how many Americans will believe this.

Consider also that American neoconservatives, who have orchestrated the “war on terror,” have no protection whatsoever and that the Secret Service protection of Bush and Cheney is minimal. If America really faced a terrorist threat, especially one so professional to have brought off 9/11, every neoconservative along with Bush and Cheney could be assassinated within one hour on one morning or one evening.

The fact that neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, William Kristol, Libby, Addington, et. al., live unprotected and free of fear is proof that America faces no terrorist threat.

Think now about the airliner shoe-bomb plot, the shampoo-bottled water plot, and the underwear-bomb plot. Experts, other than the whores hired by the US government, say that these plots are nonsensical. The “shoe bomb” and “underwear bomb” were colored fireworks powders incapable of blowing up a tin can. The liquid bomb, allegedly mixed up in an airliner toilet room, has been dismissed by experts as fantasy.

What is the purpose of these fake plots? And remember, all reports confirm that the “underwear bomber” was walked onto the airliner by an official, despite the fact that the “underwear bomber” had no passport. No investigation was ever conducted by the FBI, CIA, or anyone into why a passenger without a passport was allowed on an international flight.

The purpose of these make-believe plots is to raise the fear level and to create the opportunity for former Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff to make a fortune selling porno-scanners to the TSA.

The result of these hyped “terrorist plots” is that every American citizen, even those with high government positions and security clearances, cannot board a commercial airline flight without taking off his shoes, his jacket, his belt, submitting to a porno-scanner, or being sexually groped. Nothing could make it plainer that “airport security” cannot tell a Muslim terrorist from a gung-ho American patriot, a US Senator, a US Marine general, or a CIA operative.

If a passenger requires for health or other reasons quantities of liquids and cremes beyond the limits imposed on toothpaste, shampoo, food, or medications, the passenger must obtain prior approval from TSA, which seldom works. One of America’s finest moments is the case, documented on UTube, of a dying woman in a wheelchair, who requires special food, having her food thrown away by the gestapo TSA despite the written approval from the Transportation Safety Administration, her daughter arrested for protesting, and the dying woman in the wheelchair left alone in the airport.

This is Amerika today. These assaults on innocent citizens are justified by the mindless right-wing as “protecting us against terrorism,” a “threat” that all evidence shows is nonexistent.

No American is secure today. I am a former staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. I required high security clearances as I had access to information pertaining to all US weapons programs. As chief economist of the House Budget Committee I had information pertaining to the US military and security budgets. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I was provided every morning with the CIA’s briefing of the President as well as with endless security information.

When I left the Treasury, President Reagan appointed me to a super-secret committee to investigate the CIA’s assessment of Soviet capability. Afterwords I was a consult to the Pentagon. I had every kind of security clearance.

Despite my record of highest security clearances and US government confidence in me including confirmation by the US Senate in a presidential appointment, the airline police cannot tell me from a terrorist.

If I were into model airplanes or attending anti-war demonstrations, little doubt I, too, would be arrested.

After my public service in the last quarter of the 20th century, I experienced during the first decade of the 21st century all of America’s achievements, despite their blemishes, being erased. In their place was erected a monstrous desire for hegemony and highly concentrated wealth. Most of my friends and my fellow citizens in general are incapable of recognizing America’s transformation into a warmonger police state that has the worst income distribution of any developed country.

It is extraordinary that so many Americans, citizens of the world’s only superpower, actually believe that they are threatened by Muslim peoples who have no unity, no navy, no air force, no nuclear weapons, no missiles capable of reaching across the oceans.

Indeed, large percentages of these “threat populations,” especially among the young, are enamored of the sexual freedom that exists in America. Even the Iranian dupes of the CIA-orchestrated “Green Revolution” have forgotten Washington’s overthrow of their elected government in the 1950s. Despite America’s decade-long abusive military actions against Muslim peoples, many Muslims still look to America for their salvation.

Their “leaders” are simply bought off with large sums of money.

With the “terrorist threat” and Al Qaeda deflated with President Obama’s alleged assassination of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was left unprotected and unarmed by his “world-wide terrorist organization,” Washington has come up with a new bogyman–the Haqqanis.

According to John Glaser and anonymous CIA officials, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen “exaggerated” the case against the Haqqani insurgent group when he claimed, setting up a US invasion of Pakistan, that the Hagganis were an operating arm of the Pakistan government’s secret service, the ISI. Adm. Mullen is now running from his “exaggeration,” an euphemism for a lie. His aid Captain John Kirby said that Mullen’s “accusations were designed to influence the Pakistanis to crack down on the Haqqani Network.” In other words, the Pakistanis should kill more of their own people to save the Americans the trouble.

If you don’t know what the Haqqani Network is, don’t be surprised. You never heard of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. The US government creates whatever new bogymen and incidents are necessary to further the neoconservative agenda of world hegemony and higher profits for the armaments industry.

For ten years, the “superpower” American population has sat there, being terrified by the government’s lies. While Americans sit in fear of non-existent “terrorists” sucking their thumbs, millions of people in six countries have had their lives destroyed. As far as any evidence exists, the vast majority of Americans are unperturbed by the wanton murder of others in countries that they are incapable of locating on maps.

Truly, Amerika is a light unto the world, an example for all.

By Paul Craig Roberts

30 September 2011

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds [1],” details why America is disintegrating.

 

Iran injected a new twist on Tuesday into the week-old American accusation of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, asserting that one of the defendants really belongs to an outlawed and exiled opposition group.

The defendant, Gholam Shakuri, identified by the Justice Department as an operative of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, is actually a “key member” of the Mujahedeen Khalq, Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported.

The agency did not explain the group’s possible motive but left the implication that the plot was a bogus scheme meant to frame and ostracize Iran.

It said Mr. Shakuri, who is at large, had last been seen in Washington and in Camp Ashraf, the group’s enclave in Iraq. “The person in question has been traveling to different countries under the names of Ali Shakuri/Gholam Shakuri/Gholam-Hussein Shakuri by using fake passports including forged Iranian passports,” Mehr said.

American officials did not immediately comment on the Mehr report. Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, reiterated the American view in a daily press briefing in Washington that “this was a serious breach of international law and that Iran needs to be held accountable.”

The opposition group itself dismissed the Mehr report as nonsense. Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman, said in an e-mailed response that “this is a well-known tactic that has been used by the mullahs in the past 30 years where they blame their crimes on their opposition for double gains.”

The group, also known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, is regarded by Iran as a violent insurgent organization with a history of assassinations and sabotage aimed at overthrowing the Islamic government that took power in 1979. While the group claims to have renounced violence a decade ago, it is still classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, but not by Britain or the European Union. It maintains a headquarters in Paris.

Mehr said it had learned what it called the new information about Mr. Shakuri from Interpol but was not more specific. Calls and e-mailed queries to Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, were not immediately returned.

If Mr. Shakuri were in fact a member of the opposition group, it would be an embarrassing turn for the United States, which announced the suspected plot with some fanfare a week ago in a televised news conference by Attorney General Eric. H. Holder Jr., who said American investigators believed high officials in Iran’s government were responsible.

The Justice Department has accused Mr. Shakuri and Mansour J. Arbabsiar, a naturalized Iranian-American citizen from Corpus Christi, Tex., of conspiring to hire assassins from a Mexican drug gang for $1.5 million to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States.

American officials have acknowledged the suspected plot sounds hard to believe but asserted they have the evidence to back it up. Saudi Arabia, apparently accepting the accusation as fact, has accused Iran of a “dastardly” scheme, and other American allies say they regard the accusation seriously.

Britain has gone farther than others, announcing on Tuesday it had ordered British banks to impound any assets of the two defendants as well as three other Iranian officials in the Quds Force suspected of running the plot.

Since Mr. Holder’s news conference, Iran has sought to counter the accusation with a mix of verbal counterattacks, accusing the Obama administration of concocting the plot to divert attention from other problems, conspiring with Israel to malign Iran and driving a wedge into Iran’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Iran scholars in the United States have said the suspected plot, while sounding far-fetched and amateurish, is not implausible. Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said it could reflect an attempt by Iran’s security forces to retaliate for what they view as American-hatched plots carried out within Iran.

“It is suggesting, if true, that they’re trying to meet pressure with pressure,” he said. “From their perspective, the United States is involved in Iran’s internal affairs.”

By RICK GLADSTONE

18 October 2011

@ The New York Times

Reporting was contributed by Artin Afkhami in Boston, Maïa de la Baume in Paris and Ravi Somaiya in London.