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A Formal Funeral For The Two-State Solution

The Palestinian Authority’s bid to the United Nations for Palestinian statehood is, at least in theory, supposed to circumvent the failed peace process. But in two crucial respects, the ill-conceived gambit actually makes things worse, amplifying the flaws of the process it seeks to replace. First, it excludes the Palestinian people from the decision-making process. And second, it entirely disconnects the discourse about statehood from reality.

Most discussions of the UN bid pit Israel and the United States on one side, fiercely opposing it, and Palestinian officials and allied governments on the other. But this simplistic portrayal ignores the fact that among the Palestinian people themselves there is precious little support for the effort. The opposition, and there is a great deal of it, stems from three main sources: the vague bid could lead to unintended consequences; pursuing statehood above all else endangers equality and refugee rights; and there is no democratic mandate for the Palestinian Authority to act on behalf of Palestinians or to gamble with their rights and future.

Underscoring the lack of public support, numerous Palestinian civil society organizations and grassroots leaders, academics, and activists have been loudly criticizing the strategy. The Boycott National Committee (BNC) — the steering group of the global Palestinian-led campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel that has been endorsed by almost 200 Palestinian organizations — warned in August that the UN bid could end up sidelining the PLO as the official representative of all Palestinians and in turn disenfranchise Palestinians inside Israel and the refugees in the diaspora. A widely disseminated legal opinion by the Oxford scholar Guy Goodwin-Gill underscored the point, arguing that the PLO could be displaced from the UN by a toothless and illusory “State of Palestine” that would, at most, nominally represent only Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Others, such as the Palestinian Youth Movement — an international coalition of young Palestinians — declared that it stood “steadfastly against” the UN bid because it could jeopardize “the rights and aspirations of over two-thirds of the Palestinian people who live as refugees in countries of refuge and in exile, to return to their original homes.” Many, like the PYM, fear that unilaterally declaring a state along 1967 borders without any other guarantees of Palestinian rights would effectively cede the 78 percent of historic Palestine captured in 1948 to Israel and would keep refugees from returning to what would then be recognized de facto as an ethnically “Jewish state.”

Of course, there may be no clearer evidence of the distance between the UN bid and the actual will of the Palestinians than the secrecy of the process. Today, just days before the application is filed with the UN, the Palestinian public remains in the dark about exactly what the PA is proposing. No draft text has been shared with the Palestinian people. Instead the text is being negotiated with the Palestinian Authority’s donors as if they, not the Palestinian people, are its true constituency.

More fundamentally, though, the entire discussion of statehood ignores the facts on the ground. For starters, the PA fails the traditional criteria for statehood laid out in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: it controls neither territory nor external borders (except for the tiny enclaves it polices under the supervision of Israeli occupation forces). It is prohibited under the 1993 Oslo Accords from freely entering into relations with other states. As for possessing a permanent population, the majority of the Palestinian people are prohibited by Israel from entering the area on which the PA purports to claim statehood solely because they are not Jews (under Israel’s discriminatory Law of Return, Jews from anywhere in the world can settle virtually anywhere in Israel or the occupied territories, while native-born Palestinian refugees and their children are excluded). The PA cannot issue passports or identity documents; Israeli authorities control the population registry. No matter how the UN votes, Israel will continue to build settlements in the West Bank and maintain its siege of Gaza. As all this suggests, any discussion of real sovereignty is a fantasy.

Nor is the strategy likely to produce even formal UN membership or recognition. That would require approval by the Security Council, which the Obama administration has vowed to veto. The alternative is some sort of symbolic resolution in the UN General Assembly upgrading the status of the existing Palestinian UN observer mission — a decision with little practical effect. Such an outcome will hardly be worth all the energy and fuss, especially when there are other measures that the UN could take that would have much greater impact. For example, Palestinians would be better off asking for strict enforcement of existing but long ignored Security Council resolutions, such as Resolution 465, which was passed in 1980 and calls on Israel to “dismantle the existing settlements” in the occupied territories and determines that all Israel’s measures “to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity” and are flagrant violations of international law.

Ultimately, any successful strategy should focus not on statehood but on rights. In its statement on the UN bid, the BNC emphasized that regardless of what happens in September, the global solidarity struggle must continue until Israel respects Palestinian rights and obeys international law in three specific ways: ending the occupation of Arab lands that began in 1967 and dismantling the West Bank wall that was ruled illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice; removing all forms of legal and social discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel and guaranteeing full equal rights; and offering full respect for Palestinian refugee rights, including the right of return. Palestinians and Israelis are not in a situation of equals negotiating an end to a dispute but are, respectively, colonized and colonizer, much as blacks and whites were in South Africa. This truth must be recognized, and pushing for such recognition would resonate far more with the Palestinian public than empty statehood talk.

Indeed, such a strategy has worried Israel enough that it has enlisted the U.S. in the fight against what Israeli leaders term “delegitimization.” “Delegitimizers” are supposedly not seeking justice and full human and political rights for Palestinians, but rather seeking the collapse of Israel — much like East Germany or apartheid South Africa — through political and legal assaults. According to Israel and groups supporting it in the United States, virtually all Palestine solidarity activism, especially BDS, is “delegitimization.” Some Israelis, including even former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have warned that fighting a movement calling for universal civil and political rights would only make Israel look more, not less, like an apartheid state, worsening its situation. But Israeli elites have come up with no plausible response to the reality that within a few short years — because of Palestinian population growth and Israeli settlement construction — a Jewish minority will be ruling over a disenfranchised and subordinated Palestinian majority in a country that cannot be partitioned.

These, then, are the lines along which the battle for the future of Palestine are going to be fought, no matter how many U.S. envoys head to Ramallah and Jerusalem to try to revive negotiations in which no one believes. Meanwhile, the UN bid should be seen not as the means to give birth to the Palestinian state but as the formal funeral of the two-state solution and the peace process that was supposed to bring it about.

By Ali Abunimah

20 September 2011

@ Foreign Affairs

Ali Abunimah is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He co-founded the Electronic Intifada and is a policy adviser to Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

A diplomatic bid to call Israel’s bluff

The diplomatic crisis at the UN triggered by the Palestinians’ attempt to win recognition as a state may or may not advance their quest for justice and self-determination. But what it has started to do is strip away layer after layer of the cant and duplicity that has enveloped the so-called peace process.

The starting point for any consideration of the Palestinians’ diplomatic gambit is that the negotiations that appeared to promise so much after the 1993-95 Oslo accords have not ended the Israeli occupation of their land. Mahmoud Abbas, successor to the late Yassir Arafat as Palestinian president, has eschewed violence and staked everything on negotiations. He has nothing to show for it except the ruin of his reputation.

Whereas Arafat was a feckless negotiator who kept the option of the gun dangerously in play and preferred the trappings of statehood to the statecraft needed to win a state, Mr Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, have chosen diplomacy and nation-building. But the occupation continues.

Going all the way back to Oslo, the peace process has served as an international smoke and mirrors screen for the inexorable expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. It cannot be stated often enough that the biggest single enlargement of the settlements took place in 1992-96, at the high-water mark of the peace process under Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, when the number of settlers grew by 50 per cent, or four times the rate of population growth inside Israel.

Since then, the colonisation of the West Bank and Arab east Jerusalem has reached the point at which no viable Palestinian state is now possible unless this is reversed. But these settlements are intended to be permanent. The so-called Palestine Papers, leaked documents to al-Jazeera in January detailing how Mr Abbas was willing to give up nearly all of east Jerusalem but was still scorned by the previous, allegedly moderate Israeli government, make this abundantly clear.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Likud premier who leads a coalition freighted with irredentist believers in a Greater Israel, has never himself believed in anything more than a sort of supra-municipal government for Palestinians, on roughly half the land conquered by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The real story here, therefore, is not that UN recognition will torpedo a peaceful resolution of the conflict negotiated by these two, vastly unequal sides. There is no prospect whatsoever of that happening. It is that international recognition of the Palestinians right to a state would call Israel’s bluff and expose the hollowness of the US role as a less-than-honest broker.

The Palestinians are losing any prospect of a state, square mile by square mile. They know they have little to lose.

The Netanyahu government and the administration of President Barack Obama insist a UN vote is meaningless. If so, why have Israeli diplomats been moving heaven and earth to try to prevent it, even presenting it as an existential threat? Puzzlingly, they also describe the Palestinians’ appeal for the recognition Israel denies them, in the world’s main multilateral forum for conflict resolution, as destructive unilateralism.

What is unilateral is Israel’s relentless land grab. What is destructive is US acquiescence in it. Last year President Obama first demanded a settlements freeze, then a short pause in settlement-building. Snubbed by Mr Netanyahu, he simply capitulated. This February the US stood alone in the Security Council to veto a resolution calling for a freeze, just as it will veto Palestinian recognition if it reaches the Council.

If so, Mr Obama’s little remaining credit in the Arab and Muslim worlds will evaporate, and Mr Netanyahu will have isolated Israel further. But if the Palestinians were to win recognition, even by the General Assembly, then for much of the world Israel would no longer be occupying territory it claims is in dispute. It would be occupying another state. That would carry a price in lost legitimacy.

It is hard to see how any of this helps Israel, especially at a time when its Arab neighbourhood is in ferment. Because Israel would also lose its ability to keep simultaneously in play the ideas that it is irresistibly powerful but uniquely vulnerable – what Levi Eshkol, prime minister at the time of the 1967 war, described as the “poor little Samson” narrative replacing the perception of David against Goliath.

By David Gardner in London

21 September 2011

@ Financial Times

How much longer until we find the missing and grant civil rights to the rest?

Sabha, Libya: “The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind” was the general consensus following a discussion between this observer and a gathering of Palestinian refugees in Sabha, Libya, many of whom would very much like to travel to Shatila camp in Beirut this week and participate in the 29th annual commemoration of the 1982 Israeli facilitated massacre that left more than 3000 dead and hundreds still missing.

Today Sabha, with a usual population of around 130,000 is now less than half that but hosts a few thousand Palestinian refugees, who appear to avoid current Libyan politics. Some are survivors of the 1982 Israeli facilitated massacre at Shatila camp in Beirut and they insist that no Palestinian or Hezbollah groups were fighting anywhere in the East or around here. Maybe a few individual Palestinian members of the Benghazi based Muslim Brotherhood happened to be Palestinians but that was about all the gathered explained.

Many of Libya’s Palestinian refugees in Libya, like those is the Diaspora, desperately seek to learn what became of their family members who disappeared before, during and following the events of Sept. 15-20, 1982.

Seriously compounding the problem, Lebanon has failed to legislate a truth, justice and reconciliation agency. Consequently, along with the failure of the governments of other states that were involved, the result has been that the whereabouts of many Palestinians remain a mystery and those responsible remain unidentified and unpunished.

British Journalist Robert Fisk, writing in the UK Independent claims that more than 1000 Palestinians are buried in pits in Lebanon’s only Golf Course that is adjacent to Shatila camp and the Kuwaiti Embassy.

Dr. Bayan Nuwayhed al Hout — author of “Sabra and Shatila: September 1982” told this observer: “I’m positive that dozens of people were buried there with the help of bulldozers. The bulldozers were used to get rid of the dead bodies.”

Author Al Hout is referring to the fact that Israel supplied bulldozers, paid for by my American taxpayers, to their allies, the right wing Christian militia that committed the slaughter with Israeli facilitation. On Saturday morning, September 18, 1982 Israeli Mossad agents inside the camp actually were observed driving three of the bulldozers in a frantic attempt to assist the Lebanese Forces militia (now headed by March 14 key figure Samir Geagea) in covering up evidence of the crime before the exported international media arrived on the scene.

The late American journalist, Janet Lee Stevens, documented that during Sept. 18 and 19th, most of the massacre victims killed during this period were slaughtered inside the joint Israeli-Lebanese Forces “interrogation center.”

This observer packed Janet’s belongings and after some wrangling with the US Embassy staff who had arrived on the plane President Ronald Reagan sent to return Janet and the other Americans remains to the US, her two cardboard boxes of papers and research notes were onboard.

Unfortunately, but understandably, a family member, who I was advised did not understand Janet’s work in Lebanon, discarded her papers, following Janet’s funeral in Atlanta Georgia and before they could be collected by the University of Pennsylvania for analysis and preservation.

So we are deprived of most of Janet’s data on the missing Palestinians which confirmed the fate of several hundred who disappeared during the massacre. Fortunately, in February of 1983 Janet had forwarded some of her conclusions to friends and for publication.

What needs to be done to locate the missing Palestinians and Lebanese?

A serious and sustained effort to locate the disappeared Palestinians and Lebanese and bring some degree of solace and closure to their families should be undertaken without further delay.

These Palestinian and Lebanese families have no idea if their loved ones are dead or alive. Obviously they are unable to organize a dignified burial or even properly grieve. Families of the disappeared suffer from a series of legal, financial, and administrative problems that result from not knowing what became of their missing loved ones.

A recent Amnesty International study of Lebanon’s problems on this urgent subject included the experience of Wadad Halawani, the founder of the Committee of the families of the Kidnapped and missing in Lebanon. Wadad described her life after her husband was taken away from their home in Beirut in September 1982, apparently by agents of Lebanese military Intelligence, the Duexsieme Bureau (also controlled by right wing militia leaders). Wadad was forced to raise her two young children, aged six and three alone following his disappearance, and she described how she “lost her balance in life.” She did not know “how to protect the children from the rockets” and was “lost for answers to their endless questions” about their father for which she had no replies.

From knowing many families of missing husbands, Wadad outlined the problems faced by them, personal, social, legal, administrative, and economic.

On the personal and social level, she explained that a Palestinian or any woman in Lebanon, whose husband is missing is neither a married woman nor single, divorced or a widow, and for all that time she will have faced serious problems and obstacles linked to the low status of women.

On the legal and administrative level, she explained that “a woman cannot spend her husband’s money nor dispose of his property, such as selling his car, as she does not have power of attorney allowing her to do so. Nor can she get a passport for herself, nor for her children if they are under 18 as the guardian required the father even though the mother is raising the children. On the economic level, Wadad told Amnesty International that most of the missing people are from poor families, so the loss of the breadwinner has had devastating impact. In many cases, the families have been unable to cover basic daily needs, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and the costs of education.

The families of missing and disappeared Palestinians and other persons have the right, under international law, to the truth which means a full and complete disclosure about events that transpired during the disappearance of their loved ones.

In March 2010, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that this includes the right to know the exact fate and whereabouts of each victim.

To date Israel has refused UN and international demands to turn over its records. The international community must sanction Israel until it complies with international law on this subject.

As a young Palestinian lady in Sabha told this observer, and sounding very much like Miss Hiba Hajj in Lebanon’s Ein el Helwe camp:

“Every Palestinian must visit this site you told us about of this mass murder of our brothers and sisters. I will do it soon. I promise you. It is not an option, it is an obligation.”

By Franklin Lamb

16 September 2011

Countercurrents.org

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Libya. He is reachable co fplamb@gmail.com. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon. Dr. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut. Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC

Ketchup, a petite 22-year-old from Chicago with wavy red hair and glasses with bright red frames, arrived in Zuccotti Park in New York on Sept. 17. She had a tent, a rolling suitcase, 40 dollars’ worth of food, the graphic version of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and a sleeping bag. She had no return ticket, no idea what she was undertaking, and no acquaintances among the stragglers who joined her that afternoon to begin the Wall Street occupation. She decided to go to New York after reading the Canadian magazine Adbusters, which called for the occupation, although she noted that when she got to the park Adbusters had no discernable presence.

The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding the park, who toy with money and lives, who make the political class, the press and the judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain the U.S. Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of Ketchup or any of the other scruffy activists on the street below them. The elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. And what significance could an artist who paid her bills by working as a waitress have for the powerful? What could she and the others in Zuccotti Park do to them? What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave a few days ago to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the folly of hubris.

Even now, three weeks later, elites, and their mouthpieces in the press, continue to puzzle over what people like Ketchup want. Where is the list of demands? Why don’t they present us with specific goals? Why can’t they articulate an agenda?

The goal to people like Ketchup is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word—REBELLION. These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back.

This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don’t understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb

“The world can’t continue on its current path and survive,” Ketchup told me. “That idea is selfish and blind. It’s not sustainable. People all over the globe are suffering needlessly at our hands.”

The occupation of Wall Street has formed an alternative community that defies the profit-driven hierarchical structures of corporate capitalism. If the police shut down the encampment in New York tonight, the power elite will still lose, for this vision and structure have been imprinted into the thousands of people who have passed through park, renamed Liberty Plaza by the protesters. The greatest gift the occupation has given us is a blueprint for how to fight back. And this blueprint is being transferred to cities and parks across the country.

“We get to the park,” Ketchup says of the first day. “There’s madness for a little while. There were a lot of people. They were using megaphones at first. Nobody could hear. Then someone says we should get into circles and talk about what needed to happen, what we thought we could accomplish. And so that’s what we did. There was a note-taker in each circle. I don’t know what happened with those notes, probably nothing, but it was a good start. One person at a time, airing your ideas. There was one person saying that he wasn’t very hopeful about what we could accomplish here, that he wasn’t very optimistic. And then my response was that, well, we have to be optimistic, because if anybody’s going to get anything done, it’s going be us here. People said different things about what our priorities should be. People were talking about the one-demand idea. Someone called for AIG executives to be prosecuted. There was someone who had come from Spain to be there, saying that she was here to help us avoid the mistakes that were made in Spain. It was a wide spectrum. Some had come because of their own personal suffering or what they saw in the world.”

“After the circles broke I felt disheartened because it was sort of chaotic,” she said. “I didn’t have anybody there, so it was a little depressing. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“Over the past few months, people had been meeting in New York City general assembly,” she said. “One of them is named Brooke. She’s a professor of social ecology. She did my facilitation training. There’s her and a lot of other people, students, school teachers, different people who were involved with that … so they organized a general assembly.”

“It’s funny that the cops won’t let us use megaphones, because it’s to make our lives harder, but we actually end up making a much louder sound [with the “people’s mic”] and I imagine it’s much more annoying to the people around us,” she said. “I had been in the back, unable to hear. I walked to different parts of the circle. I saw this man talking in short phrases and people were repeating them. I don’t know whose idea it was, but that started on the first night. The first general assembly was a little chaotic because people had no idea … a general assembly, what is this for? At first it was kind of grandstanding about what were our demands. Ending corporate personhood is one that has come up again and again as a favorite and. … What ended up happening was, they said, OK, we’re going to break into work groups.

“People were worried we were going to get kicked out of the park at 10 p.m. This was a major concern. There were tons of cops. I’ve heard that it’s costing the city a ton of money to have constant surveillance on a bunch of peaceful protesters who aren’t hurting anyone. With the people’s mic, everything we do is completely transparent. We know there are undercover cops in the crowd. I think I was talking to one last night, but it’s like, what are you trying to accomplish? We don’t have any secrets.”

“The undercover cops are the only ones who ask, ‘Who’s the leader?’ ” she said. “Presumably, if they know who our leaders are they can take them out. The fact is we have no leader. There’s no leader, so there’s nothing they can do.

“There was a woman [in the medics unit]. This guy was pretending to be a reporter. The first question he asks is, ‘Who’s the leader?’ She goes, ‘I’m the leader.’ And he says, ‘Oh yeah, what are you in charge of?’ She says, ‘I’m in a charge of everything.’ He says, ‘Oh yeah? What’s your title?’ She says ‘God.’ ”

“So it’s 9:30 p.m. and people are worried that they’re going to try and rush us out of the camp,” she said, referring back to the first day. “At 9:30 they break into work groups. I joined the group on contingency plans. The job of the bedding group was to find cardboard for people to sleep on. The contingency group had to decide what to do if they kick us out. The big decision we made was to announce to the group that if we were dispersed we were going to meet back at 10 a.m. the next day in the park. Another group was arts and culture. What was really cool was that we assumed we were going to be there more than one night. There was a food group. They were going dumpster diving. The direct action committee plans for direct, visible action like marches. There was a security team. It’s security against the cops. The cops are the only people we think that might hurt us. The security team keeps people awake in shifts. They always have people awake.”

The work groups make logistical decisions, and the general assembly makes large policy decisions.

“Work groups make their own decisions,” Ketchup said. “For example, someone donated a laptop. And because I’ve been taking minutes I keep running around and asking, ‘Does someone have a laptop I could borrow?’ The media team, upon receiving that laptop, designated it to me for my use on behalf of the Internet committee. The computer isn’t mine. When I go back to Chicago, I’m not going to take it. Right now I don’t even know where it is. Someone else is using it. But so, after hearing this, people thought it had been gifted to me personally. People were upset by that. So a member of the Internet work group went in front of the group and said, ‘This is a need of the committee. It’s been put into Ketchup’s care.’ They explained that to the group, but didn’t ask for consensus on it, because the committees are empowered. Some people might still think that choice was inappropriate. In the future, it might be handled differently.”

Working groups blossomed in the following days. The media working group was joined by a welcome working group for new arrivals, a sanitation working group (some members of which go around the park on skateboards as they carry brooms), a legal working group with lawyers, an events working group, an education working group, medics, a facilitation working group (which trains new facilitators for the general assembly meetings), a public relations working group, and an outreach working group for like-minded communities as well as the general public. There is an Internet working group and an open source technology working group. The nearby McDonald’s is the principal bathroom for the park after Burger King banned protesters from its facilities.

Caucuses also grew up in the encampment, including a “Speak Easy caucus.” “That’s a caucus I started,” Ketchup said. “It is for a broad spectrum of individuals from female-bodied people who identify as women to male-bodied people who are not traditionally masculine. That’s called the ‘Speak Easy’ caucus. I was just talking to a woman named Sharon who’s interested in starting a caucus for people of color.

“A caucus gives people a safe space to talk to each other without people from the culture of their oppressors present. It gives them greater power together, so that if the larger group is taking an action that the caucus felt was specifically against their interests, then the caucus can block that action. Consensus can potentially still be reached after a caucus blocks something, but a block, or a ‘paramount objection,’ is really serious. You’re saying that you are willing to walk out.”

“We’ve done a couple of things so far,” she said. “So, you know the live stream? The comments are moderated on the live stream. There are moderators who remove racist comments, comments that say ‘I hate cops’ or ‘Kill cops.’ They remove irrelevant comments that have nothing to do with the movement. There is this woman who is incredibly hardworking and intelligent. She has been the driving force of the finance committee. Her hair is half-blond and half-black. People were referring to her as “blond-black hottie.” These comments weren’t moderated, and at one point whoever was running the camera took the camera off her face and did a body scan. So, that was one of the first things the caucus talked about. We decided as a caucus that I would go to the moderators and tell them this is a serious problem. If you’re moderating other offensive comments then you need to moderate these kinds of offensive comments.”

The heart of the protest is the two daily meetings, held in the morning and the evening. The assemblies, which usually last about two hours, start with a review of process, which is open to change and improvement, so people are clear about how the assembly works. Those who would like to speak raise their hand and get on “stack.”

“There’s a stack keeper,” Ketchup said. “The stack keeper writes down your name or some signifier for you. A lot of white men are the people raising their hands. So, anyone who is not apparently a white man gets to jump stack. The stack keeper will make note of the fact that the person who put their hand up was not a white man and will arrange the list so that it’s not dominated by white men. People don’t get called up in the same order as they raise their hand.”

While someone is speaking, their words amplified by the people’s mic, the crowd responds through hand signals.

“Putting your fingers up like this,” she said, holding her hands up and wiggling her fingers, “means you like what you’re hearing, or you’re in agreement. Like this,” she said, holding her hands level and wiggling her fingers, “means you don’t like it so much. Fingers down, you don’t like it at all; you’re not in agreement. Then there’s this triangle you make with your hand that says ‘point of process.’ So, if you think that something is not being respected within the process that we’ve agreed to follow then you can bring that up.”

“You wait till you’re called,” she said. “These rules get abused all the time, but they are important. We start with agenda items, which are proposals or group discussions. Then working group report-backs, so you know what every working group is doing. Then we have general announcements. The agenda items have been brought to the facilitators by the working groups because you need the whole group to pay attention. Like last night, Legal brought up a discussion on bail: ‘Can we agree that the money from the general funds can be allotted if someone needs bail?’ And the group had to come to consensus on that. [It decided yes.] There’s two co-facilitators, a stack keeper, a timekeeper, a vibes-person making sure that people are feeling OK, that people’s voices aren’t getting stomped on, and then if someone’s being really disruptive, the vibes-person deals with them. There’s a note-taker—I end up doing that a lot because I type very, very quickly. We try to keep the facilitation team one man, one woman, or one female-bodied person, one male-bodied person. When you facilitate multiple times it’s rough on your brain. You end up having a lot of criticism thrown your way. You need to keep the facilitators rotating as much as possible. It needs to be a huge, huge priority to have a strong facilitation group.”

“People have been yelled out of the park,” she said. “Someone had a sign the other day that said ‘Kill the Jew Bankers.’ They got screamed out of the park. Someone else had a sign with the N-word on it. That person’s sign was ripped up, but that person is apparently still in the park.

“We’re trying to make this a space that everyone can join. This is something the caucuses are trying to really work on. We are having workshops to get people to understand their privilege.”

But perhaps the most important rule adopted by the protesters is nonviolence and nonaggression against the police, no matter how brutal the police become.

“The cops, I think, maced those women in the face and expected the men and women around them to start a riot,” Ketchup said. “They want a riot. They can deal with a riot. They cannot deal with nonviolent protesters with cameras.”

I tell Ketchup I will bring her my winter sleeping bag. It is getting cold. She will need it. I leave her in a light drizzle and walk down Broadway. I pass the barricades, uniformed officers on motorcycles, the rows of paddy wagons and lines of patrol cars that block the streets into the financial district and surround the park. These bankers, I think, have no idea what they are up against.

By Chris Hedges

10 October 2011

TruthDig.com

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Why is this protest spreading when others have fizzled?

Young people locking arms, facing arrest on a cold, wet Seattle street—it could have been the WTO protests that rocked the city more than ten years ago. Only this time, Seattle is just one of dozens of places where the movement for the 99 percent is taking hold.

And, unlike the WTO protests—whose motivation was unclear to many Americans—the demonstrations now spreading virally from Wall Street immediately strike a chord: we all know that neither our economy nor our government is working for the benefit of the 99 percent.

Whatever issue you care to name, from childhood obesity (linked to agribusiness subsidies) to war (linked to the power of the military-industrial complex), from a watered-down health care bill (linked big Pharma and health insurance corporations), to a failing economy (which Wall Street and corporations have depleted in favor of global speculation), the power of the one percent is at the root of the problem. And the power of the 99 percent is key to the solution.

We’ve watched as urgent matters, like climate change, go unaddressed—in large part because powerful corporations fund think tanks, lobbyists, and Astroturf campaigns that spread confusion about the science and threaten the political fortunes of those who take leadership.

The #OccupyWallStreet movement is powerful because it is naming the source of the crisis—something that the political establishment had been unwilling to do.

The protests are giving the unemployed, the uninsured, the evicted, indebted students, homeless veterans, and would-be retirees a place to break out of their isolation. OccupyWallStreet shows that millions share their hardships and are standing up. Transforming shame, self-doubt, and isolation into solidarity unleashes enormous power.

But there’s more that makes OccupyWallStreet powerful. It is respectful, inclusive, and egalitarian. Protesters invite police to join them, noting that they, too, are part of the 99 percent. When Troy Davis was executed, a rally of supporters marched to lower Manhattan to a warm welcome by the OccupyWallStreet protesters. Even former tea party members have gotten involved.

The scene in Zuccotti Square is radically democratic – different teams have autonomy to manage food, sanitation, media, comfort, and other tasks necessary for a protracted stay. But no one directs the whole group. Instead, decisions are made by consensus at General Assemblies. Cornel West, Michael Moore, and other celebrities show up to speak, and their words are appreciated. But at the General Assemblies, each person who wishes to speak has a turn, and each one can help shape events.

I did not witness a single incident of violence in the three sites I visited: Zuccotti Park on Wall Street, McPherson Square in Washington, DC, and Westlake Plaza in Seattle. Nor have I read any accounts of protester violence. Only the police have resorted to violence, using pepper spray and, during arrests, bloodying the mostly young protesters.

Some have criticized the occupiers for failing to come up with a list of demands. But demands can be easily co-opted and endlessly debated.

Instead, OccupyWallStreet is holding out principles and values that are widely viewed as just—and this is already shifting the political debate. Just in the last few days, the president and vice president of the United States and the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank all acknowledged that the protesters had a point.

Powerful movements build not on a laundry list of policy demands, but on principles and values. OccupyWallStreet has a moral force that speaks to the urgency of the times. The 99 percent, and our future descendants, are losing out in a world dominated by the 1 percent.

Powerful movements create their own spaces where they can shift the debate, and the culture, to one that better serves. That’s why showing up in person at the occupy sites is so critical to this movement’s success. In hundreds of communities around North America, people are showing up to make a statement and to listen to each other. They are also teaching one another to facilitate meetings, to take nonviolent direct action, to make their own media. They are taking care of each other, gathering food supplies, blankets, and clothes that can allow people to remain outdoors even as the weather gets wetter and colder. Like the uprisings of the Arab Spring, they are using social media, and getting out their own story, even when the corporate media chooses to distort or ignore their message. And they are growing. According to the Personal Democracy Forum, the numbers “liking” a Facebook Occupy site for the 54 cities now listed is growing at the rate of more than 25 percent per day.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, the clarity of their demand for change, and their growing power may be the most important news of our time.

By Sarah van Gelder

Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and executive editor of YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

The White House announced Wednesday that it is imposing a new round of economic sanctions against Iran, while Vice President Joseph Biden warned that “nothing has been taken off the table” in regard to Washington’s response to an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, suggesting the possibility of military strikes.

Among the new targets of US sanctions is Mahan Air, Iran’s first privately owned airline, which flies to 12 countries. US officials claimed that the airline was involved in “secretly ferrying” members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Washington has seized upon the alleged plot to attempt to terrorize the American people, issuing a global travel warning against unspecified threats supposedly emanating from Iran while cautioning that attacks within the US itself are also possible.

The supposed terrorist plot was announced to the public by US Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday in Washington. The Justice Department’s case involves a wildly unlikely scenario involving a failed Iranian-American used car dealer from Texas, Manssor Arbabsiar, traveling to Mexico and attempting to enlist the feared drug cartel Los Zetas in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, by blowing him up in an unnamed Washington restaurant. The other relevant plot twist is the fact that the supposed representative of Los Zetas contacted by Arbabsiar happened to be a confidential informant for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

During Tuesday’s press conference, FBI Director Robert Mueller felt compelled to note that the government’s case “reads like the pages of a Hollywood script.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented to the Associated Press: “The idea that they would attempt to go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?”

That is precisely the question raised by the entire affair. It has all the earmarks of the type of conspiracy that has been “made up” by the US government repeatedly in the course of its “global war on terrorism,” using covert agents to ensnare hapless individuals in terrorist plots that never existed before US agencies invented it.

In this case, however, the alleged plot has been fashioned to implicate not merely a few individuals, but a nation of 75 million people and its government, setting the stage for a potential war that would prove far more catastrophic than the US interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The only other person named in this alleged plot is Gholam Shakuri, described as a member of the Quds Brigade, the special operations division of the 150,000-member Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

What evidence the government claims to have, while wrapping the case in the mantle of national security secrecy, is of the flimsiest character and none of it indicates direct involvement in or even knowledge of the alleged plot by the Iranian government. Virtually all of it stems from a confession extracted from Arbabsiar, who was described by a former business partner as “sort of a hustler… albeit a bit lazy” and “no mastermind.”

Nonetheless, by Wednesday, US officials, “speaking on condition of anonymity,” were claiming that it was “more than likely” that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, knew of the alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador.

Such involvement was taken for granted by the US corporate media, which has treated the Iranian government as already tried, convicted and waiting for its sentence to be imposed. Well trained CIA mouthpieces such as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer have jumped on the case, stressing the most lurid elements of the government’s charges, which are accepted as proven.

The media’s response only proves that it is organically incapable of learning anything from its reaction to the similarly unproven charges concerning “weapons of mass destruction” that played such a crucial role in paving the way for the war against Iraq. Once again, the establishment media serves as a jingoistic instrument of war propaganda.

One of the details played up in most media reports about the supposed plot to kill the Saudi envoy by planting a bomb in his favorite Washington restaurant is the indifference of the plotters to potentially killing scores of others. Few of the reports have bothered to accurately quote Justice Department officials, who referred to the bomb plot targeting a “fictional restaurant” because the scheme was invented by the government agents and referred to no real eatery frequented by Mr. al-Jubeir. US Attorney Preet Bharara clarified that no explosives were involved and “no one was actually ever in any danger.”

The announcement of the supposed assassination conspiracy has provoked a flurry of demands from US politicians for retaliation. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, claimed that the case proved that the “threat posed by Iran becomes more severe every day.” She said it had to be met with “crippling pressure on the Iranian regime and its enablers.”

Representative Peter King, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, called the alleged plot an “act of war” and called on the Obama administration to deport any Iranian officials present in the US.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, affirmed that the supposed conspiracy had to involve top levels of the Iranian government. “I just don’t see how this could be done any other way,” she said.

For his part, President Obama called the alleged plot a “flagrant violation of US and international law.” Vice President Biden called it “an outrageous act, where the Iranians will have to be held accountable.”

In expressing their moral outrage over a hypothetical assassination plot that was apparently concocted by US intelligence, they all express the utter hypocrisy of the American ruling elite and the US government, which routinely carries out real assassinations all over the world and has even created a secret committee of the National Security Council to draw up hit lists that include US citizens. Iran itself has seen a number of its leading scientists murdered in what is widely deemed a US-Israeli campaign to sabotage the country’s nuclear program.

Given that the “sting” operation dates back to May and President Obama was briefed on it in June, the question inevitably arises as to why the White House has picked this moment to spring the alleged plot on the American public.

The Iranian government itself provided a perceptive explanation. “The US government and the CIA have very good experience in making up film scripts,” said Iranian presidential spokesman Ali Akbar Javanfekr in Tehran. Referring to the nationwide spread of anti-Wall Street protests, he added: “It appears that this new scenario is for diverting the US public opinion from internal crises.”

There is no doubt that the US ruling elite and its political establishment are becoming increasingly concerned about the social and economic crisis in the US and the growing anger of working people and youth, which has found an expression in the demonstrations against Wall Street. Promoting fear of a terrorist attack and preparing once again for war serve a definite political purpose in shifting attention from the conditions of mass unemployment and social inequality that have given rise to the nationwide protests.

While uncritically embraced by the mass media, the US charges against Iran have been treated with extreme skepticism by experts on Iran all over the world. Many questioned what possible motive the Iranian government could have in supporting such a plot.

“I am not convinced that Iran would attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the US. There is no political use to it,” Mohammed Qadri Saeed, a strategic expert at Cairo’s Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Reuters.

Under conditions where the uprisings in the Arab world, particularly the upheavals in Bahrain that were suppressed by Saudi troops and the unrest in Saudi Arabia’s own eastern province, are isolating and undermining the Saudi monarchy, Iran’s chief regional rival, such a plot could serve only to bolster the Saudi regime’s rule and justify redoubled US support.

The New York Times was compelled to acknowledge that Washington’s charges “provoked puzzlement from specialists on Iran, who said it seemed unlikely that the government would back a brazen murder and bombing plan on American soil.”

Among those questioning the US claims was Robert Baer, a 21-year veteran CIA case officer in the Middle East. He told ABC News that the US charges were not “credible.” The supposed plot, he said, “doesn’t fit their modus operandi at all.” He continued: “It’s completely out of character, they’re much better than this. They wouldn’t be sending money through an American bank, they wouldn’t be going to the cartels in Mexico to do this. It’s just not the way they work.”

Baer warned that the US administration could respond to the supposed conspiracy with “retaliatory attacks, you know, hit, bomb a Quds Force base in Tehran, any number of things, of course, which would lead to a huge escalation.”

The ex-CIA agent suggested that the plot could have been the work of someone “attempting to frame the government” in Tehran.

Why would Iran’s elite secret service choose a bankrupt former used car dealer with a criminal record to execute its first-ever plot on US soil? Why would this individual be sent to Mexico to seek out and hire Los Zetas, whose enterprise is drugs and the elimination of rival narco-traffickers, to kill an ambassador in Washington? The US Justice Department has provided no answers to these questions.

The most plausible explanation is that Arbabsiar was in Mexico not to carry out an assassination plan for the Quds force, but rather to conduct a drug deal. Caught by the DEA, he could have been “flipped,” becoming an instrument for the US government to concoct a phony terror case against Iran.

If this is indeed the case, it is another indication of the extreme recklessness of US foreign policy and Washington’s relentless search for provocations as a means of advancing its geo-strategic interests. The deepening economic crisis has only made US imperialism more desperate to assert its domination over the oil-producing regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, for which it has fought over the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increasingly, it sees Iran as the regional power that stands in the way of these predatory aims.

One of the most valuable benefits of putting political action into the form of nonviolent encampments is that we learn each other’s stories as we occupy our public parks and squares. Here’s a story from the October2011 occupation in Freedom Plaza, Washington, D.C. There are many more, and we’d like to hear yours when you join us.

Aristine Maharry is 29 years old and now lives in Freedom Plaza. She grew up in a very military family, with members of her family having participated in every major U.S. war going back to the war for independence, and with members of every generation having joined the military.

Maharry’s family did not encourage her to aspire to a military career, but — as in many such stories I’ve heard — actions spoke more loudly than words. Maharry was proud of her father’s military experience. She hoped from a very young age to join the U.S. Army. She grew up playing at army with her half-brothers. They would flip the couch on its side and toss pretend grenades. She loved the board game Risk. The biggest holiday in Aristine’s family was the Fourth of July. She doesn’t say she bled red white and blue. She says she bled green, Army green. She wanted to serve her country and other people. She was willing to die for her country. She was proud of her country.

Aristine was a good student and a good athlete. At age 7 she tested with an IQ of 185. She was placed in gifted and talented classes in all of the many public schools she attended. She got good grades, ran track, and was president of the Future Business Leaders of America at West Potomac High School in Northern Virginia, where at 16 she dual enrolled at George Mason University. She graduated from high school at 18 in the year 2000, was married the next January and pregnant in February.

Aristine knew that the military would be reluctant to enlist a mother of a child under 1 year of age. She hoped to take part in the Green to Gold program, enlisting and eventually becoming an officer. Her own father had dropped out of college to enlist and fight in Vietnam. She admired that history. However, when her first son was nine months old, Aristine became pregnant again. She headed to the recruiter’s office when her second son turned one in May 2004. She had a family and a good job in management training new personnel in the pharmacy department of Liberty Medical Supply in Florida. But recruiters’ job is to recruit, and Maharry didn’t require any persuading.

She arranged to train at the same camp her father had trained at, Fort Leonardwood in Missouri. She headed there in December 2004, leaving behind a husband and two little boys for the holidays. Aristine says it was a very sad time for her, very difficult, and also very cold in Missouri. But, she thought to herself: “All the other soldiers have families too. They do it. I’m not different. I can serve too. I want to do my part as an American.” She signed up to become a combat medic, hoping to care for injured soldiers.

The first few weeks of training in January were extremely hard, she says: lots of pushups, not a lot of sleep, but a great deal of hostility from drill sergeants conditioning recruits to face hostility in battle, struggling with their own post-traumatic stress, or simply acting out their sadism. Aristine characterized it as “ten times worse than in the movies.” She was in Charlie Company, Third Battalion, 10th Unit, 4th Platoon. Her platoon had four drill sergeants, three of them male named Davis, Harris, and something like Fontana (she doesn’t remember this name clearly), and one female drill sergeant named Gilliard.

The woman sergeant was not what you would call gentle and loving. Aristine witnessed Gilliard yank a male soldier across a desk and injure him. His offense had been to request a pen. Fontana (or whatever his exact name was) made Gilliard look sweet and delicate by comparison. He was shorter and meaner than the others, according to Maharry. She saw him slam a female private named Barr up against a wall.

Aristine is amazingly understanding of this abuse. The sergeants, she says, had just done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The training was their rest period between tours of combat. They were all, she believes, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Aristine’s understanding this is even more amazing considering what happened next.

Aristine was doing pushups along with the other privates. It was dark. Fontana came up behind her and kicked her hard repeatedly in the pelvis. The next morning, with her 50-pound rucksack, Aristine was not able to keep up on the run in her usual way. One of the drill sergeants, Harris, told her she would have to report to “sick call.”

That night, Private Barr came and got Maharry. The two of them went to the military police (MP) and told their stories of abuse. The MPs sent them right back without indicating that they would do anything at all. The reports that the MPs took down may or may not still exist among their records.

The next morning Aristine reported to sick call. Before she did, Gilliard whispered in her ear that she needed to say she had slipped on ice, which was a complete fabrication. An X-ray showed a fractured pelvis. Aristine was put in the Army hospital on the base from January 8, 2005 to February 1st or 2nd, immobilized in bed with a morphine drug for pain. She was then sent on 30-day convalescent leave with heavy pain killers. If she did not return after the 30 days, she was told, the Army would come and find her. Through the course of her initial processing and training, she had already been advised repeatedly that going AWOL (absent without official leave) was punishable by anything up to death.

Aristine says she was “terrified” and “scared to death.” She didn’t tell her husband what had happened, as she was afraid that if he raised the issue she would be punished when she returned to the Army. When she did return, she pleaded with a physical therapist not to send her back to the same unit. It turned out that it was standard practice not to do that. Aristine worked hard, she says, to recover fast in the Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Program (PTRP) because those who did not, the “hold-overs,” would be kept in separate rooms in barracks with their units’ drill sergeants and would often be raped. Aristine did not use the word “rape” but indicated sex that was unwanted. “Rape” or “command rape” is an accurate term.

Unfortunately, the First Sergeant for the same Company she had been in before came and requested that Aristine return to the same unit. She passed a test and was returned. Once back, she was kept in a separate room, but resisted the drill sergeants’ attempts at sex, she says. A couple of female holdovers, she says, were also kept in private rooms. They would be taken out at night, and would cry endlessly when they were returned.

Aristine was now in the fourth week of training, with the same company, platoon, and drill sergeants (except for Fontana who was no longer there), but all new privates, her original group having long since graduated. Aristine was miserable, terrified, and “crying, crying, crying.” “How,” she asked herself, “could they send me back here?” The First Sergeant told her: “You’d better not open your mouth about what happened last time.” Maharry was still on lots of pain medicine and suffering mental pain as well.

Privates are all assigned “battle buddies,” and Aristine’s was a man named Principe. Privates objected that she couldn’t have a male battle buddy. The sergeants said that she could and that it happens in war. Luckily, Principe was a decent person, or — perhaps more to the point — a person who had not been in combat and was not placed in a command position. But Principe left early, during the eighth week. There was one more week to go.

During these later weeks of training, the drill sergeants were not as hard on the privates, and focused more on building camaraderie within the unit. They also brought the privates into the way the Army thinks. Drill Sergeant Davis said to whole platoon, as Aristine recalls: “It does not matter what happens in a room as long as two or more of you have the same story. That’s the party line.”

Aristine, like every private, slept with her weapon, knew its parts and how to assemble it, and gave it a name. Her gun was called “Blue.” Among the chants used in training were “We are Charlie Company and we like to party: drink blood drink blood all night long,” and another that began “Sharpen our machetes!”

Aristine was treated to particular abuse through these weeks. She was frequently awakened during the night and deprived of sleep. For weeks, she resisted the advances of the First Sergeant, Drill Sergeant Davis, and Drill Sergeant Kitchen. Aristine learned to sleep sitting straight up in the daytime.

During the final week, the First Sergeant called for her at night and said “We know what you did with your battle buddy” and “We know you’re selling pain killers.” He claimed that Principe had accused her of selling her pain killers. She knew that Principe would not have said that. She had no use for money in basic training, she desperately needed the pain killers, and the accusation named no party she’d sold to or any other details. There were no witnesses, and the accusation was false. There was never any trial or finding, just an accusation. The Army threatened to bring Aristine up on charges under Article 15 of the Universal Code of Military Justice. She refused to sign their forms, and they dropped the matter.

Aristine says that frequently she would cry as her Army superiors threatened her, repeatedly, for weeks. They would point out that she never received any letters in the mail. They claimed that nobody would know if they “took care of her.” Remarks included “We know how to make people shut up” and “We can make you be quiet forever.” Aristine says she took these as clear threats to kill her or imprison her, and that these threats were offered on multiple occasions.

Aristine injured her arm, and a doctor agreed not to treat her so that she could ship out, which was what she wanted: to escape Missouri.

Aristine’s birth mother showed up out of the blue. She had been an Army Captain. She had also been a model for ROTC posters and “Babes of the Military” calendars. Aristine was reluctant to tell her mother the true story, terrified that the Army would find out she’d talked and kill her or lock her away in prison. So Aristine told her mother the things she’d seen done to other female privates. She told her mother the Army was trumping up charges to keep her quiet. Aristine’s mother said she knew how it worked, and she kept quiet.

When I spoke with Aristine this week she said that she was still scared to be speaking about it. This is even more understandable considering the rest of the story.

After graduating, and being denied permission to walk in the graduation ceremony as punishment for the baseless accusation of selling drugs, Aristine shipped out to Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio, Texas. She was treated for her arm injury. She could not be sent on convalescent leave again so soon. Instead, she was sent to wait for a review by a medical board. Many she spoke with had been waiting two or more years for the medical board to review them. They could not leave for holidays or visit families. Aristine sank into depression. She felt unable to sit and do nothing, not to mention being constantly made fun of for not going to war.

She tried to switch from combat medic to a paperwork job that she could handle. She was told she was not fit for any duty until the medical board reviewed her case.

She tried to quit the Army with no benefits. They told her, she recounts: “Because we broke you, we have to fix you.”

I asked “Like Iraq?”

Aristine: “Yeah, like Iraq.”

A chaplain declined to help.

A physical therapist declined to help.

A woman, possibly named Rodriguez, told Aristine that if she “pulled the same s— here as in basic” she would “personally hunt you down and take care of you.”

Aristine went to a psychiatric clinic and said she was considering suicide. She really was. The clinic made her sign a statement that she would not kill herself. Then they sent her right back to hurry up and wait for the medical board.

Aristine left most of her possessions behind and went AWOL.

She was afraid to return to her family. She still does not want to face her father. She is deeply ashamed of having failed to succeed in the military. People had warned her she would fail. And she failed, or at least viewed it that way, even knowing that what was done to her was not her fault. She wished she’d listened to her colleagues at work who had told her “You’re too pretty,” and “Girls like you shouldn’t join the military.” She had taken those comments as insults to her pride. She now says they were right but didn’t go far enough. “It’s no place for anybody,” she now concludes.

Before joining up, Aristine had contacted both of her parents. Her father had never spoken about Vietnam. He now said “I saw things in the Army that no one should ever be exposed to.” He told her not to do it. She took that as fatherly protection and thought to herself “I’m stronger than he thinks.” He had received medals in Vietnam, she points out, but he’d also returned with “shell shock” or PTSD. Loud sounds would cause him to throw something or hit someone. He suffered tunnel vision in crowded places, and Aristine says she had the same symptom for a while.

Aristine went AWOL on July 5th (“my independence day”). She went to Florida and picked up three jobs, and then a job in New York. But in New York in November 2006, she had a checkbook stolen and reported it to the police. She did not face prosecution for going AWOL. But she was required to report to Fort Knox in Kentucky and sign out, along with many others in her same position — many women and men too, all suffering injuries, many from training and some from combat. They were made to put on Army uniforms and ordered about. She had to write out her story for a judge. She was told she could not speak with a judge. She was not told she could hire a lawyer. The Army may still have the report she wrote out. She was given a less than honorable discharge.

Aristine tried to reconcile with her husband. They tried counseling. She did not believe she could become pregnant anymore. But she did, and the pregnancy was very hard on her, her third son being born a month early. Doctors told her insurance would not cover problems related to military injuries. So Aristine went to the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) and asked to change her discharge to honorable and to obtain health coverage. She again had to write down her whole story, and this time she left a copy with her birth mother. She was now advised that she could have had a lawyer at Fort Knox.

Aristine is now on her own, but has joined together with a growing crowd of activists opposing the entire direction in which our war economy is dragging our nation and the world. Many people are finding the strength to tell their stories, and finding power in joining them together with others’.

Aristine Maharry thinks the military should release injured people to their families and treat them through the VA. She’s seen a woman forced to stay in a hotel, forbidden to see her family, while her family lived an hour and a half away. For what purpose?

Aristine thinks the Army should allow stretching during training to avoid countless shin injuries in women and men.

She thinks her story is similar to a great many others. She’s found the strength to talk after six years and in the midst of a nonviolent occupation. “The Army is keeping people quiet,” she says, “many, many people. Victims are sent to their attackers to ask for help.”

In school, Aristine says, she learned that America is always the hero, there to fix things and to help the rest of the world. “If it weren’t for us, the world would be lost!” But, she adds, you don’t learn the effects that wars have on people.

By David Swanson

27 October 2011

Warisacrime.org

David Swanson is the author of “War Is A Lie”

As of 7 October 2011, the 10th Anniversary of the US  invasion of Afghanistan , the human cost of the Afghan War has been estimated as about 1.4 million violent deaths and 4.2 million  non-violent avoidable deaths from Occupier-imposed deprivation, a total of 5.6 million war-related deaths. A detailed and documented Afghan War Human Cost Fact Sheet has been prepared to assist humane public discussion of the ongoing, US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide (5.6 million war-related deaths) that has now reached the dimensions of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation).

1. Post-invasion non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation total 4.2 million (using a baseline of expected annual mortality of 4 deaths per 1,000 of population for a high birthrate Developing country not subject to war). [1].

2. Post-invasion violent deaths total 1.4 million (assuming expert advice that the level of violence has been 4 times lower in the Afghan War than in the Iraq War and an Iraq War violent deaths/non-violent deaths ratio of 1.3). [1, 2, 3].

3. Post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 2.9 million (nearly twice the number of the 1.5 million Jewish children killed by the Nazis in WW2). [1].

4. Afghan refugees total 3.2 million, this comprising 2.7 million in Iran and Pakistan and 0.4 million internally-displaced persons (IDPs)  in Afghanistan ). [4].

5. The US bombing and US-backed Pakistani Army offensive in NW Pakistan generated 2.5 million Pashtun refugees. [5].

6. Annual under-5 infant deaths in Occupied Afghanistan currently total 237,000, 90% avoidable and due to war-imposed deprivation. [6]

7. It was estimated in 2009 that the annual death rate was 7% for under-5 year old Afghan infants as compared to 4% for Poles in Nazi-occupied Poland and 5% for French Jews in Nazi-occupied France . [7].

8. Annual per capita total health expenditure permitted by the Occupiers in Occupied Afghanistan totals US$69 as compared to US$3,382 for Occupier Australia. [8].

9. Life expectancy at birth m/f (years): 47/50 (as compared to 80/84 for Occupier Australia). [8].

10. Gross national income per capita:  US$ 1,100 (as compared to US$37,250 for Occupier Australia) . [8].

11. Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births): 199 (as compared to 5 for Occupier Australia). [8].

12. Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population): 440/352 (as compared to 79/45 for Occupier Australia). [8]

13. % of under-fives (2003–2008) suffering from stunting (WHO) moderate & severe: 59% (negligible in Occupier Australia except for Indigenous Australians). [6].

14. Adult literacy rate: females as a % of males, 2003–2007: 29% (about 100% for Occupier Australia)). [6].

15. Maternal mortality ratio (annual number of deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes per 100,000 live births): 1,800 (adjusted value 7 for Occupier Australia in 2008) [6].

16. US military deaths in and around Afghanistan in the Afghan War as of October 2011 totaled 1,721, Australian military deaths totaled 29 and total US Alliance deaths totaled 2,757. [9].

17. About 100,000 people die avoidably from opiate drug-related causes each year. The US Alliance restored the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to about  90% today. It can accordingly be estimated that about 0.1 million people per year x 0.9 x 10 years  =  0.9 million people have died globally due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry, this including about 200,000 Americans and 3,000 Australians. [10, 11, 12, 13].

18. Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) and Professor Linda Bilmes (Harvard University) estimated the accrual cost of the Iraq War alone at over $3 trillion with huge impacts on oil prices, the Afghan war, US federal debt, liabilities for injured veterans, the global financial crisis and US recession.  Dr Michael Intriligator, a senior fellow at the US Milken Institute, has suggested a long-term cost of the Afghan War at $1.5 trillion to $2.0 trillion. Australia ‘s involvement costs about $1 billion annually. [14, 15].

19. Perverted fiscal diversion for the Afghan War continues to have mortal consequences in the US and other US Alliance countries such as Australia . Thus it has been estimated that about 1 million Americans die preventably each year from poverty, deprivation or violence (e.g. 30,000 Americans are killed by guns each year; 44 million Americans live in poverty and the difference between infant mortality rates between Singapore and the world’s richest country, the US, indicates that about 20,000 US infants die avoidably each year; about 20,000 Americans die annually from lack of medical insurance; and about 1 million Americans die preventably each year from these causes and related lifestyle choices such as drinking, smoking and obesity-linked problems). 9,000 Indigenous Australians die avoidably each year out of an Indigenous population of about 0.5 million due to Third World living conditions and a 2- to 3-fold underfunding of Aboriginal health (currently $1.5 billion annually but should be $3 billion to $4.5 billion annually). Australia spends about $1 billion annually on the Afghan war [16, 17, 18].

20. The horrendous fiscal diversion for war in Afghanistan (and in Iraq and indeed around the world) has contributed to the ongoing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust in which an estimated 18 million people die avoidably each year from deprivation in the Developing World (minus China ). (There were 16 million global avoidable deaths  in 2003). [19].

21. Man-made global warming is a major problem for Humanity, together with nuclear weapons and poverty. The huge fiscal diversion for the Afghan War has crippled the political will of America to tackle man-made climate change. Both Dr James Lovelock FRS (Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson ( Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) have recently estimated that only about 0.5 billion people will survive this century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming. Noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis. The nations that need to curb greenhouse gas pollution most quickly and indeed achieve 100% renewable energy by 2020 if the world is to have a 67% chance of avoiding a 2C temperature rise (estimates by Professor  Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany) are indeed the worst polluting US Alliance countries, namely  the US, Canada and Australia. “Annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO2 -equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is 0.9 (Bangladesh and Afghanistan), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), less than 3 (many African and Island countries), 3.2 (the Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 23 (Canada), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 54 if Australia’s huge Exported CO2 pollution is included). Australia ‘s current annual domestic plus exported per capita GHG pollution is 64 tonnes CO2-e per person per year (71 times that of Bangladesh or Afghanistan ).  Professor Schellnhuber says that an average annual per capita GHG pollution of about 2.6 tonnes CO2-e per person per year is needed over 40 years on the path to zero emissions by 2050 with a 67% chance of avoiding a 2C temperature rise disaster (conservative odds: would you board a plane if there were a 33% chance of it crashing?). [20, 21, 22].

22. The US Alliance is involved in an Afghan Holocaust (huge numbers of people dying) and an Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention which states : “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” It must be noted that mass murderers rarely confess and “intent” is typically established by sustained, remorseless conduct (for 10 years in the case of the US Alliance in the Afghan War). [23].

23. The US Alliance is grossly violating Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

Article 55. To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate. The Occupying Power may not requisition foodstuffs, articles or medical supplies available in the occupied territory, except for use by the occupation forces and administration personnel, and then only if the requirements of the civilian population have been taken into account. Subject to the provisions of other international Conventions, the Occupying Power shall make arrangements to ensure that fair value is paid for any requisitioned goods. The Protecting Power shall, at any time, be at liberty to verify the state of the food and medical supplies in occupied territories, except where temporary restrictions are made necessary by imperative military requirements.

Article 56. To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties. If new hospitals are set up in occupied territory and if the competent organs of the occupied State are not operating there, the occupying authorities shall, if necessary, grant them the recognition provided for in Article 18. In similar circumstances, the occupying authorities shall also grant recognition to hospital personnel and transport vehicles under the provisions of Articles 20 and 21. In adopting measures of health and hygiene and in their implementation, the Occupying Power shall take into consideration the moral and ethical susceptibilities of the population of the occupied territory. [24].

24. While Western Mainstream media, politicians, academics, public servants and law enforcement agencies ignore these horrendous realities in gross violation of truth, humanity and rational risk management, I have made repeated, detailed formal complaints to the International Criminal Court over US Alliance and Australian war crimes and genocide complicity in Occupied Afghanistan and elsewhere. [25].

25. In 2009 the German Advisory Council on Climate Change (WBGU) determined that for a 75% chance of avoiding a 2 degree C temperature rise, the World must pollute less than 600 Gt CO2 (600 billion tonnes CO2) between 2010 and essentially zero emissions in 2050. Unfortunately Australia (through disproportionately huge annual fossil fuel burning and exports) had by August 2011  already used up its  “share” of this terminal greenhouse gas (GHG) budget and is now stealing the GHG entitlement of other countries, including wretchedly poor countries such as Bangladesh and Afghanistan. From this analysis major GHG polluter the US has about 3 years from mid-2010 to get to zero emissions while low emitters Afghanistan and Bangladesh have over 80 years left. The US and Australia are not merely war criminal, racist and genocidal  but also climate criminal, climate racist and climate genocidal  in relation to devastated Afghanistan. [26].

Conclusions.

An appalling irony is that according to the “official Bush Administration version of 9-11” no Afghans were involved in the 9-11 atrocity (3,000 dead). Osama bin Laden denied involvement, was not wanted by the FBI for this crime,  was offered up by the Afghan Government to a Third Country for trial (an offer rejected by the Americans) and was finally deliberately murdered by the Americans (this preventing long-sought judicial testimony and making Barack Obama an accessory after the fact of the 9-11 atrocity). Indeed many science, engineering, architecture, aviation, military and intelligence experts assert that the US did 9-11 [27].

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UN ODC) has stated clearly that  “the United States saw 38,400 deaths from illicit drug use in 2006, corresponding to a drug-related mortality rate of 182 deaths per one million inhabitants aged 15-64”. 60% of these are due to opiates and of opiate-related deaths 90% are due to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry to about 90% of world market share i.e.  0.6 x 0.9 x 38,400 = 20,740 pa and 201,000 US opiate drug deaths since October 2001 due to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry. The corresponding figure for Australia is 3,000 such deaths of Australians linked to the US Alliance and Australian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan . [28].

A s of 7 October 2011, the 10th Anniversary of the US  invasion of Afghanistan , the human cost of the Afghan War has been estimated as about 1.4 million violent deaths and 4.2 million  non-violent avoidable deaths from Occupier-imposed deprivation, a total of 5.6 million war-related deaths, carnage that has now reached the dimensions of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and which amounts to a US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust and an Afghan Genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention. Mainstream media lying and censorship in the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-beholden Western Murdochracies and Lobbyocracies ensures that ordinary citizens remain largely unaware of this ongoing catastrophe [29, 30]. Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can and (b) urge and apply sanctions and boycotts against all people, politicians, products, corporations and countries involved in this ongoing atrocity.

By Dr Gideon Polya

10 October 2011

Countercurrents.org

[1]  UN Population Division data (the 1998 Revision): http://esa.un.org/unpp/ .

[2]. Just Foreign Policy: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/ .

[3]. Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .

[4]. UNHCR: Afghanistan : http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/page?page=49e486eb6 .

[6]. UNICEF data on Afghanistan : http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_statistics.html .

[7]. Polish Holocaust, Afghan Holocaust and Western Holocaust denial: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya170410.htm .

[8]. WHO data in Afghanistan : http://www.who.int/countries/afg/en/ .

[9]. US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan : http://icasualties.org/oef/ .

[10]. Australian National Drug Research Institute, “Tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs responsible for 7 million preventable deaths worldwide”, 2003: http://db.ndri.curtin.edu.au/media.asp?mediarelid=40 .

[11]. UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), World Drug Report 2007: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2007.html .

[12]. US foreign policy hugely supports global drug trade, Bellaciao: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19234 .

[13]. Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .

[14]. Joseph Stiglitz & Linda Bilmes, “The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond”, Washington Post, September 2010: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html .

[15]. Eli Clifton, “Bill for Afghan War could run into the trillions”, Information Clearing House, May 2010: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25479.htm .

[16]. Gideon Polya, “Carbon burning, Zionism and war kill 1 million Americans yearly”, Newsvine, 2008: http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/2008/06/19/1593137-carbon-burning-zionism-war-kill-1-million-americans-yearly .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “The Awful Truth”, National Indigenous Times, June 2007: http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11552 .

[18]. Aboriginal Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ .

[19]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007): http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2008/08/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality.html .

[20]. Climate Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[21]. Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research, Terra Quasi-Incognita: Beyond the 20C line, International climate Conference, 28-30 September 2009, Oxford , UK : http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/4degrees/ppt/1-1schellnhuber.pdf .

[22]. Beyond Zero Emissions, “Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan”, July 2010 (for free download see: http://beyondzeroemissions.org/about/bze-brand .

[23]. UN Genocide Convention: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html .

[24]. Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm .

[25]. 9 January 2010 Formal Complaint by Dr Gideon Polya to the International Criminal Court (ICC) re US Alliance Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Muslim, Aboriginal, Biofuel and Climate Genocides: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/9-january-2010 .

[26]. Gideon Polya, “Shocking analysis by country of years left to zero emissions”, Green Blog, 1 August 2011:   http://www.green-blog.org/2011/08/01/shocking-analysis-by-country-of-years-left-to-zero-emissions/ .

[27]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/home .

[29]. “Mainstream Media Lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .

[30]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/ .

Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career.

Legal mechanisms developed after the end of the Second World War to more easily prosecute war criminals are now being taken off the books to preserve Israeli impunity from accountability.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes an outraged international community demanded justice — a demand that resulted in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the introduction of the new legal concept of universal jurisdiction. Justice, it seemed, would be impartial and hiding places for criminals scarce.

Universal jurisdiction is a simple concept. Deriving its authority from Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, it places an obligation upon all states “to respect and ensure respect” for the laws of war, effectively requiring all states to prosecute suspected war criminals regardless of where the crimes were committed.

In reality, however, universal jurisdiction has rarely been invoked. This absence of enforcement in a world replete with war crimes and crimes against humanity may seem more than a little peculiar but is easily explained. In the vast majority of states the decision to investigate and prosecute lies with the state-controlled institutions of the police and public prosecutor’s office, and these unfortunately, unless they are politically sanctioned to do so, do not spend time investigating crimes committed elsewhere.

Consequently, when suspected war criminals travel abroad they travel with virtual impunity; the preparatory investigations needed to establish a case against them having simply not been done. Until mid September, however, there was one country where war criminals stood a fair chance of having their day in court.

In the UK the judicial system allowed private parties and individuals to present their own evidence of war crimes before a magistrate who could then, if he or she felt the case was strong enough, issue a warrant for the suspect’s arrest. Consequently, in 2005 retired Israeli General Doron Almog only escaped arrest by skulking in his plane before being flown back to Israel, while in 2009 Kadima party leader Tzipi Livni cancelled her trip rather than face arrest. Other senior Israeli figures simply chose to stay away from Britain.

Sadly on 15 September this means of potentially achieving justice was revoked. In response to Israeli protests the UK government chose to change its laws rather than see Israelis arrested. In a move condemned by Amnesty International, the UK government amended the law on universal jurisdiction so that in future only the Director of Public Prosecutions can authorize the arrest of a suspected war criminal (“Tories make life easier for war criminals,” Liberal Conspiracy, 30 March 2011).

Contradictory grounds

Oddly, the UK government defended its decision on two contradictory grounds. The first reason it put forward is that the evidence used to secure the arrests stands little chance bringing about “a realistic prospect of conviction.”

This is disingenuous, to say the least. As Geoffrey Robertson, a UN appeals judge, states: “The change in the law has nothing to do — as the UK claims — with ensuring that cases proceed on solid evidence. No district judge would issue an arrest warrant lightly (“DPP may get veto power over arrest warrants for war crime suspects,” The Guardian, 22 July 2010).” Secondly, the reason for the arrest is so the suspect cannot flee while further evidence is being gathered. Indeed, this is a common way for domestic investigations to proceed.

The other equally disingenuous reason the UK gave for the change in the law is that arresting suspected war criminals may endanger the non-existent peace process.

This absurd view was advanced by UK Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, who decried the previous law because it constituted a risk to “our ability to help in conflict resolution or to pursue a coherent foreign policy.”

Indeed, claiming that the previously granted arrest warrants had been politically motivated, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague declared, “We cannot have a position where Israeli politicians feel they cannot visit this country.”

However, the UK’s retreat from the implementation of universal jurisdiction is not a lone example of the power of the Israel lobby to affect states’ domestic legislation. A similar shameful episode ensued when Ariel Sharon was indicted before the Belgian courts, in that instance not just Israel but also the United States brought pressure to bear, Donald Rumsfeld going as far as to threaten to move NATO headquarters from Belgium.

Which raises the question, if enforcing international humanitarian law is a threat to peace, then why do we have it?

A more coherent view was advanced by Daniel Machover, partner at the law firm Hickman and Rose: “It is disgusting that the Foreign Office is exaggerating the impact on the peace process to get a few people who are suspects of very serious international crimes off the hook” (“Ministers move to change universal jurisdiction law,” The Guardian, 30 May 2010).

Skipping Holocaust dinner to vote

Nevertheless, the move to change the law was not unaccompanied by controversy, and The Jewish Chronicle reported that in the House of Lords the vote was tied 222 to 222 and only passed because one lord, Monroe Palmer, former president of the Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel group, put off an invitation to attend a Holocaust Education Trust dinner (“Universal jurisdiction change becomes law,” The Jewish Chronicle, 15 September 2011). That in itself seems odd; surely Palmer should have gone and perhaps learned that, to use the Latin phrase, “impunitas sempre ad deteriora invitat,” impunity always leads to greater crimes.

And certainly it is also at odds with the assessment by retired South African judge Richard Goldstone that “The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence” (“Goldstone defends Gaza war crimes report,” Ynet News, 29 September 2009).

Sadly, however, while Ilana Stein of the Israeli foreign ministry celebrated — “We are glad that Britain has made the right choice” — it seems that the lessons of the Holocaust have still to be learned.

By Richard Irvine

Richard Irvine teaches a course at Queen’s University Belfast entitled “The Battle for Palestine” which explores the entire history of the conflict. Irvine has also worked voluntarily in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and is coordinator of the Ireland-based Palestine Education Initiative.

Independence Avenue in Istanbul has been a bustling centre of commerce for hundreds of years. Today is no different: shoppers and other pedestrians walk 15 abreast on the thoroughfare that runs across what was once a 13th-century Genoese trading colony on the bank of the Bosphorus.

Atila Kocer, who runs a cramped mobile phone franchise, says 3,000 people visit his shop every day, many eager to buy iPhones despite the price tag of TL2,300 ($1,230). “This is a better year than last year – and last year was very good,” he says. It is a very different message from the one heard on high streets elsewhere in Europe.

Istanbul is much more than Independence Avenue, and Turkey much more than Istanbul, but the good economic times from which Mr Kocer is benefiting are shared across much of the country. Cranes clutter city skylines, and for much of the year sales of cars and white goods have increased by 20-30 per cent, although the pace has relented of late. Altogether, the country has experienced hypercharged economic growth, up 10.2 per cent for the first half of 2011.

It is a phenomenon with important consequences – for investors seeking an alternative to mediocre growth in the US and the eurozone; for Turkey’s ruling centre-right Justice and Development (AK) party, whose electoral success is rooted in the surge in living standards; and for Ankara’s rising influence on the world stage.

But even though today’s strong performance caps the AK party’s nine years in office, during which per capita income has tripled in dollar terms, there are fears it could prove unsustainable, as the current account deficit grows and the lira weakens. “This is a very vulnerable macroeconomic story,” says Murat Ucer, an economic consultant in Istanbul, arguing that the jump in dollar income, which has fed demand for imports, has far outstripped productivity growth.

Some of Ankara’s decisions – notably cutting interest rates at a time of rising inflation – have heightened concerns that parts of the economy have been growing too fast. And, despite schadenfreude among the governing elite about the European Union’s economic and financial travails, there is little doubt that a deep slump in the eurozone would gravely afflict both Independence Avenue and the Anatolian heartlands.

For now, however, international politicians and business leaders are heading for Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, and Ankara, eager to improve ties with one of the brightest success stories in a gloomy world economy. “There’s a vast potential that we haven’t tapped till now,” said Vince Cable, British business secretary, in Istanbul last month leading a delegation that included a UK construction company seeking to help build a third bridge over the Bosphorus. He depicted the trip as part of an effort to reorient ties towards the emerging markets that today account for half of global gross domestic product and offer the promise of continued growth.

His message is echoed by decision-makers such as Thomas Donohue, head of the US Chamber of Commerce, who complains that American-Turkish trade is worth a mere $15bn – less than a third as much as US trade with Singapore, despite Turkey’s credentials as a “bigger, stronger economy” than before.

Indeed, after a financial crisis a decade ago, the country’s economic situation is in many respects the envy of its northern neighbours.

“If you look at basic fundamentals in Turkey we are in good shape,” says Mehmet Simsek, finance minister. “We’ve created jobs, interest rates are by Turkish standards low and banks are healthy.” Public debt levels, too, are low.

Although much of the groundwork was laid by Kemal Dervis, finance minister in the previous coalition government during the crisis of 2001-02, it is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister, who has presided over the good times. On his way to a record-breaking third election victory in June – in which he increased his share of the vote – he promised more of the same.

Announcing construction plans at almost every stop – from a new canal to bypass the Bosphorus to hospitals and football stadiums for Anatolian towns, he vowed to make Turkey, today the 17th-largest economy in the world, one of the 10 biggest by 2023.

By that year – far from coincidentally, the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic – Mr Erdogan wants GDP per capita to more than double again to $25,000. (The rise in this figure during his tenure, dramatic in dollar terms, is more modest when measured in domestic currency and adjusted for inflation.)

The confidence conferred by growth – and the prospect of growth – is boosting Ankara’s diplomatic influence too. To many of its neighbours, caught in the upheaval of the Arab spring, Turkey offers an example of democracy and prosperity – and Mr Erdogan, who hopes to increase the country’s clout, cuts the image of a strong, determined leader. He kicked off a triumphal tour of north Africa last month by taking more than 200 businessmen to Egypt. Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister, declares it his duty to open an em­bassy wherever there is a Turkish entrepreneur.

“As this political change sweeps through the region and some significant presences retreat others are filling the vacuum and this country is one of those,” Tony Hayward, the former BP chief executive, now at Vallares, a London-based resources group in the process of taking over Turkish energy group Genel Energy, told the Financial Times last month.

Yet an increasing number of voices are warning that – in the short term, at least – this may be as good as things get. In a report last month, the International Monetary Fund predicted that the rate of growth would slow dramatically next year to just 2.5 per cent.

Even the Turkish central bank, while disputing such forecasts, says there are clear signs that the pace is letting up. It points to indicators such as industrial production and the purchasing manufacturer’s index, which in August dipped below the level of 50 that divides confidence from concern before edging up in September.

A chief reason for the IMF’s alarm – and the factor that explains why Ankara is keen to detect signs of slowdown – is the biggest blot on Turkey’s economic landscape: the yawning current account deficit. At about $75bn a year, it is now almost at 10 per cent of GDP. The government has hailed the latest figures, showing a $3.96bn deficit for August, as a sign the problem has peaked.

But it still forecasts only a modest reduction in the deficit, from 9.4 per cent of GDP at year end to 8 per cent next year and 7.5 per cent in 2013. Some analysts see such forecasts as a signal that Ankara’s priority remains delivering growth whatever the cost.

But even Mr Simsek acknowledges the deficit is an unsustainable byproduct of surging domestic demand and a low savings rate. “If Turkey didn’t have such relatively low savings rates, we could easily outpace the Chinese growth rate,” he notes ruefully.

Without such savings, however, economic growth leads to more imports and the country becomes increasingly reliant on foreign funds. Indeed, recent figures released by the central bank reveal that when the current account is taken together with the external liabilities of the corporate and financial sectors, Turkey will need more than $200bn in foreign financing over the next year.

Such debt requirements are becoming harder to meet. The lira has lost more than 20 per cent against both the dollar and the euro in the past year, as low interest rates, the current account deficit and a flight from global assets seen as less risky have all taken their toll.

Having welcomed the lira’s initial decline, the central bank has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars some days trying to stem its fall; in August, such interventions in effect underwrote the current account deficit. But the bank’s firepower may be limited – at only about $85bn, its reserves are much less than the country’s short-term liabilities.

Concern that the currency’s slide will feed through to inflation is also rising. The government expects consumer price inflation of 8 per cent rather than the 5.5 per cent target for end of the year; producer prices are even further astray.

Another problem is credit growth. The IMF’s recent World Economic Outlook cited Turkey as a country where soaring loan growth could undermine financial stability and re­ferred to a Turkish “boom” – a term that implies the strong possibility of a bust. Indeed, tucked away in the report is a graphic signalling that, of the Group of 20 leading economies, Turkey is at greatest risk of a financial crisis.

The IMF makes clear what it would like Turkey to do to avoid such a fate – raise interest rates and husband foreign reserves rather than spend them on propping up the lira. But it has not found a willing audience in Ankara, which has sought instead to manage overall domestic demand by making it harder for banks to increase lending.

Despite the lira’s slide, the central bank is keeping to its low interest rate policy, intended to diminish the country’s attractiveness to, and hence dependence on, foreign portfolio capital that could dry up.

It argues that Turkey’s vulnerability to external shocks will decrease as the current account deficit shrinks as a result of a combination of a slowing economy, which means fewer imports, and a weak currency, which could lead to more exports.

Some analysts, who prefer not to be quoted, argue that the bank’s insistence on low interest rates mirrors Mr Erdogan’s desire to keep the economy roaring ahead. The bank itself says the overriding reason for the most recent 50 basis point cut in August was to shore up the economy against bad news from the eurozone.

It argues that the risk of overheating is past, and that the biggest challenge facing Turkey is a fall in external demand.

In the longer term, prospects remain bright – the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates average annual growth for Turkey of 6.7 per cent in the next six years – faster than that of any other member.

But given its dependence on industrialised economies for trade and, in particular, financing, it cannot be an entirely safe harbour, despite its proud record of the past few years.

“If Turkey is the lifeboat tethered to the big ship, the rope between the two is very short,” says one observer of Ankara’s economic links to the EU, which absorbs half of the country’s exports. “If the big ship goes down, there’s very little they can do.”