Globalia Magazine 9th edition

Quarterly - Issue 09 January 2011 EUR 4, USD 5.5, GBP 3.5 AED 20, MYR 20, ZAR 44

MAGAZINE

Kazakhstan

A Leading Central Asian Power

Global

The New Arms Race

Culture

Leo Tolstoy

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- Issue 09 - January 2011

Contents 4

Editorial

6

Cover Story

Chief Editor - Abu Bakr Rieger Kazakhstan - A Leading Central Asian Power

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Interview - Professor Schneider

13

Personalities

16

Economy & Finance

18 21 24

Paranoia & The Role of Terrorism

Who is Bakir Izetbegovic?

The Tip of the Iceberg The Fall of the Euro Paper Money Experiment

Global

The New Arms race Wikileaks & the Post-Modern Frontiersman

CONCEPT & EDITORIAL

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CHIEF EDITOR Abu Bakr Rieger

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Africa

PUBLISHER IZ Medien GmbH Beilsteinerstr. 121 12681 Berlin Germany

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Europe

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ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sulaiman Wilms DISTRIBUTION IZ Medien GmbH GLOBALIA Magazine reserves the right to shorten letters. Readers’ ­letters, guest articles and quotations do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Editors, nor do ­articles by named authors.

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E-mail: info@globaliamagazine.com Website: www.globaliamagazine.com Cover Image: Kazakh Hunters - Reuters

Wreckage, Aral Sea, Kazakhstan

Fax:

Contrary to International Law Attack on the Reichstag Triumph of the Will to Freedom

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Americas

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Middle east

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Ecology

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Culture

Living on the Edge Israel builds Seperation Fence with Africa Electric Cars, Plug-in Mobility On the Quest for the Divine - Leo Tolstoy

Issue 09 - January 2011 -

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EDITORIAL

Editorial

by Abu Bakr Rieger: Chief Editor, Globalia Magazine

Dear Readers, There is no doubt at all that Islam is the most discussed issue in Europe so far this century. No other matter polarises Europe’s societies as much as the presence of millions of Muslims in their midst. A screen onto which much is projected, the immigrant is the key political figure of the decade.

Europe is still trying to ignore the large number of European Muslims who know Europe and love it as their homeland, who were born in Europe and cannot be described as foreigners.

Two reports from the UK and France in the New Year highlighted positive and negative aspects of this heated debate.

A recent article on the incidence of Islam in Britain in The Independent (4th Jan 2011), reported that ‘thousands of Britons are accepting Islam every year’, possibly as many as 6,000, with, according to the newspaper report, the number of conversions in the United Kingdom between 1991 and 2001 standing at 60,000. Such numbers are hard to verify though since there are few certain figures relating to new Muslims in Europe.

At the same time, around 40 percent of people in Germany and France – if the statistics are to be believed – consider Islam a significant danger to their national identities. Two thirds of French people and three quarters of Germans also believe that Muslims are not well integrated. Such were the findings of a survey published in January on behalf of Le Monde by the French polling institute IFOP. There have been heated debates in France and Germany about the integration of Islam.

Throughout Europe, neo-liberal, Islamophobic and racist parties are stirring up public opinion against Islam. Their strategy is simply to equate immigrants with Muslims

and integration problems with Islam – an absurd aspect of which is the notion of “Islamic terrorism”, which continues to harm Muslims in Europe today. The latent xenophobia and fear of foreign domination that exists in Europe is being fed a perverted form of political correctness outlet in the prevalent anti-Islamic stance.

Large sections of the media support the proponents of such attitudes, effectively feeding a widespread condition which European scholars are describing as “paranoid” – as reported in this issue.

Yet, as the British example shows, when the public debate is about Islam, then interest in Islam also grows. Despite being branded a political ideology, the Revelation of Islam is a source of growing fascination for many Europeans. To name but three aspects among many: Islam’s doctrine of Unity corresponds with the most important streams of European philosophy, Islam’s economic laws correspond to the search for more justice, and Islam’s Awqaf, or charitable foundations, have the potential to relieve states facing hopeless indebtedness.

These are just three of the ways in which a well-founded dialogue with Islam can attract the European intellect. Inevitably, Europe’s media are seldom interested in this content-rich discussion about Islam.

Our publication serves the dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslim elites in the best possible way.

In this edition, GLOBALIA magazine once again presents several important articles on the links between East and West. The article on Kazakhstan aims to highlight the growing importance of the Eurasian continent, in which light the exchange between European and Asian Muslims is also of growing import, from Berlin to Kazan and from London all the way to

Abu Bakr Rieger

Kuala Lumpur. Energetic Kazakhstan, with its new capital Astana, is of course a key part of that map. There, new Muslim elites are building a new body politic on the foundations of their traditions.

In February, we will be introducing GLOBALIA magazine to the public in Kuala Lumpur. Upon our invitation, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad will be talking on the relationship between Europe and Asia, and in so doing will continue the dialogue between Asia and the Muslims of Europe.

In 2007, Dr. Mahathir addressed the same important theme in Istanbul. In Europe he is now credited with having foreseen the new currency wars after the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s.

We take pleasure in presenting our new magazine design, and renewing our intention to ascend to the Champions’ League of global magazines in the years to come. We hope to find more and more partners to join forces with us in this important media project.

Abu Bakr Rieger Chief Editor

Issue 09 - January 2011 -

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COVER STORY

Kazakhstan A Leading Central Asian Power

by Khalil Breuer 6

- Issue 09 - January 2011

COVER STORY

The snow leopard: the national symbol of Kazakhstan. There are still many books and myths dedicated to this wonderful beast of the wild. The spirit of independence, intelligence, bravery and cunning are attributed to the leopard. Western elegance, oriental wisdom and tolerance are other characteristics attributed to this national symbol. Its home is in Central Asia, on the border between Europe and Asia, one of the most important emerging areas in the world.

Since the fall of Communism, a fresh wind has been blowing throughout a region undergoing a process of rapid development.

This is not only important in terms of the development of new markets, but also in the revitalisation of ancient trade routes, languages and thus the old Muslim identity of the people.

It is perhaps the fate of the Kazakh people to once again regain their freedom through this great undercurrent of time.

States are considered leading powers on the basis of their wealth of natural resources and their economic potential to take on important geopolitical positions. The new Kazakhstan clearly meets these require­ ments. Therefore, the political leadership in Astana is already being courted by both major Eastern and Western powers as a reliable partner in one of the world’s key regions.

For the last twenty years this country has played an important role in Central Asia, not least because of its political stability and strategic location. It is in this respect that this new nation faces some challenges.

Political stability, economic development and cultural identity, as well as the preservation of the state’s independence are crucial.

What is continually astounding is the actual scale of the country. With 724,900 sq km, it is the ninth largest country overall and the largest landlocked country in the world.

A tiny 5.4 per cent of it is in eastern Europe.

The republic’s huge territory extends from the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea in

compulsory education. The rate of illiteracy is roughly 2.5 percent, which is around the same as that of Germany.

the west, to the Altai Mountains in the east, spanning two time zones. Kazakhstan is bordered by China (1,469 km), Kyrgyzstan (980 km), Turkmenistan (380 km), Uzbekistan (2,300 km) and Russia (6,467 km). The borders with the neighbouring states is 12,187km long. Good relations with the neighbouring powers of Russia and China is of course significant for the Kazakhs.

Kazakhstan has always been a cultural melting pot. Today there are over fifty ethnic groups represented in Kazakhstan with over a thousand members each. The largest ethnic group, representing over sixty-four percent of the population, are Muslim Kazakhs. The Turkic-speaking minorities include 332,017 Uzbeks, 185,301 Uyghur’s, 132,000 Tatars, 105,000 Meskhetians, 41,847 Bashkirs, 8000 Chuvash peoples and groups of Azer­ baijanis, Turkmens, Kyrgyz, Kara­kalpaks, Crimean Tatars and Balkan Turks. The Russians are the largest minority (around 23 per cent).

Central Asia is not only home to hundreds of peoples, but it is also a fascinating linguistic area. The dominant language in Kazakhstan is still Russian, spoken by 83.1 per cent of the population. At the same time, the role of the Kazakh language, spoken by 56 percent of the population, is becoming increasingly important.

In the years since independence, the government has increased its efforts in support of the most important cultural language. Many children are now taught it in schools. There are now nine years of

The country’s condition is almost primed for economic development. The state, with a population of only 16 million has been gifted with wealth. Kazakhstan controls a vast number of natural resources. Of the 105 elements present on the periodic table, 99 can be found in Kazakhstan. 70 of these elements have been explored and over 60 are currently in production. There are currently 293 sites containing 1,225 known mineral resources.

First and foremost, the energy resources are naturally in demand. For example, at the end of 2007, Kazakh oil reserves contained 5.3 billion tonnes, 3.2 percent of the world’s total reserves. The country not only has 31.2 million tonnes, but also enormous coal reserves and many other important commodities, such as iron ore, copper, chromium, zinc and silver. In the future, the significant presence of uranium will become strategically important. The country has about 20 percent of the world’s uranium reserves and plans to become one of the largest exporters of nuclear fuel.

The country’s wealth means that Kazakhstan has become one of the three “upper middle income countries” in the post-Soviet area, along with Russia and Belarus. It is no wonder that this young and wealthy nation needs to continually arm itself against “hostile takeovers”. In times of globalisation, there is always the risk that national wealth will be sold off to oligarchs or foreign investors.

The government seeks to hold all the threads in one hand, with regards to foreign energy giants and the all-important energy sector. The government in Astana tries to keep the advancing investors at bay with economic nationalism – the entire country and not just a small elite ought to share in the national wealth.

The legitimacy of the political leadership of the country, as is known in Astana,

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COVER STORY

The New Kazakh capital of Astana

measures itself against the national income. In recent years, the poverty rate has fallen significantly.

In 2007, the country’s President explained the implementation of the 2030 strategy.

“Kazakhstan”, as the President summed up, “is no longer a developing country”.

President Nazarbayev has been the country’s leader since 1989 and, as a unifying figure, guarantees the stability of the multiethnic nation. This can be all the more appreciated at home and abroad since the bloody unrest in other Central Asian republics, such as recently in Kyrgyzstan.

Throughout his administration, Nazarbeyev has attempted to implement a long-term strategy of independence. In 1997 both the government and parliament relocated from Almaty to Aqmola. In 1998, Aqmola was declared the official capital and renamed Astana. The new capital is strategically

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located. The many building sites tell of a strong desire to expand. However, in Astana, the financial crisis showed that the local economy is under threat from both debt and currency manipulation.

The country is bracing itself for an impending currency war. In times of financial crisis and global inflation, the President has a powerful trump card in the form of the country’s gold reserves. Over the past few years, the visionary Nazarbayev has been considering implementing a gold standard.

Of course the country’s new Muslim elite will be the ones to shape the course of the state. Kazakhstan is a vivid example of how people of forty different faiths and religious denominations can live together in peace and harmony. Historically, Kazakhstan has always been a crossroads; a meeting point and a place where the different religions of the East and West can

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engage in dialogue. Totalitarianism in its modern forms has been totally alien to these people.

Today, the total number of religious associations stands at 4,173, in 1990 there were only 670. These religious organisations have 3,129 places of worship – There are 2,229 mosques, 258 orthodox churches, 93 Catholic churches, 6 synagogues and more than 500 Protestant churches and places of worship. Over 67 percent of the population are Muslim. Islam has been the leading religion in Kazakhstan since the 8th century. Since its independence in 1991, as in other former Central Asian Soviet Republics, Islam has undergone a fulminating resurgence. In 1991 there were over 170 mosques and 230 Muslim communities.

Kazakhstan received a lot of financial help from Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Islam in Kazakhstan is considered moderate and

COVER STORY

President Nazarbayev

plays an important role in the lives of many Kazakhs. Furthermore, Kazakhstan is hospitable and an ever-increasing number of Muslims from Europe and Turkey are visiting this self-confident Islamic country.

A country in such an exposed position must of course command the subtleties of diplomacy. In foreign policy, Kazakhstan shifts between close collaboration with Russia – for example, in the Eurasian Economic Community and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, on the one hand – and a cautious striving to free itself from Russia with close collaboration with the USA, on the other. The relationship with the USA is mainly shaped by the commitment of large American corporations in the country, but also through mutual interests, such as the fight against terrorism or drugs.

Russia is still the country’s most important partner. The international space station,

Baikonur, is in southern Kazakhstan and is leased by Russia. The EU Central Asia strategy provides for an enhanced dialogue between Europe and Kazakhstan. The political, economic and trade relations between Kazakhstan and the European Union are based on the partnership and cooperation agreements signed in Brussels on 23rd January 1995, which came into force on 1st July 1999.

The partnership with the Peoples Republic of China will also be expanded. A new train line is to be built connecting the two countries. An oil pipeline to China was extended to 2009.

Despite Kazakhstan’s security interests, the country was the first in the former Soviet Republic to completely abandon its nuclear arsenal. Between 1949 and 1989, 470 nuclear tests (of which 124 were above ground) took place at the nuclear weapons testing site, Semipalatinsk.

The heavily contaminated area was closed on 29th August 1991. There were other small nuclear testing sites near the Soviet Union, such as two in north-western Kazakhstan on the Caspian Mangyshlak peninsula and north of the Aral Sea. In the sixties, opposition began to arise in the population and protest leaflets in the Kazakh language can be seen in the national museum in Almaty. This also explains the country’s commitment to a nuclear weapon-free Central Asia.

In Astana, there are naturally no illusions about the exposed position of the country.

The government has of course taken steps to expand its conventional military capacity.

In 2007, the government adopted a new military doctrine. The goal is a compre­ hensive modernisation of the armed forces and the establishment of a naval fleet on the Caspian Sea.

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INTERVIEW

Robotic arm inspecting suspected explosive device

Paranoia & The Role of Terrorism

by Yasin Alder

Professor Manfred Schneider is a lecturer in Aesthetics and Literary Media in the German department at the Ruhr-University, Bochum. In his new book, Das Attentat. Kritik der Paranoischen Vernunft (Terrorism: A Critique of the Paranoid Rationale), Schneider deals with the psychology of the terrorist, the role of terrorism in modern times and the political and societal reaction to the phenomena as well as with the essence of paranoia itself.

Professor Schneider, what were the reasons behind your decision to write a book about terrorists?

Manfred Schneider: I would like to respond with a question: How is it possible not to write a book about terrorism given the present state of affairs? A day rarely goes by without news of a bombing, attempted bombing, warnings of terrorist attacks or political measures taken to

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prevent terrorist attacks, or news of suicide bombings, particularly in the Middle East or Afghanistan. It is clearly an issue of great importance.

I am a keen observer of political events, and I must say that the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, when I was a young student, was a key event for me. So too was the history of the formation of the Red Army Brigade in Germany in the

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seventies and the ensuing bombings and political attacks. These all led me to the conclusion that today we have a situation where terrorism has become a modus operandi of politics, and one that we can no longer get rid of.

Your book contains a dedication with a quote from Nietzsche, “It is not doubt, but rather it is certainty that makes men mad.� Is this the radical subjectivity ideologues of all shades have in common?

Manfred Schneider: The quote ought to emphasise that the madness of paranoia, which I have no intention of describing as clinical insanity, is a form of certainty, if extreme; an unshakable conviction. Yet his is also a form of the rational mind. There is a very interesting definition of paranoia

INTERVIEW

by a nineteenth century psychiatrist which defines the paranoid person as one who has lost everything except his reason. That is to say that this extreme certainty amounts to being a worldview, whether it be political, scientific or religious, but one that is wholly persuasive. It lacks any element of doubt, scepticism, or ability to look at things from an opposite point of view. These are the specific attitudes discussed in the book in question. Much ideological mischief stems from such fossilised convictions.

of the few, in the hands of politicians, the military, the police, business figures, but it is also in the hands of the media, news­ papers, television and so on. In fact the problem is that we cannot actually see this power. What we see of politics and power is, for example, a clever, yet unassu­ming chancellor, an army general or police chief – we cannot imagine that these ordinary people wield such power.

Your book is also a history of terrorists.

Has modern media, the media of the world in which we now live, changed the behaviour of terrorists?

Manfred Schneider: One of my book’s main theses is that the modern media, be it newspapers, photographs, cinema, television, the news distributed by politicians, in effect produce terrorists. The paradox is that terrorists despise the media because in their eyes the media is guilty of lies, diverting attention from major issues, falsifying images and shielding the facts, but on the other hand they want to appear in the media.

The terrorist wants to be perceived as a hero, a liberator, and a victim, seen by all.

In actual fact, this desire to be seen is an old one; it existed before the birth of modern media. But it is with the modern media that these two paradoxical positions came to exist – the idea that the media is lying, while at the same time wanting to appear as authentic, an image of truth in the media.

This is a modern phenomenon.

You also describe the relationship between the individual terrorist and their helpless, as well as destructive, political attacks on the power apparatus.

Why is this figure more important today, and has it already become an integrated aspect of modern politics?

Manfred Schneider: A serious problem with today’s politics is our use of power. Of course we know the kinds of power that exist in the world and that it is in the hands

Manfred Schneider: There is a heavy weight of responsibility on all of us. The collective understanding of a society can quickly revert to a paranoid understanding as to the reasons or causes of a particular evil which it has something to do with.

There are also these primitive thought mechanisms which look for scapegoats for the causes of evil. In this past, this was the Left, even further back it was the Jews, today new groups have emerged, such as immigrants, Muslims or benefit-dependant “slackers”, who are portrayed as disturbing, unpleasant things to be fought against. We have to see that for the most part we have become obsessed by terrorists when it comes to individual assailants who have gone off track – even if they at some point belonged to a group. We must not lose sight of this.

Where would you draw the line between “normal” fear and paranoia?

Prof. Manfred Schneider

The spectacle of that policy and power which is accorded to us is disproportionate to the immense power that we are familiar with and sometimes feel when things are going wrong for us. This is the source of a suspicion that is somehow present in us all, namely that behind the scenes something completely different is at work, that com­ pletely different powers are functioning in the background, although we as citizens, as democrats, embody and in actual fact are this power.

The terrorist thus can be likened to an arbitrator of this anxiety which haunts us with regards to this power. Although we do not assign them, they act as our delegates, allowing us to see this distant, unseen and otherwise suspicious power, if only for a moment.

We recently experienced an act of terrorism in Stockholm at the hands of a Muslim. How can we prevent our society from becoming “paranoid” in the face of these ever-present threats?

Manfred Schneider: Fear is not paranoia, even when it is very intense. Paranoia is a state of mind that – even if it is borne out of fear – looks for a reason or cause behind distressing experiences, concerns or an individual’s political problems and then mobilises in order to eliminate this cause.

Of course people experience fear in different ways – that is a fact of life. This fear becomes paranoia when there is seen to be a single cause for this evil. Today’s political and social ills are ever increasingly complex and difficult and are composed of many sub-aspects and problems, and the simplification of these by reducing them to a single reason can be described as paranoid It is often assumed that the current brand of terrorism is a worldwide “Islamist” conspiracy. Is this an accurate picture in your opinion?

Manfred Schneider: No, in my opinion this is a complete distortion. Of course there are some more or less prominent figures in the Islamic world that advocate the war against the “Infidel”, the West, or

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INTERVIEW

Suspected terrorist detained at Guantanamo

the enemies of Islam. And it is also true that these individuals often provide cues for individual terrorists, such as the men behind the September 11 attacks or the poor man who recently blew himself up in Stockholm.

But if you look properly, these are mainly impotent braggarts, not acting as part of a large ring of conspirators. This conspiracy is for the most part cultivated in the American imagination for which there is no evidence, in my opinion. It is terrible that individual acts are sometimes committed in the name of Islam.

Can paranoia be used politically?

Manfred Schneider: Yes, of course. The obvious example is the U.S. government, who in the wake of the September 11 attacks, placed an entire society in a state of paranoia. This was reflected in many small details and was deeply worrying.

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This has however eased in recent years.

Similarly, in German history, anti-Semitism in the Third Reich, when scientists, politicians, as well as a large proportion of the population confirmed a completely absurd and untenable theory of the “Jewish race” and used it to justify horrifying deeds.

The background for this was the interplay between science and politics, which demands special attention.

In your book, it sounds as though you doubt whether there is such a thing as fate as an explanatory model. The belief in destiny is a key aspect of religion.

Are religions – in your opinion – to an extent “paranoid”?

Manfred Schneider: I would of course not claim that this is the case. When entire peoples or societies make elements of a religious belief part of their conviction, with many deriving their worldview from them,

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then it becomes a part of the culture itself.

On the other hand, sects tend to develop paranoid ideas, and the pronounced paranoia is always religious. Furthermore, the major world religions offer a wide breadth of interpretation, allowing for a belief in an explicit determination of fate or in freedom per se. In the Christian age, this was expressed in the differences between Protestant and Catholic religious beliefs.

This is why religions are not fundamentally paranoid systems.

Whereas, we have to see that paranoia is a state of mind that places the power of redemption in a single living person. If it is a Messiah – a godsend – effected by a third party, as in the Judeo-Christian tradition, then it is different to when a living person claims this Messiah function. That’s the difference.

Professor Schneider, thank you very much for your time.

PERSONALITIES

President Bakir Izetbegovic

Who is Bakir Izetbegovic?

by Berina Mulabegovic

Bakir Izetbegovic is the first president of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but what are his objectives and just what has he managed to achieve since he came to office?

Bakir Izetbegovic was born June 28th, 1956, in Sarajevo, son of Alija Izetbegovic. He earned a degree in architecture from the University of Sarajevo in 1981 and worked as a consultant at an architectural firm until the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. SDA – Party of Democratic Action, whose founder was Alija Izetbegovic, has advocated the constitution of a state belonging to all of its citizens, the independent, sovereign, multiethnic and multireligious Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). This was the party platform that ensured its victory in Bosnia’s first democratic parliamentary elections in 1990.

Based on the Brisel declaration introduced by the European Union on 17th December 1991, the assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina voted for a memorandum of sovereignty. The referendum question

stated: Are you for an independent and sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina, for a republic of all of its citizens in which the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina – Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats and other nationalities that live in it – shall enjoy equal rights? On the referendum, which took place on 29th February and 1st March 1992, a little more than 63 per cent of citizens of the territory which at that time was still part of Yugoslavia voted for an independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During the hardest times of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992-1994, Bakir Izetbegovic served as a personal assistant and advisor to his father. Alija Izetbegovic, in those dire times, taught him through his example – by transmitting a most valuable wisdom and knowledge – how to build a multiethnic and democratic Republic. At that time Bakir Izetbegovic had a crucial function as his father’s right hand organizing Bosnia’s defense strategy against the enemy’s aggression.

One of his major roles was his high-profile involvement in constructing the famous Sarajevo tunnel, dug during the winter

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E OO PN E ALITIES PU ERS

Woman visits the graves of Muslims killed during the Srebrenica massacre.

of 1993 in a period of three months, the first year of the siege of Sarajevo. The aim of building the tunnel was to link the divided city and allow entrance of food and humanitarian aid to the civilians, as well as the military. This task demonstrated his great perseverance and stamina in the hardest and most desperate time of the war. The Sarajevo tunnel was the only viable alternative possibility for the people of Sarajevo to connect with the rest of the world during almost entire 4 years of siege.

In the post war period from 1996 until 2003, Bakir Izetbegovic served as a director of a City Construction Agency and organized the rebuilding of damaged Sarajevo. Among many projects, he is best remembered for solving the water shortage problem when the city was struggling with water reductions.

Some other similar vital projects included the sanitation of a city landfill site, construction of the western city entrance, reconstruction of public lighting, restoration of public lawns, refurbishment of 1,350 damaged flats, initiation of the first phase of reconstruction of the monumental city library Vijecnica, and the construction of 500 flats for the war veterans in the Bacicko polje and Sip suburb areas of Sarajevo.

One of Bakir Izetbegovic’s initiatives was the setting up a reconstruction agency that has organized the rebuilding of the city of Mostar. He further organized the construction of various mosque structures in Sarajevo noted for their beautiful Islamic

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architectural designs, such as the Istiklal mosque, the King Fahd mosque, the Kosevo mosque, the Jordanian mosque, the Malaysian mosque, the Sokolje mosque and the Blue mosque in Donji Vakuf. Bakir Izetbegovic also participated in many initiatives that culminated in internationally recognized cultural projects like the Sarajevo Film Festival and the museum of modern arts Ars Aevi.

Bakir Izetbegovic played a role as coordinator for construction of the modern BBI Center in Sarajevo, the only commercial shopping mall in Bosnia and Herzegovina that has prohibited sales of pork and alcohol. He has also been coordinating the expansion of Gazi Husrev Bey’s library in Sarajevo.

Among his political and social activities, Bakir Izetbegovic was an active member of the Governing Board of the Football Club Sarajevo from 1995 until 1997. Between the years of 1997 to 2000, he served in the same role for the Basketball Club Bosna.

He was also a member of the Governing Board of Humanitarian Aid Merhamet (1999-2003) and a member of the Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina Islamic Society (2000-2002).

Bakir Izetbegovic entered politics in 2000. He served on the Canton Board in Sarajevo and presided over the SDA club of representatives in the Sarajevo Canton Assembly (2000-2002).

In the years from 2002 until 2006 he served in a variety of party roles, including the SDA vice-presidency from 2003 to 2009. Bakir

PERSONALITIES

Sarajevo: Old Muslim Quarter

Izetbegovic became the House of Representatives of the Federation of BiH Parliament (2002-2006). Since 2006 he has been presiding over the SDA Club of representatives in Parliament’s House of Representatives and the BiH delegation in the Council of Europe. He has been one of the key contributors to the reform process in BiH since the year 2000. With his help, 71 state institutions have been formed, a joint army has been created out of three military units and Bosnia’s internationally recognized country border has been mutually protected.

Bakir Izetbegovic won a presidential seat as a Bosniak member in the presidential elections of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Monday, Oct. 4, 2010. According to the electoral commission, Bakir Izetbegovic came first in a field of nine candidates with 35 percent of the votes. During the pre-election speech, Bakir Izetbegovic expressed his main goals for the following four years – were he to be given a presidential seat.

These goals were to create common peace, stability, adopt conventions of human rights and remove any barriers to entry into the European Union. His aims were to establish cooperation, dialogue and and a spirit of compromise with neighbouring countries, undertake work programmes and organize institutions.

Some of his other goals were to develop an internal dialogue and partnership which would bring the country closer to NATO and

the European Union. He now aims to lead negotiations with the other political parties in the area of governmental reforms that are seen as crucial for EU integration.

One of his major goals was to make the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina a country of truth and justice, a country in which its economic status, its people’s dignity, its work opportunities and veteran rights might be improved.

The economy was to be rebuilt by the construction of highways, bridges, hydroelectric and thermoelectric plants and facilitation of foreign capital and investment. In short, his plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina was to bring her closer to the western democratic systems and continue the country’s policy of investment in education and technology together with the elimination of corruption, crime and excessive administration.

In one of his pre-candidate speeches he stated that the Party of Democratic Action welcomed all people of with good intent in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His final words were: “We should start from the beginning and then persevere. Our first president, the great leader, Alija Izetbegovic, was the inspiration for this way of ours.” His message was: “Let’s raise our flags high in the air and abandon all fears and doubts! We should work with the utmost dedication and be conscious that our life, our death and our destiny are not in our hands. In this faith is our freedom, our strength and if God permits our victory!”

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ECONOMY & FINANCE

The Tip of the Iceberg

by Robert Luongo

Events took place in Iceland earlier this year that put the country’s citizenry in direct opposition to their elected officials in regards to the liability incurred for the failure of the Icelandic Bank. In the aftermath, it is most exigent that the story, conspicuously dropped from the designated headlines of what is newsworthy, and therefore presented to the general public, be re-opened.

The citizens of that country created a referendum by acquiring the requisite number of signatures, which was then voted upon by them.

By an overwhelming majority vote they have prohibited their government to bailout the Icelandic Bank in order to repay the people or associations (many of which were local councils in the UK, such as the Norwich City Council) who had invested large sums in high yield ‘financial products’ on offer at various Icelandic financial institutions.

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One of these products involved investment in derivatives on the futures markets for fish, something in abundance in the waters around Iceland, which were first monetised then securitised, while not yet caught but, arguably, an available asset – swimming about in the North Atlantic.

Why should the Icelandic citizens have to pay? They do not own the bank, as like most banks, it is a privately owned company; nor did they tell the investors to put their savings in them. This places the government in a terrible bind as they

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cannot possibly obey both ‘the will of the people´ and the demands of the inter­ national financial establishment. While the people have clearly spoken, government is unable to hear. Will little Iceland be added to the Axis of Evil? Jeremy Paxman has made statements on British television indicating that the people of Iceland are violating the peace and security of British citizens. So much for a free and independent media!

What took place at the Icelandic Bank was certainly not an anomaly but as we are well aware has been replicated in nearly every major bank around the world. In addition to the wildly lucrative derivatives market, the practices that precipitated the collapse of the sub-prime housing market in the US, as well as the failure of the home equity market were based upon inflated ‘values’ against which endless new loans were made, pumping more and more new money into the market at the expense of the currency already in circulation.

That the system of usury-capitalism has collapsed in on itself cannot be viewed as

ECONOMY & FINANCE

a shock, as it has visibly been spiralling out of control for decades. What can be seen as shocking is a perfidious world media, unrelenting in its attempt to persuade us – not only that it is viable – but that the system is being patched up as we speak.

There has been, clear across the world, a total failure of the political class, who are little more than mannequins dressed up as people in power. Ideological differences have faded away, with communist China as the number one supplier of the capitalist world’s supermarkets and the Arab leaders of the often referred to ‘Oil Rich Gulf States’ rushing like lemmings headlong over the cliff of disaster as they continue to follow those they so obsequiously strive to imitate.

Dubai World, much to the delight of the banking fraternity, needed to be rescued from the very brink of bankruptcy. The political class, in actuality, have no power, as has been made abundantly clear by their servile adherence to the dictates of financial institutions. This is the world we live in today. But what about little Iceland, now overshadowed and all but forgotten as Greece takes centre stage, to be followed, we are told, by Portugal and most likely Spain?

Let us back up a little before seeing if we can pick up the thread of Iceland’s current malaise. According to Gudni Adalsteinsson, managing director of Kaupthing Treasury Department in Reykjavik, shares in HBOS and Barclays plummeted in value following the collapse, in September 2008, of Lehman Brothers investment bank in New York.

This prompted many investors, many of which were other banks, to move their funds to the banks of Iceland, believing that they could, for the moment, avert disaster.

As from January 2010 there were literally hundreds of cases lodged in Iceland’s high court on the legality of forced liability for the collapse of the ‘old Icelandic banks’.

Meanwhile, British taxpayers are up in arms insisting that the money lost in the Icelandic banks be reimbursed to the

British Government that had to step in to cover the losses of British banks left exposed by the failure, that will now have to be covered by UK taxpayers. Meanwhile, the ‘new’ Icelandic banks, nearly entirely owned by European banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and several of Germany’s largest banks are, according to a July report, faced with yet another looming crisis.

“What is now abundantly clear is that the system of modern liberal democracy was put in place to serve the requirements of the financial sector. Both have failed, both are disgraced.”

Financial authorities in Reykjavik have been scrambling to work out the implications of a landmark Supreme Court judgment outlawing car loans indexed to foreign exchange rates.

Gunnar Andersen, director of the Financial Supervisory Authority, told the Financial Times that Icelandic banks faced “deep trouble” if the verdict was applied to all forms of consumer and corporate credit linked to foreign currencies.

The court decision has been described as one of the most important events in Iceland since the 2008 bank crash, potentially reducing the repayment burden on thousands of households holding foreignindexed debt while threatening the financial system with renewed turmoil. The court ruled that car loans paid out and collected in Icelandic krónur, but indexed to foreign currencies, violated laws designed to protect borrowers from exchange rate risks.

Recalling that we began with a massively supported referendum vote by the Icelandic electorate – its first national referendum since 1944 – and an attempt to block their government from subjecting the people of Iceland to the burden of debt incurred by private banks, only to discover that the voice of the people fell onto deaf ears, now

their judiciary is attempting to make a stand against the oligarchs of world banking.

What is now abundantly clear is that the system of modern liberal democracy was put in place to serve the requirements of the financial sector. Both have failed, both are disgraced.

Since the current disaster emanated from the epicentre of the failed New York investment houses, it is appropriate to go back to that nation’s founding ‘framers’ of what is referred to as the world’s greatest democracy: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” (Thomas Jefferson) Needless to say, Jefferson’s warnings could not be heeded, as the very premise upon which US constitutional law was founded opened the door, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to what became the inevitable outcome: that the banks would take over.

This is a case for the prosecution that can never go to trial, and while the turmoil we are witnessing is exceedingly alarming, it may very well only be the tip of the iceberg.

Robert Luongo is a lecturer of Shakespeare & Rhetoric at Dallas College in Cape Town.

He is the author of The Gold Thread – Ezra Pound’s Principles of Good Government & Sound Money (1995) and The Power Template – Shakespeare’s Political Plays, scheduled for release in January 2011.

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The Fall of the Euro

by Khalil Breuer

It is one of the ironies of modern history that China is set to buy yet more government bonds from European debt transgressors in order to help buy up the euro and that it should be a communist regime who lends a hand to capitalists everywhere.

Having already rescued the Africans and Americans, now the Chinese are to save the Europeans from drowning. Thus globalism proves itself an effective neutraliser of perceived political and cultural divides.

To kick off his tour of Europe, China’s Executive Vice-Premier Li Keqiang announ­ced in Madrid his country’s intention to buy up more Spanish securities: “We are a reliable long-term investor, which is why we are investing in Spain as a financial location.” Meanwhile, the two states signed economic treaties worth 5.6 billion euros.

China had previously helped bail out Greece by buying government securities.

“With financial stability packages, China is supporting the EU by helping indebted countries weather the crisis,” wrote Li in a guest article for Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung.

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establishing itself as the only relevant evaluational category. The US Secretary of State formulated the new state of affairs, asking who would talk straight with their creditors?

China’s shopping spree through Europe’s major capitals is based on a simple strategy: Beijing is buying up sections of the economy, and with them influence on European policies. The game is far from over. China has vast foreign currency reserves of around 2.65 trillion dollars.

‘Economic state of emergency’ is a mode of governance which will now have to be re-assessed following the various campaigns that have been needed to save the euro. Scottish author Ian Dallas was probably the first to formulate an intellectual foundation for this phenomenon in his book Technique of the Coup de Banque. He saw clearly that in recent decades it has been economic powers, not politics, that have transgressed the law. The financial system, presenting as global financial technique, has become so powerful that man now has to return to the all-inclusive context of Revelation in order to survive spiritually and politically.

Given the silent synthesis of two formerly adversarial systems – made clear for all to see by the crisis of the euro – 21st century politics will need some rethinking.

Authoritarian capitalism is preparing for more hostile takeovers, having become almost unassailable in its role as the new Mega-Creditor. Economic value is

The euro crisis is a painful reminder to Europeans of the lost primacy of politics.

Intellectual resistance is resurgent, especially in the motherland of the Deutschmark. A recent publication by former head of the German Association of Industry, Hans-Olaf Henkel, has turned heads. In his book Rettet unser Geld (Save

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ECONOMY & FINANCE

Our Money), the former industry manager criticises the failure of politics, claiming that all of the guarantees for the stability of the euro which were made to the Germans in return for giving up the deutschmark were thrown overboard during the Greek crisis.

The actual “Guardian of the Constitution”, the Bundesbank, was disempowered when the euro was established. It is known that Helmut Kohl bought France’s consent to German re-unification with a promise to give up the Deutschmark. Nevertheless, recalls Henkel rightly, the then Finance Minister Theo Waigel initially set up the European finance structure along typically German lines and not, say, French ones (i.e. laissez faire).

To financially conservative Germans, the independence of the European Central Bank and the prevention of a “transfer union” (in which poorer parts of Europe such as Greece, Portugal and Spain would become semi-permanent peripheries dependent on massive subsidies from richer countries) were formerly nonnegotiable.

Then came what Olaf Henkel calls “the Putsch”. First of all, deficit procedures were not taken seriously. Then the Maastricht criteria were softened, the Greeks were dragged on board the leaking boat, and then, as a prelim and with bad weather approaching – the European rescue umbrella was opened wide.

In May 2010 Sarkozy cowed Angela Merkel into submission, threatening the imminent collapse of currency, nation and world, and – Henkel comments bitterly – even with the re-introduction of the worthless old Franc. Merkel gave way. A despairing Henkel quotes the head of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, pointing to the naivety of the Chancellor: “It was the French banking system that was in danger, not the euro.”

Henkel sums up the consequences for the Germans: “I’m afraid they still haven’t

noticed that what happened in Brussels that day in May 2010 was a putsch against the rule of law, a betrayal of the German state, and a financial fraud on German taxpayers.” There it is again, the state of emergency.

This image of a putsch also encompasses Henkel’s theory that former German President Horst Köhler stepped down during those days in May on account of pressure to sign the European rescue package – a pressure which was fundamentally anti-constitutional. The President was given less than two days for his difficult assessment of the consti­tu­ tionality of the Act. Köhler, former head of the IWF, had previously criticised the world financial markets, calling them a “monster” that prevents political freedom.

Like euro-critic Henkel, many Germans and other Europeans are busy wondering what political force is still left standing against all this. It’s a difficult question. None of the parties, Left or Right, seems to see an alternative either to the euro or to the politics of new indebtedness. New “Right wing” parties are neoliberal when it comes to economic issues, while gathering up Europe’s old racism and directing it against the Muslims. The presses in the paper money factories run hot. More and more intellectuals are asking what it means when a system constantly describes itself as being without alternative.

It is here that another of history’s ironies reveals itself. The only really rational alternatives to today’s suicidal financial system are to be found within Europe’s religious heritage. The religions, after all, agreed for centuries that the taking of interest – the mother of all economic problems – is forbidden. Disparaged by politics as unenlightened and backward, recently it has been Muslim and Christian thinkers who have defined this other side.

Unlike businessman Henkel they are not critics of the euro alone, they consider the paper money experiment a moral and

economic failure. Calling for free markets, alternative currencies and a return to the ban on interest, they are busy crafting potential alternatives to the banking system. “The banks are dead” – a sentence which induces indignation and cries of disbelief in today’s “secular” Europe.

The political idea of liberating money has a long tradition in Europe, and the myth of paper money has been attacked numerously, by such figures as Sylvio Gesell with his famous experiment in Wörgl, and by great European thinkers from Goethe to Ramuz. In Goethe’s renowned play Faust, the idea of paper money is attributed to Mephistopheles. And in German philosophy, Martin Heidegger defined the nature of Technik (technique, technology) as “challenging the creation”.

Politics of all orientations ignored the stark dangers of an escalating paper money system, and political ideologies saw paper money, banks and the interest system itself merely as welcome techniques of acquiring power. After the Second World War, money printed by central banks financed new imperial ambitions. The history of the influence of European philosophy ends with us gazing out on an economic vortex which threatens to suck in and consume the old political order. Man, ever desirous of power, has ended up impotent.

The “Coup de Banque” of the 21st century – announces a newly refined conviction – can only take place using new, authentic currencies. Islam, vilified by its opponents as a political ideology, in fact contains a complete, alternative economic model, and one which limits the power of politics over markets and money.

According to Muslim tradition, the foundation for a just economic order is the rational, free treatment of money as a means of exchange. And of course, more than 1.5 billion Muslims already hold the greatest potential for a sustainable monetary union with their Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham.

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WORLD ISLAMIC MINT

Kelantan Islamic Gold Dinar

Ensuring the Quality of a Global Service WIM verifies compliance with legal standards in accordance with Islamic law during the manufacture of coins and medallions. Correctly manufactured products receive a corresponding licence from the WIM. We continually monitor the minting activity of all Islamic Mint Offices that mint the coins on a local basis. The dies of all the Islamic Mints maintain a certain standard incorporating key characteristics that allow people to recognise the coins.

WIM supports scientific research of the monetary system in general and the manufacturing process of coins and medallions according to Islamic law.

WIM examines the legal requirements and standards for the distribution of coins in the whole world. In addition we support the activities of lawyers regarding the introduction of these products as legal tender.

WIM

For more information visit us at:

www.islamicmint.com

Kelantan Islamic Silver Dirham

ECONOMY & FINANCE

Paper Money Experiment

by Abu Bakr Rieger

The question of money determines our understanding of freedom and morality. A few years ago, the demand for gold and silver as the basis of our monetary systems was labelled at best as “backward-looking romanticism.” The modern monetary system and its temple mountains of virtual paper money have been glorified as a prerequisite for “progress” and a new world of prosperity for all.

Before the financial crisis, hardly anybody noticed that we, as free citizens, had a choice in everything, except what money we use on a daily basis. Additionally, this “modern society”, which now more than ever rotates around the matter of money, paradoxically discovered that they actually knew nothing about the basis of the economic system, paper money. Slowly, however, the fog is clearing.

The “free market” is now not only run by monopolies, but also ad absurdum by state “fines”. In Europe, the use of free gold and silver currency is neither wanted nor de facto practicable, due to the levying of VAT on coins, among other things.

In a free and truly liberal market, the market actors would be able to “fairly” determine their own currency, whether it be gold,

silver, platinum or something else. In such a market, people and their economy would be encouraged to be moderate and to only serve the progress of the real economy.

Needless to say, it is not the advocates of a genuine currency who are making the absurd attempt to escape back to the middle ages. Also, in the internet age, a gold currency can be flexibly implemented as debit cards, mobile phone or internet transfer systems are no longer a technical problem. The question of money, which has preoccupied people for centuries, in reality goes beyond the crude polarity between progress and regression.

Many analysts now believe that the “money question” is the century’s real issue. With regard to the question of what type of money we use, the old left/right dialectic is no longer what will determine our future concepts of freedom and morality. Here is where is the sham debates are dissolved.

Today, the way in which money is made,

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ECONOMY & FINANCE

considered and spent, to the point of submissive faith in the banks themselves, differs neither between America and Iran, nor between fundamentalist and atheist.

The question remains, how can you be “pious” or “enlightened” if you have to use “unsound” or “worthless” currency? Here is where the circle closes, a new dialogue opens and today’s rational comes up against the insight of ancient books of religion.

In the last century the technological project has been unleashed through the creation of a pure system of paper money. Cruel wars and the financing of their armies have been made “financially viable” on a global scale. But what was the deeper precondition for this development? Only if the state keeps a monopoly over the supply of money and its citizens disenfranchised, is it possible for money to be created virtually out of nothing.

For a time, the printed money serves in the enhancement of power. It is then propagated through constant concerted lending, without related savings or value to back it.

For politics, this system has the charming advantage in that you can “give and promise money” to the population at any time, and then later take it away again “unnoticed” through inflation. This endlessly reproduced money is of course necessarily inflationary, and it causes – whether they want it to or not – inevitable economic and financial crises. Threatening recession and unemployment can, at least “in theory” be fought with even cheaper money. Sisyphus sends his greetings.

The question thus remains: why doesn’t the free market implement our money themselves. Among the voices that criticise this “unfree” situation is, for example, that of Barclays chief economist, Thorsten Polleit. The system of paper money is, for the analyst Polleit, a new kind of “experiment” with rationally considered poor prospects for success. In the Welt am Sonntag, the finance expert gave his

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stance on the current crisis in the monetary system and laid out the advantages of free market currency. There, far from any ideology, he called not for the unconditional return to the gold standard, but only rather that “in a free market system of currency, the market actors themselves decide through supply and demand, what money is. According to Polleit, it would “probably” be, as in previous centuries, gold “or perhaps silver, platinum or palladium.”

The new debate is now unstoppable and stretches beyond the usual party divisions across the globe. The Republican, Mike Pitts, representative for South Carolina, for example, today put forward legislation to

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the state, preferring “gold and silver coins”of the old paper money currency. In an interview with the website “Hotsheet”, he leads soberly with “if the government continues to spend and continually print more and more money, then the economic system will be forced to collapse”.

Politicians fear that the American Empire might otherwise collapse over the money question, like the Soviet Union. His political thrust for the establishment of a gold currency is, for him, the only logical continuation of the “American Dream”. The politician is motivated by his genuine “concern for the people”, who simply have to be prepared for the logical collapse of the paper money system.

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GLOBAL

The New Arms Race

by German-foreign-policy.com

The international balance of power between the world’s leading naval forces will clearly shift in favour of the Pacific.

German naval experts are predicting a dramatic shift over the next twenty years in the balance of power between the world’s leading naval forces. Whereas the naval capabilities of several countries in East and Southeast Asia are growing considerably, those of the US are shrinking slightly. European naval units, including those of Germany, have to expect drastic declines due not only to the current Euro crisis, but due also to the fact that NATO countries have to invest huge amounts in their ongoing interventions and their forces deployed on the ground in Afghanistan, according to an analysis published in the recent edition of the Marine Forum journal.

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The “‘Champions league’ of naval armament” is playing today in the “Asian Pacific realm.” Beyond a doubt, the “most important change in the maritime interplay of forces between the old and new world powers” is “the field of tension between the massive growth of the Chinese Navy and the further shrinking of the US Navy.” In the future, Europe will have no decisive role to play in the rivalry of naval forces, according to the analysis.

Perspective 2030 The analysis, written by an expert of the German Federal Office of Defence Technology and Procurement (BWB) and published in the current issue of the MarineForum journal, compares the development of the world’s navies. One yardstick is the number of vessels (“units”) at the disposal of each navy. Due to important differences in the capabilities of warships, the author calculates a specific capability index coefficient for each navy, allowing a comparison of their respective capabilities. A smaller number of vessels could thereby have larger capabilities. The comparison

GLOBAL

also those already commissioned and those in planning, but not yet in the phase of realisation during the next twenty years. The comparison also includes vessels to be scrapped by 2030 – a predictable number, according to the author. According to the analysis, only 18 of the world’s 120 to 130 navies can be called “important” in regards to their capabilities. These 18 navies consist of over two thirds of all currently existing units and are “primarily globally oriented.”

US Navy: “Slight Shrinking” The US Navy has by far, the largest navy, with its 511 units and a capability index coefficient of 645.7. In spite of its ambitious arms programs, the USA will not be able to maintain its naval forces at the current level, predicts the analysis. The US Navy has been slightly shrinking since early 1990 and this will most likely continue. The author of the analysis predicts that by 2030, the US Navy will have 450 units and also a capability index coefficient of 450. The US Navy will, in the future, no longer be competing with its main long-time rival, the Russian Navy. By 2030, the Russian Navy, due to its numerous outdated vessels, will experience a drop from its present 298 units to 50 and from its present 247.4 capability index coefficient to 50, according to the analysis. The former naval world power will therefore be “at the threshold of the naval forces of the medium-sized powers” and will fall even behind Turkey.

China: “More Globally Oriented” The author places emphasis on the particular importance of the Chinese Navy. In spite of its large number of vessels (493), it only has one fourth of the capabilities of the US Navy (167.0). But Beijing is accelerating its naval modernisation. Its aircraft carrier programs, the “expansion of its amphibious component with large landing crafts” and its participation in the international (“War on Piracy”) deployment at the Horn of Africa are all “indicators of a more global orientation of the Chinese Navy.” It must be seen, “if the creation of a powerful logistical component, indispensable for global operations, will follow.” But it can be expected that by 2030, the People’s Republic of China will have over 550 vessels, reaching a capability index coefficient of 300. With a continued Chinese growth, writes the author, the US Navy and Beijing’s fleet would be “on a par in about 30 to 50 years.”

India: “China’s Antagonist” The author of the analysis is also expecting arms efforts from China’s Asian rivals. Even though Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia will not, in all cases, increase the number of their vessels, they will definitely enhance their naval capabilities. This also applies to India: “As China’s future antagonist on the world scene, that country is seeking to significantly enhance its naval capabilities.” The author predicts that by 2030, the above

Fighter Jet on an Indian Carrier

mentioned countries will rank from three to five and eleven (Australia) behind the USA and China on its list of the world’s most powerful naval forces. The German warship building industry is also profiting from this arms race.

Europe: “Significant Shrinking” But Europe, according to this analysis, is falling far behind in this naval arms race. The author writes that the French Navy will shrink about 45 percent; the British naval forces could even lose up to two-thirds of their units and capabilities. The Italian fleet will also shrink. Only Spain could possibly maintain its standing, if it is not sucked into the Euro crisis. Greece has to save funds and cut its fleet in half, therefore losing rank 13, falling far behind on the list of the world’s most powerful navies. The German navy will also shrink. Because it has to finance the war in Afghanistan, deployment of the ground troops and air transport, Berlin has little leeway left for new vessels. By 2030, Germany will lose about 45 percent of its vessels and one-third of its naval capabilities. All the navies of the EU combined, will have approximately the same number of vessels as the US Navy, but only half its naval capabilities.

A New Arms Race The international balance of power between the world’s leading naval forces will clearly shift in favour of the Pacific. By 2030, a rising Chinese Navy will face a shrinking US Navy. But the US Navy can draw upon strong allies – India, Japan, South Korea and Australia. In this naval race, Europe will lose its powerful position. It is China that is posing the decisive questions, according to the analysis: whether the Chinese Navy should continue its primarily regional orientation or rather orients itself globally. “The latter would be”, writes the author, “a remake of the arms race between the US Navy and the ‘Russian bear’ under Admiral Gorshkov in the 1980s.” At that time, the Soviet Union was in decline. In 20 years, the United States could be in a similar situation, according to several observers.

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GLOBAL

Wikileaks

& the Post-Modern Frontiersman

by Parvez Asad Sheikh

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GLOBAL

The story of Wikileaks has reverberated across the globe proving to be one of the most contentious issues of recent times. An analysis of the organization’s actions and the subsequent reaction on the part of the ‘Establishment’ is difficult due to the unprecedented scope of the leaks, the politically anarchic realm of the internet in which the story takes place and the fact that the plot has yet to reach a stage of dénouement.

Beyond the partisan debate over whether Julian Assange is a freedom fighter or a ‘cyber-terrorist’ lies the fact that what has taken place represents a stage in the crystallization of our post-modern age and the internet as a political zone. After a decade of media docility and the sociopolitical effects of the Terror Dialectic on the democratic ideals of civil liberties, the ‘cyber war’ over the internet sparked by the audacity of Assange and his organisation has forced the reawakening of the mitochondrial debate over the boundaries between the State and the Individual from which the Democratic Era was born.

The Logic Behind the Leak Julian Assange cuts an unorthodox figure as far as political personalities are concerned, whichever end of the heroterrorist continuum he is to be placed in.

He boasts neither the brawn of the archetypal nationalist leader nor the turbaned and bearded allure of the Hispanic extras one encounters in more recent Hollywood blockbusters. Assange’s biography reads like the complicated plot of a Marvel comic-book character — educating himself at an early age and reaching intellectual maturity as a hacker in the early days of the World Wide Web. His colourful, non-conformist mother loses custody of her son after a police raid on his home and being charged with twenty five counts of hacking related crimes, including roaming freely and unwarranted in the computer networks of the U.S Department of Defense and Nortel.

Although he is fined and not incarcerated upon conviction, the misfortune is followed

by a period of depression, with Assange sleeping in parks and going through a neoascetic transformative experience which crystallises in his mother’s struggle to regain contact with him. The formative events which Assange encountered from his bohemian childhood, his days as a hacker and subsequently the legal battle fought by his mother against the Australian Health and Community Services in order to regain custody of her son, all moulded his political stance and gave birth to the theoretical ethos upon which Wikileaks is founded. A particularly well crafted June 2010 article in The New Yorker describes Assange as a ‘student of Kafka, Koestler, and Solzhenitsyn’, illustrating the theoretical logic behind the ‘Leak’ as a caveat of political activism: [Assange] had come to understand the defining human struggle not as left versus right, or faith versus reason, but as individual versus institution. He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled “Conspiracy as Governance,” which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial, the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare.

If Julian Assange is in fact the post-modern heir to the great modern political writers of the likes of Kafka, his political ideology has the clumsy fervour that is characteristic to

the young ideologue in a Dostoevsky novel. The internal logic of seeing absolute transparency in government and corporate functions as the key to socio-political utopia falls in on itself without the need for too much pressure to be exerted. One of the most popular jibes on the part of those commentators on the political ‘Right’ is that Wikileaks can only survive if it can maintain a high level of secrecy in order to force governments and corporations to be more transparent.

The success of Assange’s vision inevitably results in an enormous concentration of extortionate power in organisations such as Wikileaks, which act as powerful arbi­ trators not bound to the traditional notions of state interests. In this sense Wikileaks represents a threat to those in power in the traditional democratic or republican sense by taking over their role in this capacity, essentially a form of coup d’etat in the Information Age. The anarcho-liberta­ rianism of Assange and his organisation is at heart an oxymoron, with what he terms ‘radical democracy’ simply shifting the apparent head of power while leaving the body intact, with no real dissolution of power to the ‘people’.

The genius of the Leak itself lies in its action as a catalyst for political debate.

Regardless of the intellectual formation which has set Assange outside the traditional pale of democratic discourse the left-right structuralist stage of debate - the actions of Wikileaks have reverberated straight to the core issue of the very legitimacy of our governments and corpo­ rations which, through their subsequent reaction to the organisation since Assange’s arrest late last year, have proven to be politically aligned. While Assange’s theoretical focus on trans­ parency falters easily on inspection, the unhealthy political state which he sees as the illegitimacy of the ‘regimes’ in power is what the Leak is designed to treat. And while regarding the Leak as a means to force these governments to embrace transparency and ‘radical democracy’ is too mathematical an equation to work

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smoothly in a tumultuous world, the ‘Cablegate leaks’ have forced those regimes to act in a manner that has made the legitimacy of their actions — and by extension the legitimacy of their power to act in such a manner — the focal points of renewed scrutiny of the significant concentration of powers which has gone relatively unquestioned for almost a decade.

The Regime While the diplomatic cables have provided a mine of primary source information pertaining to the American diplomatic and strategic stance to its foreign policy, the actual impact of the information so far has not forced a paradigm shift in the manner in which the subject of American foreign policy is understood.

Most political analysts worth their salt have had a rather good grasp on the general tune to which America dances on the world stage and the content of the cables provide ample support for existing perspectives, and a good snide comment to quote where appropriate.

Despite the relative harmlessness of the actual information that has been made public, the United States has taken the incident as a provocation treasonous enough to label Assange a ‘cyber-terrorist’.

And while the information released so far has not devastated American diplomacy or their military presence in Iraq and the ‘Af-Pak’ region, Assange still has what has been described as a ‘thermonuclear deterrent’ of information that he will unleash onto the world if he is compromised. The encrypted file aptly named ‘insurance. aes256’ has already been distributed across the internet, with only the key to unlocking the information needed. With only a fraction of the quarter of a million cables released so far, the sensitivity of the information leaked may not be simply dismissed.

In an interview published in Forbes magazine in December 2010, the mere allusion on the part of Assange that he

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planned to publish damning internal documents of a large American bank was enough for the stock price of the Bank of America — apparently one of the least trusted American banks — to weaken and for the corporation to undertake a frantic investigation into the possibility that it is indeed the target.

“Assange and Wikileaks are both intricately part of and detached from the terror dialectic itself. They cannot be dealt with in the same manner as the traditional terrorist-as-Muslim” In 2009, Wikileaks published reports from a pharmaceutical group which indicated that its lobbyists held considerable sway over the World Health Organisation’s project to fund the development of pharmaceutical drugs in Third World countries and led to the termination of the project. The commodities giant Trafigura was forced to pay around $200 million in damages when an internal communiqué revealed that the corporation was dumping toxic chemicals off the Ivorian coast and was responsible for health problems of hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting Ivorian. Trafigura had managed to prevent the British media from mentioning the documents through a court injunction which only found its way to the public when it was published by Wikileaks. The potential impact of the Leak is devastating to the highly manicured public faces of the organisations which are targeted.

It is now popularly understood that while Julian Assange is awaiting trial for charges of sexual misconduct and is currently confined to an English country estate, he is gradually gravitating towards U.S jurisdiction. While the response to Assange and Wikileaks on the part of America and corporations ― particularly the financial institutions which have actively involved themselves in attacks on the organisation ― is understandable considering potential threat that Wikileaks poses, the manner in

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which this reaction has manifested itself has only led to more scrutiny of their legitimacy and the lionisation of Wikileaks and Assange. Private Bradley Manning, who currently languishes in solitary confinement, is accused of leaking the cache of cables to Wikileaks, but has still to be convicted of the charges which he faces under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The person responsible for turning Manning in is the ex-hacker, Adrian Lamo. Wikileaks and Assange are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution, heavily protective of media freedoms as was demonstrated by the court ruling on the Pentagon Paper leaks during the Vietnam War which ensured that organisations which were involved in the publishing of leaked information and who did not incite the provision of the information, could not be convicted under the Espionage Act. Adrian Lamo has reportedly provided the FBI with a transcript of an online chat conversation which he had with Manning that alludes to the possibility that Assange had been in direct contact with Manning and that Assange had taken measures to assure Manning of his safety. This transcript is purportedly to be used by the Department of Defence as a means to remove the constitutional protection which Assange and Wikileaks benefit from as a publishing organisation and to provide the narrative loophole of evidence needed to implicate Assange in the charges which Manning is currently facing.

If this is in fact the nature of the case being built up by the American government in order to ensure that it is able to make an example of Assange and deter the threat which the Leak Organisation poses, it is indeed a flimsy one. The need for the American government to stretch the legal relevance and coherence of its case against Assange only weakens the legitimacy of its power to take such an action. To charge Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 ― formulated as a means to curb dissent against America’s involvement in First World War at a time

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when popular opinion favoured isolationism ― would be a highly dramatic measure on the part of the U.S against a foreign citizen and an organisation which is global in nature.

Power and Legitimacy The Democratic era was born of an attempt to establish a political system in which the will and power of the state was seconded to the will and power of the individual. The swift expansion westwards of the original American Republic across the continent which the United States now regards as indigenous to its being was fuelled by the fervour of this fundamental ideal which the democratic ideology embraces in order to ensure its legitimacy. The frontiersmen who flooded over the Appalachians in order to claim their freedom had scant regard for any notion of federal legitimacy.

As the American Republic conquered its continent, the debate over individual and federal power led to the Civil War, with slavery the issue through which the debate was voiced and the rallying cry for that devastating event. The ideal of personal freedoms is the central tenet of the democratic paradigm and while it is understood that the state and organizations require a certain amount of secrecy in order to maintain the dynamic of their ability to function, this debate has always been at the heart of the socio-political dynamic of the democracy.

Ever since the beginning of the age of the terror dialectic, when reporters began to be ‘embedded’ and an unprecedented amount of civil liberties were relinquished to the state ostensibly in order for the state to be able to protect the individual from the spectre of terrorism, the debate over individual freedom versus state control was unnaturally subdued in the democratic sense.

Wikileaks represents the re-awakening of this debate after a decade of docility.

Whether Wikileaks’ aim to establish a ‘radical democracy’ in which power is devolved to organizations which collectively

monitor government and corporations actions is possible or not, the target of their activism ― the legitimacy of those in power ― has sparked the beginning of a debate over the legitimacy of the amount of power states have taken to themselves in the age of terror. Assange and Wikileaks are both intricately part of, and detached from, the terror dialectic itself. They cannot be dealt with in the same manner as the traditional terrorist-as-Muslim whose alliances are foreign to the dominant political paradigm.

Wikileaks’ radical ideology is not born from a foreign discourse or political understanding but, as is stated on its website, on the Declaration of Human Rights. Assange would have more in common with the rugged frontiersmen who conquered the American continent and gave birth to today’s superpower than the statesman accusing him of terrorism. And just as American westward expansion was dependent on a euphemistic focus on individual freedom, the attempt to lay barriers on the freedom of information in

the traditionally anarchic political zone of the internet has been met with more popular resentment than has the war being waged with real lead and blood in the Hindu Kush.

The Wikileaks story has upped the pressure of current political discourse. With the Cablegate leaks attacking the core issue of the legitimacy of the state and corporate power, it has begun a process by which the necessity to maintain individual freedom will place pressure on governments in the West to prove their legitimacy. While Julian Assange and Bradley Manning await their fates, the ongoing economic crisis is putting further pressure on the legitimacy of state power, with the draconian economic reforms forced upon the populations in Western states pushing them into the streets in serious popular protest.

Wikileaks may simply be said to be the beginning of a process by which the current political and economic state of affairs will be challenged and reformulated.

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Caravan crossing the Western Sahara

Contrary To International Law

by Azzadine Karioh

There are differing theories and explanations for the origins and causes of the Western Saharan conflict. Owing to its complexity, this writer believes that a non-legal examination would fail to do it justice. The core of this research has been to determine whether or not there is justification in international law for the secession of the Polisario-Front.

A U.N. Charter explicitly mentions the right of people to self-determination, specifically in section 2 of Article 1 and also in Article 55. There is an overwhelming consensus with regards to the legal significance of these provisions laid out in the Charter: these are distinctive elements of international law. There is also agreement however that the realisation of selfdetermination should not necessarily lead to the break up of multinational states. It is quite possible to retain a people within a

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multinational state (by, for example, granting them autonomy). Therefore, the granting of self-determination should not automatically be equated with the right to secede.

A matter of debate among international jurists is whether people’s right to selfdetermination includes the right of minorities to withdraw from a confederation (seces­ sion). The prevailing opinion within the legal field rejects such aggressive self-

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determination, taking into consideration the integrity of existing confederations.

On the other hand, minority opinion maintains that self-determination has the same stature as the right to self-defence.

The right to secession thus may be upheld in specific or exceptional circumstances, for example, in case where international law is seriously violated, (e.g. cases of genocide).

As an intermediate result, the prevailing opinion among international jurists is to deny the Polisario-Front the right to secede.

Even according to the minority opinion, the circumstances hardly meet the minimum conditions for the right to secede. Initially there is the problem of what actually constitutes a “people” in the context of the right to self-determination. If a nation is not

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regarded as such, then there are no special rights to be granted.

Whether or not an indigenous Sahrawi people can even be said to exist is matter of considerable contention. The undis­ putable fact is that at the time of the withdrawal of the Spanish colonial powers, the natives of the Western Sahara were considered predominantly nomadic.

According to the principles of international law, acknowledgement of nomadic peoples in state building is inapt.

There is also the question as to whether there have been any attempts to commit serious crimes contravening international law.

Such issues can be left open since the right to secession has already been forfeited by a violation of the prohibition on the use of force. In order to enforce the right to selfdetermination, for those advocates of the right to secession, it is crucial that the prohibition on the use of force is strictly adhered to. This is due to the fact that such a prohibition, expressly outlined in Article 2, section 4, of the U.N. Charter, is a cogent law and cornerstone of the current international legal order. Under current international law, the prohibition on the use of force outweighs the self-determination of peoples, although both are equally compelling rules within international law.

The Polisario-Front movement refers to the non-governmental, militarily organised group, which has assumed military powers in order to enforce their objectives using violent means. The Polisario-Front’s (irregular) use of military force is not a matter of debate, even among its own leaders and supporters. While current international law acknowledges the “natural” right to self-defence, outlined in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, this right, in accordance with the article, can only be invoked by a sovereign state. The PolisarioFront is not entitled to this right, due to the fact that the Polisario-Front movement is not engaged with a state. Furthermore, the Polisario-Front, self-proclaimed as The

Village elder, Western Sahara

Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic cannot rely on this right. In order to be admitted to the United Nations as a sovereign state, it requires the recognition of all five members of the permanent Security Council, composed of the United States, Russia, China, France and Great Britain.

The Polisario-Front, aka Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, lacks such recognition. Neither, it should be mentioned, do the majority of the members of the African Union, as with the majority of United Nations member states, recognise the self-styled Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

There may be those who hold that the prohibition on the use of force takes precedence over the right to selfdetermination, the latter of which has no chance of actually being realised. This assertion can be contradicted using numerous historical examples. It cannot be overlooked that in many situations involving a breach of international law, non-

violent methods have been proven to be effective. Nor should it be discounted that the U.N. Charter points out effective means for dealing with breaches of international law. In this context, Article 51 of the Charter refers to a multilateral response – a military one, if necessary – when it comes to its implementation.

International law seeks to strike a balance between the territorial integrity of states and the self-determination of peoples. This can, on occasion, lead to the granting of autonomy status. Rightly, under interna­ tional law, a general right to secession cannot be enforced since the present laws protect the territorial integrity of all states, as laid out in the declaration on principles of international law, friendly relations and co-operation among states in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations of 24th October 1970: “A government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or colour.”

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EUROPE

Attack on the Reichstag

Background: Terrorist attacks in Germay How do Muslims categorise recent reports?

by Abu Bakr Rieger

Security measures at the Reichstag, Berlin

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It is a dark image, but perfect for the media: a bearded detachment of bloodthirsty ‘Islamists’ capturing the Bundestag, destroying democracy in a surprise coup and then hoisting the Khalifate Flag over Germany’s capital. So goes the latest projection in the War On Terror, and it is one with a long-term psychological effect. Yet it is not the invention of psychologists, rather it is from SPIEGELOnline, Germany’s foremost news portal, which has developed a habit of informing us – promptly and exclusively, but usually under undisclosed circumstances – about imminent terror plans.

The consequences are obvious: many Germans are afraid, and Islamic associations in the country are complaining of a new populism against the Muslim minority.

Fortunately, recent fantasies of an attack were nothing other than an unproven conspiracy theory. A radicalised German Muslim phoned the German authorities from a telephone box in Pakistan and told them of the plans. Very few of the German media published the caveat that while the FBI and its German counterpart the BKA attached great importance to this report of an apparent international terrorist plan, the USA foreign intelligence agency CIA, along with Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution were rather more skeptical about it.

In other words, within the confusing mesh of authorities there are different sets of interests and no one common position.

Sensationalised speculation worries some of them while apparently benefiting others.

The burgeoning security apparatus, which is assuming an unprecedented form in terms of size and numbers, is becoming an impenetrable web in Germany as it has hitherto in the USA. Precisely because there are some hundreds of radicalised Muslim partisans, reports of this kind cannot be consigned to the realm of fantasy per se. It is as well that the majority of Islamic scholars have now pointed out Islam’s prohibition of suicide

attacks and terrorism in general, along with history’s proof of the incompatibility between such a phenomenon and the Muslims. In effect, Muslims, however well versed and competent within Islamic law may easily remain immune to the criminal scheming of isolated outsiders.

Naturally then, the Muslim population is anxious about the terror hype and the associations that are constantly being drawn. Much of the blame for this lies with overburdened politicians for whom it is often convenient to play off security against freedom. Even now, while the threat of attack has not yet become a reality, there are calls for a stiffening of the law.

Preventative punishment such as that proposed recently by Norbert Geis, the CSU expert on home affairs, is, once raised to the next rhetorical stage of escalation, little other than a call for preventative detention camps inside Germany. Giorgio Agamben calls the torture workshops, already integrated into the modern Nomos, as “locations voided of order”.

Muslims are paying the price for this general mobilisation, not least in their normal daily lives – looking for jobs and flats, or strolling innocently through any one of Germany’s typical Christmas markets. We, as Germans, are told that if “three strange people who only speak Arabic” suddenly move into our neigh­ bourhood, we should become watchful and inform the authorities if in doubt. This is the new form of German vigilance recom­

mended by Berlin’s Interior Senator Ehrhart Körting. How naïve has one to be not to see where these senseless recommen­ dations are heading? (In fact the only real attack in the city on the day of his statement was an arson attack on a Berlin mosque).

The relationship between Muslims and the security authorities could be better. There is mutual mistrust. As a minority, which, alas, is too often associated with terrorism, Muslims listen to reports about agents provocateurs with mixed feelings. Such agents, familiar with the Muslim scene, use ‘radical speeches’ to discover who in the community are responsive to extremist positions. It is said that in London there are now 60,000 Muslim intermediaries in regular contact with the security services; it is not known how many informers, go-betweens and agents there are in Germany.

Whatever the case, there is already something of a Kafkaesque atmosphere prevalent. Politics are no longer talked about in most German mosques – “just to be on the safe side” – and in many of them there is a constrictive feeling of mutual distrust. Those with animosity towards Islam have repeatedly scandalised the normal exercising of religion in public.

On occasion the German security services have even incited suspicious people to criminal acts. “This has been documented in the course of investigations,” says the lawyer Christian Kessler who represents an 18-year-old from Neunkirchen. This young man from Saarland is said to have been encouraged by a go-between to threaten attacks in Germany in a series of video messages demanding the release of Daniel Schneider, a member of the myth-enshrouded ‘Sauerland Group’.

According to the lawyer, the investigation files prove clearly that a police go-between entered into contact with the 18-year-old at a mosque in September.

Creating an event and then controlling it is not an entirely new tactic, but it is an activity which occupies an indistinct greyzone in legal terms. Yehia Yousif, a former

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faculties and at the expense of the distance it is necessary to maintain from such sources.

Online journalism has been especially to blame for a creeping change to our open society in the age of terror. With the advent of the Google era, series of associations, phantoms and supposed facts can be released to the world with just a few clicks of the mouse. No other medium is so effective in denouncing and defaming dissidents, especially – as we are witnes­ sing in the fight against terrorism – since it operates using indistinct terminology.

Harm­less Turkish functionaries and criminal mass-murderers can both be filed under the category of ‘Islamists’ – which in the case of an Islamophobic media, simply gets bracketed together under ‘Muslims’.

Increased police presence at the Reichtag

go-between, who worked for BadenWürttemberg’s Constitutional Protection Services and who was the spiritual father of almost all of the radicals in the Ulm Terrorist Scene, still lives undisturbed abroad. Almost everyone suspected of terrorism in this context have had contact with the Ulm Scene. To this day it remains unclear how, when or under what circumstances, the Ulm Group ‘got out of control’.

Security experts argue, on the other hand, that terrorist activities cannot be detected early enough without the use of active infiltration. They complain that part of the reason for this is that they receive so few ‘voluntary’ reports from the Muslim community, which for its part tends to be helpless for the simple reason that there are very few concrete clues or incidents to report. This all leads to a public impression that the Muslims are playing a passive onlooker role.

That of course is not intentional, since the majority of Muslims are just as oppressed

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by the permanent state of emergency as other citizens, while also sharing the anxiety of the security services about potential attacks. Such attacks would of course be the very worst-case scenario for the millions of peace-loving Muslims in the country.

Muslims have however frequently criticised certain elements of the media and journalists they perceive as being highly subjective. This applies in particular to journalists working under what is presented as a kind of ‘state of emergency’, which justifies a low-quality reporting under pressure for quick information. Very few of the thousands of reports on the chaotic War On Terror are based on journalists’ own original research.

It is a matter of economic survival in the media industry and the fight for circulation figures that a small number of key media enjoy the advantage of exclusive contacts with the security services. One might however ask whether such links are maintained to the cost of their own critical

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Perhaps the greatest danger for Muslims is that they will be forced into playing a mushrooming, reactive role in a ‘phantom reality’, too often based on the ‘phantom bogeyman’. The dramatic image of an ostensible threat to democracy by mutinous pirates bent on seizing the Reichstag certainly distracts somewhat from the silent but very real undermining of democracy by global financial technology.

Many Muslims are asking whether there might be a vested interest somewhere behind an intense but ultimately illusory public debate on Islam.

Certainly it is easy to doubt whether what is at issue is solely the investigation of real threats and their proportionate categorisation within the security situation.

On 19 November the Kölner Stadtanzeiger ran an article about the apparent new backers of global terrorism. It was entitled ‘Kashmiri, in truth a phantom?’ Of course, the eminent journalist, sitting at his desk in provincial Cologne, came to the only reasonable conclusion of any such honest research – and that is, that the existence or non-existence of this phantom was once again impossible to prove, for him and for us all.

Burning of the Reichstag february 1933

But the crucial sentence lay below the phantom image of the villain, so reminiscent of the terrorist Carlos, a sentence which insightfully defined the virtual image of the enemy. Laconically it stated: “Whether or not Kashmiri exists is unimportant.” At this point it becomes impossible to overlook the fact that the phantom enemy is no longer a real person but rather a created picture corresponding to an idealised enemy figure.

This phantom enemy figure represents a kind of prototype evil enemy that can then be loaded up with other negative asso­ ciations at will. What emerges is an image of an enemy, one might almost say avatar, which is part of a virtual reality. Is it possible that ongoing phantom attacks, phantom enemies, and in the end a new kind of virtual or phantom reality could create a new political decision-making zone, but one with an irrational basis?

Many Muslims in Germany are asking themselves how they can defend them­ selves against such powers of imagery, defamatory association and scheming. It would seem that as well as strengthening our own media, it would be wise to encourage more active discussion between Muslims and to promote a sensible dialo­ gue with those representatives of society, media and government authorities who show an interest.

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Public unrest and rioting in Pristina, Kosovo

Triumph of the Will to Freedom

by Agim Zogaj

Despite its de facto independence, there are still some steps to be taken by Kosovo’s leadership in gaining international recognition of this newly independent, predominantly Muslim territory. Despite resistance, politicians and observers are confident that they will reach their aim.

The advisory judgement of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of Kosovo’s declaration of independence paved the way for the state of Kosovo, for its obtaining recognition in new areas and for its taking decisive steps towards membership in the UN. But this was not all: following this decision, the state of Kosovo won full international legitimacy because this mechanism of UN, the ICJ, being the highest instance of a body of international law, proved that on the occasion of the founding act of the state of Kosovo (Republic of Kosovo), it did not violate any principle or standard of international law.

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It thus was further testimony of the triumph of freedom of the people of Kosovo, which, like other nations of the world, had been right to fight for freedom from Serbia. As a result of this universal right, the people of Kosovo in accordance with the principles of the right of peoples to self-determination of their fate, their freedom and their future, established its own state in the Homeland of its forefathers on February 17th, 2008.

For the people of Kosovo, freedom without a state was not enough because, as history tells us, there is no freedom, no security, no future or prosperity for any nation without a state. In effect the ICJ advisory judgement was a public rebuttal of Serbia’s

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expansionist and colonial policy whose state policy, historically – in particular with respect to Kosovo and the Albanian people – has proved to be a policy of enslavement of other people and conquering territories.

Moreover the ICJ legal judgement on Kosovo, based on the standards of international law destroyed the false Serbian myth of Kosovo as “the cradle of Serbisation” or as “a Serbian land” and so on. It proved that the militarily powerful Serbia, with its colonial policy of violence and the ongoing ethnic cleansing, had continuously occupied Kosovo, holding the Albanian people enslaved since 1912.

It should be obvious to Serbia, the Serbian people and especially the Serbian leadership once and for all that, upon the estab­lishment of the state of Kosovo, there can be no further question of secessionism, separatism, disunion, parting or any violation of territorial integrity – terms which still form

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part of the web of lies and propaganda of the Serbian leadership. The Serbian people should have a better, more objective, knowledge of their own history, and they should also know that it was in its distant history, in 1804, that the first Serbian uprising under the leadership of Karadjordje Petrovic aimed at implementing the country’s unilateral secession from the Ottoman Empire. Serbia, as a country, as an integral state, emerged from the Congress of Berlin (1878) under the direct assistance of Russia and after the military defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Kosovo thus did not lie within its territorial integrity, being one of the four Albanian vilayets ruled by the Ottoman Empire. It is shameful that the Serbian people have forgotten about this, but still more shameful is the fact that they are now trying to conceal their own true history.

So it is that the people who were enslaved until yesterday by Serbia can now remind them of the truth about their history of conquests, colonies, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Serbia, as an independent state since 1878, emerging from the maelstrom of enslaved peoples, joined forces with other rapacious peoples and occupied – during the Balkan wars from 1912 to 1913 – initially Kosovo and then Macedonia. With those invasions, Serbia, the Serbian people and its leaders deprived the Albanian people and other peoples of the right to determine their own fate and their future.

It was on those foundations that the rapacious policies of all Serbian governments were founded since the establishment of the first unitary Yugoslavia in 1918, and the second AVNOJ (AntiFascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia, 1943). In particular, Serbia’s policies were inspired by the arrival in power of Slobodan Milosevic. Serbian politicians and academics, and even the Serbian people should be aware that the new Constitution of Serbia, in September 1990, proclaimed “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia”, a year before Croatia and Slovenia announced their indepen­ dence from Yugoslavia.

Today, alas, the Serbian state policy in relation to the Kosovo issue continues.

Even after the IJC’s clear-cut advisory judgement – namely that delegates of the Assembly of Kosovo, according to the act of constitution of the state of Kosovo, have neither breached international law, nor Resolution 1244 – Serbia still continues not to recognize it.

Further, the leadership of Serbia, led by president Tadic, has launched a new resolution in the General Assembly of the UN to challenge the IJC advisory judgement. The new Serbian resolution also seeks to persuade the UN General Assembly to make a decision in favour of starting a new round of talks between Kosovo and Serbia.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 is de facto dead The EU, however, found itself in a very delicate situation and is now making efforts to coordinate positions with officials in Belgrade to change the contents of proposed resolution, which has already been submitted to the UN by Serbia. The EU, or rather its officials, are insisting that Serbian leadership should recognise the IJC’s judgement on the Kosovo issue. A number of EU member states and officials in Washington have already made clear to Serbian officials that the IJC’s decision has ended the question of the status of Kosovo and so they are now suggesting that Belgrade open talks with Kosovo state leaders on matters of mutual interest. But if Serbia’s proposed resolution is not modified and no agreement is reached, then it is possible that another project resolution will be sponsored in the UN General Assembly by Albania, or another member state of the UN. In the capital of the Republic of Kosovo, officials think that UN Resolution 1244 is de facto dead, politically speaking – given that the IJC advisory judgement has

explicitly said: “This act of Kosovo [The Declaration of Independence – A.Z.] has not violated international law in general or in particular with respect to resolution 1244.” The majority in Kosovo thinks that the time has now come for a new resolution on Kosovo to be proposed by the UN Security Council. The arguments are various, but the prevailing view is that since the IJC has decided that the declaration of independence was a legal act, then Kosovo’s interim status, which was provided for by Resolution 1244, is now over and so a new resolution is needed to accommodate its new status.

The ICJ judgement, even though it is advisory and not binding, should become binding. The leadership of the state of Kosovo is harmonising and coordinating positions with its Euro-Western allies. New resolutions with a binding character can be issued and approved only by the UN Security Council. In this particular case, although it appears difficult because of the possibility of Russia’s or China’s veto, the new resolution must nevertheless be approved by the votes of all five members of the UN Security Council and it should contain the key recommendations under which the Assembly UN General would have to accept Kosovo into the community of states. This procedure is provided for by Article 4 of the UN Charter. In such a scenario, and the aim of Kosovo and its Western allies, its friends, including countries of the Arab world, the General Assembly, by a vote of two thirds of its members, will declare Kosovo a member of the UN. The road to that decision – ending with the international declaration of the state of Kosovo – is full of challenges, but given that the historical, ethnic and international right is on side of the people of Kosovo, then the will of freedom and self determination for Kosovo will triumph in the General Assembly of UN. The author is Head of the Department of Political Science and vice president of the Board of the University of Pristina.

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AMERICAS

Anti Muslim Rally on the streets of New York

Living on the Edge

by Shahid R. Siddiqi

The Muslim community in the USA is fearful about its future.

Of late, the Muslim community in the US has been living on the edge. Targets of a “growing tide of fear and intolerance”, as the Islamic Society of North America puts it, Muslims are at a loss as to how to deal with the outburst of hostility they now experience in their daily lives.

It all started with the opposition to Cordoba House, a 100 million dollar community centre to be built in Lower Manhattan and designed to house facilities such as an auditorium, a gym, a performing arts centre, a food court, a day care centre, a prayer room and an interfaith centre. The project, sponsored by a moderate New York cleric, was named after the famous Cordoba Mosque in Spain, symbol of the heights of Muslim glory and of moderate rule. It was designed to be a high profile showplace of mainstream, moderate Islam that promotes pluralism and a liberal approach to religion, providing a platform for amplifying the voice of the silent majority of Muslims who shun warped, radical, fundamentalist ideologies.

Right wing zealots, conservative politicians, far right Christian groups, bloggers and the Tea Party movement members ganged up against the Centre to punish their new enemy – Islam. Like the proverbial lamb in the nursery fable, The Lamb and The Wolf in which the lamb is blamed for defiling the water, the Cordoba Centre was blamed for being close to Ground Zero, as the World Trade Centre site is now called, where the Bush coterie had orchestrated the 9/11 hits, blaming them on Al Qaeda.

A halo was immediately created around Ground Zero, site of a new commercial complex, in the memory of the victims of September 11, 2001. Although the Centre was two blocks away and not even visible from Ground Zero, opponents insisted that, ‘It would be sacrilegious to allow the construction of a mosque in its vicinity’.

Their reason; the sight of Muslims praying in this mosque would hurt the sentiments of the near and dear ones of those who perished when the terrorist Muslims (allegedly) flew their hijacked planes into the towers killing 3,000 people, never mind that there were 300 Muslims among the dead who were equally good Americans.

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AMERICAS

Ceremonies to start the construction of mosques have become a common scene in USA today.

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AMERICAS

Muslims praying outside the White House, Washington

Labelling the community centre as the ‘Mosque at Ground Zero’, to conjure up mental images of soaring minarets and the ‘Jihadists’ who caused 9/11, the gang unleashed a crusade against Islam, employing demagoguery and using demonstrably false but alarmist phrases over and over again to incite adverse public response. Islam was on trial in the United States.

The debate that ensued and the venomous discourse that dominated the national scene, exposed the agenda of right-wing politicians and the Religious Right – they were out to utilize this long awaited opportunity to demonise Islam, interpreting it as a religion that promotes terrorism and presenting it as an enemy in order to exploit the nation’s worst xenophobic instincts – all for political gains.

Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey of Tennessee (Republican) suggested that Muslims should not be accorded the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment. “You could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult or whatever you want to call it.” he said.

Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich compared the organizers of the project with the Nazis. “America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization,” he claimed. Bryan Fischer, a prominent figure within the religious Right, argued against granting any more permits to build mosques in the US since they are dedicated to the overthrow of the American government. The right-wing talkradio host, Michael Berry told his audience, “I hope the mosque isn’t built, and if it is, I hope it’s blown up.” These incessant smears were reflected in a poll commissioned by Time magazine, in which

1 in 3 Americans believes that Muslims should be barred from running for president; a similar number said they would oppose the construction of a mosque in their own neighbourhood, and almost 3 in 10 said Muslims should not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court.

Americans have been misled into believing the lie that Islam will soon take over the country, with Shariah law not far behind.

Christian Right pundits and Republican politicians have gone to the extent of insisting that Islam is not a religion but a political cult, that Muslims cannot be good Americans and that mosques are only a front for extremists. Unsure of themselves and generally unaware of the world outside their borders, the American people found this discourse too complicated to comprehend and its acceptance, as presented, far easier.

In all of this, the mainstream media has played the devil. To serve its ends, it pushed the mosque story 24/7, from the perspective of both the left and the right, manufacturing a controversy in the process and playing on a fear of Islam that has been cooking up for the last nine years, thanks to the likes of Dick Cheney, using phoney “Muslim” terror plots” and “al Qaeda” threats.

The connections that the Far Right media helped to create between the Cordoba Centre, Islam, the 9/11 event, 19 radical Muslims supposedly controlled by a few mullahs in the Tora Bora caves in Afghanistan and who were able to fly hijacked commercial airliners with great precision into the WTC without having ever flown such an aircraft in their lives, did the trick for the Republicans, the Tea Party movement and the Christian Right; with the lead role played

by Fox News.

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AMERICAS

life”, said Imam Abdullah T. Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University, “there is hopelessness, helplessness and real grief.”

After 9/11, most American Muslims had woken up to the realization that they needed to make concerted efforts to build relationships with other fellow Americans, publicly reject terrorism, educate non-Muslims about Islam and participate in interfaith activities.

Most Muslim communities did successfully move towards greater integration and understanding with other communities. But lately, their successes seem to be all but vanishing into thin air, with Islamophobia manifesting itself in many forms.

The communities across the US have been subjected to vandalism and harassment. A mosque in Miami, Florida, was sprayed with gunfire last year, mosques were vandalized or set aflame in Brownstown, Michigan; Nashville, Tennessee; Arlington, Texas; Taylor, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Eugene, Oregon; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Tempe, Arizona; and in Northern and Southern California. A mosque in a suburb of Chicago was vandalized four times in recent years. A plastic pig covered with graffiti was thrown into a mosque in Madera, California and teenagers disrupted prayers in a mosque in upstate New York during Ramadan. Not just mosques were targeted; in May, an Arab was brutally beaten in New York by four young men who also used abusive language. In Chicago, a Muslim woman was assaulted by another woman who took offence at her headscarf.

In San Diego, a man assaulted an American of Afghan descent while he was praying and screamed “You idiot, you (...), go back to where you came from.”

Ground Zero protest on the streets of New York

The Republican rhetoric created such rampant anti-Muslim sentiment that it placed all American Muslims in a precarious situation. This year, the 9/11 anniversary, another legacy of the dark days of Bush, coincided with Eid-ul-Adha. To avoid being misunderstood, Muslims in many places opted not to celebrate the festival and instead participated in the 9/11 commemoration events. The bigotry they were experiencing reminded many of them of the treatment meted out to other scapegoats in American history – Native Americans, Irish Roman Catholics, Blacks and Japanese, among others.

“Some of what people are saying in this controversy is very similar to what the German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,” said a doctor in Maryland. “It’s really scary.” Daniel Luban writing in Tablet magazine astutely calls this dark spread of Islamophobia “the new Anti-Semitism.”

“The younger generation of American Muslims, who are far better assimilated in the American society, are also at a loss in trying to figure out their place in mainstream America and their goals in

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The perpetrators of these hate crimes are clearly unhinged, but they are being whipped into a frenzy by cynical Right wing fearmongers. “Victims are reluctant to go public with these kinds of hate incidents because they fear further harassment or attack,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations, “they’re hoping all this will just blow over.”

Blow over it will, one hopes. Although recent times have been agonizing for a Muslim community that has truly caused no grief to any segment of the American population, it hopes its nonconfrontational approach will allow this artificially created controversy to die down. It takes comfort in the fact that the attention span of American politicians, media and the people is historically short and can swiftly move to other emerging issues.

By the New Year, the issue of ‘Ground Zero mosque’ should run out of steam, unlikely to remain an election issue, as the GOP strategists also recommend. The economy, the budget deficit, unemployment and the US retreat from Afghanistan will most certainly replace it as attention grabbers. But to expect that the fallout from this controversy will disappear entirely any time soon would be a fallacy. Its reverberations will be heard long into the future.

MIDDLE EAST

Israel builds Separation Fence with Africa

by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani (IPS)

After the separation barrier against Palestinian territories, Israel has begun to build a new fence; this one to keep migrants from Africa out. The new fence is coming up on the Egyptian border, and with Egyptian support.

The Israeli government approved plans late last month to build a detention camp near its border with Egypt to house illegal African immigrants. Local activists decried the move, which they say flies in the face of internationally accepted human rights norms. “The idea of a prison built expressly for African immigrants is not only racist, it also contravenes basic tenets of

international law,” Hafez Abu Saeda, president of the Cairo-based Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights told IPS. On Nov. 28, Israel’s cabinet approved the construction of a camp to temporarily accommodate undocumented African immigrants that enter Israel from neighbouring Egypt. According to Israeli

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who provided little other detail, the project comes within the context of a wider plan to halt the “wave of illegal immigrants” entering the country in search of employment.

Israel claims that within recent years, tens of thousands of African migrants have illicitly crossed the Egypt-Israel border into its territory. Once inside the country, these migrants are often hired as manual labourers - at relatively low wages - by Israeli farms and in settlements. “This influx,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying, “is growing and threatens the jobs of

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MIDDLE EAST

internal Israeli affair” that neither threatened Egypt’s national interests nor violated its sovereignty. The planned fence will not be the only barricade to go up in the fraught border zone.

Passport Control - Egyptian Border towards Gaza

Israelis. It is changing the face of the state and we have to stop it.”

The Egypt-Israel border represents a major transit route for African migrants, both political refugees and job seekers, coming mainly from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Attempts to cross the frontier illegally already tense due to its proximity with the besieged Gaza Strip - often result in fatal clashes with Egyptian border police.

In late October, a Sudanese national was killed by Egyptian border authorities while attempting to cross into Israel. A recent report by Human Rights Watch noted that since 2007, Egyptian border authorities have killed at least 85 African migrants, recording 24 fatalities this year and 19 the year before.

The Israeli prime minister, for his part, stressed that the planned detention centre was intended to house illegal job seekers and not political refugees. “We are not stopping the entry of war refugees,” he was quoted as saying. “But we have to stop the mass entry of illegal work seekers due to the severe impact they can have on the nature and future of the state of Israel.”

Abu Saeda, however, challenged Israel’s right to make the distinction. “The issue of who is and who isn’t a political refugee

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should be decided by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which is mandated with determining if migrants’ lives are in jeopardy in their home countries,” he said. Abu Saeda also refuted Israeli claims that African immigrants represented an economic liability. “Israel welcomes the Falasha (Ethiopian Jews) as well as Jews from other countries, such as Russia, even going so far as to offer financial incentives to Jewish immigrants,” he said. “So how can they say immigrants are bad for their economy?”

Late November 2010 saw Israel begin construction of a 250-kilometre-long electric fence along its border with Egypt.

Israeli officials say the 360 million dollar fence, which will incorporate high-tech surveillance cameras, aims to stop the influx of African migrants.

A 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel strictly limits military and security deployments - by either side - on or near the shared border. Nevertheless, Egyptian officialdom appeared indifferent to news of Israel’s planned border fence.

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki has said that Egypt neither approved nor disapproved of the barrier “as long as it is built on Israeli territory.” He went on to describe the project as “an

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Over the last year, Egypt has been building an underground steel barrier along its 14-kilometre border with the Gaza Strip, with the ostensible aim of disrupting smugg­ling operations. Since Israel - and later Egypt - hermetically sealed its border with the strip in 2007, Gaza’s roughly 1.5 million inhabitants have come to rely on cross-border tunnels for their most basic needs. “The frontier zone is becoming a region of walls and fences,” Ayman Abdelaziz Salaama, international law professor at Cairo University, told IPS. “For the last ten years, Israel - ever obsessed with its own security - has surrounded itself with walls and fortifications.”

“But no country in history has been able to build walls high enough to keep out those determined to get in,” he added.

Abu Saeda agreed, noting that no amount of border security could ever entirely deter attempts at emigration as long as certain countries continued to suffer chronic economic stagnation. “Instead of building camps and fences, the international community should promote development in these countries so as to alleviate the root causes of undocumented migration, namely, unemployment and poverty,” he said.

A conversation with one undocumented Darfurian migrant resident in Cairo, arrested earlier this year for attempting to cross the border illegally, appeared to bear this out. “My cousins stole into Israel and found jobs with relatively good salaries, some of which they sent back to Darfur,” he told IPS on condition of anonymity.

“Even though I was jailed for 30 days for attempting it myself, I’m thinking about trying my luck at the border again.”

He added: “Because the situation in Darfur won’t improve any time soon.”

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ECOLOGY

Electric Cars, Plug-in Mobility

by Sulaiman Wilms

How can the rising demand for mobility be reconciled with the preservation of the environment? Electric cars are now considered a plausible answer, and producers like Nissan, Citroen, GM, India’s Tata and others have unveiled prototypes.

But electro-mobility also needs globally available raw materials and a restructuring of how electricity is supplied if it is to achieve its self-declared aims.

Everyday life in complex societies is inconceivable without private transportation. With the exception of Europe (and a few other regions), public transport is often underdeveloped or non-existent.

The further down the road of modernisation and the division of labour we go, the more people’s homes, places of work and everyday needs become separately located. Even impoverished day-labou­ rers in Morocco, South Africa and Brazil are dependant on transport on a daily basis.

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Anyone who has ever witnessed the state of public transport in those countries will know what a hindrance it is to get things done. Transport too plays an important role on the world’s islands of prosperity, with transport costs for example being the second biggest monthly outlay for the average German family.

What will the future’s transport be like?

The steady growth of traffic volumes may be a logical consequence of economic development, but it has a devastating

- Issue 09 - January 2011

effect on the environment and on human health. In the European Union, emissions caused by industry and heating have declined by 10 percent since 1990 thanks to modern technologies and laws, while emissions from transport have risen by around a third.

Given the shrinking leeway in politics, some people hope that the automotive industry will be able to solve the problem itself. Big manufacturers have announced electric cars for mass use starting 2011 and 2012. Jochen Flasbarth, President of the German Office for the Environment, believes that transport will be defined by electric mobility in the coming decades, “Greenhouse neutrality should be largely achieved by the middle of the century … with bio-fuels more likely to emerge in aviation and electric vehicles representing the biggest opportunity in the car industry.”

ECOLOGY

Critics disagree, saying that actual trends contradict this forecast. Transport expert Martin Lanzendorf at the University of Frankfurt sees signs of “the car’s decline in importance” in favour of public means of transport, such as rail.

Conservationist Werner Ruh of the ecology organisation BUND considers it an error in reasoning to confine electromobility to cars: people tending to forget that public transport systems such as trams, underground trains and suburban railways have long been providing electric mobility successfully – and requiring only a fraction of the estimated primary energy needs for the spread of mass electric cars.

Century-old innovation Electric cars are nothing new. The first ones were built almost a hundred years ago by the likes of Ferdinand Porsche, who subsequently settled on the combustion engine. Electric vehicles have long been used as golf carts, forklifts and similar, but their enormously heavy lead batteries have always limited their range and speed.

Despite these restrictions, industry experts now see a future market in electric mobility. According to Deloitte’s Global Manufacturing Industry Group, e-cars will constitute a third of all new car purchases by 2020. “The run on electric cars is gaining speed,” says Dr. Martin Hölz of Deloitte Germany. “Government policies and regulations, driven by factors such as CO2 emission limits and the desire to be less dependent on energy imports, will have a powerful effect on the marketing of electric cars and other technical innovations.”

The Gelsenkirchen-based “Centre of Automotive Research (Car)” is even more optimistic about the prospects of electric cars and other similar green vehicle technologies. “We believe that from 2025 onwards all of the private passenger vehicles sold in Europe will be pure electric cars, parallel-hybrid models or serial hybrid vehicles,” says Car’s director, Ferdinand Dudenhöffer.

No more refuelling, just plug-in and charge

Not a new product, a new system Electric cars have some technical advantages. Their acceleration is excellent in spite of their motors. Aside from the development they still require, the principle is simple – replace the combustion engine with an electric motor, switch the tank for a rechargeable battery, and charge them using power from an electrical socket.

Electric cars mean freedom from imported energy, no direct CO2 emissions, and less noise. Their drive systems are less prone to breaking down since they have no gearbox or clutch. Electric motors are simpler to build and require less oil to lubricate them. With efficiency levels of 85 to 95 percent they are well ahead of conventional engines (petrol: 35 percent, diesel: 45 percent).

According to corporate consultants Bain & Co., electric cars will be a mass product by 2020, when half of all new cars will have electric motors. These will not just be a new product but “a change to a completely new system”, for which customers will initially be willing to accept a lower range. The cost of producing batteries, to date one of the most serious weak-points of electric cars, will, according to the consultants, “reach a mass-market level by 2015”, with prices at a third of current levels by 2020.

Producers still face difficulties, admitted Guido Otten in conversation with Globalia Magazine. Otten runs Oekomotive.net, a magazine dealing with alternative automotive technologies. “The challenges are many – not only are batteries still unsatisfactory, so too is the way they are charged. Electric cars are unattractive to private buyers because their range is too short,” comments Otten. There is however light at the end of the tunnel for consumers, he adds, with more plausible models with auxiliary generators likely to be available in 8 to 10 years and with much higher ranges. Electric vehicles have so far only been practicable for corporate managers and for well-off people “looking for a trendy second car.”

So what will mass-market vehicles look like? Otten paints quite a clear picture: “The trend now is to have the windscreen very near the front, which makes the tiny cars look a bit longer than they are and the interiors seem much more spacious. The Mercedes A-Class, for example, looks set to be an electric car of the current breed.

Charging ports will be in the place of the petrol cap or beneath the brand emblem near the radiator. Prices will still be very high on account of the expensive batteries which can make up half to two-thirds of the total retail price. Tax cuts and subsidies in

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47

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ECOLOGY

Extensive component testing in Germany

the USA and Japan are reducing the impact of the battery’s cost, while here in Germany you have to shell out 30,000 euros or more for a small electric car.”

Is the sun rising in the East?

Our networked world means that the push to develop electric cars is happening everywhere. Governments in China and the USA have recently announced schemes to subsidise e-cars and have published strategies on the future of the technology.

In March 2009 President Obama announced his intention to grant tax rebates on plug-in hybrid vehicles and earmarked 310 million dollars for research and development. “These investments will make us less reliant on foreign oil and will place American automobile makers back at the forefront of progress.”

“Chinese producers,” says energy expert Chen Quanshi, “are hoping for the onset of a ‘golden age’”. According to the Xinhua

news agency, China is the world’s third largest car producer after the USA and Japan. There are two aspects to e-mobility that are particularly interesting to Beijing; firstly, their car industry is well positioned to compete fast with this relatively new technology and secondly, Chinese cities all suffer from heavy smog pollution.

The Chinese private producer BYD Co. Ltd., which is 10 per cent owned by the billionaire Warren Buffett, has announced its expansion onto the US market where, says the company’s vice president Stella Li, its e6 electric car is to be launched in 2012, but not before the introduction of the K9 electric bus. “BYD intends to offer a package of ecosystems including new types of vehicle, batteries, energy storage systems and solar panels … for the US market.”

So far, batteries have been the Achilles Heel. But that should soon change with

producers working hard at improving them.

Far-Eastern companies like Sanyo, Sony, Samsung, BYD and Hitachi are currently in the lead. New production sites are forthcoming in other regions too: facilities are to be built in the Detroit region at a cost of four billion dollars. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, US Energy Secretary Chu stated that batteries as we now know them will soon have improved by a factor of two.

In December 2010, a Californian interest group announced its plans to make the state a leader in electro-mobility. Within a decade they want charging stations installed in thousands of homes, office buildings, shopping centres and other locations. Jonathan Read, President of Ecotality, which aims to build 1,600 public charging stations in San Diego and Los Angeles, describes how the project was unveiled as the first Nissan Leaf – a purely electric car – was delivered to a customer

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ECOLOGY

in California’s Redwood City. Read states that one company in particular is planning a network of swapping points where customers can exchange empty batteries for fully charged ones.

Guido Otten believes that German producers are lagging behind, but not for long. “We’re developing electric cars apace, but the Americans and Japanese are a few steps ahead. Mercedes is reliant on technology from American electric car start-up Tesla and buys in its hybrid technology from Toyota in Japan.

But the future doesn’t look so bad with Audi planning to launch its electric car with an auxiliary generator in one or two years, and a Golf Blue-E-Motion with an electric drive is scheduled for 2013.” Otten sees more potential growth in German electromobility than in solar energy. “The automotive industry is one of the biggest drivers of German industry. Electric cars and the associated supplier industry can profit immensely in this sector.”

No alternatives without new energy It all seems so simple – electric cars that you charge up from the socket – the transport of the future with zero emissions.

So why do some critics consider this form of electromobility a cul-de-sac?

A vehicle can only be genuinely emissionfree if it runs using electricity originating from renewable sources. Electric cars running on the normal energy mix in Germany (coal, nuclear, combined cycle power stations and renewable sources) are responsible for just as much greenhouse gas as normal combustion engines.

In 2009, the German section of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) published its estimation of the ecological benefits of electric cars. WWF automotive expert Viviane Raddatz says they were surprised how little carbon monoxide is saved by electric cars, with one million e-cars only reducing emissions by one percent. The WWF survey revealed that even petrol

50

produces less CO2 than conventional coal-fired power stations for the same amount of generated energy.

It is small wonder that power producers are among those promoting electromobility.

During phases of low demand, most power stations produce electricity that needs users – especially at night, when many e-cars could doubtless be charged. Current electric vehicle designs do not yet bring the incentive for the power industry to switch to sustainable energy sources, but it will take precisely just such an ecological sea-change to make electric cars a real alternative by cutting CO2 emissions.

“Today’s automotive industry will be buried within 15 years if China meets its goals for electric vehicle production.”

(Gustavo dos Santos, Brazil’s National Bank fur Economic and Social Development) The production of e-cars also has an ecological impact. “Manufacturers have not addressed the production aspect of electric cars, from which we can conclude that they will not diverge much from conventional practice,” believes Guido Otten. Batteries are also part of an ambivalent ecobalance. Claus Doll of the Frauenhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research confirms that, “if they last for less than seven years then you’re better off with a petrol vehicle.” The reason for this is that a lot of harmful substances are produced in the manufacture of batteries.

It is the battery which restricts the range of an e-car. Even the 100,000 Euro Tesla Roadster can only manage 300 kilometres.

It is precisely the range issue that could be the spanner in the works, believes Michael Cramer, the Green Party’s EU Minister. If

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they cannot travel far, e-vehicles “will compete with eco-friendly transport like buses, rail and bicycles.” Short and medium distances do not require new cars, he claims, they require alternatives – what people forget is that the problem of emissions is just one of many, that include accidents as well as the “consumption” or sealing-up of rural land caused by the building of roads.

Beijing at source Although not immune to potential geoeconomic conflict, the production and sale of e-cars serves to connect very disparate regions of the world as the development of new transport systems is clearly a global process.

The People’s Republic of China is once again set to play a key role in this. The economic giant not only supplies 40 percent of all batteries, it controls almost all of the yet-to-be-exploited deposits of what are known as rare earth metals. What are rare earth metals? Most simply defined, they are as those chemical elements that have atomic numbers between 57 and 71.

These include lanthanum, from which rare earth metals get their collective chemical name of lanthanides, to lutetium – all of which are metals.

“Used in electric car motors (…), neodymium, a ‘rare earth metal’, is at the epicentre of the race between wealthy and emerging nations to create green technologies,” wrote Emilio Godoys more than a year ago for the globalisation-sceptic IPS news agency. The production of neodymium and its wide range of uses reflect the competition for raw materials in the field of green technologies. In 2006, nearly all the world’s production – 137,000 tonnes – came from China. But in recent years China has reduced its exports in order to feed its own industries.

The Toyota Prius, a mass-market car with a hybrid engine, has proven a real “guzzler” when it comes to rare earth metals, according to independent raw materials consultant Jack Lifton. “Earlier

Electirc car production - China

Car park recharging point in London

in 2009, concern over rare earths and their availability caught fire within the US Congress who ordered the US Government Accountability Office to undertake a comprehensive review of US dependence on rare earths for military applications.”

Lifton wrote in an article in January 2010.

Then there is lithium, the decisive element in modern lithium-ion batteries. There is no shortage at the moment but that could change if battery production increases.

One of the footnotes in modern geopolitics is that according to the most recent study

by the United States Geological Survey, it is Afghanistan that has the potential to become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium”. The EU Commission states that there could be a lithium shortage by the year 2050.

Japan, neighbour and rival of China, has taken stock of the situation, with its New Energy and Industrial Development Organisation joining forces with the University of Hokkaido to develop a new electric motor that manages without rare earths. Since summer last year, Japan has felt the effect of restricted exports of raw materials from the Chinese mainland.

Japanese researchers have so far been able to a build motors with magnets that do not include any rare earth metals yet still boost motor magnetism. Their electric motor has the same power output as present models, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily News. The materials used to make regular magnets can be obtained cheaply and easily. “If we can make practical use of this technology, worries over the supply of materials for magnets will disappear,” stated Hokkaido University, assistant professor Masatsugu Takemoto of the new motor.

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51

C U LT U R E

On the Quest for the Divine – Leo Tolstoy

by Yasin Alder

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C U LT U R E

The great Russian author and thinker Leo Tolstoy has not only been accorded a special status in his homeland – but throughout the world he is also one of the most popular and best known authors of all time and his works are timeless. Among his most famous works are War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection and The Kreutzer Sonata. The year 2010 was the 100th anniversary of Tolstoy’s death. On this occasion we will take a special look at an often less well known aspect of his thinking, namely the connection between this great Russian and Islam.

Leo Tolstoy (Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy) was born on 9th September 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana near Tula. His family were of the Russian nobility. When he was orphaned at the age of nine, his mother’s sister became his guardian. In 1844 he began studying Oriental languages at the University of Kazan. After transferring to the faculty of Law, he ceased studying in order to improve the situation of the 350 serfs on the family estate in Yasnaya Polyana through land reform. He served in the Tsarist army and experienced the battles in the Caucasus and trench warfare of the besieged fortress of Sevastopol at the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854.

The reports from the war, the Sevastopol Stories, made him well-known early on as a writer.

From 1851 Tolstoy was deployed to the Caucasus. He shows his admiration for the Muslim mountain peoples, their primitiveness, and their noble character traits in stories such as The Cossacks, The Prisoner in the Caucasus and Hadji Murat.

Tolstoy makes a stark comparison between them and the Russians, especially the upper class and even the Tsar himself whom he regarded as morally corrupt and unscrupulous.

In 1856 Tolstoy left the army. Between 1857 and 1860/61 he visited western Europe where he met artists and peda­ gogues. On his return he renewed his efforts towards educational reform and established village schools along the lines of Rousseau. For the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, according to some one of the

Early photograph of Leo Tolstoy greatest poets of the last century, Tolstoy was the pure embodiment of the Russian people. On his second trip to Russia, Rilke visited Tolstoy at his country estate, an encounter that left the then young Rilke with a lasting impression.

In the preface of the book The Last Day of Leo Tolstoy by Vladimir Chertkov the editor wrote: “Almost a century after his death, Leo Tolstoy remains a giant in the world of literature and the effect of his ‘spiritual mission’ still cannot be measured”. In Russia, writers have always been seen as more than just authors – more as preachers showing the way for their people. This is particularly true of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy who up until this day are still perceived as moralists and religious fighters for nonviolence and social justice. Not only Tolstoy’s intense search for the meaning

of life and moral values, but also his spiritual and social critical approach to the time in which he lived are themes which run throughout his entire oeuvre. After the 1870s his attention turned ever increasingly to the matter of death, sin, repentance and moral revival. Leo Tolstoy died on the 20th November 1910 of pneumonia in Astapowo railway station after having shortly before left his estate in a hurry. He was on his way south.

Tolstoy’s work A Confession which was written in the final decades of the nineteenth century was published at a time when people were imbued with a belief in material and technical progress, when thoughts of the spiritual dimension were considered by many to be irrational and unscientific. In the book, Tolstoy describes his long search for the meaning of life and God, a search beset by setbacks. During this search Tolstoy experienced phases in which he completely denied the meaning of life. In the end, however, Tolstoy finally returned to a belief in God. For example, he descri­ bes it in the following quotation from A Confession: “I live, really live, only when I feel Him and seek Him. ‘What more do you seek?’ exclaimed a voice within me. ‘This is He’. He is that without which one cannot live. To know God and to live is one and same thing. God is life. Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God. And more then ever before, all within me and around me became illuminated, and the infinite light no longer abandoned me.” And at another point he says: “I returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and youth. I went back to the belief in that Will which created me and desires something of me.”

With respect to references to Islam and Muslims, Tolstoy wrote an impressive description of a wandering Dervish in his book The Resurrection and there are also his aforementioned stories from the Caucasus and a collection of thoughts about the Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, based on a collection of prophetic hadiths (traditional sayings) by the Indian Muslim scholar,

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As-Suhrawardi (published as a translation in London in 1908). For a long time this document was only known to a few interested parties.

Recently, however, it was published online by Rasih Yilmaz and Faruk Arslan in English as The Hidden Book with comments, notes and some of Tolstoy’s letters about Islam, as well as excerpts from his A Confession. Tolstoy’s treatise about the Prophet Muhammad was published for the first time in 1909 under the title The Sayings of Muhammad which were not compiled in the Qur’an. In communist Russia, further publication of the work was not possible.

Only in 1978 was the publication of the treatise allowed in Azerbaijan after initial censorship. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its suppression of religion, it was published again in 1990 in Russia. The Azerbaijani translators of the book, who are also included in the online version by Yilmaz and Arslan, Professor Dr. Telman Khurshidoglu Alivey and Vaqif Tehmezoglu Khalilov changed its title to The Sayings of Muhammad which is more accurate from an Islamic point of view.

In their foreword Aliyev and Khalilov quote the Russian Muslim Valeria Porokhova who also translated the Qur’an into Russian. Porokhova is of the opinion that Tolstoy converted to Islam and stipulated in his will that he was to receive an Islamic burial. A further proof, in addition to this stipulation, is the absence of a Christian cross from his grave. In fact, in a letter dated 1884, Tolstoy wrote the ambiguous sentence, noted with great interest by Muslims to this day: “Some – liberals and aesthetes – consider me to be mad or weak minded like Gogol; others – revolutionaries and radicals – consider me to be a mystic and a man who talks too much; the officials consider me to be a malicious revolutionary; the Orthodox consider me to be a devil. I confess that it is hard for me… And therefore, please, regard me as a kind of Mohammedan, and all will be fine.”

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According to literary scholar Professor Dr. Elfine Sibghatullina, Tolstoy also came into contact with Tatar Muslims who belonged to a branch of the Naqshibandi-Tariqat.

According to Sibgahtullina, their leader Bahauddin Waisow met with Tolstoy.

Waisow was later arrested for a critical letter sent to the Tzar and was banned.

And in a letter in which Tolstoy answered questions from the Tatar newspaper Iqtisad he said of a collection of hadiths entitled A Hadith For Every Day which had been sent to him: “These celestial sayings are appropriate for every kind of religious person.”

“Islam by its very appearance

stands higher than Christianity,

of this there is no doubt . . . Islam afforded me great illumination”.

Leo Tolstoy

Not only Tolstoy’s intense search

for the meaning of life and moral

values, but also his spiritual and social critical approach to the time in which he lived are themes which run throughout his entire oeuvre.

Tolstoy’s letters reproduced in the work are the most interesting aspect of the text published by Yilmaz and Arslan, along with the aforementioned collection of sayings of the Prophet. In 1909 he corresponded with Elena Vekilova, a Russian woman who was married to the Azerbaijani General Ibrahim Agha Vekilova. Velikova treasured Tolstoy’s advice and regarded him as a teacher – she addressed him in the letters as “our dearest teacher’. Tolstoy enquired after her three children, two of which, namely the two sons, were inclining towards Islam. Elena Vekilova wanted to know what Tolstoy thought of her sons accepting Islam. The parents were concerned that their sons, one of whom

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studied in St. Petersburg and the other was an officer in the military school in Moscow, would grow up disadvantaged by the acceptance of Islam. In accordance with a former law, one spouse had to adopt the religion of the other. However this was not so in the case of the Vekilov’s because Ibrahim Agha managed to obtain a certificate of exemption. The children of a mixed marriage, such as this, had to be baptised Orthodox-Christian. According to a law passed in 1904, it was made easier for Russian citizens to return to the religion of their forefathers, to reconvert, as it were.

Tolstoy’s answer was as follows: “Regarding your sons’ preference for Islam over Christianity and especially their generosity of spirit in wanting to fully submit themselves to their ideas, I join them with my whole heart. It may perhaps seem strange to you that I say these words, coming from someone who gives prefe­ rence to the original teachings of Chris­ tianity, but Islam by its very appearance stands higher than Christianity, of this there is no doubt. If there is a choice between Christianity and Islam then anybody with a sound reason would give preference to Islam – with one God and His Prophet – over Christianity which is so full of complex theology about the Trinity, baptism, prayers and various modes of worship of Mary, mother of Jesus, and about the saints and their images. Such complexities are not possible in Islam.”

Later in the letter it is clear that Leo Tolstoy regarded the historical chronology of religions as one of gradual improvement, so therefore, since Islam appeared chronologically after Christianity it had a higher value. Certainly it needs to be acknowledged that he, at least in his letter, regarded religions as primarily fomented by mankind and were therefore not seen as perfect: this included Islam, but imperfection affected it in his view to a lesser extent than Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or other religions. It also ought to be acknowledged that he gave prefe­ rence to Islam. He wrote: “…with regard to

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Tolstoy towards the end of his life

these topics, there are many strange beliefs and every kind of superstition in the most ancient religions – which cover up the truth. This is more evident in ancient religions such as Buddhism, Brahmanism, Confucianism, Taoism and Christianity as well as Judaism, but they exist very little in the latest and greatest religion, Islam.

Islam is more pure in this regard.”

Apparently Elena Vekilova and her husband accepted Tolstoy’s advice and Ibrahim Agha’s two sons became Muslim.

Their acceptance of Islam was confirmed in writing in Tbilisi by the Mufti Mirza Husayn Effendi Qayipzade. The written correspondence between Tolstoy and Elena Vekilova are now in the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow, her son Faris having

donated them to the museum in 1978.

References to Tolstoy’s attitude towards Islam can also be found in other documents, such as those of his personal physician, D.P. Makovitski’s recorded conversations with his guests under the title Being with Tolstoy in 1904-1910 and in 1979 as The Notes in Yasnaya Poliana, published in four volumes. In a recorded conversation, Tolstoy mentioned the above mentioned letter from Elena Vekilova: “On March 13th 1909, Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy said in a conversation that ‘I received a letter from a mother. She writes: My husband is Muslim, but I am Christian. I have two sons, one is a student, the second is an officer.

Both want to convert to Islam.’ To Tolstoy, Sofya Andreyeyna (Tolstoy’s friend) said: ‘Perhaps, her sons want to convert to Islam

so that they can marry more than one wife.’ Tolstoy said: ‘And what of it…? Do we have a lesser number of people who practise polygamy? When I reflected upon this letter, it became clear to me that Muhammad has always stood higher than Christianity. He does not think of man as God and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims do not have any Gods – but God himself, and Muhammad is His messenger. There is no mystery and no doubt in it.’ Sofya Andreyevna asked: ‘Which is better, Christianity or Islam?’

Tolstoy said: ‘For me, it is evident that Islam is better and higher.’ After a short silence, Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy repeated: ‘If we compare Islam with Christianity, Islam stands higher. Islam afforded me great illumination …’”

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