May 2012
Vol 12, No.05
OPENING THE OTHER EYE: CHARLES TAYLOR AND SELECTIVE ACCOUNTABILITY By Richard Falk
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rom all that we know, Charles Taylor deserves to be held criminally accountable for his role in the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone during the period 1998-2002. Taylor was then president of Liberia, and did his best to encourage violent uprisings against the governments in neighbouring countries so as to finance his own bloody schemes and extend his regional influence. It was in Sierra Leone that “blood diamonds”, later more judiciously called “conflict diamonds” were to be found in such abundance as to enter into the lucrative world trade, with many of these diamonds reportedly finding their way eventually onto the shelves of such signature jewelry stores as Cartier, Bulgari and Harry Winston, and thereby circumventing some rather weak international initiatives designed to protect what was then considered the legitimate diamond trade. It is fine that Charles Taylor was convicted of 11 counts of aiding and
abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity of the rebel militia that committed atrocities of an unspeakable nature, and that he will be sentenced in early May. And it may further impress liberal commentators that fair legal procedures and diligent judicial oversight led to Taylor’s acquittal with respect to the more serious charges of “command responsibility” or “joint criminal enterprise”. Surely, the circumstantial evidence sufficiently implicated Taylor in a knowing micromanagement of the crimes that it would have seemed reasonable to hold him criminally responsible for the acts performed, and not just for aiding and abetting in their commission. I share the view that it is desirable to lean over backwards to establish a reputation of fairness in dealing with accusations under international criminal law. It is better not to convict defendants involving crimes of state when strong evidence is absent to uphold specific charges beyond any reasonable doubt. In this respect, the Taylor conviction
seems restrained, professional and not vindictive or politically motivated.
But as Christine Cheng has shown in a perceptive article published online on Al Jazeera, there are some elements of this conviction that feed the suspicion that the West is up to its old hypocritical tricks of seizing the moral high ground while pursuing its own exploitative economic and geopolitical goals that obstruct the political independence and sovereignty of countries that were once their colonies. As Cheng points out, the financing of the Special Court for Turn to next page
ARTICLES .WESTERN OIL FIRMS REMAIN AS US EXITS IRAQ BY DAHR JAMAIL ..................................................P 4
.ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK, ISLAM,
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.W HY ARE P ALESTINIANS GERMANY’S SINS?
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.D IVIDE B ETWEEN T ECH -S AVVY C OUNTRIES WIDENS BY PAUL TAYLOR ....................................................P 10
.GOD OR GREED? A MUSLIM VIEW BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR .........................................P 10
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Sierra Leone was almost totally handled by the United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada. In addition, there were pragmatic reasons to make sure that Taylor was never allowed to return to Liberia, where he retains a strong following. It was feared that if Taylor were back in Liberia he would likely again foment trouble in the Liberian sub-region, and this would make it impossible to restore stability, and begin “legitimate” mining operations, which is what the West apparently wanted to have happen in Sierra Leone. A double standard on criminality What is dramatically ironic about the whole picture is that the United States is the number one advocate of international criminal justice for others. President Obama has even taken the unprecedented step, on April 23, 2012, of establishing an Atrocity Prevention Board under the authority of the National Security Council, and headed by Samantha Power - a prominent human rights activist that has been serving in his administration. In his speech of April 23 at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, announcing the formation of the board, Obama said that atrocity prevention and response was a “core national interest of and core moral responsibility” of the United States. It is hard to fault such an initiative in light of the faltering US (and UN) response to recent allegations of mass atrocities in Syria and Sudan, and against the background of refusing to be more pro-active back in 1994, as a grotesque and preventable genocide unfolded in Rwanda. At the same time, there is an impression, the essence of the liberal mentality, of Uncle Sam surveying the world with a blinkered vision, seeing all that is horrible while overlooking his own deeds and those of such friends as Israel or Bahrain. Heeding the sound of one hand clapping, it might be well to remember that the United States - more than any
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country in the world - holds itself selfrighteously aloof from accountability on the main ground that any international judicial process might be tainted by politicised motivations. Congress has even threatened that it would use military force to rescue any US citizens that were somehow called to account by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and has signed agreements with more than 100 governments pledging them not to hand over US citizens to the ICC. And yet it is international criminal lawyers and human rights NGOs from the US that have been most loudly applauding the outcome in the Taylor case, without even a whimper of acknowledgement that there may be some issues relating to double standards. If international criminal adjudication is so benevolent when prominent Africans are convicted, why does the same not hold for US officials? Given the structure of influence in the world, there exists more reason for Africans to be suspicious of such procedures than for Americans who fund such efforts, and who are so influential behind the scenes.
If aiding and abetting is what the evidence demonstrates, then should there not be at least discussion of whether international diamond merchants and jewelry retailers making huge profits by selling these tainted diamonds should be investigated, or even prosecuted? There was a voluntary, self-regulating certification procedure established -the Kimberly
L E A D A R T I C L E Process (2001) - named after the city in South Africa where the meeting of concerned governments, corporate leaders and civil society representatives took place. This joint initiative was especially pushed by large diamond sellers, such as the notorious De Beers cartel of South Africa, that were distressed by the downward effect on world prices by the availability of blood diamonds. A British NGO, Global Witness, reports that almost none of the prominent diamond retailers took any notice of this cooperative effort to restrict the flow of blood diamonds, and seemingly purchased diamonds at the lowest price without enquiring too much as to their origins, or complying with the certification requirement established by the Kimberly Process. The latter process was partly developed to avoid a civil society backlash protesting this indirect support of atrocities, as well as to protect the market shares and control of the established international companies that had long dominated the lucrative trade in diamonds. But isn’t revealing that Western corporations are asked to act in a morally responsible manner by way of a voluntary undertaking, while political leaders of sovereign states in Africa are subject to the draconian rigour of international criminal law? Overlooking atrocities These issues are absent from the Western public discourse. Take the self-satisfied editorial appearing in the Financial Times (April 27, 2012). It starts with words affirming the larger meaning of Taylor’s conviction: “A strong message was sent to tyrants and warlords around the world yesterday. International law may be slow, but even those in the higher ranks of power can be held to account for atrocities committed against the innocent.” And the editorial ends even more triumphantly, and without noticing the elephant standing in the middle of the continued next page
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continued from page 2 room, that leaders “... in states weak and strong - now know that there can be no impunity for national leaders when it comes to human rights.” Such language needs to be decoded to convey its real message as follows: “National leaders of non-Western countries should realise that if their operations henceforth stand interfere with geopolitical priorities, they might well be held criminally responsible.”
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The United States is particularly vulnerable from these perspectives. When we hear the names of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the immediate association is with US war crimes. When US leaders openly endorse reliance on interrogation techniques that are generally condemned as “torture”, we should be commenting harshly on the wide
There are several observations that follow: If non-Western leaders are supportive of Western interests, their atrocities will be overlooked, but if there is a direct confrontation, then the liberal establishment will be encouraged to start “war crimes talk” - thus Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi (killed before proceedings could be initiated) were charged with crimes, while the crimes of those governing Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Israel are ignored. The great majority of cases dealing with international crimes have been, up to this point, associated with events and alleged criminality in sub-Saharan Africa, confirming the extent to which this region has been devastated by bitter conflicts, many of which are attributable to the remnants of colonialism (divide and rule; the slave trade; formation of arbitrary boundaries separating tribal and ethnic communities; apartheid; the continuing quest for valuable mineral resources by international business interests etc). The Western mind is trained not to notice, much less acknowledge, either the historical responsibility of the colonial powers or the unwillingness of the West to submit to the same accountability procedures that are being relied upon to impose criminal responsibility on those who are perceived to be blocking Western economic and political interests.
chasm separating “law” from its consistent implementation. When a soldier, such as Bradley Manning, is reported to have exposed the atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he is held in humiliating prison circumstances and prosecuted for breaching secrecy, with suggestions that his intent was “treasonous”, that is, intended to help enemies. At least, if there was a measure of good faith in Washington, it should have been possible to move forward on parallel paths: hold Manning nominally responsible for releasing classified materials, mitigated by his motives and absence of private gain, but vigorously repudiate and investigate the horrible crimes being committed against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the battlefield practices and training programs that give rise to such atrocities. Hypocritical punishers The Western powers have gone significantly further in sculpting international law to their liking. They have excluded “aggressive war” from the list of international crimes contained in the Rome Treaty which governs the scope of ICC jurisdiction. When the defendants were the losers in World
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War II, aggressive war was treated at Nuremberg (and Tokyo) as the supreme war crime - as it was declared to encompass the others: war crimes and crimes against humanity. The UN Charter was drafted to reflect this outlook, by unconditionally prohibiting any recourse to force by a state except in self-defence - narrowly defined as a response to a prior armed attack. But in the decades that followed, each of the countries that sat in judgement at Nuremberg engaged in aggressive war and made non-defensive uses of force - and so the concept became too contested by practice to be any longer codified as law. This reversal and regression exemplifies the Janus face of geopolitics when it comes to criminal accountability: when the application of international criminal law serves the cause of the powerful, it will be invoked, extended, celebrated, even institutionalised, but only so long as it is not turned against the powerful. One face of Janus is that of international justice and the rule of law, the other is one of a martial look that glorifies the rule of power on behalf of the war gods. Where does this line of reasoning end? Should we be hypocrites and punish those whose crimes offend the geopolitical gatekeepers? Or should we insist that law, to be law, must be applied consistently? At least these questions should be asked, inviting a spirit of humility to emerge, especially among liberals in the West. 1 May, 2012 Richard Falk is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is currently serving his third year of a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. Falk is also a member of JUST’s International Advisory Panel (IAP) Source: Al- Jazeera
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By Dahr Jamail While the US military has formally ended its occupation of Iraq, some of the largest western oil companies, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, remain. On November 27, 38 months after Royal Dutch Shell announced its pursuit of a massive gas deal in southern Iraq, the oil giant had its contract signed for a $17bn flared gas deal. Three days later, the US-based energy firm Emerson submitted a bid for a contract to operate at Iraq’s giant Zubair oil field, which reportedly holds some eight million barrels of oil. Earlier this year, Emerson was awarded a contract to provide crude oil metering systems and other technology for a new oil terminal in Basra, currently under construction in the Persian Gulf, and the company is installing control systems in the power stations in Hilla and Kerbala. Iraq’s supergiant Rumaila oil field is already being developed by BP, and the other supergiant reserve, Majnoon oil field, is being developed by Royal Dutch Shell. Both fields are in southern Iraq. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iraq’s oil reserves of 112 billion barrels ranks second in the world, only behind Saudi Arabia. The EIA also estimates that up to 90 per cent of the country remains unexplored, due to decades of US-led wars and economic sanctions. “Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, US and other western oil companies were all but completely shut out of Iraq’s oil market,” oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz told Al Jazeera. “But thanks to the invasion and occupation, the companies are now back inside Iraq and producing oil there for the first time
since being forced out of the country in 1973.”
Of this prospect, Dr Zalloum was blunt.
Juhasz, author of the books The Tyranny of Oil and The Bush Agenda, said that while US and other western oil companies have not yet received all they had hoped the US-led invasion of Iraq would bring them, “They’ve certainly done quite well for themselves, landing production contracts for some of the world’s largest remaining oil fields under some of the world’s most lucrative terms.”
“The last thing the US cares about in the Middle East is democracy. It is about oil, full stop.” A strong partnership? A White House press release dated November 30 titled, “Joint Statement by the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq Higher Coordinating Committee”, said this about “energy co-operation” between the two countries: “The United States is committed to supporting the Republic of Iraq in its efforts to develop the energy sector. Together, we are exploring ways to help boost Iraq’s oil production, including through better protection for critical infrastructure.”
Dr Abdulhay Yahya Zalloum, an international oil consultant and economist who has spent nearly 50 years in the oil business in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, agrees that western oil companies have “obtained concessions in Iraq’s major [oil] fields”, despite “there being a lack of transparency and clarity of vision regarding the legal issues”. Dr Zalloum added that he believes western oil companies have successfully acquired the lions’ share of Iraq’s oil, “but they gave a little piece of the cake for China and some of the other countries and companies to keep them silent”. In a speech at Fort Bragg in the wake of the US military withdrawal, US President Barack Obama said the US was leaving behind “a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people”.
Iraq is one of the largest oil exporters to the US, and has plans to raise its overall crude oil exports to 3.3m barrels per day (bpd) next year, compared with their target of 3m bpd this year, according to Assim Jihad, spokesman for Iraq’s ministry of oil. Jihad told Al Jazeera that Iraq has a goal of raising its oil production capacity to 12m bpd by 2017, which would place it in the top echelon of global producers. According to Jihad, Iraq’s 2013 production goal is 4.5m bpd, and in 2014 it is 5m bpd. The 2017 goal is ambitious, given that Iraq did not meet its 2011 goal, and many officials say 8m bpd capacity is more realistic for 2017. Unexplored regions of Iraq could yield an additional 100bn barrels, and Iraq’s production costs are among the lowest in the world. continued next page
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To date, only about 2,000 wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared with roughly one million wells in Texas alone. Globally, current oil usage is approximately 88m bpd. By 2030, global petroleum demand will grow by 27m bpd, and many energy experts see Iraq as being a key player in meeting this demand.
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partner with Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd., or Petronas, winning a contract for the super-giant Majnoon field, one of the largest in the world, with estimated reserves of up to 25 billion.” Zalloum says there is a two-fold interest for the western oil companies. “There is development of the existing fields, but also for the explored but not-yet-produced fields,” he said. “For the old fields, there are two types of development. One is to renovate the infrastructure, since for most of the past 25 years it has depreciated due to the sanctions and turmoil. Also, some of these fields have different stratum, so once they use innovative techniques like horizontal drilling, there is a huge potential in the fields they have explored.”
It is widely understood that Iraq will require at least $200bn in physical and human investments to bring its production capacity up to 12m bpd, from its current production levels.
But there are complicating factors. As a spasm of violence wracked Baghdad in the wake of the US military withdrawal and political rifts widen, Iraq’s instability is evident.
Juhasz explained that ExxonMobil, BP and Shell were among the oil companies that “played the most aggressive roles in lobbying their governments to ensure that the invasion would result in an Iraq open to foreign oil companies”.
“Iraq has lots of cheap-to-get oil, but it also has a multitude of problems political, ethnic, tribal, religious etc that have prevented them from exploiting it as well or as quickly as the Saudis,” says Tom Whipple, an energy scholar who was a CIA analyst for 30 years. “Someday it may turn out that Iraq has more oil underground than Saudi Arabia. The big question is how stable it will be after the US leaves? So far it is not looking all that good.”
“They succeeded,” she added. “They are all back in. BP and CNPC [China National Petroleum Corporation] finalised the first new oil contract issued by Baghdad for the largest oil field in the country, the 17 billion barrel super giant Rumaila field. ExxonMobil, with junior partner Royal Dutch Shell, won a bidding war against Russia’s Lukoil (and junior partner ConocoPhillips) for the 8.7 billion barrel West Qurna Phase 1 project. Italy’s Eni SpA, with California’s Occidental Petroleum and the Korea Gas Corp, was awarded Iraq’s Zubair oil field with estimated reserves of 4.4 billion barrels. Shell was the lead
Jihad, Iraq’s ministry of oil spokesman, however, said attacks against Iraq’s oil pipelines have minimal effect on production capabilities, and claimed “sabotage will not affect our oil production and exports because we can fix these damages within days, or even hours”. Whipple, a fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute, says Baghdad had driven a
A R T I C L E S hard bargain with western oil companies. “The only reason they are participating is because everybody else is and they hope to get a foot in the door in case some new government in Iraq changes its policies to let other outsiders make more money. Remember it is not all the traditional western oil companies that are in there; the Chinese, Russians and Singapore all want a piece of the action.” Wrong idea? Spokesman Jihad told Al Jazeera that the reason many Iraqis think western oil companies are operating in Iraq is simply to steal Iraq’s oil. “These ideas were obtained during the regime of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, and these are the wrong ideas,” he said. “The future will help Iraqis understand these companies have come to work here to help Iraq sell its oil to help the people, and they work to serve the country.” Jihad admitted that his media office works “to help Iraqis understand the nature of the work of these companies and their investing in Iraq”. Despite the efforts of Jihad’s office to prove otherwise, Iraqis Al Jazeera spoke with disagree. “Only a naïve child could believe the Americans came here for something besides our oil,” Ahmed Ali, an unemployed engineer, told Al Jazeera. “Nor can we believe their being here has anything to do with helping the Iraqi people.” Basim al-Khalili, a restaurant owner in Baghdad’s Karada district, agrees. “If Iraq had no oil, would America have sacrificed thousands of its soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars to come here?”
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continued from page 5 Oil analyst Juhasz also agrees. “The US and other western oil companies and their governments had been lobbying for passage of a new national law in Iraq, the Iraq Oil Law, which would move Iraq from a nationalised to a largely privatised oil market using Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs), a type of contract model used in just approximately 12 per cent of the world’s oil market.” She explained that this agreement has been summarily rejected by most countries, including all of Iraq’s neighbours, “because it provides far more benefits to the foreign corporation than to the domestic government”. But it has not been an easy road for the western oil companies in Iraq. “Major western companies, such as Chevron and ConocoPhillips, that had hoped to sign contracts were unable to do so. A third round [of contracts] took place in December 2010 and saw no major western oil companies (except Shell) win contracts. I believe that there was an Iraqi backlash against the awarding of contracts to the large
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western major oil companies. Thus, in December 2010, fields went to Russian oil companies Lukoil and Gazprom, Norway’s Statoil, and the Angolan company Sonangol, among others.” Unlike under Iraq’s Oil Law, these contracts do not need to go through parliament, according to the central government. This means the contracts are being signed without public discourse. “The public is against privatisation, which is one reason why the law has not passed,” added Juhasz. “The contracts are enacting a form of privatisation without public discourse and essentially at the butt of a gun these contracts have all been awarded during a foreign military occupation with the largest contracts going to companies from the foreign occupiers’ countries. It seems that democracy and equity are the two largest losers in this oil battle.” Iraq’s oil future Under the current circumstances, the possibility of a withdrawal of western oil companies from Iraq appears remote, and the Obama administration continues to pressure Baghdad to pass the Iraq Oil Law.
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A R T I C L E S Nevertheless, resistance to the western presence continues. “The bottom line is that it seems clear that the majority of Iraqis want their oil and its operations to remain in Iraqi hands,” said Juhasz. “Thus far, it has required a massive foreign military invasion and occupation to grant the foreign oil companies the access they have thus far garnered.” While Iraq’s security remains as volatile as ever, as does the political landscape - which can change dramatically at any moment - there is one thing we can always count on as being at the heart of these conflicts, and that is Iraq’s oil. 8 January, 2012 Dahr Jamail is an American journalist who is best known as one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 Iraq invasion. He spent eight months in Iraq, between 2003 to 2005, and presented his stories on Dahr Jamail’s MidEast Dispatches. Jamail writes for the Inter Press Service news agency, among other outlets. Jamail is the recipient of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism Source: Al- Jazeera
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By Brit Dee The trial of Norwegian massmurderer Anders Behring Breivik has today entered its second week, with many interesting but chilling details having been revealed about the bombing in Oslo and subsequent shootings on the island of Utøya.
nationalists - “patriots” who reject mass immigration and the erosion of national culture - and to stifle debates on such issues.
Perhaps most interesting of all, Breivik has provided a clear explanation of exactly what he hoped to achieve through his acts of terrorism. Immediately after the attack, some commentators speculated that the tragedy would be exploited by the political elite, to demonise moderate
During the third day of his trial, The Guardian reported how Breivik insisted that his goal (in the short to medium term) was to make pariahs of Europe’s nationalists – the very people with whom you might expect him to feel kinship. ‘I thought I had to provoke a witchhunt of modern moderately
This, it seems, is exactly what Breivik hoped for.
conservative nationalists,’ he said. Then he claimed that this curious strategy had already borne fruit, citing the example of Norway’s prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who he said had given a speech since the attacks saying that critics of immigration were wrong. The effect of this ‘witchhunt’, said Breivik, would be to increase ‘censorship’ of moderately nationalist views, which would ‘increase polarisation’. The effect of this, he said, would eventually lead to ‘more radicalisation as more will lose hope and lose faith in democracy’.
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Ultimately, he said, these new radicals would join the war he has started to protect the ‘indigenous people’ of Norway and western Europe. Whilst Jens Stoltenberg’s speech may give the impression that Breivik’s strategy is indeed going to plan, other evidence suggests that nationalist parties and policies have not suffered at all in the wake of the Norwegian terror attacks. Last week Geert Wilder’s fervently anti-Islam Freedom Party, the third largest party in the Netherlands, brought down the Dutch coalition government after withdrawing its support for EU-imposed budget cuts. In France, Marine Le Pen’s equally strongly anti-Islam National Front won a record 18 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections. Le Pen claims to be fighting the “Islamisation” of France, a position for which there is evidently considerable support, particularly in the aftermath of Mohamed Merah’s “Al Qaeda” shootings in Toulouse last month (the fact that Merah was likely an asset being handled by the French authorities of course being rarely mentioned). Indeed, the far-right appears to be in the ascendancy, and even courted by the mainstream. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, knowing that he will have to attract National Front votes if he stands any chance of re-election, said after the first round that NF voters “must be respected”, as their votes were “a vote of suffering, a crisis vote”. Comments bluntly critical of Islam, previously the preserve of the far-right, have also been made by leading mainstream politicians in other European countries. Last week the leader of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in parliament, Volker Kauder, described Islam as “not part of our tradition and identity in Germany and so does not belong in Germany”, though he was careful to add “But Muslims do belong in
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Germany. As state citizens, of course, they enjoy their full rights.” Whilst Breivik’s purported plan to spark a demonisation of nationalists does not appear to be working, or even
necessary, his attacks are certainly feeding into the general tension currently building between those of different political parties and faiths; society is indeed becoming polarised. This may be the natural result of a failed experiment in multiculturalism, the effects of deliberate conspiracies echoing those such as Operation Gladio, or the “strategy of tension”, or a combination of the two. No matter who or what is behind the current ratcheting up of tension, a political, religious and racial tension inextricably linked to the collapsing economies and deteriorating living standards of Europe, the ultimate beneficiaries are clear - the shadowy criminal elite who profit from such “systemic destabilisation” and who Peter Dale Scott characterises as the “overworld”. It must be pointed out that Zionist supporters of Israel are one of the beneficiaries of the tensions currently being played out in Europe. Indeed, the new-found alliance between staunchly pro-Israeli Zionists and ultranational anti-Islamists, is one of the most intriguing aspects of today’s political scene. The extreme right has traditionally been seen, often with good cause, as antiSemitic - and yet now we see many
A R T I C L E S examples of the anti-Islamic far-right openly embracing Zionism and Zionists. Anders Breivik was himself an avowed Zionist, his 1515-page manifesto containing multiple references to his firm belief that Israel is an ally which must be strongly defended by nationalists at all costs. Breivik was also of course an avid follower of such anti-Islamic, proZionist writers as the American blogger Pamela Geller. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders, mentioned earlier, is also a staunch supporter of Israel, having reportedly lived in the country for two years during his youth, and visited 40 times in the last 25 years. His Freedom Party allegedly receives financing from supporters of Israel in the US. The English Defence League, to whom some have linked Breivik, openly state their support of Israel, sometimes appearing at demonstrations waving the Star of David flag. The EDL has a Jewish Division, run by the Zionist Roberta Moore, who recently expressed her support for Breivik’s murders and claimed that his teenage victims were “not innocent”. In France, Le Pen’s National Front has also reportedly won support recently, from a previously hostile Jewish community. We are obviously living in dangerous times and, with the economy collapsing, widespread social tension increasing, peculiar alliances forming, and Muslims seemingly being scapegoated in a role previously allocated to Jews, drawing parallels between today’s political climate and that of the 1930s, is unfortunately unavoidable. 25 April, 2012 Brit Dee runs Resistance Radio, an independent online radio station which broadcasts news, views and analysis challenging the lies of our corrupt political and financial leaders, and the controlled corporate media, at http://www.resistradio.com. Source: Resistance Radio
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No matter who you are, no matter what greatness you’ve achieved in your life or what gifts you’ve given to the rest of humanity, if you criticize Israel, you must expect to become persona non grata.
he then utterly discredited himself as a jurist by retracting his well-reasoned legal conclusions based on irrefutable evidence, which was nonetheless upheld by all his colleagues and by the international legal community.
You should expect an utter onslaught of attacks. Otherwise rational and decent people will, one by one, genuflect and sign onto the stupid clichés and tiresome accusations that question your character, integrity and even sanity. You will be called an antiSemite, or a self-hating Jew if you happen to be Jewish. The Holocaust will be invoked. You’ll be reminded of Hitler and Himmler and Goebbels and perhaps likened to Nazis, or capos if you’re Jewish. You’ll be accused explicitly or implicitly of secretly supporting the genocide of Jews and having a deep-seated desire for it. Incredibly, this nonsense does not occur among the paranoid fringe, but in mainstream culture.
Among many abuses, they called him a “capo” and a “self-hating Jew” and he was told he would not be welcome at his grandson’s bar mitzvah. Those
It happened to moral authorities like Nobel laureates Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter, both of whom were called anti-Semites, crazy old fools and worse, for daring to criticize Israel’s criminal policies toward Palestinians — the natives of the Holy Land. It happened to renowned scholars like John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt for publishing a well-documented and supported audit of Israel’s manipulation of US foreign policy through their domestic proxy lobby. Judge Richard Goldstone was chastised, shunned and punished by his own community for reporting his findings which stated that Israel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. In response,
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labels too have been hurled at intellectuals like Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky — the latter actually banned by Israel from entering the West Bank to speak at Birzeit University. The list is too long for one article, but it stretches the full breadth of international thinkers, artists, intellectuals, clergy, moral authorities and political figures. No one is immune from this insanity. Günter Grass and obvious truths But the world still has brave people who are willing to take significant risks for the rest of humanity. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, renowned crime fiction writer Henning Mankel, 84-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, and many like them risked their lives to break the siege of Gaza when they boarded the Freedom Flotilla, joining an unarmed group of people carrying humanitarian aid who were attacked,
and, in some cases, killed by Israeli forces. Others, like Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire, likewise have risked the abuse and attacks that come with speaking up for the rights of Palestinians against Israel’s unchecked aggression. The latest case in point is Günter Grass, the German Nobel laureate who dared to suggest glaringly obvious truths: that Israel has a robust nuclear program and its hinted intention to attack Iran is a threat to world stability. Of course, the so-called “only democracy in the Middle East” is banning him from ever entering the Holy Land, which happens to be my homeland. I’m barred from living there, too, but for different reasons. By the laws of the State of Israel, I am not the right kind of human being to inherit my family’s property and live where all my ancestors have dwelled for millennia. But I digress. Germany sits on sidelines Günter Grass has entered forbidden intellectual and political territory, and the criticism against him has been intense. The other side of Germany’s silence when it comes to Israel is loud and sure chastising of Israel’s critics. Every article here in the mainstream US press mentions Germany’s “understandable” reluctance to criticize Israel, as if it’s a foregone and logical conclusion that it’s perfectly fine for Germany to sit on the sidelines — eyes, ears and lips sealed — sending aid and weapons to a country that has placed itself above the law, a country with one of continued next page
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the worst human rights records in the world, and one that is engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing of the native population of the land it occupies.
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machines ever known to man, which it unleashes frequently against a principally unarmed civilian population that dares to demand freedom. It is a country that is currently in violation of hundreds of UN resolutions and nearly every tenet of international law.
As a member of that native population, I do not accept that it is “understandable” for Germany to continue unreservedly support Israel no matter what. It is convenient, for sure. Because Germany is not the one paying for its sins. We, the Palestinians, are. Everything — home, heritage, life, resources, hope — has been robbed from us to atone for Germany’s sins. To this day, we languish in refugee camps that are not fit for human beings so that every Jewish man and woman can have dual citizenship, one in their own country and one in mine. We are the ones who find ourselves at the other end of the weapons that Germany supplies to Israel. It is Palestine that is being wiped off the map. It is our society that is being destroyed. Of course, Germany’s silence is easy and convenient, but “understandable” it is not. We remember Israel is not Judaism. It is a nuclear power with the most advanced death
It is a country that has been condemned by every human rights organization that has ever investigated the situation on the ground there. It is a country with multi-tiered legal and social infrastructure that measures the worth of a human being by his or her religion. It is the regional bully that has refused a comprehensive peace proposal set forth by all Arab states. It has in the past attacked Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, all on the pretext of pre-emption. And now it wants to attack Iran under the same pretext, citing the tired “existential threat” mantra.
A R T I C L E S We are reminded of the Jewish Holocaust. But there is no need because we remember it. We also remember the Armenians, the Serbs, and we remember Rwanda. We remember the holocaust of the extermination of Native Americans and we remember the holocaust of slavery — 200 years of kidnapping, buying and selling human beings as a commodity. And we remember Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatila, Qibya and the many other atrocities Israel has committed against Palestinians. But no matter how great or unspeakable the crimes, victims are not, and should not be, granted license to commit crimes against others with impunity. None of us can fully predict the ramifications of an Israeli attack on Iran but we can all imagine the immensity of loss, blood, upheaval and instability that will reverberate far beyond the region. All so that Israel can maintain unchecked military dominance in the region. I can only thank Günter Grass for making a minimal gesture that Germany should take measures not to remain complicit in the destruction of Arab or Persian life. 15 April, 2012 Susan Abulhawa is the author of the international bestselling novel Mornings in Jenin. Source: The Electronic Intifada
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DIVIDE BETWEEN TECH-SAVVY COUNTRIES WIDENS By Paul Taylor A new digital divide is opening up between countries that make effective use of information and communications technology, and those that do not, argue the authors of a new report published Wednesday by Insead and the World Economic Forum.
that businesses in the US are increasingly concerned about the economic effectiveness of government, and that “weaknesses in the political and regulatory environment are beginning to hinder its overall performance”.
“Despite efforts over the past decade to develop ICT infrastructure in developing economies, a new digital divide in terms of ICT impacts persists,” say the authors of the 11th annual Global Information Technology Report: Living in a Hyperconnected World, published by the Forum. The report compares the availability and use of technology in 142 countries and focuses this year on what the authors describe as “the transformational impacts of ICT on the economy and society”. Sweden and then Singapore top the Networked Readiness Index ranking in the report which says that four Nordic countries are the most successful in leveraging ICT in their competitiveness strategies. Among other countries in the top 10, the US ranks number eight and the UK number 10. However, Professor Soumitra Dutta, co-author of the report, said the US ranking in particular reflected a cautionary note. He warned
The report’s main conclusion, however, is that developing countries, including the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China, which ranks number 51), lag far behind the more advanced economies of northern Europe and North America. Despite improvements in many drivers of competitiveness, the Brics still face important challenges to more fully adopt and leverage ICT. An insufficient skills base and institutional weaknesses, especially in the business environment, present a number of shortcomings that stifle entrepreneurship and innovation. Nevertheless, China has pulled ahead of India (69th) in the rankings in recent years and is outperforming many
countries in southern Europe and most in Latin America including Brazil (65th). The bottom of the list is dominated by countries in sub-Saharan Africa, reflecting what the report describes as “significant lags in connectivity due to insufficient development of ICT infrastructure, which remains too costly, and … poor skill levels that do not allow for an efficient use of the available technology”. But even in those countries where ICT infrastructure has been improved, ICTdriven impacts on competitiveness and wellbeing trail behind, resulting in a new digital divide, the report suggests. “Although many would consider that the phrase ‘digital divide’ is passé, GITR data show that it remains a stubborn reality; in spite of the spectacular global spread of mobile telephony, poor countries, especially in Africa, still suffer from lack of infrastructure and connectivity,” said Bruno Lanin, executive director of Insead’s eLab. 5 April 2012 Paul Taylor is the FinancialTimes’ New Yorkbased Business Technology and Telecoms Editor. He is responsible for The Connected Business section of the FT and is a regular writer for both the newspaper and FT.com. Source: The Financial Times
GOD OR GREED? A MUSLIM VIEW By Chandra Muzaffar Greed is condemned in all religions. Even in secular philosophies, greed is regarded as a vice. In the Qur’an, the embodiment of greed is Qarun (28:76-82; 29: 39) who was preoccupied with the accumulation of wealth and riches, and cared little for his fellow human beings
or for God. Greed is a vice in Islam because a) it is an act of stark selfishness; b) it distorts and perverts one’s character. It makes one vain and arrogant; c) it makes one overly materialistic ; d) it leads to the spread of corruption in society ; d) it is the antithesis of sharing and giving; and e) it undermines a person’s love for God
and subverts values such as justice, fairness and compassion. The repudiation of greed does not mean that one should renounce the life of this world. Money is not an evil in itself. Islam allows for the ownership of property. It prescribes rules for continued next page
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inheritance. Right through history Muslim societies have encouraged private enterprise and investment and recognised the legitimacy of reasonable profits. But in the life of this world, there are limits that one should observe. The concept and practice of limits is a fundamental principle in Islam. Do not transgress the limits is an oft-repeated advice in the Qur’an. It is linked to yet another principle, the principle of restraint. Restraint helps to check and curb greed. Restraint is the real meaning of the fast in the month of Ramadan. Limits and restraint in turn lead to balance. For it is only when everyone exercises restraint that there would be some equilibrium in society. An equilibrium that guarantees each and every person his rightful place helps to establish the framework for justice. When justice is central to society, greed will not find a foothold. There are at least five injunctions and practices in Islam which underscore the significance of justice - prohibition of interest (riba); the wealth tax (zakat); the division of inheritance (faraid); the bequeathal of personal wealth for the public good (waqf); and charity (sedaqah). Underlying these injunctions and practices is a commitment to the equitable distribution of wealth and the reduction of social disparities. It is significant that in the past this commitment did not in any way diminish the important role performed by the market in Muslim civilisation. Huge markets flourished in some of the great centres of trade of antiquity, from Fez to Melaka. But these were markets that were embedded in society, markets that by and large abided by the larger moral norms of Islam, including its prohibition on riba and on debt transaction. This is why from the perspective of Islamic values and principles, what
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mars and mires the global economy and global finance today would be morally reprehensible. The ever widening wealth gap between the rich and the poor at the global level and within nation-states, the maximisation of profits as a credo, the transformation of money into a commodity for profit and the overwhelming power of speculative capital in financial transactions would contradict all that Islam stands for. Most of all, it is the institutionalisation and the legitimisation of greed as never before in human history through a capitalist culture of acquisition, accumulation and conspicuous consumption that Islam would regard as the ultimate betrayal of God’s teachings. How does one get out of the greed trap? Perhaps one should begin with basics. Money should cease to be a commodity of profit. It should be a medium of exchange, nothing more; nothing less. Its intrinsic value should be determined once again by the gold standard. This will curb speculation and restore stability to the monetary system. It will also eliminate debt transaction. In such a system, there will be no need for interest or riba. Private commercial banking will yield eventually to public banks with mechanisms that ensure justice and fairness. The Profit-and-Loss Sharing( Mudharabah) principle - and not the maximisation of profits - will guide these banks in their lending and investment policies. Of course, reforms in the financial sector will have to be accompanied by far-reaching changes in the economy as a whole. The public good rather than private gain will be the leitmotif of the economy. Land, other natural resources, the supply of water and energy, highways, other forms of infrastructure, health care and education will all be part and parcel of the commons. Cooperatives will play a major role in the production, distribution and consumption of goods
A R T I C L E S and services. Private business enterprises will be strongly regulated by ethical principles. To sustain a transformed economy within an ethical framework, our underlying consciousness should also undergo a mammoth change. Justice, fairness, compassion, love, sharing, giving, restraint and balance will become central to the life of the individual and the community. For these universal, inclusive values to perpetuate themselves from generation to generation there has to be a psychological, emotional and intellectual anchor. That anchor has to be a profound consciousness of God. It is God Consciousness that lays out the meaning and purpose of life, that determines the role and responsibility of the human being as vicegerent on earth, that affirms our collective commitment to all that is good and beautiful in this transient existence - and therefore repudiates greed in all its manifestations. Islam and Christianity concur on this fundamental belief: that the human being cannot serve both God and greed at the same time. If we choose God then we should declare war on those structures and attitudes that allow greed to breed in contemporary civilisation. As Muslims and Christians we should write, speak, organise and mobilise against greed. In this monumental struggle we should work with people of other faiths and those who may not belong to a particular faith community. The war against greed is putting into action God’s eternal message: Believe in God and do good. 26 September, 2012 Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of International Movement for a Just World (JUST). The above is a summary of a presentation given at the Muslim-Christian Dialogue on Greed organised by the Lutheran World Federation and hosted by the Sabah Theological Seminary on 26th of September 2011 in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
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