September 2009
Vol 9, No.9
WALRUS BULLS BELLOWING ON A BEACH By I am disappointed with the view of some knowledgeable commentators over Scotland’s release of the dying man who was convicted of the Lockerbie-airline bombing. From a purely power-politics point of view, of course, they are right: judging by the ugly noises echoing across the oceans from America, Scotland has done itself no favour. But if all affairs are to be carried on in every country from that point of view, it seems to me that it is acceptance of America’s right to dictate every matter over the planet, including such intimate matters as how individual countries interpret justice and the government of laws. This is the acceptance of a de facto aristocracy running the world since American voters - and only about half of eligible Americans bother to vote represent only a percent or so of the planet’s population. It is remarkable how many Americans do not understand the basic point that not everything a democracy does is democratic or decent or even acceptable, especially things done outside its borders. Democracies abuse power just as surely as any other form of government, and a democracy with the immense military power of the United States – a power virtually cancerous to genuine
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democratic values - provides a case study in the inexorable workings of Lord Acton’s dictum. It would also represent a repression of all the better motives from which individuals and societies act now and then, surprising us and raising the standard of human behaviour from the violent-chimpanzee standard that tends to hold for much of humanity and is especially notable in America’s international affairs. That is unacceptable to most people who are not Americans or who are not dedicated flatterers of America seeking leftovers being dropped from its groaning table. You only have to ask yourself how Americans themselves would react to others telling them how they should run their court system. The sound would be deafening, like the bellowing of walrus bulls on a stony beach in mating season, which is actually pretty close to the sound of some of America’s professional-victim families today. Mercy is never misplaced, and I think Scottish justice has reached an admirable decision despite the bellowing of the unthinking American families we have heard from for years.
consideration, it is almost certain that alMegrahi is innocent, having been fitted up by American intelligence desperate for a scapegoat with the relentless political pressure of the walrus-bull families. I have to say, also, I always find it troubling to read the press repeating the lines about 270 victims for the thousandth time. It is an American mantra, emphasizing the special and precious nature of American lives over all others, at least, that is, the lives of upper middleclass Americans. Rarely do we read an accurate perspective on the Lockerbie event. The United States Navy stupidly shot down an Iranian airliner with 300 souls aboard as it observed the devastation of the Iran-Iraq War, a devastation America had an important hand in extending.
Apart from that, and a very important Turn to next page
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IRAQ: CONTROL OVER OIL AND ESCALATING VIOLENCE.......Escalating
BROAD NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE TO ZIONISM By Ahmad Hijazi ...................................... page 8
violence in Iraq is a matter of grave concern to the world ................................................................P.3
INDONESIAN PLURALISM SHOULD BE GUIDED BY PRINCIPLES NOT POLITICS By Irfan Abubakar ........................................ page 9
ARTICLES WISH YOU WEREN’T HERE: By Paul Vallely ............................................ page 4
NEW MEDIA: CHANGING THE WORLD ORDER By Chandra Muzaffar.................................. page 10
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continued from page 1 Those 300 innocent men, women, and children received no mercy, and their horrible deaths certainly never saw any justice. Their families never received compensation. And no apology was even offered by Americans, a disgusting set of behaviors, entirely.
Lockerbie was absolutely clearly revenge, but no one knows who actually committed the act of revenge.
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I might offer the observation, too, that it is the same bellowing Americans always ready to use capital punishment or torture and assassinate opponents or, indeed, to invade the lands of those with whom they disagree, bombing and killing countless innocents – three million just in Vietnam, another million or so in the Cambodia they de-stabilized, and another million or so in Iraq. The whole pattern of the two acts of
MAIN ARTICLES wanton destruction explains the basis for the so-called War on Terror. It is simply America’s saying, “I can do to you, but you can’t do to me.” 22 August 2009 John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human decency. Source: http://chuckman.blog.ca
LOCKERBIE PRISONER: THE CASE IS NOT CLOSED
Statement by Dr. Hans Koechler, International Observer, appointed by the United Nations, at the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands Dr. Hans Koechler has been appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as international observer at the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands. In two analytical reports, submitted to the United Nations in 2001 and 2002, about the trial and first appeal he had suspected a miscarriage of justice. Commenting on yesterday’s release on compassionate grounds of the only person convicted in the Lockerbie case, the Libyan citizen Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, Dr. Koechler clarified certain important points in interviews for Austrian and international media.
Domestic and international legal aspects of the release The decision by Scotland’s Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, was in conformity with Scots law and did not violate any international obligation of the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding other declarations, release on the basis of the recently ratified prisoner transfer agreement between the Libyan Jamahiriya and the United Kingdom would have violated the terms of an agreement concluded in 1991 (!) between the United Kingdom and the United States according to which the full sentence of any person convicted by the Scottish Court in the Netherlands would be served in a Scottish prison. Dr. Koechler who had listened to the reading of Mr. MacAskill’s statement, said that he is at a loss to explain how the Scottish authorities can say that they had no specific information on this legal matter because the UK authorities did not provide it to them. If he would have checked relevant documents in the public domain, he could have found – in the
official records of the House of Commons – the text of a statement made by the then Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, the late Robin Cook, on 31 January 2001. Because of the importance of the issue in legal and political terms the respective part of the statement is reproduced below: “I can give the right hon. Gentleman and the House an absolute assurance that there will be no deal with the Libyan Government on the sentence of Mr. Al Megrahi. I do not believe that any Scottish court would wear such a deal, even if we remotely contemplated striking one. As part of the terms of the agreement in 1991, it was agreed that the full sentence would be served in a Scottish prison. At that stage, we rejected the proposal that the person responsible might be sent to a prison in a third country. The United Nations will have access to his prison, because we have nothing to hide or to fear about the standard of Scottish prisons. I suspect that they will be better than those of Libyan prisons.” This was the Foreign Secretary’s answer to the following question by the Hon. Francis Maude, MP: “Will the Government undertake that Al Megrahi will neither be released early as part of some deal with Libya, nor permitted to serve part of his sentence in Libya?” In view of this official statement, made by the British Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons, it is crystal-clear that only release on compassionate grounds was in conformity with the United Kingdom’s international obligations - as Dr. Koechler had already stated on 5 August 2009 in an interview for the BBC London.
Dropping of the appeal by the convict In an op-ed article for The Independent (London), Dr. Koechler has expressed serious doubts about the decision by Mr. Al Megrahi to withdraw his (second) appeal. His decision may have been made under duress and would thus be legally questionable, he said. According to Scots law, the termination of the ongoing appeal was not in any way required for compassionate release to be granted. The Scottish Justice Secretary will have to clarify vis-à-vis the Scottish, British and international public the exact circumstances under which the appeal was dropped. According to reports, Mr. Al Megrahi’s request was lodged through his defence team on 12 August 2009, in close proximity to the date of his release (20 August 2009) and just a few days after his meeting with the Justice Secretary. How are these coincidences to be explained? It should have been obvious to the Scottish authorities that - in a case where an act international terrorism is suspected - it would be in the public interest of the country that has jurisdiction to continue with criminal proceedings and to exhaust all legal means to establish the truth about the incident. Why did the authorities satisfy themselves to deal with the question of criminal responsibility of two, later only one, suspect, and why did they accept the abrupt ending of the ongoing appeal of the only person convicted? Omission by Scotland’s Justice Secretary of any reference to the decision of Scottish Criminal Cases Review continued next page
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continued from page 2 Commission Mr. MacAskill was right, in political as well as legal terms, in releasing Mr. Al Megrahi on compassionate grounds. However, in yesterday’s statement explaining his decision, he failed the test of statesmanship or judicial expertise. Upon concluding his statement he appeared more like a Prosecutor in a trial, suddenly assuming a vindictive tone and trying to convince the court of the guilt of the indicted, not like the Secretary of Justice who has to make a decision that is not related to the question of guilt or innocence (as is the case with “release on compassionate grounds” according to Scots law).
It is noteworthy that, in his statement, the Justice Secretary did not in any way take note of the fact that - in the years since the trial court’s decision on 31 January 2001 - serious doubts have arisen about the guilty verdict and that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) – after four (!) years of painstaking investigations – had stated (in June 2007) that it suspects a miscarriage of justice and had, thus, referred the case back to the appeal court. He did – obviously deliberately – overlook the finding of the SCCRC according to which “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase [by Mr. Al Megrahi] of the items [clothes] from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988.” It does not need special intellectual skills to realize that the entire verdict collapses if there is no proof for the assertion that Mr. Al Megrahi was the person who bought clothes on that particular day in that particular shop in Malta.
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In view of the appeal now having been aborted, the work of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission will have been in vain. The least that is to be expected from the Scottish judicial authorities is that they publish the full report of the Commission. Up to the present moment, not only the full report has not been released into the public domain, several grounds of appeal given by the Commission are being kept secret. Public inquiry and possible role of the United Nations As matters stand in Scotland, there may be no further criminal proceedings or investigations. However, establishing the truth about the midair explosion of an airliner and identifying the perpetrators is in the supreme public interest of any polity that is built on the rule of law. The legitimacy of any state is closely connected to a state’s willingness and ability to investigate and prosecute sine ira et studio each and every incident such as that which caused the death of 270 innocent people on the PanAm plane and in Lockerbie, Dr. Koechler said. In an exclusive interview with Al-Jazeera’s Felicity Barr the former UN-appointed observer reiterated his call for a public
S T A T E M E N T inquiry to be mandated by the British House of Commons. He further explained that, absent a decision by the House of Commons, the United Nations General Assembly may consider establishing an international commission of inquiry into the Lockerbie incident on the basis of Art. 22 of the UN Charter. Since the United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, has decided on 12 September 2003 to remove the Lockerbie issue “from the list of matters of which the Security Council is seized,” the General Assembly would undoubtedly have authority to deal with the issue. About alternative theories In all conversations with media representatives and in an interview, moderated from London and broadcast live on Al-Jazeera TV shortly after Mr. Al-Megrahi’s release, Dr. Koechler has made clear that, as a United Nationsappointed observer as well as a scholar, he does not engage in any speculation about the perpetrators as long as no alternative theory about the incident can be built beyond a reasonable doubt. He added that, if the Scottish judges at Camp Zeist would have respected that criterion, they could not have reached the guilty verdict in the case of Mr. Al Megrahi. 21 August 2009 Further Reading: “I saw the trial - and the verdict made no sense” Article by Hans Köchler in The Independent, London. Enquiries: info@i-p-o.org phone +43-15332877, A-101 Vienna, Kohlmarkt 4, Austria Hans Köchler is also a member of JUST’s International Advisisory Panel (IAP)
STATEMENT IRAQ: CONTROL OVER OIL Escalating violence in Iraq is a matter of grave concern to the world. On one day alone — 19 August — 95 people were killed as a result of bomb blasts and mortar attacks in Baghdad. Scores of people have been killed in other parts of Iraq this month as the security situation in the country worsens. This new wave of violence has been attributed to the withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi cities as part of their
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planned overall withdrawal from the country over the next 22 months. Of course, thousands of American soldiers will still remain in Iraq after June 2011, in heavily fortified bases as part of a bilateral agreement between the US and a so-called ‘sovereign’ Iraqi government. In other words, US occupation will continue in another guise. The underlying reason for this continuing occupation is perhaps the real explanation
for the new wave of violence. On 30 June 2009, an oil consortium helmed by British Petroleum was awarded the contract to develop the Rumaila oil field. 32 mainly Western corporations, among them ExxonMobil and Shell, with a handful of companies from China, India and other Asian countries are “ chasing billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic meters of gas. On offer are six oil and two gas fields.” (Crescent International Aug `09). continued next page
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continued from page 3 From the outset, the Iraqi people have been opposed to this oil grab. Mass demonstrations have been held in various parts of the country against the proposed oil legislation introduced in early 2007 which favours foreign oil corporations over the Iraqi people. Oil workers have gone on strike. Oil installations have been sabotaged. The Iraqi Parliament itself has not been able to pass the law after two years of wrangling. A number of Nobel Peace Laureates have openly criticized the legislation. The proposed law which allows foreign oil corporations to enter productionsharing agreements with the Iraqi government will undoubtedly strengthen
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their hold over Iraqi oil. Before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, oil was under state control. All the major exporters of oil in West Asia — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran — have placed the commodity under the control of the State and do not allow foreign ownership and control of what they consider a depleting national asset. It is partly because there is so much anger and unhappiness over the oil grab which came to the fore with the 30 June contract involving the Rumaila oil field that violence has increased in Iraq in recent months. The mainstream media has not focussed upon the question of oil and the escalation of violence. It demonstrates yet again how complicit the media is
A R T I C L E S when it comes to the real truth behind so-called acts of terror. It is not just the media that has concealed the truth. President Barack Obama dare not admit that foreign control over oil is one of the reasons why there is so much turmoil in Iraq today. It shows that while Obama is willing to give some attention to the manifestations of occupation such as the US military presence in Iraq, he is not prepared to address the substance of occupation, which is control over resources. Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST). 22 August 2009.
ARTICLES WISH YOU WEREN’T HERE: THE DEVASTATING EFFECTS OF THE NEW COLONIALISTS Thousand of protesters took to the streets, waving the orange flags of the opposition. Before long, looting began. Buildings were set on fire. But the turning point came when a crowd moved from the main square towards the presidential palace. Amid the confusion, someone panicked and gave the order to the troops guarding the palace to open fire. Scores died. The leaders of the army decided they’d had enough and stormed the palace, causing the president to flee. A typical African coup d’état? Not quite. Certainly there were allegations of corruption in high places. The president had bought a private jet – from a member of the Disney family – for his own personal use. He was accused of unnecessary extravagance, of mismanaging public funds and confusing the interests of the state with his own. But something else had whipped up the protesters in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, earlier this year, when the government of Marc Ravalomanana was overthrown in the former French colony. The urban poor were angry at the price of food, which had been high since the massive rise in global prices of wheat and
By Paul Vallely
rice the year before. Food-price rises hit the poor worse than the rest of us because they spend up to two-thirds of their income on food. But what whipped them into action was news of a deal the government had recently signed with a giant Korean multinational, Daewoo, leasing 1.3 million hectares of farmland – an area almost half the size of Belgium and about half of all arable land on the island – to the foreign company for 99 years. Daewoo had announced plans to grow maize and palm oil there – and send all the harvests back to South Korea. Terms of the deal had not originally been made public. But then the news leaked, via the Financial Times in London, that the firm had paid nothing for the lease.
Daewoo had promised to improve the island’s infrastructure in support of its investment. “We will provide jobs for them by farming it, which is good for Madagascar,” a Daewoo spokesman said. But the direct cash benefit to Madagascar would be zero – in a country which can barely produce enough food to feed itself: nearly half of the island’s children under the age of five are malnourished. The government of President Ravalomanana became the first in the world to be toppled because of what the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization recently described as “landgrabbing”. The Daewoo deal is only one of more than 100 land deals which have, over the past 12 months, seen massive tracts of cultivable farmland across the globe bought up by wealthy countries and international corporations. The phenomenon is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe’s farmland targeted in just the past six months. To understand the impotent fury that provokes in impoverished farmers, consider the reaction if something similar happened in Britain. The international continued next page
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development policy consultant Mark Weston has a vivid image to help: “Imagine if China, following a brief negotiation with a British government desperate for foreign cash after the collapse of the economy, bought up the whole of Wales, replaced most of its inhabitants with Chinese workers, turned the entire country into an enormous rice field, and sent all the rice produced there for the next 99 years back to China,” he suggests. “Imagine that neither the evicted Welsh nor the rest of the British public knew what they were getting in return for this, having to content themselves with vague promises that the new landlords would upgrade a few ports and roads and create jobs for local people. “Then, imagine that, after a few years – and bearing in mind that recession and the plummeting pound have already made it difficult for Britain to buy food from abroad – an oil-price spike or an environmental disaster in one of the world’s big grain-producing nations drives global food prices sharply upwards, and beyond the reach of many Britons. While the Chinese next door in Wales continue sending rice back to China, the starving British look helplessly on, ruing the day their government sold off half their arable land. Some of them plot the violent recapture of the Welsh valleys.” Change the place names to Africa and the scenario is much less far-fetched. It is happening already, which is why many, including Jacques Diouf, head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, has warned that the world may be slipping into a “neo-colonial” system. Even that great champion of the free market, the FT, described the Daewoo deal as “rapacious” and warned it is but the most “brazen example of a wider phenomenon” as rich nations seek to buy up the natural resources of poor countries. The extent of this new colonialism is vast. The buyers are wealthy countries that are unable to grow their own food. The Gulf states are at the forefront of new investments. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar – which between
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them control nearly 45 per cent of the world’s oil – are snapping up agricultural land in fertile countries such as Brazil, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Egypt. But they are ‘ also targeting the world’s poorest countries, such as Ethiopia, Cameroon, Uganda, Zambia and Cambodia. The amounts of land involved are staggering. South Korean companies have bought 690,000 hectares in Sudan, where at least six other countries are known to have secured large landholdings – and where food supplies for the local population are among the least secure anywhere in the world. The Saudis are negotiating 500,000 hectares in Tanzania. Firms from the United Arab Emirates have landed 324,000 hectares in Pakistan. But they are not the only buyers. Countries with large populations such as China, South Korea and even India are acquiring swathes of African farmland to produce food for export. The Indian government has lent money to 80 companies to buy 350,000 hectares in Africa and recently lowered the tariffs under which Ethiopian agri-products can enter India. One of the biggest holdings of agriculture land in the world is a Bangalore-based company, Karuturi Global, which has recently bought huge areas in Ethiopia and Kenya. Food is not all the new colonialists are after. About a fifth of the massive new deals are for land on which to grow biofuels. British, US and German companies with names such as Flora Ecopower have bought land in Tanzania and Ethiopia. The country whose name became a byword for famine at the time of the Live Aid concerts has had more than 50 investors sign deals or register an interest in the cultivation of biofuel crops on its soil. From Ethiopia’s point of view, the economic logic is straightforward: the country is an importer of oil and is therefore vulnerable to price fluctuations on the world market; if it can produce biofuels it will lessen that dependency. But at a cost. To keep the foreign biofuel investors happy, the government doesn’t force any companies to carry out environmental impact assessments. Local
A R T I C L E S activists claim that 75 per cent of the land allocated to foreign biofuel firms are covered in forests that will be cut down. More worrying is the plan by a Norwegian biofuel company to create “the largest jatropha plantation in the world” by deforesting large tracts of land in northern Ghana. Jatropha, which can be cultivated in poor soil, produces oily seeds that can produce biodiesel. A local activist, Bakari Nyari, of the African Biodiversity Network, has accused the company of “using methods that hark back to the darkest days of colonialism... by deceiving an illiterate chief to sign away 38,000 hectares with his thumbprint”. The company claims the scheme will bring jobs, but the extensive deforestation which would result would deprive local people of their traditional income from gathering forest products such as shea nuts. The failed Daewoo land deal in Madagascar may have been intended to be the biggest landgrab planned to date, but it is far from the only one. So what is the cause of this sudden explosion of land acquisition across the globe? It has its roots in the food crisis of 2007/8, when prices of rice, wheat and other cereals skyrocketed across the world, triggering riots from Haiti to Senegal. The price spike also led foodgrowing countries to slap export tariffs on staple crops to minimise the amounts that left their countries. That tightened the supply still further, meaning food prices were driven up more by a situation of policy-created scarcity than by supply and demand. This situation also made many rich countries that are reliant on massive food imports question one of the fundamentals of the global economy: the idea that every country should concentrate on its best products and then trade. Suddenly having unimaginable quantities of cash from oil was not enough to guarantee you all the food you needed. The oil sheikhs of the Gulf states found that food imports had doubled in cost over less than five years. In the future it might get even worse. You could no longer rely on regional and global markets, they concluded. The rush to grab land began. continued next page
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continued from page 5 The logic was clear. The highly populous South Korea is the world’s fourth-biggest importer of maize; the Madagascar deal would replace about half of Korea’s maize imports, a Daewoo spokesman boasted. The Gulf states were equally open: control of foreign farmland would not only secure food supplies, it would eliminate the cut taken by middlemen and reduce its foodimport bills by more than 20 per cent.
And the benefits could only increase. The fundamental conditions that had led to the global food crisis were unchanged, and might easily worsen. The UN predicts that by 2050, the world population will have grown by 50 per cent. Growing the food to feed nine billion people will place enormous pressure on the Earth, eroding soils, denuding forests and draining rivers. Climate change will make all that worse. Oil prices will continue to rise, and with them the cost of fertiliser and tractor fuel. Demand for biofuels would further cut land available for food crops. The 2007/8 price crunch might just be a foretaste of something worse. The times of plenty are already over. Next, there might not be enough food to go round, even for those with lots of money. We have not really noticed it here, because the UK, like the US, still instinctively seems to place unlimited faith in the ability of the market to provide. But other countries have begun to devise a long-term strategic response. The clearest public sign of that came in June when, just before the meeting of world leaders at the G8 in Italy, the Japanese prime minister, Taro Aso, asked: “Is the current food crisis just another market vagary?” He replied to his own question: “Evidence suggests not; we are undergoing a transition to a new equilibrium, reflecting a new economic, climatic, demographic and ecological reality.” But the market is having its say, too: the cost of land is rising. Prices have jumped 16 per cent in Brazil, 31 per cent in Poland, and 15 per cent in the midwestern United States. Veteran speculators such as George Soros, Jim Rogers and Lord Jacob Rothschild are snapping up farmland right now. Rogers – who between 1970 and 1980 increased the value of his equities
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portfolio by 4,200 per cent, and who made another fortune predicting the commodities rally in 1999 – last month said: “I’m convinced that farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time.” After the disastrous involvement of financial speculators in housing – the global recession had its roots in the development of mortgage-based derivatives – it is hardly reassuring that the same financial whiz-kids are turning to land as a new source of profit. “The food and financial crises combined,” says the Philippines-based food lobby group Grain, “have turned agricultural land into a new strategic asset.” In one way, that ought to be a good thing for poor countries. Land is what they have in plenty. And the agricultural sector in developing countries is in urgent need of capital. Aid once provided this, but the share of that which goes to farming fell from $20bn a year in the 1980s to just $5bn a year in 2007, according to Oxfam. A mere 5 per cent of aid now goes to rural-development agriculture, even though in the poorest places such as Africa, more than 70 per cent of the population rely on farming for their income. Decades of low investment have meant stagnating production and productivity. Landgrab deals ought, at least, to rectify that by injecting much-needed investment into agriculture in these countries. That ought to bring new jobs and a steady income to the rural poor. It should bring new technology and knowhow to local farmers. It should develop rural infrastructure, such as roads and grain-storage systems, to the good of the entire community. It should build new schools and health posts that will benefit all. It should give African governments much-needed taxes to invest in developing their countries. All of which should lessen dependency of food aid. Landgrabs should produce a win-win situation. That was the kind of big billing which the government in Kenya gave to the deal it did recently with the state of Qatar. Just one per cent of land in the Arab emirate is cultivable, so Qatar is heavily reliant on food imports. The deal was that
A R T I C L E S Qatar would get 40,000 hectares of land to grow food in return for building a $2.5bn deep-water port at Lamu in Kenya. Unfortunately, even as the negotiations with Qatar proceeded, the Kenyan government was forced to announce a state of emergency because a third of Kenya’s population of 34 million was facing food shortages. President Mwai Kibaki declared the situation a national disaster and appealed for international food relief. Hungry voters often fail to understand the long-term attractions of the economic advantages which could be brought to Kenya by creating what would be only its second deep-water port and opening up a third of the country – in the arid and neglected north-east – to development. This is a country, after all, where people kill for land, as was shown after the botched elections in 2007. If the world food crisis tightens, as everyone seems to predict, it will become ever more unpalatable politically for a government such as Kenya’s to countenance the massive export of food at a time of shortage. That is even more true in a continent as politically unstable as Africa. There is, in any case, already fierce opposition from many to projects like this. The land offered to Qatar is in the Tana River delta. It is fertile with abundant fresh water but it is home to 150,000 farming and pastoralist families who regard the land as communal and graze 60,000 cattle there. They have threatened armed resistance. They are supported by opposition activists, who object less to the land being developed, but want it to grow food for hungry Kenyans. Then there are the environmentalists, who say a pristine ecosystem of mangrove swamps, savannah and forests will be destroyed. The environment is another major worry in many of the great rash of land deals. Growing food crops in huge plantations is dominated by large-scale intensive monoculture production using large quantities of fertiliser and pesticides. The results are spectacular at first – which might satisfy the yen of the outside investors for short-term profit. But it risks damaging the long-term sustainability of tropical soils unsuited for intensive continued next page
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continued from page 6 cultivation and can do serious damage to the local water table. It reduces the diversity of plants, animals and insect life and threatens the long-term fertility of the land through soil erosion, waterlogging or increased salinity. The intensive use of agrochemicals could lead to waterquality problems, and irrigating the landholdings of foreign investors may take water away from other users.
Water is a key issue. In a sense, these aren’t landgrabs so much as water grabs, suggests the chief executive of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe. With the land comes the right to draw the water beneath it, which could be the most valuable part of the deal. “Water withdrawals for agriculture continue to increase rapidly. In some of the most fertile regions of the world (America, southern Europe, northern India, north-eastern China), over-use of water, mainly for agriculture, is leading to sinking water tables. Groundwater is being withdrawn, no longer as a buffer over the year, but in a structural way, mainly because water is seen as a free good.” The world needs to begin to think more urgently about water. The average person in the world uses between 3,000 and 6,000 litres a day. Barely a tenth of that is used for hygiene or manufacturing. The rest is used in farming. And the world’s lifestyle, with factors such as increased meateating, is exacerbating the problem. Meat requires 10 times more water per calorie than plants. Biofuels are one of the most thirsty products on the planet; it takes up to 9,100 litres of water to grow the soya for one litre of biodiesel, and up to 4,000 litres for the corn to be transformed into bioethanol. “Under present conditions, and with the way water is being managed,” the Nestlé chief says, “we will run out of water long before we run out of fuel”. Indeed, in many places underground, aquifers are falling; in some regions by several metres a year. Rivers are running dry due to over-use. And the worst problems are in some of the world’s most important agricultural areas. If current trends hold, Frank Rijsberman of the International Water Management Institute has warned, soon “we could be facing annual losses equivalent to the entire grain crops of India and the US
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combined”. Between them, they produce a third of all the world’s cereals.
Is there a way forward? The Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute believes so. It has recently produced a report containing recommendations for a binding code of conduct to promote what Japan, the world’s largest food importer, called for at the G8 in Italy – responsible foreign investment in agriculture in the face of the current pandemic of landgrabs. It wants a code “with teeth” to ensure that smallholders being displaced from their land can negotiate mutually beneficial terms with foreign governments and multinationals. It wants measures to enforce any agreement, if promised jobs, wage levels or local facilities fail to materialise. It wants transparency, and it wants legal action in their home countries against firms that use bribes, rather than relying on prosecutions in the Third World. It wants respect for existing land rights – not just those which are written, but those which exist through custom and practice. It wants compulsory sharing of benefits, so that schools and hospitals get built and those living in areas around landgrabs get properly fed. It suggests shorter-term leases to provide a regular income to farmers whose land is taken away for other uses. Or, better still, it would like to see contract farming that leaves smallholders in control of their land but under contract to provide to the outside investor. It demands proper environmental impact assessments. And it says foreign investors should not have a right to export during an acute national food crisis. No one is fooled that this will be easy. The local elites in developing countries have a vested interest in the lucrative
A R T I C L E S deals on offer. The government in Cambodia has massively promoted landgrabbing, taking advantage of the fact that many land titles were destroyed under the terror of the Khmer Rouge. Mozambique has signed a $2bn deal that will involve 10,000 Chinese “settlers” on its land in return for $3m in military aid from Beijing. The strategic considerations are clear. “Food can be a weapon in this world,” as Hong Jong-wan, a manager at Daewoo, put it. But things are ratcheting up on the other side, too. Landgrabs are “a grave violation of the human right to food”, in the words of Constanze von Oppeln of the big German development agency Welthungerhilfe, one of the most prominent campaigners in the field. She speaks for many who have no voice internationally – although they are making their presence felt well enough in their own countries. A huge public outcry erupted in Uganda when its government began talking to Egypt’s ministry of agriculture about leasing nearly a million hectares to Egyptian firms for the production of wheat and maize destined for Cairo. Mozambicans have similarly resisted the settlement of the thousands of Chinese agricultural workers on its leased lands. Earlier this year, angry Filipinos successfully blocked a deal by the Philippines government with China which involved an astounding 1,240,000 hectares. And last month the same activists exposed what they call a “secret agricultural pact” between their government and Bahrain. With 80 per cent of the 90 million population landless, the deal is “unlawful and immoral”, activists there say. Food touches something very deep in the human psyche. Do not expect either side to give up without a fight. 10 August 2009
Paul Vallely CMG is a leading British writer on Africa and development issues. He is also associate editor of the UK newspaper The Independent
Source : The Independent/UK http://www.independent.co.uk/ environment/nature
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A R T I C L E S BROAD NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE TO ZIONISM By Ahmad Hijazi
Amid the escalating violence, and the 60-year-long status quo, there are certain fundamental questions that need to be asked. Are there certain values and absolute foundations that make resistance in general, and against Zionism specifically, a moral and humane necessity? What is the framework for nonviolent resistance, and how is it connected to these values? What is the ultimate end goal of the struggle? Is it returning the land and some rights to the indigenous Palestinian population, or can it lead to “solutions” that include acceptance of Zionism or even its right to exist? Millions of persons hope for a chance to participate in this noble struggle, yet can’t find the medium in which they can contribute. This is where there is an important role for a group of “movers” to create the vehicles for individual and collective contributions within the above framework and mobilizing the hitherto wasted support to achieve measurable results. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions defines Zionism as: “a global, political, ideological movement that aims to return the land of ‘Israel’ to the Jewish people,” but this definition, besides its racist flavor (as it doesn’t mention or consider an entire people who were inhabiting that land), doesn’t tell the complete story. It might be important to mention that UN Resolution 3379 of 10 November 1975, after a prolonged discussion of the mechanisms of racist regimes, their alliances and human rights violations, decided that Zionism was equivalent to racism (the General Assembly revoked this decision by resolution 84/86 in 1991 after the advance of “peace negotiations”). To properly understand Zionism we cannot rely only on how it defines itself or how the dictionary defines it, as indicative as those might be. We must also look at the behaviors and practices that have characterized Zionism from the beginning of the movement and that were given intellectual and ideological
rationales, fundamentally related to the materialization of Zionism through a state. Zionism could not have effected its program without the ethnic cleansing of the people that inhabited what it called Greater Israel. Forced displacement, terrorism, murder and devaluation of the most basic human rights were justified because of the complete belief in the right of the Jewish “race” which consequently becomes racially “supreme” because Zionism claims that this “race” possesses an undeniable and superior “right” in this land. The existence of Zionism, and its continuation as it is, constitutes a legitimization of all the previously mentioned crimes, co-existence with the logic of power, and the acceptance of the practical if not openly acknowledged racial inferiority of the Palestinian (read “Arab”) people. The right to resist derives from the values of justice, equality and freedom, but in the case of the Arab people it specifically gains the added value of being an existential struggle and a fight against the supremacist vision of the inferiority of the Arab people, and a refusal of the ideology of the oppressing power. Thus it is in no way merely a nationalistic, Arab or Islamic idea and its end goal can never be fighting the Jewish people or even uprooting Israel. The clear goal of resistance should be defeating the Zionist ideology. This is an existential fight and one should never fear clearly stating a complete refusal of this ideology and its result (which in no way is an uncivil or a non-life-loving expression). Peace negotiations achieved nothing regarding this central dimension of the struggle, although removing Zionism as an ideology and practice is vital for peace in the Middle East. The rocket and the gun — as significant as their role may be — cannot have the decisive word in the realm of the cultural, intellectual and
humanistic battle. We need to understand the role of holistic resistance that the Arab people now more than ever have the ability and interest in deploying to place a siege around Zionism and racism. This resistance is very closely connected to values, culture and history. In the age of globalization, the Internet and social media, the importance of centralized efforts is diminished as compared with decentralized, selfdriven networks. More than ever, nonviolent resistance can harness the work of individuals contributing to a worldwide effort that has several aspects: The knowledge dimension (cultural/ educational/learning): This dimension is the most connected to the motives for resistance and is the logical input into the other dimensions. Understanding the motives and reasons behind the struggle and understanding the adversary and its methods, contributes to building the relationship between the values of justice and humanity on the one hand and the actions of resistance on the other. This dimension answers the “why” and increases the sense of moral and humane responsibility. Resistance must include learning curricula about the values being defended, and the educational and cultural work has to attack Zionism through arts and literature and the other cultural contributions. This is an important role of parents, researchers, writers and the elites in general. Media and public relations: This dimension has internal and external aspects. The internal is directed to Arab audiences, educating them about the struggle, its goals, methods and cultural importance which it should be emphasized are humanistic and not nationalist or religious. The external effort is directed to global public opinion which has a central role in the cultural struggle. Zionism realized this from the start and developed its strategy of hasbara (propaganda) and continued next page
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became a model to be studied in polishing the reputation of Israel and pressuring different groups and organizations. There are so many Israeli websites that aim to “educate” volunteers on how to refute accusations against Zionism, on creating pressure groups and organizing networks and public relations campaigns through tapping the huge potential of networks ready to provide support. We need to develop this dimension to empower the many people who believe in the cause but lack the means get the chance to express themselves. The political-social dimensions: And here I don’t mean politics in its direct relation with the military struggle, but rather as the translation of the wishes of the people. It should reflect the people’s hopes of a dignified life and culture, and advancement towards good living that supports the belief in the values of justice. Civil society should, as a unit, communicate the values of resistance, justice and equality. The economic and financial dimension: This is a very important weapon that we have until now failed to utilize. The
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least we can do is not buy the products of companies that are committed to the prosperity and development of the Israeli economy. I am not calling for a mass-scale boycott here, but rather surgical boycott of certain companies that really have a black history of unlimited and unjustified support to Israel, after communicating with them clearly about the reasons and the intent to boycott their products. There is already a global and growing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that provides a framework to build on and support. The judicial dimension: To try all Israeli and other individuals (and the state) for their responsibility for all the crimes (massacres, assassinations, displacement, theft, piracy, murders, rape, kidnapping and more) and flooding the international courts of law and civil rights groups with cases addressing Israeli crimes on all levels. There is a secondary role to this activity which is to direct the world’s attention to the gravity of the various crimes. This should include all institutions that and individuals (even those deceased) who have actively contributed to supporting Zionism so they are recognized for what they are: criminals. There seems to be a need
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here for a central body that can coordinate the efforts of many research and legal groups. All the above-mentioned aspects of nonviolent resistance are at the heart of a dignified, prosperous and humane life. The belief in and practice of these values can never be negative or destructive, but is a positive, value-affirming activity. All efforts need to be directed to the origin of the problem in order to solve it, and the origin here is very clear: Zionism. As for occupation, that is just a symptom. 18 March 2009 Ahmad Hijazi is Lebanese writer and researcher on the Arab-Israeli struggle and the effects of media and international opinion on shaping it. His blog is nth-word.blogspot.com. Source: The Electronic Intifada
INDONESIAN PLURALISM SHOULD BE GUIDED BY PRINCIPLES NOT POLITICS By Irfan Abubakar Muslims in Indonesia have long been accustomed to religious diversity. But such diversity is accepted merely as fact, not as a guiding principle. The future of pluralism in Indonesia is, unfortunately, still determined by political negotiations between religious and state elites, not by principles recognised by all religious followers. Consequently, religious tolerance in Indonesia stands on fragile ground. As a country with more than 17,000 islands, its diversity is not only reflected in its natural resources, but also in the ethnicity, language and religion of its people. Before Buddhism, Islam, Christianity and other world religions arrived in the country, inhabitants had their own belief
systems, which are still practiced in several tribal communities today. To manage this diversity, Indonesia’s founding fathers in 1945 decided on a common platform: Pancasila, which comprises the five core principles of religiosity, humanity, unity, democracy and social justice. These principles govern public life. The significant role of religion in public life is recognised by the first principle, “belief in one supreme God”, but this principle does not uphold any particular religion, even Islam – the religion of the majority – as state ideology. The Indonesian constitution (also written in 1945) ensures the freedom
of every citizen to practice his or her faith. It declares that “the state guarantees all persons the freedom of worship, each according to his/her own religion or belief” (Article 29). However, in practice, the state only guarantees the freedom of certain religions: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism and, more recently, Confucianism. Other religions and local belief systems are not acknowledged as legitimate religions. Even currently recognised faiths were not always so. A ban on Confucianism, which began in 1967, was only lifted in 2000. During President Suharto’s continued next page
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acknowledge the truth of other religions, use reasoning to understand the Qur’an or relegate religion to only private affairs, clearly contradicting the principles of diversity that shape the foundation of Indonesia as a state.
1965-1998 New Order administration – which was dominated by the military and characterised by a weakened civil society – followers of Confucius, and those adhering to local religions, were asked to identify with one of the religions recognised by the government on their national identity card. Since 2006, however, those who follow religions that are not officially recognised by the state are no longer obliged to list one of the staterecognised religions on their identity cards, though they are not yet allowed to list their own particular faith either. Additionally, according to Indonesia’s criminal code, the state has the authority to investigate any groups that are suspected of violating religious doctrines and punish the perpetrators. Investigations are conducted by the Coordinating Team for Monitoring Public Religious Cults and Sects, which comprises various government agencies and religious elites. The lack of synchronicity between the constitution’s ideals and the government’s policies in the past means that post-Suharto administrations have not had a clear policy on the treatment of groups that are considered to be outside of the mainstream, such as the Ahmadiyya, whose members believe the Messiah returned in the 19th century as founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, or the Lia Eden Congregation, a small sect that combines elements of Islam and Christianity. Since 1998, as people began to feel
These examples show that the management of diversity in Indonesia, based on the interest of keeping social harmony, has sacrificed religious freedom and civil rights. comfortable publicly expressing their religious identities, these groups became more visible. Some more mainstream religious groups, claiming to defend orthodoxy, saw their emergence as a threat, often leading to violence as each group tried to maintain their influence. In June 2008, for example, a Muslim vigilante group that claimed to defend Islam led attacks on Indonesian Ahmadiyya communities. Responding to this crisis, the government released a Joint Ministerial Decree from the Minister of Religious Affairs, the General Attorney and the Minister of Home Affairs, prohibiting Ahmadis from spreading their teachings in order to “maintain religious harmony and public order”. Another example of the absence of clear policy is when the government refrained from taking a position on a fatwa, or legal opinion, issued by the Indonesian Ulama Council in 2005 prohibiting Muslims from “following ideas of pluralism, liberalism and secularism”. According to this edict, Muslims are not allowed to
NEW MEDIA: CHANGING
THE By Chandra Muzaffar
Will the new media — from internet to the video-camera — change the world Order? Before we can answer that question, we should ask ourselves: what is wrong with the present world order? The present world order — which is actually in disorder — is characterized by vast iniquities in wealth and power; political authoritarianism; pervasive
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Currently, the parliament is discussing the possibility of revising the criminal code. This is an opportunity for civil society to advocate amending the article allowing for investigation and punishment of groups suspected of violating religious doctrines to protect every citizen from intimidation or violence when it comes to their religious freedom. Genuine social harmony will not be realised by silencing diversity; it can only be attained when the rights of every citizen are upheld and every group is free from religious discrimination. For this to happen, the state must be impartial to religious doctrines. 4 August 2009 Irfan Abubakar is a programme coordinator for conflict resolution and peace studies at the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture (CSRC) at Hidayatullah Islamic University (UIN) in Jakarta. This article is part of a series on pluralism in Muslim-majority countries written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service www.commongroundnews.org
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violence; cultural homogenisation; and ethnic tensions and conflicts. Besides, the monumental crises that confront humankind today, from the environmental crisis to the economic crisis, reflect a world in tumult and turmoil. An objective observer of the global scene will agree that we cannot go on this way. There will have to be
fundamental changes to structures, policies, and indeed, the very values we live by. However, the media by itself — whether new or old — will not be able to bring about the transformation that we yearn for. Fundamental changes are wrought by a variety of forces, often working independently of one continued next page
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continued from page 10 another, sometimes without any inkling of what their modest efforts would lead to in the long run.
Since the global economic crisis, the media, both old and new, mainstream and alternative, has been asking important questions about the situation that we are in today. The old, mainstream media, for instance, has been critical about the lack of regulation of financial markets, the phenomenal incomes of hedge fund operators and currency speculators, the greed of bankers and those who trade in unscrupulous derivatives. Similarly, the mainstream media is asking governments to enhance environmental protection and enforce the demands of environmental impact assessment studies. However, most of the old, mainstream media have not gone as far as segments of the new, alternative media. The latter, in some instances, have challenged contemporary capitalism itself and have called for an honest evaluation of an economic system that is premised upon the unlimited accumulation of wealth by a few and is incapable of delivering justice to the majority. Segments of the new media are convinced that the global economic crisis can only be resolved through the creation of an alternative global economy which emphasises the public good rather than private gain. On the environment, they are espousing not just better laws but a drastic change in the lifestyles of the upper stratum of society — a change which would require the elites to eschew ostentation and extravagance. Why the advocates of change in the new media are far more comprehensive and holistic in their articulation of ideas on the environment and the economy, compared to those who speak through the old media, it is not difficult to fathom. The old media is sometimes encumbered by vested interests which, at the end of the day, want the status quo to be preserved — albeit with some modifications here and there. After all, many mainstream newspapers and
A R T I C L E S in all our faiths, does not figure prominently in the collective mind of contemporary civilization. It is these spiritual and moral principles, our shared heritage as a human family, which the new media has failed to emphasise.
television channels in a number of countries are intimately linked, through ownership, to huge corporations for whom wealth accumulation rules the roost. If it is not ownership by private corporations, it is control by the state. Much of the old media in the Global North and the Global South are directly or indirectly part and parcel of the State bureaucracy which is why they seldom question the status quo. The new media that is committed to change, oftentimes, is not beholden to the rich and the powerful. While there is a lot that is commendable in the positions adopted by the interlocutors of change in the new media, there is also something missing, a vacuum of sorts in their vision. Very few of them have suggested harnessing shared universal spiritual and moral values from the religions of the world to shape an alternative spiritual-moral vision which could be the basis of a just, compassionate world order. Why is such a vision important, nay, imperative, at this juncture of history? Analyse in depth each and every major world crisis today and you will discover that at the root is a fundamental spiritual flaw. If humankind has not accorded enough protection to the environment, it is partly because we no longer recognise the inter-connectedness of all things — an essential principle in all our spiritual philosophies. Similarly, if greed and over-consumption are rampant in the economy, it is partly because we do not value restraint as a cardinal ethic in our lives. This again is a supreme norm in all our religions. By the same token, if so much of our wealth goes into the production of weapons of mass destruction today, it is partly because the sacredness of life, a central axiom
Of course, some of these principles do appear in the discourses of a specific religion — say Buddhism, or Christianity or Islam — in the new media but even these are few and far between. What we are proposing here is the articulation of spiritual and moral principles that belong to, and yet go beyond, particular religions, and are truly universal and inclusive. Only when values and principles are understood and transmitted in this manner will they be perceived, and appreciated, by human beings everywhere as the common property of the human race. Such an approach and perspective has become critical for our very survival as a species because the crises that confront us, transcend religious borders and cultural boundaries. It is hoped that the new media will take up the challenge of presenting this universal spiritual and moral vision on contemporary challenges to the world. New media writers and journalists should not view this proposal as a call to return to religion in the superficial, ritualistic, formalistic sense. Far from it, we are espousing a vision which not only transcends religion, but harnesses the essence of faith for the service of all of humankind, indeed all of creation. New media practitioners, like their counterparts in the old media, should overcome their phobia of the spiritual. For what humankind needs today, more than perhaps anything else, what a just world order demands, is a genuine spiritual revolution. 25 May 2009
The above is a summary of a presentation made at the Asia Media Summit 2009 in Macau, China on 25 May 2009. The Summit was organised by the Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD)
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