Our Man in Annapolis
November 28, 2007
Angry Arab reveals that the overly uncritical coverage of the farce in Annapolis by the Guardian correspondent Ian Black may have to do with the fact that his son serves in the Israeli Occupation army.
And now for some truth: IMEU has two Palestinians reporting on the realities the Guardian and others will not report.
The right to our land must be restored
Fareed Taamallah, IMEU, Nov 27, 2007This week in Annapolis, Maryland the United States government will host a conference between Palestinian and Israeli leaders to launch peace talks on a permanent agreement. A vital component of the peace proposals to be discussed involves exchanges of territory that would allow Israel to keep its West Bank “settlement blocs” while compensating Palestinians with land inside Israel.
Army in Swat
November 28, 2007
The Christian Science Monitor is probably the only quality paper in the US mainstream, but this article on Pakistan is pretty poor. It reports on the deployment of 15,000 Pakistani troops (who have historically excelled in fighting their own people even as they’ve lost every war against the putative adversary — India) to Swat, where they will be combating local militants. Recall that earlier such operations in Waziristan relied on heavy handed, Israeli-style collective punishment which left many innocent civilians dead in their wake.
These operations were carried out with the support of the Pakistani urban liberals while in the NWFP and Baluchistan they have succeeded in generating enormous resentment. It isn’t surprising then that the two English language dailies and a couple of ‘bloggers’ (one of them sitting in Canada) that CSM has chosen all exhibit the same gung-ho appetite for destruction. Like so many other scoundrels, they will fight these wars to the last drop of someone else’s blood. The only conceivable solution lies in dialogue and accommodation. Swat had not history of militancy before Bush’s war of terror was introduced to the region.
Let me advise CSM: next time you want to gauge public sentiment, ask someone who is at least in a 100 mile radius of the conflict zone, and who preferably speaks the language of the people on the receiving end. The ignorant ravings of a pustule with a laptop sitting in Canada are not a substitute for the lived experience of a Swati enduring Busharraf’s war of terror.
Boycott Eden Springs
November 27, 2007
I notice that the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign is kicking necessary ass. “Israeli water firm faces boycott call in Capital”, reports The Scotsman. (For more on Eden Springs’ exploitation of stolen Arab assets, check out SPSC’s website)
AN Israeli water firm could lose its £117,000 contract with the city council after claims it is “pillaging” Syrian natural resources to create profit.
Various groups are calling for a boycott of Eden Springs. It operates in the Golan Heights, a border plateau captured by Israel from Syria in the Six-Day War in 1967.
Spinning Chávez
November 27, 2007
Hugh O’Shaughnessy is a veteran Irish journalist who has been covering Latin America for many years. In the following article he argues that it is precisely because of the successes of Hugo Chávez that Western media and politicians will continue their attempts to discredit him. (Incidentally, it appears that when New Statesman published this article, it for some reason redacted references to the Zionist clown Denis MacShane). (thanks Paulo)
On Sunday 2 December 16 million Venezuelans vote in a referendum: all the signs are that they will approve constitutional reforms proposed by President Hugo Chávez.
Popular as ever for having put a big dent in the shocking gap between rich and poor in an oil-rich country, he wants a chance to bury 19th century Leninist shibboleths, strengthen already rumbustious local democracy and stand for election again.
It is very likely that the electors will give Chávez what he wants: it is certain that spinners in Washington, London and elsewhere will do their best to pull the process to pieces.
America in the Time of Empire
November 27, 2007
While Chalmers Johnson in his last book, Nemesis, argues that the quest for empire may lead to the demise of American Republic, Chris Hedges here warns that the American empire may itself have run its course.
All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance. This rot takes place over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible.Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions. They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless mechanisms of control. They lose the capacity for empathy, which allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a world of accommodation rather than strife. The creeds and noble ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of greater plunder, corruption and violence. By the end, there is only a raw lust for power and few willing to confront it.
Missing in Pakistan
November 27, 2007
An important short documentary on the disappearances in Pakistan. I am saddened that in a country full of exceptionally bright people, this illiterate clown is all the ‘enlightened dictator’ (who, until recently, was a darling of Pakistani liberals) could find for a Minister of Law, Human Rights and Justice. And that other incoherent blob, Aftab Shepao, is a former fugitive from justice, who was invited back from exile in UK by Musharraf after striking a bargain to be subsequently appointed as the Interior Minister. (thanks Ali)
Venezuela’s Bad Example
November 26, 2007
Today’s guest editorial is an important piece on Venezuela by Alberto Cruz of CEPRID. As I have always argued, Venezuela’s greater success has been its foreign policy. (Also check out my friend Teresa’s excellent update on the Bolivian right-wing media’s campaign against Evo Morales)
The Venezuelan political process, that people there describe as Bolivarian, is systematically demonized not just by the bourgeois media but also by some supposed progressives. They tend to focus more on the figure of Chavez than on what that deepening social change means for the great mass of people marginalised and oppressed since independence from the Spanish colonial centre so as to exalt the political, economic — and white — elite. The world is full of cases of dubious leadership — not so Chavez, consistently re-elected and supported by a broad swathe of the Venezuelan people — so the great imperial power and its allies are by no means upset when suspicions are thrown up about the Venezuelan President.
So what is going on then? Well, in Venezuela what is happening is nothing less than the hard expression of a class struggle where although, for the moment, the correlation of forces does not clearly favour the people, at least they enjoy a self-evident equilibrium with the oligarchy. And this struggle transcends the country itself, something capitalists all over the world have grasped, especially opinion makers writing out of preconceived prejudices and stereotypes and often from a clear class position stemming from neo-colonialist habits of mind.
Financial hypocrisy
November 26, 2007
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out that the “contrast between the IMF/US Treasury’s advice during the East Asia crisis and what has happened in the sub-prime debacle is glaring”. Stiglitz’s insider’s view not only confirms Naomi Klein’s disaster capitalism thesis, it also provides rare insights into the whole cynical enterprise of the multilateral financial institutions.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the East Asia crisis, which began in Thailand on July 2, 1997, and spread to Indonesia in October and to Korea in December. Eventually, it became a global financial crisis, embroiling Russia and Latin American countries, such as Brazil, and unleashing forces that played out over the ensuing years: Argentina in 2001 may be counted as among its victims.
There were many other innocent victims, including countries that had not even engaged in the international capital flows that were at the root of the crisis. Indeed, Laos was among the worst-affected countries. Though every crisis eventually ends, no one knew at the time how broad, deep, and long the ensuing recessions and depressions would be. It was the worst global crisis since the Great Depression.
Lebanon’s Controlled chaos
November 26, 2007
“Amid a dangerous political vacuum in Lebanon, American tactics against Hizbullah resemble those directed against Hamas in Gaza” argues Karim Makdisi in his astute analysis of the developments in Lebanon. It should be noted that military aid has been one of the trusted mechanisms of co-optation in US arsenal.
At midnight on Friday, Lebanon entered the uncharted waters of a constitutional crisis as the outgoing President Emile Lahoud‘s term ended without the appointment of a successor. Earlier in the day, the scheduled meeting of parliament to elect a new president was postponed for the fifth time, this time to November 30, amidst an opposition boycott that prevented the two-thirds quorum required by the constitution.Lebanon has now entered what is being called “controlled chaos”, a precarious phase in which leaders of both the pro-US March 14 coalition and the opposition have pledged to intensify the search for a consensus presidential candidate over the coming week while toning down the provocative political rhetoric and sectarian venom that has featured so prominently in recent months. This deal has prevented, or at least postponed for now, what most Lebanese fear most: civil unrest which could lead to yet another war. The dangers remain very real amidst claims by the more extreme elements within the March 14 group that they retain the right to elect a president even in the absence of the two-thirds quorum – something the opposition claims will provoke conflict.
The Absurd World of Martin Amis
November 26, 2007
A brilliant caustic piece by Chris Morris, where he pricks the inflated egos of two of the world’s three renowned Islamic scholars, Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens (the third being Tony Blair). (Thanks Sabaa)
No matter that they act like senile 12-year-olds on the Today programme website – smoking illegal fags to look tough and cool. No matter that Amis coins truly abominable terms like ‘the age of horrorism’ and when criticised tells people to ‘fuck off’. Surely we all chuckle at the strenuous ennui of his salon drawl. Didn’t he once accidentally sneer his face off? His ‘insight’ about Mohammed Atta involved pretending the hijacker was constipated for six months – brilliantly smuggling into our subconscious that idea that Atta was ‘full of shit’. He abandoned his satire on terrorism in which a Muslim unleashes mass rape on America because ‘faced with Islamism, even satire withers and dies’, not because his idea was obviously rubbish.
Despite his manifest absurdity (he called the World Trade Centre attacks ‘edificide’ and the towers’ destruction an ‘apocollapse’), people take him seriously and if they do then we must.
