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Iraq reconstruction ‘has failed’

December 14, 2008
Al Jazeera, Dec 14, 2008

The report quotes Powell as alleging that Iraqi troop numbers were inflated by defence officials [AFP]

The US-led force’s $100bn effort to rebuild Iraq has failed amid bureaucratic quarrels, ignorance of Iraqi society and violence in the country, the New York Times says, quoting a US federal report.

The newspaper said on its website on Saturday that it had obtained a draft copy of Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience, which is circulating among senior officials.

The report was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is led by Stuart Bowen Jr, a Republican lawyer.

In the report, Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, alleges that after the 2003 invasion the US defence department kept inflating figures on the number of Iraqi security forces on the ground.

The defence department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces – the number would jump 20,000 a week! We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000”, he is quoted as saying in the draft report.

The report says that Powell’s view was supported by Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the most senior ground troops officer in Iraq, and Paul Bremer, who was the civilian administrator before the Iraqi government takeover in June 2004.

It concludes that the US government does not have the policies or the organisational structure required to put the largest reconstruction programme since the Marshall Plan into place, the newspaper reported.

Cronyism alleged

The rebuilding effort did not go beyond restoring what was destroyed during the invasion and its immediate aftermath, the newspaper cited the draft report as saying.

By mid-2008, the report says, $117bn had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including about $50bn in US taxpayer money.

In one example, an official at the US Agency for International Development (USAID)was given four hours to work out how many miles of Iraqi roads needed to be repaired, the Times said.

The official’s estimate came from documents in USAID’s library and was then submitted into a master plan.

Furthermore, funding for a large amount of Iraqi reconstruction projects was divided up among local politicians and tribal leaders, according to the New York Times.

“Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources,” it quotes one US embassy official in Baghdad as saying.

“You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.'”

Political lobbying

The report also pointed to political manoeuvring in the US, highlighting an example where a Republican lobbyist working for the US occupation authority called on the Office of Management and Budget to fund $20bn in new reconstruction money in August 2003.

“To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the president [George Bush],” Tom Korologos, the lobbyist, said, according the report.

“[Bush’s] election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt,” the draft quoted Korologos as saying.

The Bush administration supported Korologos’ request and the US congress allocated the money later that year.

The draft report is based on about 500 interviews and more than 600 audits, inspections and investigations undertaken in Iraq over several years.

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Nearly 1 billion of world’s people face chronic hunger

December 13, 2008
By Oliver Richard , WSWS.org, 13 December 2008

The number of undernourished people in the world has increased from 923 million in 2007 to 963 million in 2008. This disturbing figure comes from a report on world hunger released on December 9 by the Rome-based UN Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), entitled The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008.

The report notes that the number of chronically hungry people rose by 75 million in 2007, while the 2008 figure shows an increase of 40 million. The recent increase in the number of hungry people has been exacerbated by high food prices, especially in developing countries.

In a news release on the FAO web site, FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem underscored the difficulties being faced by people in the developing world:

“For millions of people in developing countries, eating the minimum amount of food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality.”

The report is the ninth in a series that began in 1996 at the World Food Summit (WFS), which set up the goal of halving world hunger by 2015. While the WFS called for the number of hungry people to decline by 50 percent, the UN’s Millennium Development Goal (MGD) has set a target to cut in half the proportion of those suffering malnutrition.

Given the upsurge in food prices and other problems, it will continue to be difficult to achieve either goal by 2015. With the increase to 963 million hungry people, it would be necessary to reduce the number of hungry people by about 480 million. And, while the proportion of undernourished people (the MDG measurement) had been decreasing, from 20 percent in 1990-92 to 16 percent in 2003-05, it appears that this progress is being reversed, moving back up to about 17 percent.

The distribution of undernourished people in the world is largely concentrated in the developing world, although there were 16 million undernourished persons in developed countries in 2003-2005. Among the 832 million chronically hungry persons in 2003-2005, 65 percent were concentrated in India, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia.

In sub-Saharan Africa, while the proportion of people who are chronically hungry was reduced between the early 1990s and 2003-2005, one in three persons still remains undernourished. However, most of the numerical increase in the undernourished has come from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has suffered from a persistent conflict resulting in an increase from 11 million to 43 million chronically hungry people.

While South America has been one of the most successful sub-regions in reducing hunger, this success has not been uniform throughout the Latin American and Caribbean region. In Haiti, for example, 58 percent of the population suffers from chronic hunger.

The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have had a direct, negative impact on levels of undernourishment in the Near East and North Africa regions, which have generally experienced some of the lowest levels of undernourishment. The number of chronically hungry undernourished persons in the region nearly doubled, from 15 million in 1990-92 to 28 million in 2003-2005. This number has increased by 4.9 million in Afghanistan, and by 4.1 million in Iraq.

While there has been some modest progress in Asia and the Pacific regions, “nearly two-thirds of the world’s hungry people still live in Asia,” according to the FAO report.

Since 1992, barely a third of the developing countries have been able to reduce the number of those suffering from chronic hunger. The findings show that those hardest hit by increases in food prices were the poor, the landless, and female-headed households.

Low-income families are more likely to be “net food buyers,” or households that consume a higher value of food staples than the value they produce, who stand to lose from an increase in the price of food staples.

While landowners are in a good position to gain from food price increases, the report notes, “Across the board, high food prices hit landless households hardest.”

Female-headed households will also suffer proportionally more than male-headed households. This is due to female-headed households’ tendency to spend a higher proportion of income on food, heightening the impact of food price increases, and the gender-specific obstacles that women face, which may restrict their access to certain resources such as land and credit.

Facing higher food prices, households may try to cope by changing the quality, quantity, and diversity of foods eaten, or make cuts in other areas such as health care and education. The first strategy results in malnutrition and higher risks of deficiencies in essential micronutrients, especially among women and children.

The story of Drissa Kone, living in Côte d’Ivoire, illustrates some of the problems that arise as individuals attempt to save money on medicine. Suffering from a severe respiratory infection, he has turned to counterfeit medicines, which sell for a fraction of the price of legitimate medicines but are of questionable quality and may even further harm his health.

The FAO has analyzed the key determinants of countries’ vulnerability to high food prices: whether they are net importers of energy products and cereals, relative levels of poverty, and prevalence of undernourishment. The report discusses the diverse number of ways in which a food crisis can arise, resulting from both natural and man-made disasters.

Natural disasters can be classified by whether they are “slow onset” or “sudden onset.” While slow onset disasters, such as droughts, have constituted the majority of natural disasters, sudden onset disasters, such as hurricanes or earthquakes, increased from 14 percent of all natural disasters in the 1980s to 27 percent in 2000.

According to the FAO, man-made disasters include both war or conflict and socio-economic shocks that may be internal or external. War has been the primary cause of man-made disasters, although disasters arising from socio-economic shocks have risen from 2 percent in the 1980s to 27 percent in 2000.

As the WSWS wrote in a three-part series, “The world food crisis and the capitalist market,” the sources of the current food crisis “lie in economic and political processes of privatization and price speculation that have unfolded over the past three decades and are bound up with the globalization of capitalist agriculture.”

The world is presently reeling from a gigantic “socio-economic shock,” in the form of a developing global financial crisis, which will inevitably exacerbate the world hunger crisis, as millions of people find themselves jobless, homeless, and are thrust deeper into poverty.

That nearly 1 billion people are suffering from hunger is yet another testament to the irrational allocation of resources under capitalism. As the foreword to the report notes: “Hunger has increased as the world has grown richer and produced more food than ever in the last decade.”

While the capitalist mode of production has revolutionized the productive forces, developing the capacity to feed every person on earth and eliminate hunger, the social relations of production have become a fetter upon the realization of this goal. The FAO’s The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 documents the devastating impact of the growth of social inequality—in the form of chronic hunger—on large numbers of the world’s population.

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An Israeli in Gaza

December 13, 2008

An Interview with Jeff Halper

By FRANK BARAT | Counterpunch,  Dec 12 / 14, 2008

Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He is the author of An Israeli in Palestine. He lives in Gaza.

You recently took part in the Free Gaza movement and successfully reached Gaza by boat with others activists, journalists and human rights workers from around the globe. How did you get involved in such an initiative and why was it important for you to take part?

As an Israeli and the head of an Israeli peace organization (ICAHD – The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions), I was asked by the Free Gaza Movement organizers to take part in their action to Break the Siege of Gaza by sailing two boats from Cyprus to Gaza City port. I agreed because this was a non-violent political action; breaking the siege and by implication highlighting Israel’s responsibility for it (which it tries to shrug) fit into ICAHD’s mission, to end the Israeli Occupation completely. Had this been defined as a humanitarian mission I would not have participated, since the so-called “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza is not the result of some natural calamity, but of a deliberate policy of Israel – plus the US, Europe and Japan, it must be said, and aided by Egypt – to break the will of the Palestinians to resist and to replace the democratically elected government of Hamas by a collaborationist regime more amenable to Israeli control.

What was the goal of this initiative and has it been reached?

The goal of this initiative, as I mentioned, was to break the Israeli and international siege on Gaza – although we were careful not to disconnect Gaza from the wider Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, of which it is a part. In an important sense we succeeded. One successful action gives tremendous hope and encouragement to the people the world over that civil society initiatives can shame governments to relent and even change policy, as well as express solidarity with oppressed people. But in order to genuinely break the siege, regular boat traffic must be established. In that we have partially succeeded. So far five FGM boats have reached Gaza (the last one on December 9th, as I write this), although a Libyan ship was turned away and a boat of Palestinian-Israeli parliament members was prevented from sailing. I am in the midst of a campaign, with European supporters, to organize maritime trade unions in ports around the Mediterranean to express solidarity with Gaza, which hadn’t seen a foreign vessel in 40 years before ours arrived. One of our goals is that on appointed day in the spring or summer one or more boats will depart to Gaza from every port on the Mediterranean. Imagine what a scene, what a gesture of solidarity and resistance that would be!

As an Israeli Jew, what type of welcome did you get from the Gazans? Did you meet anyone from Hamas?

We all received a tremendous welcome from the Palestinian Gazans – 40,000 came out to greet us as we entered the port! As, unfortunately, the only Israeli Jew (two more have since sailed to Gaza), I was sought out by Gazans who wanted to communicate with me – in Hebrew – how much they yearned for a just peace in which all the inhabitants of the country could live together in peace. I was struck by how non-political their discourse was. No accusations, no political programs, just a deep desire to get beyond this superfluous conflict to a life good for everyone. This, it seems to me, is a solid foundation upon which a just peace can be built.

I was invited for dinner with Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian Prime Minister from the Hamas party, together with the rest of our group. I decided not to attend so as not to deflect the public discussion, especially in Israel, from our action’s main focus, breaking the siege, to side issues such as the connection of the Israeli peace camp to Hamas. This is just what the Israeli authorities would have wanted: a discussion over my attending a Hamas dinner instead of over its own responsibility for Palestinian suffering and oppression. I refused to play into their hands. Nonetheless, I am proud to note that I received Palestinian citizenship, including a passport, from the Palestinian government.

Continued >>

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Riding the atheist bus

December 13, 2008

Thanks to the inspiration of our friends in Britain, we’ve started our own atheist bus ad campaign in Washington DC

American Humanist Association)

An advertisement from the American Humanist Association on a bus in Washington DC. (Photograph: American Humanist Association)

It’s a simple question: “Why not try Jesus?” Equally simple is an opposite: “Why believe in a god?” Yet in the United States the first question is widely viewed as positive, or at least ordinary, while the second can be perceived as offensive and even hate speech.

This difference in reaction can’t result from the structure of the statements. They’re the same. Nor can it be the tone. Nope, it’s just the message. Americans think it’s good to believe in a god and bad not to. Furthermore, it’s good to tell everyone about your belief but bad to be just as open about nonbelief or doubt – especially during the winter holiday season.

Clearly, American nontheists can’t get a break.

We in the American Humanist Association found this out first hand when we launched our Washington DC advertising campaign on November 11 with the slogan “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” The venue was the sides, rears and insides of 230 of the city’s buses. News coverage of the campaign generated an outpouring of phone calls and e-mails, mostly negative. The largest number came directly to us but hundreds of complaints also came to Metro, the government entity that handles the city’s buses and subways. One of the complainers expressed a wish (or perhaps a prayer): “May all your atheist buses break down!”

The sudden high volume of visitors to our special campaign website www.whybelieveinagod.org crashed our server twice. Soon, the conservative talkshow hosts were clamouring to give us air time so they could argue against us and further rouse their audience. And conservative Christian organisations not only denounced our efforts but encouraged their flocks to come bleat in our ears. All this before our bus ads actually started to appear one week later. By the beginning of December we’d received 37,742 hits on our campaign website, logged 638 new members and received over $6,000 in new contributions.

American Humanist Association) An ad from the American Humanist Association inside a bus in Washington DC. (Photograph: American Humanist Association) Now, it seems, we have a couple of competitors. The primary one, a local Catholic stay-at-home mother of four, decided to launch a counter campaign: same types of bus advertisements, same number of buses, same topic. Her slogan? “Why believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness’ sake.” The sentiment is signed, “God”. The second competitor, Pennsylvania Friends of Christ, announced an ad on 10 buses that will read, “Believe in God. Christ is Christmas for goodness sake.”

This led to more newspaper stories and interviews on radio and television. So much so that the company that handles bus advertising for Metro asked us this week if we would be so kind as to quantify all our results for them so they can inform would-be clients just how effective bus ads can be!

If all this buzz sounds a little familiar, it’s because it is. Back in October a story in the Guardian went global about the Atheist Bus Campaign in London. The planned adverts, written by comedy writer and Guardian contributor Ariane Sherine, were designed to read: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” This was in reaction to a widely run Christian campaign threatening unbelievers with hellfire. The British Humanist Association agreed to handle the financial contributions for this effort and was able to raise a whopping £120,402 in the first month. Yet none of the adverts have actually appeared on buses, being slated to hit the streets in January.

Naturally, this excitement affected those of us planning promotional efforts for the American Humanist Association. We’d been trying to work up a splashy advertising campaign for Washington DC buses since July but hadn’t figured out an ad slogan we really liked. So, when the news hit about the London plans, it became for us like an inspiration, a revelation – dare I say, a miracle?

We accelerated our work, experimenting with a range of slogans, until finally settling on the one. Then we contracted for the ad space, designed and printed the signs, bought display ads in the New York Times and Washington Post, and the rest followed.

The media is still heated up. There’s more to come. But we pause amid the flurry and fury to reach our hands across the pond in gratitude and solidarity with our likeminded friends in the UK. The work of each enhances that of the other as we both let millions of atheists, agnostics and humanists know there are others like them and organisations to serve their needs and advance their ideals.

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Understanding Imperialism

December 12, 2008
Sandra Bloodworth | Socialist Alternative

“I will never apologise for the United States.

I don’t care what the facts are.”

George Bush the First in 1988 when a US missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people.

“We think the price is worth it.”

Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, in December 1996 when it was reported that UN sanctions had killed 576,000 Iraqi children under the age of five.

Today, in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” – hope-laden words – as many as 250,000 Iraqis lie dead, Iraqis and Afghanis live with the brutality of military occupation by the US and it allies and over 20,000 US soldiers are dead or maimed.

In a world where facts are irrelevant, and language is used as if we are living in a never-ending mad hatter’s party, the protests of millions keep alive some sense of human sanity. However, if we are to not just protest, but begin to challenge the source of the barbarity, we need to understand what we are up against.

The idea that Bush is a homicidal maniac surrounded by greedy bastards is appealing. But it implies we just need well-intentioned politicians and business people. As the Indian writer and activist Arundati Roy  said: “It’s true that [George Bush the Second] is a dangerous, almost suicidal pilot, but the machine he handles is far more dangerous than the man himself.”

Understanding that machine provides us with the tools we need to disable it.

Capitalism breeds war

Two Russian revolutionaries – Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin – explained why war is an inevitable result of capitalism when they analysed the causes of World War I.

Capitalism is a system of competition, but there is an inbuilt contradiction: successful companies buy up those that go broke, getting ever bigger. Lenin wrote: “Marx had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly.” Ever-bigger capitalist corporations combine in cartels to keep rivals out of the market. Just think of OPEC, the modern cartel of oil exporting states. Their website sums it up: “OPEC’s mission is to … ensure the stabilisation of oil prices in order to secure … a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital to those investing in the petroleum industry.”

By the twentieth century, giant corporations had developed interests extending beyond the borders of their national state. They struggle to out-compete each other in an increasingly integrated world market (called globalisation today). Microsoft, Shell, Nike, BHP-Billiton are typical.

However, contrary to many anti-globalisation theories today, we are not just confronted with marauding multinational corporations. National states have to control “spheres of influence” in order to maximise access to raw materials, markets for goods and investment, trade routes and the like for their multinational corporations. They may use economic and political means, but “the mutual relations of those states – [are] in the final analysis the relations between their military forces”.

Lenin and Bukharin concluded that imperialism – the competition between powerful nations to dominate areas of the globe – defines modern capitalism and this makes war inevitable.

Twentieth century imperialism

As Lenin and Bukharin predicted, World War I did not end the drive to war; it only laid the basis for a further re-division of the world between the major powers. World War II was an imperialist war, not a war for democracy. “War for democracy” – sounds eerily familiar doesn’t it? That’s because the machine was the same – only the drivers were different.

The war ended with a new re-partitioning of the world – by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. The Cold War after 1945 was a stand-off between two new superpowers, the Stalinist USSR and the US. The massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction by both sides were justified by the lies that capitalism was defending freedom from the tyranny of communism, and conversely, that the “workers’ states” – which were in reality state-run capitalist states – were a bastion against vile capitalism. It finally ended when this madness brought on the collapse of the USSR’s imperialist bloc between 1989 and 1991.

However, the inbuilt contradictions of capitalism gave rise to a new balance of power. The lunacy of wasting billions of dollars on more than enough nuclear weapons to blow the earth away sustained the longest economic boom ever. Germany and Japan, forbidden to re-arm, gained an economic advantage, riding on the back of the boom to modernise their economies without the burden of military spending. By the end of the long boom in the mid-1970s, the US was no longer the supreme economic power it had been.

The dominance of the US ruling class rested more on military than economic might. Increasingly they needed to send a message to other rising powers such as China, Japan or a united Europe that the US could and would take on any states that challenged its status as the world’s superpower. But the defeat in Vietnam undermined US confidence.

When Saddam Hussein, their former bully boy in the Middle East, looked too independent, they seized the opportunity, not to rid the world of the “new Hitler” as they proclaimed in 1991, but to strike a blow for their future. “Humanitarian” interventions in places such as the Balkans and Somalia were used to put the “Vietnam syndrome” behind them. And they bamboozled even some on the left into believing US might could be humane.

The War of Terror

The supposed “war on terror” is nothing more than the US ruling class’s drive to shore up their empire. Saddam and Al Qaeda are just a convenient pretext for US military bases in the strategic Middle East and Afghanistan, a corridor for supplies of natural gas and oil from Central Asia.

But much more than control of that strategic commodity is at stake. It is about an increasingly belligerent capitalist class who rely on military might to prevent a challenge to their power. Bases in Afghanistan complete the encirclement of China, a potential rival. And the wars demonstrate the barbarity the US is willing to unleash.

Nuclear war – the logic of imperialism

Bush’s drive towards a nuclear strike against Iran is, from the point of view of the US rulers, not madness, but the most reliable way to ensure they remain top imperialist dog.

Australia, as a middle-ranking power, allies itself with the US as a central part of its own imperialist drive to dominate the area regarded as “our own backyard”. Howard and Australia’s capitalists want to go down the nuclear road because it gives them an entry into the nuclear imperialist club. Even if Australian capitalists are only minor players, they’re increasingly flexing their muscles on “their” block. And they have enough uranium to make themselves indispensable to that club.

During the Cold War even many on the left argued that nuclear weapons threatened all of humanity, so at least some capitalists could be anti-war allies. But capitalists take risks all the time. Short term gain far outweighs long term risks, and certainly wins out over humanitarianism.

How can we stop war?

Once we recognise that wars are inevitable in capitalist society, it follows that we can’t rely on parliamentary parties that want to run this system. The US Democrats, in the midst of a massive anti-war campaign, ran a pro-war candidate for President in 2004. The ALP government enthusiastically sent troops to the Persian Gulf in 1991. Even the Greens, who use anti-war rhetoric, don’t consistently campaign to mobilise demonstrations against war, and they actually support the use of imperialist Australian troops to interfere in states in “our neighbourhood”. The German Greens campaigned for years against war and the nuclear industry. Once in government, they attacked anti-nuke campaigners and sent troops to bomb the Balkans in the mid 1990s.

To end the wars we will have to build a movement that mobilises the strength of the mass of people to demonstrate, strike and organise so that governments and bosses know they will have no peace while they occupy, bomb or exploit other countries. That movement needs to be implacably opposed to imperialism, fighting every deployment of imperialist troops, whatever the “justification”.

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US Drone Strike Kill Seven in South Waziristan

December 12, 2008

Missile Hit a House Near a Madrasa

Antiwar.com, December 11, 2008

A US drone struck a South Waziristan village today, killing seven militants according to Pakistani officials. Most of those killed were reportedly Punjabis, but the officials speculated that foreigners may also be among the dead.

The details of the attack, the second US drone attack this month, are difficult to ascertain as local militants have surrounded the destroyed house and are not letting officials get close to it. The US has launched over 30 such attacks in North and South Waziristan over the past few months as part of its “gloves have come off” strategy.

Pakistan’s government has condemned the strikes publicly, but is reported to have privately reached a “tacit agreement” with the United States regarding them. Pakistan has also claimed it is considering shooting down the drones, but once again there is no indication that they made any effort to do so.

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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Senators accuse Rumsfeld over abuse of detainees

December 12, 2008

A US Senate committee has accused the former defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, of being directly responsible for the abusive interrogations of detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

After an 18-month investigation, the Senate’s armed services committee concluded that Rumsfeld’s approval of aggressive interrogation methods in December 2002 was a direct cause of abuses that began in Guantánamo and spread to Afghanistan and Iraq. They culminated in the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2003, where Iraqi detainees were found to have been forced into naked pyramids, sexually humiliated and threatened by dogs.

The Bush administration insisted the abuses had been the result of a few “bad apples” and that those responsible would be held accountable. The committee found neither those statements to be true.

“The abuses at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo [Guantánamo] and elsewhere cannot be chalked up to the actions of a few bad apples,” said the Democratic chair of the committee, Carl Levin. “Attempts by senior officials to portray that to be the case while shrugging off any responsibility are both unconscionable and false.”

No other congressional report has pointed the finger of blame so squarely at Bush and his senior advisers.

In hearings in June and September, the committee heard testimony that allowed it to piece together the chronology of events leading up to the Abu Ghraib abuses. It focused its attentions on Sere, a training system used to prepare US soldiers for aggressive interrogations so that they might endure if captured overseas.

The techniques were never intended to be used by US interrogators against their detainees. But in February 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bush determined that the Geneva Conventions should not apply to terror suspects.

Following that ruling, techniques used in Sere training were applied against US detainees, and Rumsfeld gave his approval that December.

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RIGHTS: Politics Still Reign Over Principles at U.N.

December 11, 2008

By Thalif Deen | Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 10 (IPS) – The United Nations Wednesday commemorated the 60th anniversary of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) against the backdrop of widespread political repression — most notably in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Burma (Myanmar), Iraq, Afghanistan and in the Israeli-occupied territories of West Bank and Gaza.

But a sharply divided Security Council has remained politically impotent against continued atrocities worldwide, in violation of humanitarian law and international conventions, including the UDHR.

Andrew Hudson, a senior associate with the Human Rights Defenders Programme at Human Rights First, singled out U.N. member states, primarily Security Council members, “who have frequently failed to prevent or address gross violations of the UDHR.”

The United Nations, he said, should redouble its efforts to demonstrate that the human rights contained in the UDHR are universal and allow for translation into specific local contexts.

“The new Universal Periodic Review mechanism at the Human Rights Council demonstrates that the UDHR applies universally to all states,” he stressed.

The U.N. human rights system should engage in objective, impartial and universal evaluation of the human rights records of all states, Hudson told IPS.

More recently, at a political level, the Security Council has remained deadlocked because of the partisan role of the five veto-wielding permanent members.

The United States, France and Britain have continued to protect Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan while Russia and China continue to shield Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma (Myanmar) against any strictures or sanctions for human rights violations.

Article 1 of the UDHR, which was adopted by the General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948, states that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

But in reality human rights abuses are increasingly becoming the norm in most developing nations. And in developed countries, including the United States and Britain, violations are being justified in the name of fighting terrorism.

Speaking at a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the UDHR on Wednesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “We see human trafficking, the exploitation of children, and a host of other ills plaguing millions of people,” he added.

The “host of other ills”, according to human rights organisations, includes torture, disappearances, extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detention, surveillance, defamation and administrative and judicial harassment. The victims also include journalists and human rights defenders.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters that tens of millions of people around the world are still unaware that they have rights that they can demand, and that their governments are accountable to them, to a wide-ranging body of rights-based national and international law.

“Despite all our efforts over the past 60 years, this anniversary will pass many people by, and it is essential that we keep up the momentum, thereby enabling more and more people to stand up and claim their rights,” she added.

Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the San Francisco-based Oakland Institute, pointed out the failure of nation states and governments in fulfilling their obligation to ensure human rights for all.

For instance, she said, in the United States, where homelessness, hunger and poverty — particularly among children and seniors — abound, it is the failure of the government to fulfill its obligation to its people.

“The United Nations could have done more in terms of emphasising the relevance of human rights treaties, insisting on these treaties taking precedence over, say, trade agreements or other social economic policies that might conflict with human rights of people,” Mittal told IPS.

Asked where the United Nations has succeeded or failed in helping implement the UDHR, Julie Gromellon of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) told IPS the objective of the founders of the U.N. to add a human dimension to international law through the UDHR has become a reality.

She said international law, and especially the UDHR, has become an important tool to promote respect for and observance of human rights.

The Universal Declaration has also served as a starting point for further standard-setting activities through eight core human rights conventions, whose implementation is monitored by so-called treaty bodies, a more advanced system of supervision.

In this framework, the United Nations has contributed to the recognition of the accountability of all states for compliance with their human rights obligations as laid down in the UDHR, she added.

But important lacunae need to be filled to implement the UDHR. States should be continuously urged by the U.N. to ratify all relevant international human rights treaties and to accept and implement the supervisory procedures.

In particular, they should be urged to ratify the relevant individual complaint procedures, Gromellon added.

She also said the crucial role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should be recognised by the U.N. “They have contributed in a most significant way to the development and enforcement of the international human rights system,” she noted.

And such organisations should also be given a consultative status with other organisations, including the international financial institutions and the World Trade Organisation.

Rob Wheeler of the World Alliance for Transforming the U.N. said the United Nations, in failing to ensure that all people’s rights are met, is actually violating several articles of its own founding Charter.

“We thus urge the United Nations to organise and hold a U.N. Charter Review Conference, under Article 109 of the Charter, in order to determine what can and must be done to ensure that the charter is upheld and that all people’s most basic human rights are indeed provided and met,” he said.

Unfortunately, he said, most of the provisions included in the Universal Declaration have still not been met even after 60 years — 830 million people still do not have enough food to eat, 1.1 billion lack access to clean water, 2.6 billion to basic sanitation, and 2.0 billion to essential drugs.

Hudson of Human Rights First said that the United Nations, especially the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has played a critical role in education, outreach and awareness-raising about the universality of the UDHR.

“However, U.N. member states fail to implement aspects of the UDHR by suggesting that human rights do not acknowledge cultural difference — a specious argument used to avoid human rights scrutiny,” Hudson told IPS.

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The Kashmir issue and the violence in the Indian subcontinent

December 10, 2008

Nasir Khan, December 8, 2008

Almost the whole world has condemned the Mumbai attacks of November 2008. Such terrorism has also, once again, reminded us how important it is to combat the forces of communalist terror and political violence in the Indian subcontinent. But what is often ignored or suppressed is the fact that there are deep underlying causes of the malaise that erupts in the shape of such violent actions; the unresolved Kashmir issue happens to be the one prime cause that inflames the passions and anger of millions of people.

However, to repeat the mantra of “war on terror” as the Bush Administration has done over the last eight years while planning and starting major wars of aggression does not bring us one inch closer to solving the problem of violence and terror in our region. On the contrary, such short-sighted propaganda gimmicks are meant to camouflage the wars of aggression and lay the ground for further violence and bloodshed. The basic motive is to advance imperial interests and domination. The so-called “war on terror” is no war against terror; on the contrary, it has been the continuation of the American imperial policy for its definite goals in the Middle East and beyond. Obviously any serious effort to combat terror will necessarily take into account the causes of terror, and not merely be content with the visible symptoms.

The unresolved issue of Kashmir has kept India and Pakistan on a dangerous course of confrontation since 1947, when the British raj came to an end and as a last act of charity to their subjects the imperial rulers agreed to divide India along communal lines that was to prove a Pandora’s box for the coming generations. We had witnessed their double-dealings in the process when they gave their blessings and patronage here and there and a lot of mischief wherever possible especially while they drew the boundaries between the two emerging countries. The recipients of favours reciprocated in kind: the last viceroy Lord Mountbatten was made the first Governor-General of Free India! This carefully crafted expedient arrangement served its purpose well for one country at the cost of the other.

At the time of partition, the princely State of Jammu and Kashmir was ruled by the Hindu Dogra ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh who was the great-grandson of Gulab Singh, to whom the British, under the terms of the Treaty of Amritsar (1846) had sold the entire valley of Kashmir. Because the overwhelming majority of Kashmir was Muslim, it was thought that Kashmir would  join the new state of Pakistan. When the Kashmiris from what came to be  known  as Azad Kashmir and the tribal fighters from the North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan started a guerilla offensive on the state to bring pressure on Hari Singh to join Pakistan, he asked Lord Mountbatten for help, who agreed to give military help if the ruler joined India. Thus started the first war between India and Pakistan that finally stopped in 1949 when the newly-formed United Nations Organization arranged a ceasefire. The Line of Control was established that has remained the de facto boundary between the Indian-controlled Kashmir and ‘Azad’ (Free) Jammu and Kashmir (but called Pakistan-occupied Kashmir by the Indians).

To affect a ceasefire, in 1948, India took the matter to the Security Council of the United Nations against Pakistan. As a result the Security Council passed three resolutions in 1948 and 1949 that also acknowledged the rights of the people of Kashmir about whose land the two countries were fighting . According to the resolutions, India and Pakistan were to hold plebiscite in Kashmir so that the people could decide their own future. The Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru promised that the people of Jammu and Kashmir would gain independence when the peace was restored. After the end of the hostilities, he did not keep his word; neither were the terms of the resolutions ever fulfilled. The Indian government granted a special status to Kashmir that allowed more internal autonomy. This was thought to pacify the people when Kashmir’s ruler joined India. But the promise to hold plebiscite was not kept and the successive Indian governments have adamantly held that Kashmir is an integral part of India, and all demands of the Kashmiri people for plebiscite or defying Indian occupation were presented as internal Indian matters. No third party was allowed to speak on behalf of the Kashmiri people or voice their legitimate demands under the UN Charter or the UN resolutions. Meanwhile India and Pakistan fought over Kashmir another war in 1965.

The grievances of Kashmiris had accumulated over the decades. Kashmiris challenged the legitimacy of the Indian occupation and in 1989 they started armed struggle to evict the occupiers. Mass arrests, disappearances and violence followed in the wake of the military crackdown. India deployed more than 500,000 soldiers to suppress the Kashmiri Muslims.

According to conservative accounts Indian forces killed about 78,000 people and  brutalized the whole population, but the Kashmiri sources put the number of those killed  around 100,000. In this militant struggle, Kashmiri Hindu minority, the Pandits, also became the victims insurgents; according to the state government over 200,000 fled the valley. They sought refuge in Jammu and some fled to India. The conditions under which the Pandits have lived since their displacement have been deplorable. But it is heartening to see that all sections of Kashmiri Muslims and their leadership are now pleading for the return of their Hindu brothers to their homeland.

After 18 years of brutal military occupation, the Indian government was faced with a new situation. The Kashmir Jehad Council called for an end to armed struggle and instead appealed to all militant freedom-fighters to use only non-violent and peaceful means to achieve liberation from India. The call for Azadi (freedom) is getting louder which the Indian machine guns and their marauding forces are not able to drown. But the Indian rulers have shown little willingness to listen to the people and have kept a tight military stranglehold over the Kashmir Valley.

The Kashmir conflict has caused untold misery and destruction in Kashmir, both in life and property. It has also been the key cause of tension between India and Pakistan as rivals. The tremendous drain of resources incurred by the two countries on military buildup and arms-race including the acquisition of nuclear bombs is a result of their confrontation over Kashmir. The official propaganda each government has directed against the other created enmity, distrust and hatred in the respective populations of these countries against their “mortal enemy”. This has gone on for over six decades and there is no end in sight. This has poisoned the minds of Indian and Pakistani people. As a result we see political polarization and perennial tensions amongst the people that stand in the way of settling the issues like Kashmir and the normalization of relations between the two neighbours. In addition, another ghastly development has been the rise of political and religious extremism in India and Pakistan.

The growth of religious and political extremism in India and Pakistan is not new. But what is new is the general acceptance of extremist tendencies in the social and political fabric of the two countries. The preachers and high priests of communalism and hatred influence the mainstream politics.

In India, some political parties have been closely allied with communalist militant political Hinduism or Hindutva. The Sangha Parivar is the umbrella organization for all Hindutva parties. The avowed aim of Hindutva has been to assert Hindu supremacy and Hindu communalism in India by identifying India with Hinduism and Hindu rule. Hindutva organizations are influenced by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which stands for a Hindu majoritarian rule. The Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) is the leading political party of India that stands for Hindutva doctrine and Hinduising the entire country. Jawaharlal Nehru had once warned that if fascism would arrive in India, it would arrive in the form of majoritarian (Hindu) communalism. His words and warning were almost prophetic.

Of course, the main targets of Hindutva have been the Indian Muslims in the first place, followed by low-caste Hindus–formerly “Untouchables” (!) and now called Dalits–, and Christians. Over 150-million Indian Muslims are a religious minority in India. Since the unfortunate circumstances that led to the partition of India in 1947, Indian Muslims have come under enormous pressure. They have gradually found themselves at the mercy of Hindus, politically marginalized and socially alienated in their own country. Even their national status and loyalties became suspect. They are “Muslims first”, so how can they be “true Indians”? And, why are they in Hindu India anyway if they don’t like India or complain about their lot in India? They can just pack up and go away. They are ‘Pakistanis’ and should migrate to their own country!

Such views and political developments in India have left Indian Muslims in an extremely difficult situation. In 1992, Hindu militants destroyed sixteenth-century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya while the state authorities stood idle by. The then Indian prime minister promised to re-build the mosque. The promised was not kept. Instead a temple was raised on the site of the destroyed mosque that provoked religious frenzy and communal passions. Three thousand people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the ensuing riots.

Two thousand Muslims were massacred in 12002 in Gujarat, which was a full blooded pogrom which took place under the state government run by the BJP. The New Delhi rulers did not intervene to stop the massacre of Muslims.

Attacks on Muslim holy places and people have increased in the recent years. In one recent attack by Hindutva activists on a mosque a Hindu lieutenant-colonel of the Indian army was arrested for his involvement in the attack.

In Pakistan, fundamentalist religious parties have felt duty-bound to monopolise Islam, but they have never at any time gained much support in the masses. Their poor electoral results in various elections have clearly demonstrated that. However, Pakistani Muslim clerics have gained much notoriety for their inter-religious invective. The Sunni preachers direct their anger at the “infidel” Shias and the Shia preachers reciprocate by calling the Sunnis “infidels”! This leads to an unending cycle of violence and acrimony in the name of Islam. But the danger posed by militant Islamist groups in stirring violence and hatred is beyond doubt. However, the Indian treatment of the Kashmiri Muslims and the unresolved Kashmir issue because of Indian intransigence is universally condemned by all Pakistanis; it also provides an opportunity to the militant groups like Lasher-e-Taiba and others who exhort their followers to avenge the grievances of their Indian co-religionists at the hands of Hindutva militants as well as to make a stand for the freedom of Kashmir by all means, including violence. This is exactly what happened last month in the Mumbai attacks.

For the last six decades India has maintained its occupation of the Kashmir Valley by political manipulation and brutal military force. The massacres of the Kashmiri Muslims by Indian forces amount to war crimes under international law; however, the ultimate responsibility for this genocidal policy lies with the New Delhi rulers. If Indian government wants to continue with the occupation of Kashmir and also expect that people of Kashmir will forego their demands for freedom because they face a great military and economic power like India, which has extended its cooperation with other imperialist powers like America and Zionist Israel, then one thing is certain: the situation will get worse; violence and terror will flourish.

The 10-million Muslims of the Kashmir Valley want independence from Indian colonial rule and oppression. The best course left for India is to make a break with its previous policy, and accede to the right to self-determination of the Kashmiris. This will not weaken India; instead, it will show the strength of Indian democracy as well of the humane aspects of Indian cultural tradition.

Whether the people of the Kashmir Valley decide to join India or Pakistan, or they opt for full independence should be for them to decide. No matter what decision they make to determine their future as stipulated by the UN resolutions should be their and their alone. However, it is far from certain that they will choose to join Pakistan, but if they do so that should not worry India. In such a case, Hindu Jammu and Buddhist Ladakh will certainly join India. Thus, by a wise and courageous step Indian leaders can create the political conditions under which a new era of good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan can materalise if they allow the people of the Kashmir Valley to control their own destiny instead of the inhumane treatment and humiliation at the hands of the Indian state and its armed forces. Once the main bone of contention between India and Pakistan is removed then the two former rivals and “enemies” can become friends and concentrate on socio-economic problems of their people within a peaceful atmosphere. An independent and self-governing entity in the Kashmir Valley will bring hope and good-will to its neighbours. By removing the biggest unresolved problem of Kashmir that has fueled hostility and has caused immeasurable damage, the two countries will also be able to contain the forces of communalism and religious fanaticism that plague India and Pakistan.


Nasir Khan is a peace activist. He is the author of Development of the Concept and Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings 1843-44 (1995) and Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms: A Historical Survey (2006). He has his own blogs at http://nasir-khan.blogspot.com and  https://sudhan.wordpress.com through which he can be contacted.

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Human Rights Day Celebration in Gaza

December 10, 2008

Abukar Arman | Global Research, December 10, 2008

It was Dec 10, 1948 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Today this document is the most widely translated and perhaps the most referenced.

And as the international community and media around the world eagerly await the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR,) some communities still remain under the boots of domination and oppression. And no modern community has suffered more than the people of Palestine . This suffering has gotten worse since the Palestinian people exercised their democratic right and overwhelmingly elected Hamas– an entity that both Israel and the U.S. consider a terrorist organization– as its legitimate representative in January 2006.

UDHR is a powerful fusion of religious and secular principles whose aim is to uphold the existential values that sustain humanity. Its profound importance is based on its recognition of the fundamental rights of all human beings to breathe life in peace and through liberty, to have equal access to justice, and be able to live in dignity. However, UDHR is not without shortcoming. The document is simply a declaration not an international treaty that is binding. And this perhaps explains the inconsistency in its application and why the state of Israel could continue its inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people with impunity.

Ironically, several months ago, the state of Israel also celebrated its sixtieth anniversary. Some welcomed this historic occasion as a celebration of a triumph for justice while others bemoaned it as a glorified failure of the state of Israel to confront its bloody past and oppressive present!

In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, documents horrific accounts that began with systematic extermination of villagers that continue today mainly by way of inhumane treatment, uprooting of communities for land grab, and economic strangulation. And as a result of a sustained media blackout, most of the world remains misinformed or woefully ignorant about the miserable condition in which the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza , live.

Some global leaders and Nobel Peace Prize laureates such as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have, in one way or another, condemned Israel ’s treatment of the Palestinian people.

“The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza , where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished,” wrote Carter in an article published by the Guardian newspaper. The world “must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly,” said Carter. “It is time for strong voices in Europe, the US , Israel and elsewhere to speak out and condemn the human rights tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people,” he added.

Carter was accused of anti-Semitism for comparing the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people to that of the old Apartheid system of South Africa in his book Palestine : Peace not Apartheid. However, he was neither the first nor the last high profile leader to make that comparison.

Buried through the pages of history are the words of Mandela when he, On Dec 4, 1997, in a speech delivered during the commemoration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People said “… the UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.

Moreover, Tutu, as a special UN envoy that led a fact-finding mission to Gaza last May, described what he witnessed as a “gross violation of human rights” that is contrary to the teachings of Holy Scripture. Depicting the daunting impact of the economic blockade, he said the Gaza strip was “forlorn, deserted, desolate and eerie place.” Furthermore, he talked about the children whose conditions are seldom covered in the evening news: “We were struck particularly by the absence of the sounds of children shrieking and playing.”

While they are far from making an immediate impact that would free the Palestinian people from its current misery, these vocal leaders have triggered a global, conscience-based movement that would continue the arduous struggle till Israel profoundly changes its treatment of the Palestinian people.

The latest to join these champions of conscience is Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann- the current president of the United Nations General Assembly.

Like those before him, he too compared Israel ‘s treatment of the Palestinian people to “the apartheid of an earlier era.” And like those before him, he too was accused of being “Israel-hater” and being driven by anti-Semitic motives.

Going public with what no UN high official has ever vocalized, and others would only whisper, d’Escoto addressed the de facto double standard that exists and how the world accepted an endless peace process that leads to no where. The failure to establish a Palestinian state made “a mockery of the United Nations and greatly hurts its image and prestige,” he said.

Recognizing the Israeli Palestinian issue as a case of yesterday’s oppressed people doing the same to others, d’Escoto said the cruelty of the Holocaust affords Israel neither a justification nor “the right to abuse others, especially those who historically have such deep and exemplary relations with the Jewish people.”

D’Escoto urged a paradigm shifting action that would end the human suffering and not just offer symbolic rhetoric. He called on the international community to consider stricter measures against Israel ….measures similar to those taken against South Africa in the 1980s that include “boycott, divestment and sanctions.”

Whether in Israel , Sudan , Ethiopia , Somalia or any where else, the vicious cycle of oppression and human misery can only be broken when all people of conscience rise to resist it, and pressure the powers that be to heed the moral will of the people.

Abukar Arman is a freelance writer whose articles and analysis have appeared in the pages of various media groups and think tanks.

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