Dignity, justice: direct democracy

Zodwa Nsibande, from a post on South Africa’s Abahlali baseMjondolo, a shack dwellers movement:

In our days being involved in the struggle for change is no longer as popular as it was before simply because many people believe that because we had got rid of the oppressive government everything is now ok. But freedom was never just a case of replacing a white government with a black government. It was a case of building a different kind of society – a society that put human beings at the centre, a society in which there would be decent homes, decent work, decent schools and decent health care for everyone. It was a case of building a participatory democracy in which everyone’s voice and life would count the same irregardless of whether they were a woman or a man, black or white, gay or straight or poor or rich. In fact it was a case of building a society where poverty would be ended.

Those who think that the time of struggle is over are forgetting that we are still living under a kind of apartheid but that in this apartheid the difference is the people are divided by class. The gap between those who have and those who don’t have is huge and it is getting worse. Those who say that we must be patient are forgetting that things are getting worse for the poor and not better.

And here is a look at Spain’s days of protests in May of 2011.

By Siân Ruddick:

Mass demonstrations and protest camps have mushroomed across Spain as the young and the unemployed say “enough”. As many as 40 percent of Spain’s 4.5 million unemployed are under 25.

The economic crisis has brought further austerity and attacks on workers and the poor. But now the people are fighting back.

Unemployment runs at 21% in the country, 45% for those who are 18 to 25 years old.

Sokari Ekine writes about Uganda and Africa:

Uprisings continue across the continent, with Uganda being the latest country where citizens have taken to the streets in protest against rising food and energy prices.

[…]The protests have met with a violent response from the government of Yoweri Museveni, with police firing live bullets at crowds, beatings and mass arrests.

[…]Ndumba Jonnah Kamwanyah in the Southern Africa FBP likens Museveni to Egypt’s Mubarak with the same mindset and the same relationship with the West:

‘Typical of a mindset of a dictator, President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power for 25 years, does not see the connection between the uprisings and his governing style. Instead his delusional mentality makes him see how indispensable he is to Uganda. Narcissistic is what he is, just like all dictators and autocratic leaders, and he does not care about what the Ugandan citizens think or want.’

Protest in Uganda

In Egypt, here’s a peek at May 20, Tahrir Square:

Hossam el-Hamalway in an interview:

The revolution was against the Mubarak regime but all we’ve managed to do so far is remove Mubarak himself. The ones running the country right now are Mubarak’s generals, who were the backbone of his dictatorship from day one.

[…]Attempts are already under way by middle-class activists to place limits on this revolution and ensure it remains only within the realm of formal political institutions.

[…]But the main part of any revolution has to be socio-economic emancipation for the citizens of a country; if you want to eliminate corruption or stop vote-buying then you have to give people decent salaries, make them aware of their rights and not leave them in dire economic need. A middle-class activist can return to his executive job after they think the revolution is over, but a public transport worker who has spent 20 years in service and is getting paid only 189 Egyptian pounds a month – you can’t ask this guy to go back to work and tell his starving kids at home that everything will be sorted out once we have a civilian government in the future.So this is phase two of the revolution, the phase of socio-economic change. What we need to do now is take Tahrir to the factories, the universities, the workplaces. In every single institution in this country there is a mini-Mubarak who needs to be overthrown. In every institution there are figures from the old state security regime who need to be overthrown. These guys are the counter-revolution.

And in Greece, according to Matthaois Tsimitakis:

The village of Keratea is a conservative and peaceful place, about an hour’s drive from Athens. When, a few months ago, the central government decided without consultation to create a garbage landfill destroying antiquities, polluting the environment and defying the European Commission’s rejection of the plan as unsustainable, Keratea erupted into violent confrontation with the police.

[…]The Keratea resistance is part of a series of low or higher intensity confrontations with the government, its preferred contractors and the repressive apparatus of state brought in to protect the corporations. Such local movements have spread all over the country for some time, defending public spaces against privatization (this has happened repeatedly in Athens where the last remaining green spots are consistently given over to construction companies), natural resources (the Canadian gold mining corporation TVX is facing a strong resistance movement in the North of the country), or protesting against the repeated corruption scandals.

Palestinian refugees marched to commemorate Nakba on May 15, the expulsion of hundreds of thousands from their homes in today’s occupied Palestine and Israel.

Karma Nabulsi has this to say:

It was the moment for which we had all been holding our breath for decades – for 63 years to be precise. Palestinians everywhere watched the unfolding scene transfixed and awed. The camera followed the movements of a small group of people advancing from the mass of protesters. They were carefully making their way down a hill towards the high fence that closed off the mined field separating Syria from its own occupied territory of the Golan that borders historic Palestine, now Israel.

They were mostly young Palestinians, drawn from the 470,000-plus refugee community in Syria: from Yarmouk refugee camp inside Damascus, from Khan el-Sheikh camp outside it, from Deraa and Homs refugee camps in the south, from Palestinian gatherings all over the country.

Slowly, and in spite of the shouted warnings from the villagers from Majdal Shams about the lethal landmines installed by the Israeli military right up to the fence, these remarkable ordinary young people – Palestinian refugees – began to both climb and push at the fence. We were going home.

It was a profoundly revolutionary moment, for these hundreds of young people entering Majdal Shams last Sunday made public the private heart of every Palestinian citizen, who has lived each day since 1948 in the emergency crisis of a catastrophe. Waiting, and struggling, and organising for only two things: liberation and return.

[…]On Sunday, this moment of return was enacted simultaneously in Haifa and among Palestinians displaced inside Israel, on the borders of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Gaza, in the West Bank near the Qalandia refugee camp – wherever the more than 7 million stateless Palestinian refugees now live, very near their original villages and towns. Just out of sight, over the hill, across the border.

Moe Ali Nayel writes:

things will not be the same as before 15 May. Just like after Muhammad Bouazizi, things are not the same as before he shook the Arab world. The Arab people, us, the Arab youth, we are not going to let the status quocontinue, we are not going to be humiliated by our own people anymore. We are not going to let Palestine and the Palestinian people be humiliated and tortured every time they breathe.

We are freedom-loving people and we won’t live anymore on empty promises from our corrupt governments who use Palestine as a pretext to repress us while they enjoy stealing from our pockets. We won’t let them continue to make sure Israel is safe and sound, enjoying the beautiful land of Palestine, while hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees live in inhumane conditions in the camps.

In Portugal, on March 12 ” Upwards of 300,000 people took to the streets in Lisbon and other Portuguese cities on Saturday to protest job insecurity…”

In the UK, there have been cuts to education, health care and social spending after providing massive ‘bailouts’ to financial institutions that continue to pull in enormous profits. This has resulted in direct action, protests, and occupations of universities.

From We are the Third Force by S’bu Zikode of Abahlali baseMjondolo:

The community has realised that voting for parties has not brought any change to us.

[…]For us time has been a very good teacher. People have realised so many things. We have learnt from the past – we have suffered alone. That pain and suffering has taught us a lot. We have begun to realise that we are not supposed to be living under these conditions.

And here’s a little song courtesy of Nina Simone:

Occupation of an Egyptian factory: downsizing to increase efficiency or cutting people out

Under the previous Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, numerous public companies were sold off to the private sector. The process left many workers without employment from layoffs and factory closures. Here is a video of Egyptian workers explaining the situation they are  in as they occupying an abandoned factory.

Privatization was represented as a move to efficient business practice. In that case, it should have helped improve the country’s economy, if we understand improvement to mean better standards of living that would support the basic life needs of people.

This sort of doing business, ‘rationalizing’ both private and public firms, is not unique to Egypt. The problem with its practice is that even if the GDP of a country grows, poverty is in most cases is increasing.

This is true in many countries, no matter the size of their economies. And the practice of buying existing companies (or factories) and shutting them down is not new. On paper, it might even be shown to provide a short-term increase in the nation’s profits, depending on how you like to calculate such things.

For example, a group buys a working factory at low cost, closes it, and sells off all of its assets (machines, land, etc.) for a nice profit over the initial cost of purchase. They might decide to keep a few factories open in the short to medium term with reduced number of employees and call this efficiency. In time, even these can be closed and sold off as social and political pressure from the initial round of mass closures eases up.

Downsizing is another word for this sort of efficiency, putting capital markets in control of business management. For an example of this in the US, during the Reagan’s presidency, see the video clip below. It’s from Adam Curtis’ documentary, The Mayfair Set. I recommend watching the video from about 2 minutes and 10 seconds in.

You can watch the entire four part documentary for free on Youtube .

Start of: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4

Episode one and four are also available at the Internet Archive. Part 1 (the end is missing) | Part 4

What’s new in Egypt

Is there something new being introduced in Egypt, launched by a series of mass rebellions in the country and region? If something new is being introduced, then what is it?

Change from an old structure and practice of governance to the new comes in many shades and forms. Change, even if sparked by popular uprisings, does not automatically lead to a popular government nor does it have to fundamentally overturn the power of privileged associations such as broad groups of political or military elites.

What I find significant in the transformation taking place in Egypt since the removal of Hosni Mubarak from the presidency is not the purely structural details, outlines, and schema of state and government change: i.e. political offices, which leaders among the elite are in charge, etc.

The vessel of political imagination is undergoing significant change. This is the immaterial body of the imagined community.

It is a matter of re-conceiving the essence of the state, such that the concept of community and nation takes on new meaning, that old names have new significance. This is the transformation to keep one’s eye on. It is a reframing of names and concepts, leading to a new state of governance.

Image of Egypt's revolts from ArteEast magazine's April 2011 issue. Click on it to view the magainze in full.

In their meaning and practice, the names and categories ‘dignity’, ‘national identity’, ‘national interest’, ‘future’, ‘dream’, ‘need’, ‘government’,  and ‘popular’ are undergoing investigation, and adjustment or redefinition.

The new state exists within a situation of power concentrated in the hands of associations of the elite that compose a miniscule fraction of the total population. The significant change is not one of power being shared relatively equally across a mass of people.

 To put it another way, I mean that the state of affairs following the 2011 uprisings in Egypt has not led to a fundamentally emancipatory practice of social and political life. To paraphrase Peter Hallward’s philosophy on collective self-determination, the event has invented new ground but the walk through the “historical, cultural, and socioeconomic terrain” is not being organized by a deliberate assembly of the people even if they must be “conditioned by the specific strategic constraints that structure the particular situation.” (1)

There is certainly a new state of governance that is vigorously attempting to re-contextualize the concept of state and nation, but it is also clearly not a government of the people. The government of Egypt is a house of power compelled to transform itself by the sudden presence of what were established though previously suppressed incoherencies, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the old ‘regime’. This sudden presence of old contradictions appears as a great burden, a mountain of weight on the straining shoulders of Egypt.

It has come to the foreground through mass rebellion and demonstrations. It cannot be missed. It is plainly visible no matter where the gaze is fixed. The incoherencies are raw force, and they have broken the state such as it was. It is now time to grasp onto the event to organize change by transforming cultural, social, and political relationships into a new relation of thought and practice.

The associations that, until now, seem to have most successfully taken this opportunity in hand in order to forge the structure of the future Egypt, those associations that are (re)aligning the elements of the opportunity afforded them into a new state, reside predominantly within the elite, though thrust into motion by the muscle of the people. This new state is, so far, a state of the nation and not a new state of and for the people.

A tendency of privileging national identity has historically been the ease with which it is turned to the very serious zero-sum game of competing national blocs and powers. The national identity also competes with other conceptions of community and can provide “a cement which [bonds] all citizens to their state, a way to bring the nation-state directly to each citizen, and a counterweight to those who [appeal] to other loyalties over state loyalty.” (2). In this fashion, the ‘nationality’ may become “a real network of personal relations rather than a merely imaginary community.” (3) It introduces the possibility of privileging national interest by lauding those who are true defenders (patriots) of the nation tied to its instrumental apparition in the body of the state. This can endanger the effectiveness of critique as well as limit social and political options that are critical in practice.

Here is a glimpse of the tension prior to the uprisings that toppled Hosni Mubarak from nearly 30 years as president (from Amira Mittermaier’s book, Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination):

People can’t afford to buy anymore; the only thing left is window-shopping. We are sipping heavy tea that is bearable only with an excessive amount of sugar. But the tea is not the only thing that is heavy; so is the atmosphere. Like Ahmad, many friends during the course of my visit will explain that economically, morally, and politically, Egypt is going through a crisis. Almost everyone I talk to feels helpless, hopeless, and outraged about the ongoing war in Iraq and about the emergency laws that interdict all expressions of discontent within Egypt itself. ‘We’re living in a nightmare,’ people say when I bring up the topic of dreams.

Here’s what a Cairo taxi driver had to say, as recorded by Khaled Al Khamissi:

Education for everyone, sir, was a wonderful dream and, like many dreams, it’s gone, leaving only the illusion. On paper, education is like water and air, compulsory for everyone, but the reality is that rich people get educated and work and make money, while the poor don’t get educated and don’t get jobs and don’t earn anything. They loaf around, and I can show them to you, they can’t find anything to do, except of course the geniuses. And our boy Albert is definitely not one of those.

But I am trying with him. I pay for private lessons like a dog. What else can I do? I say maybe God will breathe life into him and he’ll turn out like Ahmed Zeweil, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. (4)

Another driver has this to say:

I don’t understand what they want from us. There are no jobs, then they tell us to do any job that’s going, but they’re waiting in ambush for us whatever job we do. They plunder and steal and ask for bribes and where it all leads I don’t know. Just as I spend so much a day on petrol, I have to put aside bribe money for the traffic department every day just in case. (5)

In Egypt, the practice of political power must today acknowledge the eruption of the mass response to crisis by addressing, incorporating, co-opting, redirecting, or deflecting it.

The uprisings and the resulting strain on the socio-political order were not an end to be achieved: the event is a point of departure.

The thing to keep in mind is not simply that change is taking place. It is vital to take notice of how change is taking place: what groups are and will be organizing the productions of human conditions in Egypt, and what will these conditions be? (6)

I’ll conclude with a joke as told by a Cairo taxi driver. This joke underscores the trouble with some types of change or transformation as directed by the minority who hold power. “We thank all those who voted yes in the referendum and we give special thanks to Umm Naima because she voted twice.” (7)

Sources

(1) from Hallward’s essay, The Will of the People: Notes Towards a Dialectical Voluntarism.

(2) Eric Hobsbawm, 1989. The Age of Empire, p. 149. Vintage Books.

(3) Ibid. pp. 153-154.

(4) From chapter 29 of the book, Taxi.

(5) From chapter 33 of the book, Taxi.

(6) Here, I’m adapting Peter Hallward’s some thoughts in the essay, Jacques Ranciere and the Subversion of Mastery.

(7) From chapter 33 of the book, Taxi.

China in the Middle East

China’s influence in key Middle Eastern countries has increased thanks to its economic clout. It is becoming a primary export market for countries of the region (and much of the world in general), while also making significant and strategic investments in numerous regions.

From a FPIF/Asia Times article:

In the past five years, China has emerged as the major investor in Iran, with an estimated US$120 billion worth of energy investments. Despite the sanctions already in place, trade between the countries grew by 35% in 2008, to $27 billion. In 2009, China signed over $8 billion in new energy investments. Seemingly, there is an emerging China-Iran tandem.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are among China’s biggest suppliers of crude oil.

China is Saudi Arabia’s top export market. Trade between the two countries had increased to US$41.8 billion in 2008. 16,000 Chinese workers were employed in Saudi Arabia in 2009, representing 70 companies.

It is estimated that in 2010 China will be Egypt’s largest trade partner.

Palestine in the face of a new Israeli administration

Responding to Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans as prime minister of Israel to change focus from a two-state solution to an ‘economic peace‘ plan, a chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat, writes in a Washington Post op-ed that:

Rather than ending the occupation, Netanyahu has proposed an “economic peace” that would seek to normalize and better manage it. Instead of a viable Palestinian state, his vision extends no further than a series of disconnected cantons with limited self-rule.

Saeb Eraka outlines three requirements for peace. They are:

(1) “The first is intent. Palestinians and Israelis must renew their commitment to the vision of two states existing side by side in peace and security.”

(2) “The second factor goes to the heart of credibility. By repeatedly violating its obligations under previous agreements, Israel has undermined the very credibility of the peace process. Restoring that credibility is vital. This requires that Israel implement an immediate and complete freeze on settlement activity, including all natural growth and the construction of Israel’s wall, in keeping with both international law and its obligations under the 2003 “road map.” Without a settlement freeze, there will be no two-state solution left to speak of.”

(3) “The third factor concerns accountability. A credible enforcement mechanism designed to hold both parties accountable for their obligations under previous agreements must be established by the “Quartet” of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. And America must serve as the honest broker capable of creating a level playing field between Palestinians and Israelis during talks.”

According to Haaretz, one of Netanyahu’s first acts as prime minister will be the, “the formation of an administrative body whose task is to promote economic peace with the Palestinians.” There has been no mention of a viable two-state solution by him, and concern among some is that the very idea of a Palestinian state will be discarded in favour of control or annexation of many parts of the West Bank and focus on economic policy married to current police action to manage any fallout.

Meanwhile, Egypt continues to serve as a cantankerous negotiator between the two Palestinian political organizations of Fatah and Hamas. It has now refused to attend the annual Arab Summit at Doha this end of March. No official reason has been given yet Doha has been supportive of Hamas while Cairo strongly backs Fatah. I find it strange that Egypt can have such a strong reaction and bias to the inter-Palestinian conflict yet forward itself as a fair mediator in negotiations between the two parties.

AFP reports that: “A senior Egyptian official is in Damascus to meet Syrian and Hamas officials ahead of renewed Palestinian unity talks next week, a Palestinian official said on Friday. Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman’s deputy Omar Kinawi will push for Palestinian reconciliation during the meetings, said Nabil Shaath, a senior official with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party.”

Media Wars in the Middle East: Egypt, Lebanon, and Israel

Protest in Egypt

Extreme editorial bias, formal and informal censorship, and political interference is a bane of journalists in the Middle East, both local and international. At times, this results in ambiguous or clear battle lines being drawn between media houses that have become partially or fully politicized. The traditional media of print, radio, and television is, however, being challenged in some places by a rise of alternatives provided by the Internet.

In many cases, the state has not yet had an effective response to control these new mediums of communication, and the traditional media is increasingly being influenced by independent journalists, and political activists via blogs and social networking sites. It remains to be seen if states adapt and develop new modes of control over freedom of communication, and if the Internet proves to be an effective long term medium of political comment and organization.

Below is information on the state of the media in Egypt, Lebanon, and Israel taken from a number of studies and posts.

Political Activism Among Egypt’s Youth

In the past few years, Egypt has been facing a groundswell of strikes, and protests in the face of continued repression, unemployment, and poverty. Much of the industrial action and opposition is coming from the country’s youth. A third of the population is younger than 15, 60% under the age of 25, unemployment is 10 times higher among the educated than the uneducated, 40% of the population of almost 80 million people live below the poverty line.

Al Jazeera’s program Inside Story investigates the issue of disaffected youth, with speakers from a government affiliated NGO association, an independent journalist, a representative from a youth opposition movement, and the editor of the Muslim Brotherhood’s online journal.

Below are links to the program.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Roundup of Analysis and Investigative Articles: Israeli air strike on Syria, Canadian intervention, War, Diplomacy, and Trade Unions

Ray Close on the Mysterious Israeli Air Attack on Syria. Ray Close, who was CIA bureau chief in Saudia Arabia for many years, sent around these musings on the Israeli raid on Syria. This is my Monday morning (speculative) analysis of the mysterious Israeli air attack on Syria on September 6, 2007 (with due thanks to others who have contributed their wise perspectives): 1. The Israelis offered us intelligence that Syria is beginning to develop a nuclear capability based on North Korean technology. They urged the US to cooperate with them in mounting a military attack to destroy the Syrian site. The advantages of this action, as presented to the Bush administration with great urgency by the Israelis, would be… (Syria Comment)

Deconstructing the Haiti coup. Below is from the National Film Board: Darren Ell interviews the director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, Brian Concannon, about the political situation and specifically the crimes of UN forces (MINUSTAH) in Haiti. Concannon is a thorough, articulate and elequent speaker on the subject of Haitian politics.
Yves Engler is co-author of the groundbreaking book Canada in Haiti: The War on the Poor Majority. It is the first and only in-depth analysis of Canada’s participation in the 2004 coup d’état against the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In this podcast, Yves discusses key elements of Canada’s participation in the coup.

White Guys with Guns: Canada’s Military in Afghanistan. With a few exceptions, media coverage of the mission has been generally sympathetic to the claims and actions of Canadian military officials. It is the purpose of this essay to shed light on the less-reported aspects of the mission, about which our military and government officials rarely speak. (Dave Markland, Mostly Water/ZNet)

Slum Fights. The Pentagon Plans for a New Hundred Years’ War. Duane Schattle doesn’t mince words. “The cities are the problem,” he says. A retired Marine infantry lieutenant colonel who worked on urban warfare issues at the Pentagon in the late 1990s, he now serves as director of the Joint Urban Operations Office at U.S. Joint Forces Command. He sees the war in the streets of Iraq’s cities as the prototype for tomorrow’s battlespace. “This is the next fight,” he warns. “The future of warfare is what we see now.” He isn’t alone. “We think urban is the future,” says James Lasswell, a retired colonel who now heads the Office of Science and Technology at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. (Nick Turse, TomDispatch)

Ticking clocks and ‘accidental’ war. Whilst Washington looks at the Iranian prospects through the prism of a binary, to bomb or to acquiesce decision, facing President Bush over the remainder of his presidency, the actors in the region see the conflict as imminent and arriving in a roundabout way, through the backdoor – either via escalation of Western and Israeli tension with Syria; or from events in Lebanon, or a combination of both interacting with each other. All these key actors are convinced that conflict, should it occur, will convulse the entire region. (Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum)

Pearls for coal. Palestinian and Israeli negotiators began a series of secret meetings on Monday in an effort to draft a joint document for the upcoming US-sponsored peace conference, scheduled to take place in Annapolis, Maryland, in November. The two sides continue to be deeply divided on the major issues at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to Palestinian officials close to the talks, the two negotiating teams are likely to spend more time on formulating and asserting their own respective opening positions than bridging the gaps between them. (Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram)

Egypt: Mutual support? Forget it. What should be made of the voluntary cancellation of the editions of 22 independent and opposition newspapers? Is it a coherent way to protest against what journalists believe is a concerted campaign to silence voices critical of the regime? Or is it a shot in the foot? Such questions came to a head when the vast majority of independent and opposition newspapers failed to appear on 7 October in protest against the latest round of custodial sentences handed down to journalists. (Shaden Shehab, Al-Ahram)

Egypt: The Militancy of Mahalla al-Kubra. For the second time in less than a year, in the final week of September the 24,000 workers of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra went on strike — and won. As they did the first time, in December 2006, the workers occupied the Nile Delta town’s mammoth textile mill and rebuffed the initial mediation efforts of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). (Joel Beinin, Middle East Report)

Turkey fears Kurds, not Armenians. “We did not exterminate the Armenians,” Ankara says in effect, “and, by the way, we’re going to not exterminate the Kurds, too.” Turkey’s threat to invade northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels is linked to its outrage over a US Congressional resolution recognizing that Turkey committed genocide against its Armenian population in 1915. Why the Turks should take out their rancour at the US on the Kurds might seem anomalous until we consider that the issue of Armenian genocide has become a proxy for Turkey’s future disposition towards the Kurds. (Spengler, Asia Times)

The Turnaround in Sino-Indian Relations. Many observers have recently argued that the newly forged Indo-U.S. alliance will work against its “intended aims of Chinese encirclement.” Although India denies its part in any attempt at “Chinese containment” to the publicly acknowledged satisfaction of China, the theory nevertheless persists. China’s response to the Indo-U.S. alliance is, however, quite creative. Instead of reacting with alarm, Beijing has gone on a charm offensive to draw New Delhi into a triangular entente among China, India and Russia. India, which has languished under foreign subjugation for centuries, has a visceral aversion to strategic alliances with world powers. Since its independence in 1947, it has followed what could be described as the “Third Way” in world diplomacy, which manifested itself in the birth of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) in the 1950s. China is now building bridges to India based in part on the latter’s instinctive wariness of foreign influences, which is evident in India’s homegrown opposition to its nuclear deal with the U.S. (Tarique Niazi, Japan Focus)

Roundup of Analysis and Investigative Articles: Foreign aid, treason, enemy combatants, weapons and strategy

Nuclear Weapons, Criminal States, and the US-India Deal. Nuclear-armed states are criminal states. They have a legal obligation, confirmed by the World Court, to live up to Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which calls on them to carry out good-faith negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely. None of the nuclear states has lived up to it. The United States is a leading violator, especially the Bush administration, which even has stated that it isn’t subject to Article 6. On July 27, Washington entered into an agreement with India that guts the central part of the NPT, though there remains substantial opposition in both countries. India, like Israel and Pakistan (but unlike Iran), is not an NPT signatory, and has developed nuclear weapons outside the treaty. With this new agreement, the Bush administration effectively endorses and facilitates this outlaw behaviour. (Noam Chomsky, Japan Focus)

‘Enemy Combatant’ or Enemy of the Government? By introducing the concept of war into national law, the latest U.S. anti- terrorist law, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), produces a turning point in the legal and political organization of the Western world. It puts an end to a form of state that succeeded in “establishing peace internally and excluding hostility as a concept of law.”1 It is the constituent act of a new form of state that establishes war as a political relation between constituted authorities and national populations. (Jean-Claude Paye, Monthly Review)

Unable to Defeat Mahdi Army, U.S. Hopes to Divide It. Although the U.S. military command’s frequent assertions that the primary threat to U.S. forces in Iraq comes from Iranian meddling, its real problem is that Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi army is determined to end the occupation and is simply too big and too well entrenched to be weakened by military force. The U.S. command began trying to enter into a political dialogue with Sadr’s followers in early 2006 and now claims that such a dialogue has begun, according to a Sep. 12 article by Ned Parker of the Los Angeles Times. But the George W. Bush administration is not prepared to make peace with the Mahdi army. Instead it believes it can somehow divide it if it applies military pressure while wooing what it calls “moderates” in the Sadr camp. Parker quoted an anonymous administration official last month as suggesting that there were Sadrists “who we think we might be able to work with”. (Gareth Porter, IPS)

India holds key in NATO’s world view. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s agenda is centered on its further enlargement as well as lengthening its reach to undertake missions with new partners in every corner of the world. Many of its main challenges are in the Indian Ocean region, which makes a friendly India a priority. Washington fully backs a NATO-India partnership, while Delhi has some critical decisions to make. (M.K. Bhadrakumar, Asia Times)

At last, some good news from Iraq. Iraq’s two rival Shi’ite clerics, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, who with their powerful militias have long fought for control of the Shi’ite community, have decided to lay down their arms and unite their efforts to bring stability and security to the country. It’s the first genuinely good news from Iraq for a long time. (Sami Moubayed, Asia Times)

CIDA: foreign “aid” in name only? Recent stories about Canada’s foreign aid programs should make us ponder some important foreign policy questions. A Senlis Council report released in August detailed the failure of Canadian programs supposedly aimed at alleviating poverty in Kandahar province. The mainstream media criticized the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) inability/unwillingness to successfully distribute aid and even questioned Canada’s justification for a military presence in Afghanistan. Six months earlier, the media was abuzz over a report that called for the abolition of CIDA because of its failure to alleviate poverty in Africa. On the surface this criticism seems reasonable. All government spending should be effective. But what if this focus on the effectiveness of aid to alleviate poverty narrows the parameters of the debate and excludes the real questions that should be asked?
(Yves Engler, Rabble)

Pakistan at Sixty. Disillusionment and resentment are widespread. Cultivating anti-Indian/anti-Hindu feeling, in an attempt to encourage national cohesion, no longer works. The celebrations marking the anniversary of independence on 14 August are more artificial and irritating than ever. A cacophony of meaningless slogans that impress nobody, countless clichés in newspaper supplements competing for space with stale photographs of the Founder (Muhammad Ali Jinnah) and the Poet (Iqbal). Banal panel discussions remind us of what Jinnah said or didn’t say. The perfidious Lord Mountbatten and his ‘promiscuous’ wife, Edwina, are denounced for favouring India when it came to the division of the spoils. It’s true, but we can’t blame them for the wreck Pakistan has become. In private, of course, there is much soul-searching, and a surprising collection of people now feel the state should never have been founded. (Tariq Ali, London Review of Books)

Somalia’s President Yusuf Loses His Grip on Power. The failures of the two national conferences aimed at devising a political formula for Somalia — the National Reconciliation Conference (N.R.C.) sponsored by the country’s internationally-recognized Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.), and the Somali Congress for Liberation and Reconstitution (S.C.L.R.) organized by the political opposition based in Eritrea — have led to a continuation of Somalia’s spiral into political fragmentation and conflict. (Michael A. Weinstein. Power and Interest News Report)

Egypt: Rumour and retribution. The trial of Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of the independent daily Al-Dostour, opened on Monday only to be adjourned until 24 October. More than a dozen armoured vehicles added to the daily congestion in Downtown Cairo’s Galaa Street while the scenes around the Galaa Court Complex, blockaded by state security personnel, plain clothes security men and high ranking police officers speaking loudly into walkie-talkies, resembled the trials of Muslim Brotherhood members or else of a high- profile spy rather than that of a journalist accused of spreading false rumours about the health of President Hosni Mubarak. (Shaden Shehab, Al-Ahram)

Roundup of Analysis and Investigative Articles: Assassins, Revolts, and Health Care

‘A matter of life and death’. Egypt’s largest workers’ action in 20 years began on Sunday. On Sunday, workers at the state run textile and weaving company Ghazl Al-Mahala began one of the largest industrial protests of the past two decades, with 27,000 workers downing tools. The strike, say the workers, is a continuation of the action taken in December, when production at the plant was halted. On Saturday night, police forces had surrounded the factory only to withdraw, fearing direct confrontation with the workers. Meanwhile , Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel-Hady said that action can only be taken once the strike is ended. (Karim El-Khashab, Al-Ahram)

Burma More or Less Needs Help. Burma needs help, desperately, but with a “friend” like Bush trying to capitalize on his “freedom” agenda, they might do well to look elsewhere. ASEAN is a good place to start, Burma is a member country and informal personal, cultural and trade links provide intelligence and potential leverage. Surin Pitsuwan, ASEAN’s new Secretary General is a veteran diplomat who as foreign minister under Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, chose not lend support to the dictators of Burma, in sharp contrast to the devil-may-care profiteering in Rangoon and elsewhere on the part of the successor government led by Thaksin Shinawatra. And Japan, the largest aid donor and home to a community of Burmese exiles has a modest role to play. But the real wild card in the Burma conundrum, with immense leverage for better or worse, is China. (Phillip J. Cunningham, re-published in Informed Comment: Global Affairs)

Pakistan’s plan is coming together. With President General Pervez Musharraf naming his successor as head of the army, the United States-backed stage is set for Musharraf to be re-elected as president on Saturday and for Pakistan to move towards a civilian-based consensus government. The army will not be left out, though. A select team of “war on terror” veterans will work closely with the US in its military and trade objectives in the region. (Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times)

Islamabad’s grip on tribal areas is slipping. Taliban forces and their sympathizers are becoming entrenched in the seven tribal agencies in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A lethal combination of President General Pervez Musharraf’s declining public support, a significant rise in suicide attacks targeting the army, and the reluctance of soldiers in the area to engage tribal gangs militarily, further exacerbates the problem. (Hassan Abbas, Asia Times)

Gaza’s darkness. Gaza has been reoccupied. The world must know this and Israelis must know it, too. It is in its worst condition, ever. Since the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the Lebanon war, the Israel Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza – there’s no other word to describe it – killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately. (Gideon Levy, Haaretz)

Playing loose with law. Israel’s declaring Gaza “hostile” is but a way to justify its unwarrantable starvation of Palestinians under occupation. While some Palestinians are able to cope with temporary electricity outages, there is no dispute that Gaza’s residents will not be able to weather other means of collective punishment approved by the Israeli government. Israel provides the Gaza Strip with 150 megawatts of electricity per month, which constitutes 45 per cent of Gaza’s electricity needs. According to the first stage of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan, if locally manufactured missiles continue to be fired at Israeli settlements in the Negev, Israel will significantly cut back electricity supplies. The plan clearly states that supplies will only suffice hospitals and health facilities. (Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram)

Healthcare in Africa: Lesotho’s Youth Struggle to Survive. in the small African nation of Lesotho, there are only six pediatricians to care for the country’s 800,000 children. HIV/AIDS has been declared a national emergency in the country: one in four people have contracted the virus. Why are physicians in such short supply in a nation with such a dire need for healthcare? Lesotho is yet another victim of an expanding skills drain in Sub-Saharan Africa. Promising students often leave the country and once educated, flee to surrounding nations to work in a more stable, higher-paying environment. (Nash Riggins, Toward Freedom)

Lebanon and Syria: The Politics of Assassination. The assassination of Lebanese politician Antoine Ghanem on September 19 is likely to be used, predictably, to further US and Israeli interests in the region. Most Western and some Arab media have industriously argued that Syria is the greatest beneficiary from the death of Ghanem, a member of the Phalange party responsible for much of Lebanon’s bloodshed during the civil war years between 1975 and 1990. The reasoning provided is that Syria needs to maintain a measure of political control over Lebanon after being pressured to withdraw its troops. This political clout could only be maintained through the purging of anti-Syrian critics in Lebanon, and by ensuring a Lebanese parliament friendly to Syria. And indeed, with the elimination of Ghanem, the anti-Syrian coalition at the fractious Lebanese parliament is now left with an even slimmer majority – 68 MPs in a 128-member assembly. Case solved. Or is it? (Ramzy Baroud, ZNet)

Who shot Mohammed al Dura? It was a shooting that became a powerful rallying cry for Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation at the start of the second intifada. On Sept. 30, 2000, almost seven years ago to this day, Mohammed al Dura was shot and killed in Gaza while cowering behind his father during a clash between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants. Israel immediately apologized for the shooting and said the bullets had “apparently” come from their soldiers. But, very quickly, Israel and its supporters began challenging the video and the story. The controversy has been resurrected because of a pending court case in France in which the French television journalist who aired the dramatic footage in 2000 sued a media watchdog who accused the reporter of staging the shooting. (Dion Nissenbaum, Checkpoint Jerusalem)