People Before Profit blog

UN General Assembly votes to give Palestine enhanced status

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:23:00 +0000

As expected, the United Nations General Assembly voted on Thursday to give Palestine "nonmember observer state" status. This upgrades Palestine's status from mere "observer" and, without making it a full voting member of the UN, explicitly recognizes it as a state.

The vote was taken in spite of objections by Israel and pressure from the United States. Voting in favor of the move were 138 countries, including most U.S. allies and trading partners. Only 9 countries voted against the measure: Israel, the United States, Canada, Panama, the Czech Republic and four tiny Pacific island states whose foreign and defense policies are substantially controlled by the United States: The Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru and Palau. These four states are also the ones who regularly either abstain or vote "no" on the annual vote in the General Assembly to condemn the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba.

Forty-one states abstained from the vote, and a few others did not vote. Abstainers included right-wing governments closely allied with the United States such as Colombia, Guatemala and Paraguay, plus a number of Eastern European states. Also abstaining were the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas began the campaign to get "observer state" status in the General Assembly after his efforts to get the Security Council to recognize Palestine as a full member state were blocked by U.S. opposition last year.

The move is intended to give the Palestinians more leverage for their stalled negotiations with Israel over a two-state solution to the long running Israel-Palestine conflict. It comes on the 65^th anniversary of the 1947 vote in the United Nations to recognize two states - Israel and a Palestinian state - in the former World War I mandated territory of Palestine. In 1967, Israel fought a war with Arab neighbors in which it seized the West Bank of the Jordan River and also Gaza, thereby bringing those Palestinians who had not fled into exile under Israeli rule. Since the Oslo accords of 1993, the basic Palestinian position, articulated by the PLO and the PA but rejected by Hamas, has been for a two-state solution, with the borders between Israel and the Palestinian state being those preceding the 1967 war, with Arab-majority East Jerusalem as the capital and with the recognition of a right to return (or compensation) for Palestinians exiles. However, negotiations are currently bogged down over the Israeli practice of building and expanding Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank, which encroach on territory needed for a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians also denounced actions by Israeli security forces as despotic.

The new status gives Palestine the right to participate in United Nations debates and to apply for membership in several U.N.-linked agencies. One of these is the International Criminal Court (ICC). The United States and Israel fear that the Palestinians may try to haul Israel into the ICC for violations of international law with regard to matters like the settlements.

Earlier, the Obama administration had tried to pressure the right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to stop the settlement expansion and to recognize the 1967 borders as the basis for further negotiations, but this was rebuffed. Going into yesterday's vote, the Obama administration had, instead, pressured the Palestinians to back down and to negotiate "without preconditions."

However, Abbas is also under pressure by Hamas to take a harder line with Israel. In the recent fighting in Gaza, Hamas came out a clear winner, while Abbas and the PLO were relegated to the sidelines and made to appear as passive accepters of Israeli domination. Israel ended up negotiating (through Egyptian mediation) with Hamas without reference to the PA, and even making concessions. Hamas is also buoyed by the rise of Islamic governments in the Arab world, and especially by a recent visit to Gaza by the Emir of oil-rich Qatar. So Abbas was in no position to yield to U.S. pressure.

The negative reaction to the U.N. vote came quickly. Israel announced that it is going to build even more housing for Jewish settlers in the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Obama administration quickly denounced this. Several U.S. politicians threatened cutting off aid to the PA and to any UN agency, which accepts Palestinian participation, as well as closing the PLO's office in Washington.

In the U.S., J Street, a mostly Jewish organization that supports a two-state solution, urged the Obama administration to accept the results and to move forward quickly to promoting new negotiations. In a statement it said "we strongly oppose retaliatory measures against the PLO or the Palestinian Authority-in particular, congressional efforts to cut funding, which could lead to the collapse of the PA and jeopardize the important progress made in recent years."

The J Street statement added "We reject the notion that approaching the UN for enhanced status is an attempt to delegitimize Israel...By specifically referencing relevant UN precedents and other international statements, this resolution actually affirms Israel's right to exist."

In his speech Nov. 29, Abbas stated that his purpose was not to delegitimize Israel but rather to give legitimacy to Palestine.

Huge Argentina human rights trial begins

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:22:00 +0000

On Wednesday, the trial of no less than 68 former military and civilian officials of the 1976-1983 Argentine military dictatorship began in Buenos Aires. They are accused of a wide variety of crimes against humanity, including as many as 800 instances of murder and torture of the political opposition.

Featured in the trial will be the "death flights," which took place between the dictatorship's "Dirty War" against leftist political dissidents. In these flights, prisoners were drugged and tossed from aircraft into the estuary of the Rio de la Plata and the Atlantic Ocean. The idea was to make them "disappear" completely, so that nobody could ever be held accountable for their fate. The main organizing center for the death flights and many other atrocities is believed to have been the Navy Petty Officers' School of Mechanics (ESMA), with which several of the accused pilots were associated.

The "Dirty War" began when President Juan Peron died in 1974 and was succeeded by his second wife, Isabel Peron. Fighting between the Montoneros, an armed group coming out of the left wing of the Peronist movement, and security forces gave a pretext for Mrs. Peron to decree special repressive powers for the latter. The military took this as a signal to grab power for itself, deposing Mrs. Peron in 1974 and setting up its own dictatorship under the Orwellian name of "National Reorganization Process". The military, aided by the extreme rightist Argentine Anticommunist Army (AAA) moved savagely to crush not only the Montoneros and other armed groups but all opposition to the Argentine ruling class and political right. Under the military dictatorship headed by General Jorge Videla, as many as 30,000 labor, peasant, student, and human rights activists were hunted down and killed or "disappeared," with many others imprisoned or driven into exile.

The Videla regime cooperated in this with a number of other forces. Allied in "Operation Condor" with like minded dictatorships in neighboring countries, it connived in the murder of many figures of the Latin American left, including former President Juan José Torres of Bolivia and the former head of the Chilean armed forces, General Carlos Prats, who had gone into exile in Argentina when socialist President Salvador Allende died in the military coup of September 11, 1973.

Also into the mix came French advisors, at least one of whom had been part of the Secret Army Organization (OAS) which had tried to stop the independence of Algeria. They are believed to have helped the Argentine military develop the use of torture in interrogations. This knowledge was later used by Argentine advisors to develop similar skills on the part of "Contra" forces in Central America. There were also Italian fascist connections.

The United States under the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations was heavily involved in supporting Operation Condor in Argentina and its neighbors. Then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was revealed in 2004 to have given the green light to the horrors being carried out by the Argentine military regime. Rejecting warnings from U.S. diplomats about what was going on, Kissinger told the Argentine Foreign Minister Augusto Guzzetti in 1976 that the U.S. understood what the Argentines were trying to do but that they should do it quickly so as not to risk a cutoff of U.S. aid to their country. Kissinger has never been prosecuted for these actions.

After the Videla dictatorship was pushed from power in 1983, various attempts were made by its civilian successors to bring the murderers, torturers, and rapists to book. However, opposition within the armed forces on several occasions threatened to bring about new military coups if the prosecutions were not dropped. And in 1986 and 1987 President Carlos Menem, connected with the right wing of the Peronists, got the legislature to issue sweeping amnesties. However, this was reversed by legislative action in 2003 and since then, under left wing President Nestor Kirchner and his wife and successor, incumbent President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, there have been numerous prosecutions of individuals involved with repressive actions of the dictatorship. This year, General Videla himself, along with several other individuals, was found guilty of kidnapping the minor children of people his regime had "disappeared" and sentenced to 50 years in prison, on top of long sentences he is already serving for crimes committed as dictator.

Photo: "The Disappeared," a 2008 film that relives the horror in the lives of 30,000 kidnapped and murdered by Argentine military in the 1970's and 80's. IMDB

Four more years: Into Africa

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:22:00 +0000

Over the next four years the U.S. will face a number of foreign policy problems, most of them regional, some of them global. Part 1 of this series focused on Middle East policy

Africa is probably the single most complex region of the world and arguably its most troubled. While the world concerns itself with the Syrian civil war and the dangers it poses for the Middle East, little notice is taken of the war in the Congo, a tragedy that has taken five million lives and next to which the crisis in Syria pales.

Africa represents 15 percent of the world's population, yet only 2.7 percent of its GDP, which is largely concentrated in only five of 49 sub-Saharan countries. Just two countries-South Africa and Nigeria-account for over 33 percent of the continent's economic output. Life expectancy is 50 years, and considerably less in those countries ravaged by AIDS. Hunger and malnutrition are worse than they were a decade ago.

At the same time, Africa is wealthy in oil, gas, iron, aluminum and rare metals. By 2015, countries in the Gulf of Guinea will provide the US with 25 percent of its energy needs, and Africa has at least 10 percent of the world's known oil reserves. South Africa alone has 40 percent of the earth's gold supply. The continent contains over one-third of the earth's cobalt, and supplies China-the world's second largest economy-with 50 percent of that country's copper, aluminum and iron ore.

But history has stacked the deck against Africa. The slave trade and colonialism inflicted deep and lasting wounds on the region, wounds that continue to bleed out in today's world. France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal sliced up the continent without the slightest regard for its past or its people. Most of the wars that have-and are-ravaging Africa today are a direct outcome of maps drawn up in European foreign offices to delineate where and what to plunder.

But over the past decade, the world has turned upside down. Formerly the captive of the European colonial powers, China is now Africa's largest economic partner, followed closely by India and Brazil. Consumer spending is up, and the World Bank predicts that by 2015 the number of new African consumers will match Brazil's.

In short, the continent is filled with vibrant economies and enormous potential that is not going unnoticed in capitols throughout the world. "The question for executives at consumer packaged goods companies is no longer whether their firms should enter the region, but where and how" says a report by the management consultant agency A.T. Kearney. How Africa negotiates its new status in the world will not only have a profound impact on its people, but on the global community as well. For investors it is the last frontier.

The U.S. track record in Africa is a shameful one. Washington was a long-time supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa and backed the most corrupt and reactionary leaders on the continent, including the despicable Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo. As part its Cold War strategy, the U.S. aided and abetted civil wars in Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia. Americans have much to answer for in the region.

Militarization

If there is a single characterization of US policy vis-à-vis Africa, it is the increasingly militarization of American diplomacy on the continent. For the first time since WW II, Washington has significant military forces in Africa, overseen by a freshly minted organization, Africom.

The US has anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000 Marines and Special Forces in Djibouti, a former French colony bordering the Red Sea. It has 100 Special Forces soldiers deployed in Uganda, supposedly tracking down the Lord's Resistance Army. It actively aided Ethiopia's 2007 invasion of Somalia, including using its navy to shell a town in the country's south. It is currently recruiting and training African forces to fight the extremist Islamic organization, the Shabab, in Somalia, and conducting "counter-terrorism" training in Mali, Chad, Niger, Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso, and Mauretania.

Since much of the US military activities involve Special Forces and the CIA, it is difficult to track how widespread the involvement is. "I think it is far larger than anyone imagines," says John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.

As a whole, US military adventures in Africa have turned out badly. The Ethiopian invasion overthrew the moderate Islamic Courts Union, elevating the Shabab from a minor player to a major headache. NATO's war on Libya-Africom's coming out party-is directly responsible for the current crisis in Mali, where Local Tuaregs and Islamic groups have seized the northern part of the country, armed with the plundered weapons' caches of Muammar el-Qaddafi. Africom's support of Uganda's attack on the Lord's Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in the death of thousands of civilians.

While the Obama administration has put soldiers and weapons into Africa, it has largely dropped the ball on reducing poverty. In spite of the UN's Millennium Development plan adopted in 2000, sub-Saharan Africa will not reach the program's goals for reducing poverty and hunger, and improving child and maternal healthcare. Rather than increasing aid, as the plan requires, the US has either cut aid or used debt relief as a way of fulfilling its obligations.

At the same time, Washington has increased military aid, including arms sales. One thing Africa does not need is any more guns and soldiers.

There are a number of initiatives that the Obama administration could take that would make a material difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of Africans.

First, it could fulfill the UN's Millennium goals by increasing its aid to 0.7 percent of its GDP, and not using debt forgiveness as part of that formula. Canceling debt is a very good idea, and allows countries to re-deploy the money they would use for debt payment to improve health and infrastructure, but as part of an overall aid package it is mixing apples and oranges.

Second, it must de-militarize its diplomacy in the region. Indeed, as Somalia and Libya illustrate, military solutions many times make bad situations worse. Behind the rubric of the "war on terror," the US is training soldiers throughout the continent. History shows, however, that those soldiers are just as likely to overthrow their civilian governments as they are to battle "terrorists." Amadou Sanogo, the captain who overthrew the Mali government this past March and initiated the current crisis, was trained in the U.S.

There is also the problem of who are the" terrorists." Virtually all of the groups so designated are focused on local issues. Nigeria's Boko Haram is certainly a lethal organization, but it is the brutality of the Nigerian Army and police that fuel its rage, not al-Qaeda. The continent's bug-a-boo, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Meghreb, is small and scattered, and represents more a point of view than an organization. Getting involved in chasing "terrorists" in Africa could end up pitting the US against local insurgents in the Niger Delta, Berbers in the Western Sahara, and Tuaregs in Niger and Mali.

What Africa needs is aid and trade directed at creating infrastructure and jobs. Selling oil, cobalt, and gold brings in money, but not permanent jobs. That requires creating a consumption economy with an export dimension. But the US's adherence to "free trade" torpedoes countries from constructing such modern economies.

Africans cannot currently compete with the huge-and many times subsidized industries-of the First World. Nor can they build up an agricultural infrastructure when their local farmers cannot match the subsidized prices of American corn and wheat. Because of those subsidies, US wheat sells for 40 percent below production cost, and corn for 20 percent below. In short, African needs to "protect" their industries-much as the US did in its early industrial stage-until they can establish themselves. This was the successful formula followed by Japan and South Korea.

The Carnegie Endowment and the European Commission found that "free trade" would end up destroying small-scale agriculture in Africa, much as it did for corn farmers in Mexico. Since 50 percent of Africa's GNP is in agriculture, the impact would be disastrous, driving small farmers off the land and into overcrowded cities where social services are already inadequate.

The Obama administration should also not make Africa a battleground in its competition with China. Last year US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described China's trading practices with Africa as a "new colonialism," a sentiment that is not widely shared on the continent. A Pew Research Center study found that Africans were consistently more positive about China's involvement in the region than they were about the US's.

Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa, recently praised the continent's "relationship with China," but also said that the "current trade pattern" is unsustainable because it was not building up Africa's industrial base. China recently pledged $20 billion in aid for infrastructure and agriculture.

One disturbing development is a "land rush" by countries ranging from the US to Saudi Arabia to acquire agricultural land in Africa. With climate change and population growth, food, as Der Spiegel puts it, "is the new oil." Land is plentiful in Africa, and at about one-tenth the cost in the US. Most production by foreign investors would be on an industrial scale, with its consequent depletion of the soil and degradation of the environment from pesticides and fertilizers. The Obama administration should adopt the successful "contract farming" model, where investors supply capital and technology to small farmers, who keep ownership of their land and are guaranteed a set price for their products. This would not only elevate the efficiency of agriculture, it would provide employment for local people.

The Obama administration should also strengthen, not undermine, regional organizations. The African Union tried to find a peaceful resolution to the Libyan crisis because its members were worried that a war would spill over and destabilize countries surrounding the Sahara. The Obama administration and NATO pointedly ignored the AU's efforts, and the organization's predictions have proved prescient.

Lastly, the Obama administration should join with India and Brazil and lobby for permanent membership for an African country-either South Africa or Nigeria, or both- in the UN Security Council. India and Brazil should also be given permanent seats. Currently the permanent members of the Security Council are the victors of WW II: the US, Russia, China, France and Great Britain.

In 1619, a Dutch ship dropped anchor in Virginia and exchanged its cargo of Africans for food, thus initiating a trade that would rip the heart out of a continent. No one really knows how many Africans were forcibly transported to the New World, but it was certainly in the 10s of millions. To this day Africa mirrors the horror of the slave trade and the brutal colonial exploitation that followed in its wake. It is time to make amends.

Reposted from Dispatches from the Edge

Photo: Displaced Congolese children. Sayyid Azim/AP

Garment workers protest deadly fire at Walmart-linked factory

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:12:00 +0000

On the same weekend that saw 1,000 actions across the United States supporting Walmart workers and their fight for dignity, at least 112 garment workers in Bangladesh were killed in a factory fire as they reportedly worked overtime for American clothing labels and retailers, including Walmart.

Just outside the capital city of Dhaka, the Tazreen Fashions factory was engulfed in flames Nov. 24. As workers tried to escape, they found exits blocked or locked. Bdnews24 reported interviewing survivors who said the main gate was locked from the outside. The New York Times, quoting a Bangladeshi labor leader, Kalpona Akter, reported the stairs were blocked. "In this factory, there was a pile of fabrics and yarn stored on the ground floor that caught fire. Workers couldn't evacuate through the stairs," said Akter, of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity.

Labor leaders, inspecting the burned out factory, said Walmart and other American brand labels were found.

On Nov. 26 thousands protested the conditions that led to the workers' deaths. Union leaders called the tragedy "an act of murder," demanding owners - and Western retailers and brands - take responsibility. "These international, Western brands have a lot of responsibility for these fire issues," Akter said.

Bangladesh garment factories, most of them located in the Ashulia Industrial Zone where the fire took place, have been plagued with numerous health and safety problems, including fires and lack of emergency exits. ABC News reported 700 workers have died in fires at Bangladesh garment factories in the last five years.

Bangladesh garment workers, mostly young women, are among the lowest paid in the world and work in grueling conditions. The garment industry is considered key to the Bangladesh economy. It employs 3 million workers who produce $18 billion in exports per year.

Employers there are notoriously anti-union, often working with police and hired thugs to attack labor organizers. Collusion between government officials and factory owners is rampant. The Communist Party of Bangladesh reported police and hired "hooligans" raided and assaulted union leaders during a 2010 garment worker strike, jailing many.

Workers, paid next to nothing, have fought for a minimum wage for the industry, currently at the equivalent of 21 cents an hour. This year 500,000 workers went on strike demanding a 30 percent increase, which would bring the minimum wage to 27 cents an hour.

Anti-labor Walmart has come under pressure to use its influence to improve wages and working conditions in Bangladesh. Walmart sent a warning to Tazreen Fashions last year stating its working conditions were "high risk." Based on the retail giant's "ethical sourcing" program, Tazreen could still receive orders but was to be audited within six months, according to a document posted on Tazreen's parent company website. No other document regarding the results of the audit was on the site.

Bangladesh media reported that the top industry group, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said Tazreen Fashions was "compliant" and "ultra-modern." The group's president charged the fire could have been a "pre-planned" act of arson "to destabilize the industry." Eerily echoing the owners' words, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took to the floor of parliament and also claimed the fire was "pre-planned." Alluding to unknown parties that could be sabotaging Bangladesh's economy, Hasina likened the tragedy to what happened during the country's 1971 Liberation War when warehouses holding the main export, jute, were set ablaze.

Unrelated to the deadly Tazreen fire, two people were arrested on suspicion of arson for a Monday factory fire, which was quickly doused.

Yet, workers are demanding that the owners bear responsibility for the Tazreen deaths. Demonstrators carried banners that read in part: "It is not an accident, but a case of murder. Resist the transforming of garment factories into Death Traps."

Communist Party of Bangladesh chief Mujahidul Islam Selim said the fire was not a simple accident, but a case of murder due to negligence.

"Such fires have killed hundreds earlier, but no steps were taken to prevent their further occurrence," he said. The party, he said, is demanding the arrest and trial of those responsible, compensation to the families of the dead, treatment and help for the injured, inquiry into the causes of such incidents and a declaration of a Day of National Mourning.

The government did declare a Day of National Mourning for today. The labor minister said the government would shut down garment factories having no or only one emergency exit.

The Tazreen Fashions fire was the country's worst industrial blaze and casualty numbers are expected to rise. In 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City, 146 garment workers - almost all immigrant women - died in a fire after finding exits locked.

A recent petition started by SumOfUs asks people to "Tell Walmart it must join an independent fire safety inspection program supported by Bangladeshi and international labour unions, to prevent tragedies like this.To add your name go here: http://action.sumofus.org/a/walmart-bangladesh/65/?sub=taf

Photo: Communist Party of Bangladesh members march with Garment Workers Trade Union Centre as part of the mourning procession and protest Nov. 26. The banner reads in part: "We mourn those comrades whom we lost in the fire in the Tazreen Fashion Garment Factory in Ashulia." Km Mintu via Facebook.

Right-wing murderers protected in Berlin

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:06:00 +0000

BERLIN - No, it wasn't shredded wheat. This shredding was not of breakfast food and has been much harder to digest; it was evidence of serial murder! The related biliousness is all the more painful due to a worrisome new survey of rightist hatred in Germany. But first, some background.

For a year now, the case of three mystery killers has roiled the German scene. Their mug shots, shown over and over on TV, have made them as recognizable as family members. Two of them, both men, are dead - eliminated by rather dubious "suicides."

The third, Beate Zschäpe, still awaits trial for her role in the killing, between 2000 and 2006, of ten men with immigrant backgrounds - nine Turkish and one Greek, of shooting down a policewoman, robbing banks, and igniting a bomb in 2004 in a Turkish neighborhood in Cologne which injured 22 people, four of them severely.

The ten murdered men, all shot in broad daylight at close range with the same silenced CZ 83 pistol, included a grocer, a locksmith, a tailor and an internet café operator. Since three were vendors of the popular Turkish specialty food döner kebab the gutter press invented the nasty term "döner murders" and pushed a false line that foreign mafia-type mobs were to blame, probably fighting turf wars.

The actual killer group, its size still unknown, called itself NSU for Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (National Socialist Underground), a reference to its Nazi beliefs (Hitler's party was also misnamed "Nationalsozialist"). Its aim, which found such support from part of the media, was to increase anti-foreigner animosity - and move towards its final take-over goals.

Even more earnest than the media-based racism was the reaction of the authorities, especially the government's secretive political watchdog agency called Verfassungsschutz (VS - Constitutional Protector). This VS also rejected the most obvious anti-foreigner motivation, neglected to follow up leads supplied by Swiss police as to the origin of the murder weapon and, even more suspiciously, first denied, then distorted proof that one of its own secret agents was present at the killing in the internet shop, accepting all too quickly his alleged alibi and evidently hindering any attempt to follow up this very damning lead. The VS has continually held back details on the crimes from an all-party investigatory committee of the Bundestag and finally admitted that much of the evidence had been irrevocably shredded.

Gained added importance

This bloody, disturbing affair gained added importance in connection with a survey by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, an investigatory, educational foundation connected with the Social Democratic Party. On November 14th it published polling results showing that 25 percent of all Germans had right-wing or anti-foreigner prejudices. This included forms of anti-Semitism, which, it found now affected one German in eleven, with its increase, in part, reflecting events in Palestine, especially Gaza. As many as 31.9 percent now agreed with the sentence: "The Jews use recollections of the Holocaust today to gain advantages for themselves."

But even surpassing such views were various kinds of prejudice against Islam or Muslims, affecting almost 60 percent of the population.

A generally right-wing extremist view of the world, which combines such anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-foreigner prejudice with a "tolerant" assessment of the Nazi years, has grown from 8.2 percent to 9.0 percent in the last two years.

Most alarming has been the speedier growth in eastern Germany, the former GDR. In fact, while right-wing extremist thinking in the western states of Germany actually decreased somewhat since 2006, from 9.1 percent to 7.6 percent, it doubled in the East from 6.6 to 15.8 percent. This trend was visible in nearly all categories; in regard to anti-Semitism, notably, the situation has now, in recent years, become worse in eastern than in western Germany.

Views either accepting or approving Nazi ideology, formerly a problem largely concentrated in West Germany, are also now stronger in the East.

It has long been media routine, as part of a forcefully engineered campaign to disparage every aspect of GDR life, to postulate that East Germans, due to GDR schools, were more prone to accepting fascist views and prejudices.

This poll indicates the opposite; the age group most infected is that between 14 and 30; even the oldest in this sector were only eight years old when the GDR disappeared. It had not, and could not banish all such ideas from every head, not even in forty years, but it did have a remarkable degree of success. In recent times, however, the infection has been steadily spreading eastward.

The Ebert Foundation found that fascistic, xenophobic views are partly related to education, those having the least schooling being most affected. And hatred of foreigners is strongest in areas where there are almost no residents with immigrant backgrounds, which means rural and small town districts, especially in the East (just as anti-Semitism is strongest where people have never ever met any Jewish people).

But more important, if hardly surprising, it was found that, aside from senior pensioners, those most affected by fascistic ideology are the jobless. The study's authors blame the "worrisome trend in the East" on "the cutting off of certain regions from general social-economic development (especially in rural areas) ...not only in the East but in the West as well...Right-wing extremism is definitely not only a problem of the East."

Joblessness double the rate in the West

When all Germany was united within the Federal Republic in 1990, most East German industry was eliminated, resulting in a jobless rate which has remained almost double the West German rate ever since; it currently averages about ten percent. Sporadic new growth was primarily in certain limited urban centers like Dresden, Jena or Leipzig, while the former systems of child care, youth clubs and free participation in athletic and cultural activities were critically reduced.

Especially young women moved westwards to find jobs, while many young men, frequently less mobile, remained behind in hopeless towns and districts where the Nazis, some local but many from West Germany, offered them a feeling of group belonging and a vent for frustration, most clearly marked in concerts with bands and hard-drinking audiences bawling out hateful texts against foreigners, Jews, gays and all leftists.

Anti-fascists courageously opposed them in many areas, but not a few mayors, police chiefs and district attorneys either tolerated them out of fear or, all too often, defiantly encouraged them.

It would be wrong to generalize and over-simplify. There are many contradictions. The pro-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) was able to win state legislative seats only in Saxony and in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, both in eastern Germany, but the electoral trend has luckily been downward.

In Sacxony the NPD got 5.6 percent of the vote in 2009 (down from 9.2 percent in 2004); in the latter, Germany's poorest, it got 6.0 percent in 2011 (down from 7.3 percent in 2006). There are constant confrontations with vigorous anti-fascists.

This brings us back to national politics. In this past year the evidence mounted of mysterious connections between the NSU killers and politicians, especially but not exclusively in the East German state of Thuringia, where the three killers come from. There were cover-ups, advance tip-offs of police raids, and well-paid secret agents of the authorities who helped build the neo-Nazi underground - but somehow could not help in finding the killers.

After the monstrous bombing in Cologne in 2006 the local police found evidence pointing directly to a right-wing terrorist attack and reported it that way to the federal Ministry of the Interior, Germany's top authority for police affairs. But the minister, the Social Democrat Otto Schily, once a left-wing radical but by then a main supporter of authoritarian positions, did not even interrupt his vacation, while his Ministry insisted that the word "terrorist" be removed from all correspondence regarding the tragedy. It was to be treated only as a conflict "between immigrants." The officials involved have all displayed a remarkably weak memory about the case, which somehow fits well with the "accidental" paper shredding.

Berlin government also involved

Berlin's city-state government has also become involved. One of its own secret agents, employed from 2000 to 2011 though he had himself been convicted of inciting racial hatred, had evidently known the killer trio personally for years, may even have provided them with material for bombs and had been friendly with the woman, Zschäpe. It seems that he had actually reported on his acquaintanceship with the wanted criminals to his Berlin bosses, who somehow did not react. For months these facts, if that is what they are, were not passed on to the investigating committee. Some may have been lost forever to the shredding machine. Christian democratic Deputy Mayor Frank Henkel, responsible fopr law enforcement, has been questioned has been questioned about the lack of law enforcement in the case by officials in Berlin's three opposition parties - the Greens, the Pirates, and the Left.

Will the jigsaw pieces of the Nazi underground murders and bombing ever be fitted together, despite the retention of secrets and the shredding of documents? In any case, the existence of a right-wing danger can no longer be ignored, while unpleasant recollections sometimes surface about the early decades of the VS, which was created and for years staffed largely by Nazi killers. Despite all the befuddling, the big question remains: to what extent do the bungling, buck-passing and shredding represent not so much "normal" attempts to cover up poor administration and faulty judgment but rather, on quite high levels, the toleration of extremist pro-fascists because of their potential political usefulness?

The present Interior Minister on the federal level, Hans-Peter Friedrich, has now found a solution which might have been expected from a man who himself comes from the right edge of the spectrum. Aside from firing a few more conspicuous sacrificial lambs (if one can refer to such types as lambs) and setting up a new central register, connecting all the agencies, he plans to establish a new bureau devoted to sniffing out all presumed terrorists," Islamic," right-wing and also left-wing. And the Merkel cabinet, which knows that active resistance to the Nazis has come mostly from the left, wants to continue demands that anti-fascist groups sign an "extremism clause" rejecting all "unconstitutional" connections with the right or the left. As expected, compliance with such "loyalty oaths" is often refused, which leads, as intended, to cutting off left-wing anti-fascists from any official support, legal or financial.

How familiar is this old pattern! Pro-Nazis, who, even without a definite agenda like the NSU, have been attacking and sometimes killing people for years, and who have set the homes of immigrants on fire and threateningly put both names and addresses of leftist opponents on the Internet, are equated with activists on the left who try to block the path of fascist marches and rallies.

This old equating of opposites, so basic to the ideology of politicians in many countries, is now being demonstrated most dramatically in Greece, where the immense popularity of the left-wing Syriza is being met by fostering - also, again, by the police - of the Golden Dawn fascists.

The study by the Fritz Ebert Stiftung takes a stand against this pattern:

"There is a direct connection between social gaps, social-structural disintegration, and inhumane thinking. This makes it especially important, on both the European and the national level, to deal with social-economic questions, in other words with questions of the distribution of wealth. Turning social conflicts into ethnic issues only plays into the hands of the right-wing populists and increases the spread of right-wing extremist attitudes. ...

"Generating general suspicion against social projects by insisting on an "extremism clause," while equating the inhumane ideology of the right-wing extremism with any kind of left-wing extremism whatsoever, is unacceptable and counter-productive. The very genuine threat of the right-wing extremists must by no means be minimized by equating it with a fictitious threat from left-wing extremism."

It may be hoped that if the Social Democratic Party attains a share in Germany's next government in 2013, and especially if the economic situation becomes more earnest, thus strengthening the fascists, this cogent warning from its own foundation will be heard.

New political movement rising in Mexico

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 10:44:00 +0000

A new center-left political movement, called the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) has emerged on the Mexican political landscape. Formed by losing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his supporters, MORENA will continue the fight against incoming President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who will take office on December 1.

MORENA has held packed assemblies in every state across Mexico since the conclusion of the general elections on July 1, electing leaders and executive committees. The movement, according to Lopez Obrador, who is otherwise known as AMLO, will fight for the interests of the poor, the working class, the farmers, women, the indigenous people and gay and lesbian people, as well as promoting the democratization of the country. It will also resist measures that Peña Nieto plans to take to privatize the state oil company PEMEX as well as the electrical industry, and to increase sales taxes on food and medicine.

MORENA contents that the PRI as well as the National Action Party (PAN) of outgoing conservative president Felipe Calderon have created a "mafia state" that "concentrates economic and political power in Mexico" in the hands of a minority instead of the majority.

MORENA seeks to change the neo-liberal capitalist model of development that it says the PRI imposed on the country in the 1980s. "The neo-liberal model imposed for 30 years has only benefited a minority at the cost of impoverishing the majority of Mexicans. The economy is in the hands of the monopolies, the industrial base is destroyed, there are millions of young people without opportunities to study or work, the countryside has been abandoned and thousands of immigrants cross the border each day, in spite of risks and persecution" according to MORENA's declaration of principles.

Among other things, MORENA proposes to rebuild Mexico through state led economic development, supporting domestic industry, breaking up monopolies, assisting farmers to foster greater agricultural production, and the implementation of a wide range of social programs to eliminate poverty and reduce crime.

"MORENA members are inspired by the historical fight of the Mexican people. There are three principal transformations that have taken place in our country: Independence, Reform and Revolution. MORENA aspired to foment a fourth transformation in the history of Mexico.

MORENA does not recognize Peña Nieto as Mexico's legitimate president. According to the movement, he won the elections on July 1 through a massive vote buying scheme, handing over corporate and public money, pre-paid gift cards, building and farm supplies, and tax forgiveness to the poor in exchange for votes for the PRI.

MORENA proposes to change Mexico through peaceful struggle and electoral means.

With the formation of MORENA, Lopez Obrador has made his final break with the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). AMLO was elected governor of the Mexico City region on the PRD ticket for 2000-2006 and was the party's candidate for president in 2006 and 2012. In recent years, he has voiced displeasure with the PRD leadership for, among other things, forming coalitions with the PAN in some states to block the PRI from winning elections. AMLO has reiterated that the PRI and the PAN are "the same" in their policies and outlook. Lopez Obrador has also criticized the internal factionalism that has wracked the PRD.

AMLO, as an important leader of the left, has a broad following across Mexico. In the July 1 elections, he got 16 million votes and came close to winning the presidency.

MORENA delegates voted at a weekend convention in Mexico City November 19-20 to register the movement as a political party and run candidates in the next elections. The 1,700 convention delegates attending the convention also elected the movement's president, secretary general and leadership bodies. Already, several high profile PRD members and elected officials have defected from the PRD to MORENA.

Egypt brokers Gaza talks as rocket fire continues

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 12:15:00 +0000

As rocket fire continued between Israel and Gaza's Hamas-led government Nov. 19 and Israel continued to threaten a land invasion, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Cairo to participate in ceasefire talks initiated by Egypt's government.

In parallel talks, Egyptian mediators are meeting with leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and other Palestinian organizations, and with Israeli officials, in an effort to broker a lasting resolution in the longstanding conflict. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are also participating in the talks.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told reporters that for Gaza's government to accept a cease-fire, Israel must stop its air strikes first and lift the blockade it imposed in 2007.

The Palestinians are also demanding an end to Israeli incursions into Gaza, an end to assassinations of Palestinian leaders and a permanent freeze on attacks against fishermen off the coast.

Israel, in turn, is reportedly asking for a 15-year halt to the fighting, including an end to all rocket attacks, "terrorist attacks" launched from Gaza and smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel's air and sea bombardment of tiny 141-square-mile Gaza was continuing, with Gaza's health ministry saying the death toll now tops 100 - about half of them civilians - including 24 children. Among Israeli targets was a complex in Gaza City housing international media.

Among Palestinian casualties were nine members of the al-Dalou family. Israeli officials claimed the bomb that struck their home was aimed at a senior Hamas leader.

Hundreds of rockets have been fired from Gaza onto Israel, with three Israeli deaths reported so far.

The current weeklong upsurge in rocket fire began after an Israeli airstrike assassinated Hamas military leader Ahmad al-Jaabari on Nov. 14. Jaabari had been the lead negotiator in the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and reportedly had been involved in arranging a short-lived truce in the days immediately before his death.

Besides the air and sea assaults, Israel has massed 75,000 troops on the Gaza border, amid speculation about an imminent invasion.

A poll published this week by the center-left Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz found most Israelis supporting the air strikes but only 30 percent supporting a ground offensive.

Administration officials said President Barack Obama had spoken by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Morsi, expressing condolences for the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives, and emphasizing the need to de-escalate the conflict. The administration has also said Palestinian rocket fire into Israel must end, and Israel has the right to defend itself.

The Gaza Strip, established in 1948, has been continuously controlled by Israel since 1967, despite the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli settlements and troops, and is considered by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States to be under Israeli occupation.

In a statement issued this week, the American Friends Service Committee said the current situation bears "a striking resemblance" to past Israeli military offensives including the 2008 Operation Cast Lead, in which over 1,400 Palestinians were killed and homes and infrastructure devastated.

The AFSC urged an end to violence by both sides, immediate efforts by the U.S. and international community for a cease-fire, an immediate end to the blockade, and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.

The Communist Party USA called on the Israeli government to stop escalating the conflict and pull back from sending in ground troops. The CPUSA also urged the U.S. to press Israel to stop further attacks in Gaza and return to serious negotiations toward a two-state solution meeting the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

And J Street, which calls itself "the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans," called on President Obama "to step forward ... with a bold new effort to resolve this conflict."

Photo: Smoke rises after an Israeli forces strike in Gaza City, Nov. 18. The Israeli military widened its range of targets in the Gaza Strip to include the media operations of the Palestinian territory's Hamas leaders, sending its aircraft to attack two buildings used by both Hamas and foreign media outlets. Bernat Armangue/AP

Thousands in Ireland march for woman refused an abortion

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:13:00 +0000

Thousands of people marched through Dublin, Ireland, on Nov. 17 to protest over the death of Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar who died of blood poisoning after being refused an abortion.

More than 10,000 people gathered for a vigil and march over the death and the country's draconian abortion laws.

A minute's silence was held at Merrion Square by the crowd, followed by chants "never again."

Irish doctors appear to have judged that leaving Ms Halappanavar for two days with a fully opened cervix did not present any risk of the infection from which she eventually died.

Instead, she was allegedly told that "Ireland is a Catholic country," implying that abortion was, therefore, out of the question.

Speakers from socialist parties, women's groups and abortion rights activists addressed Saturday's crowd from a flatbed lorry.

They decried the fact that two decades had passed without any political decision to define more closely when hospitals could or could not, perform abortions.

"Twenty years is far too long. Ignoring women's rights is wrong!" the crowd chanted.

Sinead Ahern from Choice Ireland told them: "We hope the people who loved Savita know how sorry we are for what happened to her."

About 1,000 people staged a rally in Galway, where the Halappavanars settled in 2008.

Some placed candles spelling Savita on the pavement in Galway's central Eyre Square.

Ms Halappanavar's husband Praveen took her body back to India for a Hindu funeral service and cremation on November 3 but intends to return to his job as a medical devices engineer at Boston Scientific in Galway.

Irish law on abortion is a rat's nest of contradictions and the Irish government has done little to untangle it.

A 1992 [Irish] Supreme Court ruling found abortion should be allowed when a continued pregnancy could endanger the woman's life but successive governments have refused to bring forward any legislation to resolve the contentious issue.

Reposted from Morning Star

Photo: Protesters light candles in memory of Savita Halappanavar during a rally outside Ireland's government headquarters in Dublin, Nov. 17. Thousands marched to the spot to demand that the government draft a law defining when abortions can be performed to save a woman's life. Shawn Pogatchnik/AP

China's Communist Party elects new leaders

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:29:00 +0000

On Thursday November 16, the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) ended in Beijing with the election of a new team of party leaders, including especially the new Politburo Standing Committee which replaces the current one headed by Chinese President Hu Jintao. The new Committee will have fewer members, 7 instead of the current 9.

The Congress was a monumental affair involving 2,217 delegates from all regions of the People's Republic of China. Its discussions ranged over all areas of economic, social, cultural and international policy for the world's largest nation (1.35 billion people). Both the Chinese people, who are very aware that what is decided in the Party's conclaves closely determines the policies to be followed by the government, and outsiders observed the proceedings closely.

The foreign press and media, including the corporate controlled media in the United States and Europe, gave excessive attention to various internal controversies and scandals, real and doubtful, and in doing so created more heat than light. It is natural, however, that outside of China there was a lot of speculation as to what new trade and foreign relations initiatives might arise from the Congress.

Various sources in China suggest a certain amount of bored irritation with the "China bashing" that has now become part of the routine of U.S. presidential elections.

The new Secretary General, Xi Jinping, who is the country's current vice president and who will become the new president next year, spoke briefly to the Congress on Thursday. His speech, like others in the Congress, stressed an approach that will strive to improve the material life of the Chinese people.

Xi and other speakers at the Congress also stressed the importance of fighting corruption. After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the Chinese state opened up more opportunities for private enterprise and the accumulation of wealth by private individuals. This has led to corruption complaints and also more labor strife. At the same time, China has become vastly wealthier and now plays a giant role on the world stage. Many countries see trade with and development aid from China as a way of getting out from under hegemonic economic control of the United States and the former colonial powers of Western Europe. China is the largest country in the world by population, and as such is the largest member of the BRICS group of nations which are seen as a counterpoise to the United States and the West (the others are Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa).

In his brief acceptance speech on Thursday, the new Secretary General, Xi Jinping, spoke very briefly and simply: "To fulfill our responsibility, we will rally the whole Party and the people of all ethnic groups in China in making continued efforts to free up our minds, carry out reform and opening up, further release and develop the productive forces, work hard to resolve the difficulties the people face in both work and life, and unwaveringly pursue common prosperity." He also stressed the need to overcome corruption, to bring the Party into a closer relationship with the people, and to combat formalistic, bureaucratic approaches.

The new approach is seen by some as aiming to expand the internal markets of China by increasing the basic living standards of the people. China has reached its current level of prosperity by emphasizing, among other things, international trade and exports, and is currently suffering from something of a slowdown because the international financial crisis and the impoverishment of many people in Europe has cut into Chinese exports. However, China plans to continue expanding its external economic activity, especially in Africa.

The new Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, will also be inaugurated early next year.

Photo: Eugene Hoshiko/AP

Middle East: the next four years

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:54:00 +0000

Over the next four years the U.S. will face a number of foreign policy issues, most of them regional, some of them global. Dispatches From The Edge will try to outline and analyze them, starting with the Middle East.

Syria

The most immediate problem in the region is the on-going civil war in Syria, a conflict with local and international ramifications. The war-which the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad ignited by its crushing of pro-democracy protests- has drawn in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Iran, and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, in particular Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The United States, France, and Great Britain are also heavily involved in the effort to overthrow the Assad government.

The war has killed more than 30,000 people and generated several hundred thousand refugees, who have flooded into Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. It has also badly damaged relations between Turkey and Iran. The former supports the insurrection, the latter supports the Assad regime. Pitting Shite Iran (and to a certain extent, Shite Iraq and the Shite-based Hezbollah in Lebanon) against the largely Sunni Muslim opposition has sharpened sectarian tensions throughout the region.

The war itself appears to be a stalemate. So far, the regime's army remains loyal, but seems unable to defeat the insurrection. The opposition, however, is deeply splintered and ranges from democratic nationalists to extremist jihadist groups. The U.S. and Britain are trying to weld this potpourri into a coherent political opposition, but so far the attempts have floundered on a multiplicity of different and conflicting agendas by the opponents of the Assad regime.

Efforts by the United Nations (UN) to find a peaceful solution have been consistently torpedoed, because the opposition and its allies insist on regime change. The goal of overthrowing the government makes this a fight to the death and leaves little room for political maneuvering. A recent ceasefire failed, in part, because jihadist groups supported by Qatar and Saudi Arabia refused to abide by it and set off several car bombs in the capital. The Sunni extremism of these groups is whipping up sectarian divisions among the various sects of Islam.

There are a number of things the Obama administration could do to alleviate the horrors of the current civil war.

First, it should drop the demand for regime change, although this does not necessarily mean that President Assad will remain in power. What must be avoided is the kind of regime change that the war in Libya ushered in. Libya has essentially become a failed state, and the spinoff from that war is wreaking havoc in countries that border the Sahara, Mali being a case in point. In the end, Assad may go, but to dismantle the Baathist government is to invite the kind of sectarian and political chaos that the dissolution of the Baathist regime in Iraq produced.

Second, if the U.S. and its allies are enforcing an arms embargo against Assad's government, they must insist on the same kind of embargo on arms sent to the rebels by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Third, China and Russia should be asked to negotiate a ceasefire and organize a conference aimed at producing a political settlement and transition government. China recently proposed a four-point peace plan that could serve as a starting point for talks. A recent Assad government controlled newspaper, Al Thawra, suggested the Damascus regime would be open to such negotiations. A key aspect to such talks would be a guarantee that no outside power would undermine them.

Palestinians

The conflict that will not speak its name-or at least that is the way the current impasse between Israel and the Palestinians was treated during the 2012 U.S. elections. But as U.S. Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, the military formation responsible for the Middle East, said last spring, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a "pre-eminent flame that keeps the pot boiling in the Middle East, particularly as the Arab Awakening causes Arab governments to be more responsive to the sentiments of their populations" that support the Palestinians.

Rather than moving toward a solution, however, the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently announced yet another round of settlement building. There are approximately 500,000 Jewish settlers currently on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, although all such settlements are a violation of international law. While Netanyahu says he wants negotiations, he continues to build settlements, which is like negotiating over how to divide a pizza while one of the parties is eating it.

Proposals to annex the West Bank, once the program of far-right settlers, have gone mainstream. A conference this past July in the West Bank city of Hebron drew more than 500 Israelis who reject the idea of a Palestinian state. The gathering included a number of important Likud Party officials and members of the Knesset. Likud is Netanyahu's party and currently leads the Israeli government.

"Friends, everybody here today knows that there is a solution-applying sovereignty [over the West Bank]. One state for the Jewish people with an Arab minority," Likud Knesset member Tzipi Hotovely told the audience.

Conference organizer Yehudit Katsover put the matter bluntly "We're all here to say one thing: the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. Why? Because!"

A major argument against absorbing the West Bank, is that it would dilute the Jewish character of Israel and threaten the country's democratic institutions. "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak argues. "If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

But right-wing conference goers dismissed that argument because they reject that there is a demographic threat from the Palestinians. According to The Times of Israel, former ambassador to the U.S., Yoram Ettinger, told the crowd that estimates of the Palestinian population are based on "Palestinian incompetence or lying" and that there are actually a million fewer than the official population count.

Legal expert Yitzhak Bam said he expected there would be no fallout from the Americans if Israel unilaterally annexed the West Bank, since Washington did not protest the 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria. Both areas were conquered in the 1967 War.

The Times reporter Raphael Ahern writes that that the conference reflects "The annexationists are growing in confidence, demanding in outspoken fashion what they always dreamed of but have never dared to say quite so publically."

The expanding settlements are rapidly making the possibility of a viable two-state solution impossible. Eventually there will be no pizza left to divide.

The Obama administration has dropped the ball on this issue and needs to re-engage, lest the "pot" boil over.

First, the Tel Aviv government needs to be told that all settlement expansion must cease, and that failure to do so will result in a suspension of aid. At about $3.4 billion a year, Israel is the U.S.'s number one foreign aid recipient.

Second, the U.S. must stop blocking efforts by the Palestinians for UN recognition.

Third, negotiations must cover not only the West Bank and Gaza, but also the status of East Jerusalem. The latter is the engine of the Palestinian economy, and without it a Palestinian state would not be viable.

Iran

The immediate danger of a war with Iran appears to have slightly receded, although the Israelis are always a bit of a wild card. First, the Obama administration explicitly rejected Netanyahu's "red line" that would trigger an attack on Teheran. The Israeli prime minister argues that Iran must not be allowed to achieve the "capacity" to produce nuclear weapons, a formulation that would greatly lower the threshold for an assault. Second, there are persistent rumors that the U.S. and Iran are exploring one-on-one talks, and it appears that some forces within Iran that support talks-specifically former president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani- are in the ascendency.

Netanyahu continues to threaten war, but virtually his entire military and intelligence apparatus is opposed to a unilateral strike. Israeli intelligence is not convinced that Iran is building a bomb, and the Israeli military doesn't think it has the forces or weapons to do the job of knocking out Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Polls also indicate overwhelming opposition among the Israeli public for a unilateral attack. This doesn't mean Netanyahu won't attack Iran, just that the danger does not seem immediate. If Israel should choose to launch a war, the Obama administration should make it clear that Tel Aviv is on its own.

U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon are pretty much on the same page as the Israelis regarding Iran's nuclear program. Even with its powerful military, U.S. generals are not convinced that an attack would accomplish much more than delaying Iran's program by from three to five years. At least at this point, the Pentagon would rather talk than fight. "We are under the impression that the Iranian regime is a rational actor," says Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Polls also indicate that nearly 70 percent of the American public favors negotiations over war.

In short, a lot of ducks are now in a row to cut a deal.

However, the US cannot make uranium enhancement a red line. Iran has the right to enhance nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and as long as inspectors are in place-as they currently are-it is virtually impossible to create bomb-level fuel in secret.

Not only has intelligence failed to show that Iran is creating a nuclear weapons program, the country's leader has explicitly rejected such a step. "The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons," says the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, calling nuclear weapons "a great and unforgivable sin." The Iranian government has also indicated that it will take part in a UN-sponsored conference in Helsinki to create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

The Obama administration should endorse this effort to abolish nuclear weapons in the Middle East, although this will force it to confront the only nuclear power in the Middle East, Israel. Israel is not a NPT signatory and is thought to have some 200 nuclear weapons. Such a monopoly cannot long endure. The argument that Israel needs nuclear weapons because it is so outnumbered in the region is nonsense. Israel has by far the strongest military in the Middle East and powerful protectors in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). While Egypt and Syria did attack Israel in 1973, it was to recover territories seized by Tel Aviv in the 1967 war, not an attempt to destroy the country. And that was almost 40 years ago. Since then Israel has invaded Lebanon twice and Gaza once. Countries in the region fear Israel, not visa-a-versa.

While the White House has recently eased restrictions on the sale of critical medicines to Iran, the sanctions are taking a terrible toll on the economy and the average Iranian. So far, the US has not explicitly said it will remove the sanctions if talks are showing real progress. Since no one likes negotiating with a gun to the head-in this regard Iranians are no different than Americans-there should be some good faith easing of some of the more onerous restrictions, like those on international banking and oil sales.

Lastly, the option of war needs to be taken off the table. Threatening to bomb people in order to get them not to produce nuclear weapons will almost certainly spur Iran (and other countries) to do exactly the opposite. A war with Iran would also be illegal. The British attorney general recently informed the Parliament that an attack on Iran would violate international law, because Iran does not pose a "clear and present danger," and recommended that the US not be allowed to use the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to launch such an attack.

The Gulf

Because US relies on the energy resources of the Persian Gulf countries, as well as strategic basing rights, it is unlikely that the Obama administration will challenge the foreign and domestic policies of its allies in the region. But then Washington should not pretend that its policies there have anything to do with promoting democracy.

The countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are monarchies that not only suppress dissent but also systematically oppress women and minorities and, in the case of Bahrain, the Shite majority. The extreme jihadist organizations that the countries of the Gulf fund and arm are destabilizing governments across the region and throughout Central Asia. Washington may bemoan extremism in Pakistan, but its Gulf allies can claim the lion's share of the credit for nurturing the groups responsible for that extremism.

The Gulf Council is not interested in promoting democracy-indeed, political pluralism is one of its greatest enemies, nor does it have much interest in the modern world, aside from fancy cars and personal jet planes. This past summer Saudi Arabia executed a man for possessing "books and talismans from which he learned to harm God's worshippers," and last year beheaded a man and a woman for witchcraft.

Lastly, the Obama administration should repudiate the 1979 Carter Doctrine that allows the US to use military force to guarantee access to energy resources in the Middle East. That kind of thinking went out with 19^th century gunboats and hangs like the Damocles Sword over any country in the region that might decide to carve out an independent policy on politics and energy.

This article originally appeared on the author's blog, Dispatches from the Edge. Photo: President Barack Obama talks with his Middle East team. At center is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who will step down next term. (Pete Souza/White House)

World condemns U.S. Cuba policy once again

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:24:00 +0000

On Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly voted, for the twenty-second consecutive time, to condemn the United States' economic blockade against Cuba by a vote of 188 to three, with two nations abstaining. This time, no nations were listed as "not voting."

The three countries that voted against the Cuban resolution were the United States, Israel (population 8 million), and Palau (population 21,000). Abstaining were the Marshall Islands (population 68,000) and the Federated States of Micronesia (population 111,000). The three Pacific Island nations do not have full control over their own foreign policies, not only because they are dependent on US aid, but because of specific arrangements which put their defense wholly in the hands of the United States through the "Compact of Free Association." All the countries comprising the rest of the world, or about six billion, eight hundred thousand people, voted to condemn the US policy. These included all of our country's trading partners, neighbors, and NATO allies.

When the vote was announced, there was fervent applause. Governments whose delegations voted "yes" are angered by the arrogance of the U.S. policy, which not only blocks most Cuban trade with the United States, but tries to prevent other countries from trading with Cuba also. Recently, the United States fined a Netherlands' company, the ING Bank, a total of $619 million for its transactions with Cuba. Such fines are assessed on the pretext that the foreign company in question has economic relationships with U.S. companies, such as using U.S.-made components in its products. The Cubans call the U.S. policy a "blockade," and not merely an embargo, because of these extraterritorial claims.

This is the highest vote yet to condemn the blockade. The series started in 1992 with a vote of 59 to three with 71 abstentions and 59 countries not voting. It has steadily built up since then. Last year, the vote was 186 to two with three abstentions.

In the lead up to the vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez gave a detailed report on the harm that the blockade has done to the Cuban people.

U.S. representative Ronald Godard claimed that the economic problems that Rodriguez had outlined were not caused by the U.S. economic blockade, but rather by failed socialist policies in Cuba, and that the U.S. policy is designed to pressure Cuba into allowing its citizens to freely choose their government, and will not be changed. There was not even polite applause for Godard.

During the weekend before the UN vote, the National Network on Cuba, an umbrella group of U.S. based organizations that work to change the U.S. government's anti-Cuba policy, issued a statement calling for the Obama Administration to waive elements of the blockade so that Cuba can purchase construction supplies and other items that it sorely needs to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy hit the city of Santiago and Environs in Eastern Cuba, doing vast damage and costing 11 lives. The statement also reiterates the Network's longstanding demand that the entire blockade be ended.

Before it went on to devastate New Jersey and New York, Sandy also hit Haiti and Jamaica hard, but only Cuba is not allowed to purchase most reconstruction materials in the United States.

It remains to be seen if the results of the U.S. general election will herald any change in U.S. Cuba policy. The Obama administration loosened some restrictions on travel, and eliminated restrictions that George W. Bush had imposed on Cuban-Americans' visits to their relatives in Cuba and remittances they send to the island, but had not changed the main trade prohibitions, which in fact have been intensified. Had Romney won, this small progress would certainly have been reversed.

All members of the Senate and the House who have called for a softening of the U.S. Cuba policy were re-elected if they chose to run. However, the biggest hardliners on Cuba, from both the Democratic and Republican parties, were also re-elected. These include, on the Republican side, people like Congresspersons Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz Balart (both of Florida), and on the Democratic side, Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Florida). Ros-Lehtinen still chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Wasserman-Schultz is the chair of the National Democratic Committee.

For years, public opinion in the United States has favored a rapprochement between the United States and Cuba. Conventional wisdom has indicated that the continued hard line under both Democratic and Republican administrations has had to do with the electoral votes of Florida, seen to be under the control of intransigent Cuban exile sectors.

However, this year, Obama won nationally even before it was seen that he had also taken Florida. Furthermore, changes in the political attitude of Cuban-Americans may open up possibilities for the administration modifying the U.S. policy without fearing the wrath of the exiles. Taking Cuba off the list of "state sponsors of terrorism" is one, and letting Cuba buy what it needs to reconstruct after Sandy, another.

Arab world on Patraeus: Lebanese woman brings down CIA

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:00:00 +0000

The headlines about the Petraeus affair in the Arab world this morning almost universally read something like "Lebanese woman brings down CIA." The woman who seems to have destroyed three careers and kicked off the FBI investigation of Gen. David Petraeus, ex-director of the CIA, goes by Jill Kelley. But her maiden name is Gilberte Khawam.

The Khawam family is Maronite Catholics from Jounieh in Lebanon, and came to the US in the mid-1970s. The father, Hanna ("John") Khawam, had been a musician in Beirut. His wife is Marcelle, also a Lebanese Christian.

Once the elder Khawam came to the United States, he at one point ran a restaurant, the "Sahara," in the Philadelphia area, and also an auto store. Gilberte or "Jill" was born in 1975, and it isn't clear whether she was born in the U.S. or in Lebanon. She later married a surgeon named Kelley and 12 years ago they moved to Tampa. They have three daughters.

The 1970s were a turbulent time in Lebanon, with the rise of the PLO in Palestinian refugee camps, student strikes, and then from April of 1975 the beginnings of a civil war that lasted a decade and a half. (I myself lived in Lebanon on and off in the 1970s).

Read the rest of the story here.

Photo: U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus gives the thumbs up with his wfe Holly at his retirement ceremony at Joint Base Meyer-Henderson Hall, Va., August 31, 2011. Petraeus recently resigned as the nation's top spy chief because of a reported affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell. (DoD/Chad J. McNeeley)

Israel assassinates Hamas military commander

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:10:00 +0000

A senior military commander of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas was assassinated by an Israeli air strike Nov. 14.

Ahmed al-Jabari and another top Hamas official Mohammed al-Hams were killed during a wave of raids in retaliation for rockets fired into southern Israel.

The 46 year-old al-Qassam brigades leader is the most senior Hamas figure to be killed since Israel's last invasion four years ago.

An Israeli Defence Force spokeswoman told the BBC the killing was part of an effort to destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad's ability to mount attacks.

More than 110 rockets have been fired into Israel since Nov. 9 with no fatalities, but Hamas appeared prior to the today's killings to hold to a ceasefire it offered the morning of Nov. 13.

The deaths are likely to be seen as a major provocation in Gaza and the West Bank.

The assassinations come a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a meeting of senior cabinet ministers to consider the controversial tactic, which provoked international outrage a decade ago.

Left-wing Hadash party Israeli MP Dov Khenin condemned the killings.

"Assassinating leaders is never the solution," he said.

"In place of the leaders killed, other will grow, and we will only get another cycle of fire and blood."

But the IDF warned that it was "ready to initiate a ground operation in Gaza" if necessary and that it had identified further targets for assassination.

Hamas supporters were also in fighting mood, with thousands gathering outside the hospital Mr. Jabari was taken to demand "retaliation" and an immediate attack on Tel Aviv.

Reprinted from Morning Star

Photo: Wreckage of the car in which was killed Ahmed Jabari, head of the Hamas military wing in Gaza City, Nov. 14. The Israeli military said its assassination of the Hamas military commander marks the beginning of an operation against Gaza militants. Adel Hana/AP

Today in history: Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:04:00 +0000

On 9-10 November 1938, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews took place throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria, carried out by the SS elite military forces, the Hitler Youth, and neighborhood gangsters. The attacks left the streets covered with broken glass from the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues.

At least 91 Jews were killed in the attacks, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and incarcerated in slave labor camps. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Over 1,000 synagogues were burned (95 in Vienna alone), and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.

A People's World reader who was a 14 year old girl living with her mother in Berlin at the time, described her recollections, "All night we heard nothing but crashes and explosions." That morning she walked out to a surreal scene of demolished neighborhood shops, including a popular lady's dress shop. She found the streets filled with broken glass up to her ankles. Bands of Hitler Youth - she described them as "scum" - were still roaming the area. The home and clinic of the Jewish doctor next door was destroyed.

In early twentieth century Germany, Jews were assimilated and even served in the military. But by 1938, the Nazi Party had won about one third of the seats in Parliament. President Von Hindenburg tried unsuccessfully to have representatives from various political parties form a government, and eventually appointed Hitler to do so. Once in, Hitler never left and had himself made "Fuehrer" or leader.

Also by this time the German economy was diverted to military build up, and shortages and rationing were common. During Kristallnacht, civilians were egged on and encouraged in looting with the promise, "Whatever you steal is yours to keep." At that time some of the largest department stores in the country were owned by Jews, including KaDeWe in Berlin.

Ironically, here in the U.S. one year later, November 9, 1939, J. Edgar Hoover created an FBI list of potential political detainees that included Communists, labor leaders, journalists, poets, writers critical of the FBI and some members of Congress.

Photo: Berliners gather in front of Berlin's main Synagogue, November 9, 2000, for a protest march against hate and anti-foreigner violence. Leading German political figures and personalities marched from the synagogue to commemorate the Kristallnacht pogrom. Banner reads: "We stand up for human kindness and tolerance". Markus Schreiber/AP

Cuban report to United Nations condemns U.S. blockade

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 12:53:00 +0000

Hurricane Sandy ravaged eastern Cuba on October 25 and humanitarian aid was soon on the way from throughout Cuba and from Venezuela, Russia, and Bolivia. U.S. activists called for easing the U.S. blockade against Cuba so U.S. construction material could arrive. Cuban observer Iroel Sánchez had another idea: "The best humanitarian aid Cuba could receive - the equivalent of billions of tons - would be to end the blockade."

The United Nations General Assembly takes that notion up on November 13 when for the 21st consecutive year it votes on a Cuban sponsored resolution calling for the blockade's demise. Last year the U.S. and Israel were the only dissenters to the same resolution out of 186 voting nations.

In preparation, the Cuban Foreign ministry has supplied the UN with a report on workings, effects, and history of the blockade, a core piece of U.S. Cuban policy. This comprehensive and detailed report accessible on the Ministry's website examines blockade operations and impact in their totality and thus provides an alternative to sporadic media reports on particular instances of blockade related suffering and shortages. The current 14,000-word document focuses heavily on new developments cropping up during the year ending on April 30, 2012.

The report begins by citing a statement in June from Adam Szubin, Treasury Department official in charge of sanctions, as signifying continued U.S. dedication, after half a century, to enforcing the blockade. Announcing a record $619 million fine imposed on a Netherlands bank for handling dollars claimed by Cuba, Szubin asserted that sanctions do reflect U. S. national security and foreign policy interests, and that OFAC (the Treasury enforcement division) "pursues them exhaustively."

The introductory segment notes that, "Policies of economic asphyxiation ... haven't let up for even an instant [since 1959]. Successive U.S. governments are obsessed with destroying the political, social, and economic system chosen by the Cuban people in exercise of rights of self determination and sovereignty." Not only are U.S. policies genocidal, but also, "The anti- Cuban blockade continues as the most unjust, all-encompassing, severe and prolonged system of unilateral sanctions ever applied against any country in the world."

Multiple illustrations are offered of how Cuba is prevented from exporting and importing to and from the United States and denied access to goods U.S. affiliated companies produce in third countries. Cuba is prohibited from using U.S. dollars in international financial transactions. U.S. banks, their affiliates abroad, and U.S. controlled institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the Inter-American Development Bank refuse to consider loans. In the process of monitoring foreign banks, OFAC has frozen $245 million in Cuban assets.

The report reviews new U.S. laws and regulations pertaining to the blockade and applauds U.S. and worldwide opposition. It reviews adverse effects on health care, food supply, export industries, foreign investment in Cuba, and Cuban patents. "Extra-territorial" enforcement actions and interference with international aid to Cuba are discussed. Interference with educational and cultural interchanges is routine, as are restrictions placed on foreign-based technologies essential to Cuba's construction, information technology, communications, and tourism industries.

Monetary losses associated with particular categories of blockade enforcement are recorded. Expressed in dollars, they reach into the millions. Thus, "Between April, 2011 and March, 2012, the construction industry was deprived of $1.027 million with the result that up to 2000 houses weren't built, or some 14 thousand weren't maintained, or nine thousand weren't repaired." In all, losses over 50 years amount to 108 billion dollars, or as expressed in terms of a depreciating dollar, one trillion 66 billion dollars. The U.S. blockade is "the principal obstacle to economic and social development of the island," the report claims.

This kind of blockade resembles real war in the suffering caused by both and often in their common goals. The U.S. government infuses its blockade policy with the language of war. Presidential re-authorizations of the blockade, for example, invoke the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, and Cuba periodically is designated a "terrorist" nation. An Eisenhower official in 1959 called for measures leaving Cuba with shortages and suffering in order to overthrow the government there. Preparations for invading Cuba's Bay of Pigs would shortly follow.

So the U.S. is mobilized for grim conflict, while Cuba would and does work in peace. The contrast, for example, is striking between the U.S. facility once known as the School of the Americas where, according to critics, the U.S. Army trains assassins and human rights abusers and Cuba's Latin American School of Medicine where students from forty countries receive medical training."

In other words, the U.S. blockades an island neighbor while, at the same time, Cuba was enabling Juan Carlos Reinao Merilao, an indigenous inhabitant of Chile, not only to serve as a physician, but also, indirectly, to become major of Araucanía municipality.

Photo: Protesters demand an end to the blockade against Cuba. laurizza/Flickr