Interview: Turkey’s FM Ahmet Davutoglu
Monthly Archives: June 2011
Hezbollah and the Arab revolution
Larbi Sadiki writes:
Is there something amiss within Hezbollah?
It rose from the ignominy of oblivion, feudal exploitation, sectarian bias, and overall marginalisation to occupy political centre stage. In fewer than thirty years it converted Shia socio-political weightlessness into a counterbalancing political gravity.
It stood up against the Israeli Goliath. It survived the “incendiaries” dropped on it by Arab politicians arrayed against it from Amman to Cairo. It outclassed its enemies within and outside of Lebanon, with imaginative political guile and fine calculation against all odds.
But resisting the Goliath of Tel Aviv while embracing the lion of Damascus risks a decreasing commitment to Arab revolution within “the Party of God” – and to its own revolutionary standing.
Freedom for Palestine – OneWorld
John McCain, John Kerry introduce Libya resolution
Politico reports:
Sens. John McCain and John Kerry introduced a resolution Tuesday that would give President Barack Obama the green light to continue limited military operations in Libya.
The language of the proposal has more teeth than the “sense of the Senate” resolution McCain and Kerry rolled out last month, which was merely a symbolic gesture backing the Libya effort. The latest plan would authorize U.S. operations in Libya but expires after one year and would make clear that the Senate agrees there is no need or desire to put boots on the ground in the North African nation.
“The Senate has been silent for too long on U.S. military operations in Libya,” McCain said on the chamber floor.
“It is time for the Senate to act. It is time to authorize the president’s use of force, whether he thinks he needs it or not. And it is time to send a message to our allies, to [Muammar Qadhafi] and to his opponents in Libya who are fighting for their freedom that there is strong bipartisan support in the Senate, and among the American people, for staying the course in Libya until we succeed.”
Clinton hails female Saudi driving activists
Al Jazeera reports:
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has praised Saudi women fighting for the right to drive in their country as “brave” but said it was up to Saudi society to determine the way forward.
“What these women are doing is brave and what they are seeking is right,” Clinton said.
Clinton was commenting on the show of defiance displayed by women in the kingdom who are campaigning a against a ban that prohibits women from driving in the kingdom.
On Friday, several woman drove cars in defiance of the ban.
“I am moved by it and I support them,” said Clinton in her first comments on the issue.
Prior to her remarks, the US state department had said that Clinton was engaged in “quiet diplomacy” on the driving ban.
This drew an appeal from a Saudi women’s group for a more forceful US stance.
In a statement emailed to reporters, Saudi Women for Driving said: “Secretary Clinton: quiet diplomacy is not what we need right now.
“What we need is for you, personally, to make a strong, simple and public statement supporting our right to drive.”
While Clinton did praise the women and their efforts she maintained that it was an internal issue.
“This is not about the United States, it is not about what any of us on the outside say,” said Clinton.
“It is about the women themselves and their right to raise their concerns with their own government,” she said.
US mayors call for end to wars and nuclear weapons
Truthout reports:
Peace activists won a major victory on Monday, June 20, when the US Conference of Mayors voted to adopt two resolutions that call for a drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Both resolutions also demand the reprioritization of defense spending, including the $126 billion spent each year in Iraq and Afghanistan, toward the needs of municipalities.
The group, which represents mayors of municipalities with 30,000 or more residents, has not passed such a resolution in 40 years.
Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) fellow Karen Dolan directs IPS’s Cities For Peace project, which organizes elected officials and activists to take action against war on a local level. In a statement to Truthout, Dolan said that the mayors, “are responsive to the needs of the people in a way in which Congress and the president have not been. Unless money is better spent at the state and local level, we will not see an economic recovery.” According to IPS, hundreds of municipalities around the United States have called for the end to the wars in the Middle East.
Israeli undercover agents boast of killing Palestinians on TV
The Ma’an News Agency reports:
Undercover Israeli intelligence officers appeared on national television Saturday to talk about assassinating Palestinians in a program broadcast on Israel’s Channel 10.
Oren Beaton presented a photo album of Palestinians he killed during his time as a commander of an undercover Israeli unit operating in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Beaton explained that he kept photos of his victims.
“This is a photo of a Palestinian young man called Basim Subeih who I killed. This is another young man. I shredded his body, and the photo shows the remnants of his body,” he said.
The TV program also featured an undercover agent referred to as “D”, who openly admitted killing “wanted Palestinians.”
He complained of suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and said that the state had rejected his demands for compensation.
The Channel 10 presenter appealed to the Israeli government to meet the agent’s demands.
“Those are the Shin Bet agents we only hear about and never see, and thanks to them we live safely,” she said.
Another theocracy in the heart of the Muslim world
Uri Avnery writes:
I am fed up with all this nonsense about recognizing Israel as the “Jewish state.”
It is based on a collection of hollow phrases and vague definitions, devoid of any real content. It serves many different purposes, almost all of them malign.
Benjamin Netanyahu uses it as a trick to obstruct the establishment of the Palestinian state. This week he declared that the conflict just has no solution. Why? Because the Palestinians do not agree to recognize, etc., etc.
Four rightist members of the Knesset have just submitted a bill empowering the government to refuse to register new NGOs and to dissolve existing ones if they “deny the Jewish character of the state.”
This new bill is only one of a series designed to curtail the civil rights of Arab citizens, as well as those of leftists.
Netanyahu: Israel needs to separate from the Palestinians
Haaretz reports:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surprised many of the participants in the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday when he embarked on a monologue praising the idea of parting from the Palestinians and in relinquishing portions of the West Bank. Netanyahu said the number of Palestinians and Jews between the Jordan River and the sea “is irrelevant” and that it’s more important to “preserve a solid Jewish majority inside the State of Israel.”
The PM made these statements during a discussion on a report by the Jewish People Policy Institute on demographic changes among Jews and Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.
Members of the institute presented the demographic data of Prof. Sergio DellaPergola, which show that, in a number of years, the demographic trends will result in a Palestinian majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel and Turkey holding secret direct talks to mend diplomatic rift
Haaretz reports:
Israeli and Turkish officials have been holding secret direct talks to try to solve the diplomatic crisis between the two countries, a senior official in Jerusalem said. The negotiations are receiving the Americans’ support.
A source in the Turkish Foreign Ministry and a U.S. official confirmed that talks are being held, though in Israel the prime minister and foreign minister’s aides declined to comment.
The talks are being held between an Israeli official on behalf of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, a firm supporter of rehabilitating ties with Israel.
Talks are also being held between the Israeli representative on the UN inquiry committee on last year’s Gaza flotilla, Yosef Ciechanover, and Turkey’s representative on the committee, Ozdem Sanberk. The two, who have been working together for several months on the UN committee, pass on messages between Israel and Turkey and have taken pains to draft understandings to end the crisis.
In addition, the U.S. administration has held talks with senior Turkish officials, mainly to foil the flotilla to Gaza due later this month, but also in a bid to improve relations with Israel.
On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu and expressed satisfaction with the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation’s announcement that the ship the Mavi Marmara would not take part in the flotilla this time around, officials said.
Syrian protesters reject Assad’s latest offers of reform
Hannah Allam reports:
Fighting to save his family’s 40-year reign over Syria, President Bashar Assad on Monday described some anti-regime protesters as “saboteurs” and “germs,” but he pledged more reforms as the nationwide rebellion continued for a fourth bloody month.
Anti-government protesters in Syria and among more than 10,000 refugees in neighboring Turkey rejected Assad’s latest promises as vague and disingenuous, however, saying he offered no concrete steps or timetable to allow citizens a greater voice in one of the Arab world’s most repressive police states.
In Assad’s televised speech, his third since large-scale protests began in mid-March, the embattled leader struck a slightly more conciliatory tone, acknowledging the rising death toll in his regime’s crackdown. He announced a 100-member panel to draft reforms related to parliamentary election law and press freedoms.
Assad also suggested that he’d prosecute those responsible for the bloodshed and would support drafting a new constitution that could challenge his Baath Party’s monopoly on political life. Opposition activists long have demanded rival political parties.
“We must isolate true reformers from saboteurs,” Assad said, speaking from an auditorium at Damascus University, where an audience of supporters clapped and cheered.
Protesters weren’t appeased, reiterating their demand that the fall of the Assad dynasty is the only acceptable resolution to the crisis, although there’s no obvious successor in a country whose opposition has been intimidated and exiled for decades.
The Greek protests are not just about the economic crisis
Aditya Chakraborrty writes:
A sunny Saturday afternoon in central Athens, and Christos Roubanis is sitting outside having a beer, while telling me about the death threats he’s received. We’re in Victoria Square, one of the most racially mixed areas in the capital. The nearby payphones have queues of Bangladeshis waiting outside, and after every few shops comes that telltale feature of immigrant-ville: a Western Union money transfer booth. Locals reckon that more than a third of residents are non-Greek subjects.
And that’s made the neighbourhood the target of fascist activity, especially since Greece plunged into severe recession in 2009. A few minutes down the road is a playground, complete with seesaws, slides and climbing frames. It was where Afghans and others used to take their kids – until the Nazis marched in and declared it a no-go zone a couple of years ago. Although most of the equipment inside looks like it’s working, the entire rec is still locked up.
Just outside, on the stones in front of the handsomely domed church, is daubed various graffiti. “I love my country” reads one in the national colours of blue and white. Another is more direct: “Immigrants go home.” Sprayed on the shutters of nearby shops are swastikas. They look particularly incongruous in a country that tried so heroically to fend off Hitler’s invasion.
Christos lives here, but can’t walk me to the playground for fear of getting beaten up. Bald, with a small greying moustache, he’s previously stepped in to prevent immigrants being hassled – so the Nazis have turned their attention on him. They ring his mobile “and call me a bloody communist and say they will kill me”. Once, he was trapped by a fascist gang brandishing wooden poles. “They brought them this close,” he says, his hand stopping just in front of his thick glasses.
Under the awning of this bar, Christos and his friends Afrodite and Olga can debate how waves of badly-managed immigration have put pressure on this working-class neighbourhood. But one thing they agree on is that the fascists are managing to exploit the tension in the area. In elections at the end of last year, the extremist Golden Dawn party won 10% of the municipal vote.
Numbers like that flatly contradict the cosy view of the popular Greek reaction to the spending cuts as being articulate, engaged, left-wing. And it is – in parts. But as Christos and his neighbours will tell you, the politics of austerity can boost the thuggish right as well as the post-enlightenment left. Indeed, the defining feature of the Greek protests is not ideology – it’s visceral hostility to anything that smacks of the mainstream, whether in politics, or business or the media.
Taliban: A law unto themselves
Patrick Cockburn writes:
It was one of history’s greatest prison escapes in terms of the ingenuity and perseverance of those involved. It happened at 10pm on 25 April this year in southern Afghanistan. After five months of tunnelling, Taliban diggers finally broke through the concrete floor of a cell in the centre of Sarposa prison on the outskirts of the city of Kandahar. Behind them snaked a tunnel 3ft high and almost 1,200ft long, which led under the prison walls to a house on the far side of a main road. During the next five hours, 541 prisoners, one of them with a broken leg, crawled to freedom. Only when the guards tried to hold their regular roll call in the prison yard later in the morning did they discover the empty cells from which had vanished some of the most dangerous prisoners in the world.
The story of the escape is not only exciting in itself; it shows Taliban members – usually portrayed as brainwashed fanatics – as imaginative, disciplined and resourceful. This is what makes them such formidable adversaries of the American, British and Afghan armies, despite their inferiority in numbers, training and weapons. The Kandahar prison break illustrates an ability to foresee difficulties and find intelligent ways of overcoming them.
The escape is also one of the few complicated operations carried out by the Taliban where a full account is available from their side and can be largely confirmed by American and Afghan government sources. Some of these details emerged immediately after the escape, as Taliban spokesmen crowed about their success and Afghan government and American officials produced their own embarrassed explanations about what had gone wrong. But the whole story of the escape from the Kandahar prison only emerged several months later when the Taliban allowed the details of the escape to be published in its Arabic-language magazine Al-Somood. Two articles were printed, one of which appears to be the Taliban’s lengthy official account of the escape, supplemented by a second shorter piece, published under the name of “Muhammad Idris”, a young Taliban fighter who was in Sarposa prison awaiting trial and was one of the first people into the tunnel. The two articles were translated and put online by the prestigious Afghanistan Analysts website. They are circumspect about a few episodes, such as the possible complicity of the prison guards. But their account is otherwise convincing.
Obama to announce plan to pull 30,000 troops out of Afghanistan
President Barack Obama is expected to announce this week that 30,000 U.S. “surge” forces will be fully withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, an administration official has told CNN.
Obama will deliver his highly anticipated speech on the troop drawdown on Wednesday.
The time-frame would give U.S. commanders another two “fighting” seasons with the bulk of U.S. forces still available for combat operations. Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pushed for additional time to roll back Taliban gains in the country before starting any significant withdrawal — a position at odds with a majority of Americans, according to recent public opinion surveys.
Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan: A Hard Country
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad reviews Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan: A Hard Country:
It is almost obligatory these days to subtitle books on Pakistan with some conjunction of ‘failed’, ‘dangerous’, ‘lawless’, ‘deadly’, ‘frightening’ or ‘tumultuous’. Pakistan is a ‘tinderbox’, forever on the brink, in the eye of the storm, or descending into chaos. It is an ‘Insh’allah nation’ where people passively wait for Allah.
In the narrow space ‘between the mosque and the military’, there is much ‘crisis’, ‘terrorism’, ‘militancy’ and ‘global jihad.’
British author and policy analyst Anatol Lieven’s refreshingly understated title ‘Pakistan: A Hard Country’ eschews emotion for description, which is fitting because the book is a 519-page myth- busting exercise.
Lieven, currently a fellow at the New America Foundation, argues that some of the alarmist claims about Pakistan are indeed true – it is a corrupt, chaotic, violent, oppressive and unjust country. But it is also a remarkably resilient one. It is not nearly as unequal as India or Nigeria, or for that matter the United States.
Its security is beset by multiple insurgencies but they affect a smaller proportion of its territory than the ones India faces. Its cities are violent, but no more so than those of comparable size in Latin or even North America.
It has an abysmally low rate of tax collection, but, at five percent of the GDP, it also has one of the world’s highest rates of charitable donations. It is no doubt corrupt, but this is due less to the absence of values than to the enduring grip of the old ones of loyalty to family and clan.
Obama’s negation of ‘hostilities’ in Libya draws criticism
The Washington Post reports:
The White House has officially declared that what’s happening in Libya is not “hostilities.”
But at the Pentagon, officials have decided it’s unsafe enough there to give troops extra pay for serving in “imminent danger.”
The Defense Department decided in April to pay an extra $225 a month in “imminent danger pay” to service members who fly planes over Libya or serve on ships within 110 nautical miles of its shores.
That means the Pentagon has decided that troops in those places are “subject to the threat of physical harm or imminent danger because of civil insurrection, civil war, terrorism or wartime conditions.” There are no U.S. ground troops in Libya.
President Obama declared last week that the three-month-old Libyan campaign should not be considered “hostilities.” That word is important, because it’s used in the 1973 War Powers Resolution: Presidents must obtain congressional authorization within a certain period after sending U.S. forces “into hostilities.”
Obama’s reasoning was that he did not need that authorization because U.S. forces were playing a largely supportive and logistical role, and because Libyan defenses are so battered they pose little danger. U.S. drones are still carrying out some strikes against Libyan targets.
GOP splitting over U.S. role in Libya and Afghanistan
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Republicans are facing a widening fissure over the U.S. role on the world stage as party leaders decide whether to confront President Obama this week over his policy toward Libya.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other congressional Republican leaders have said that U.S. involvement in NATO’s bombing campaign, which hit the 90-day mark Sunday, violates the War Powers Act. The House could seek to cut off money for the war as it takes up the annual Pentagon spending bill this week.
Several of the party’s potential presidential candidates have called for the U.S. to quit the fight in Libya and questioned the depth of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
Other Republicans have begun pushing back, criticizing what they see as a growing isolationist agenda within the party. The result is that Republicans, once relatively unified on foreign policy issues, now have a division that parallels the long-standing split in Democratic ranks.
The New York Times reports:
Since the United States handed control of the air war in Libya to NATO in early April, American warplanes have struck at Libyan air defenses about 60 times, and remotely operated drones have fired missiles at Libyan forces about 30 times, according to military officials.
The most recent strike from a piloted United States aircraft was on Saturday, and the most recent strike from an American drone was on Wednesday, the officials said.
While the Obama administration has regularly acknowledged that American forces have continued to take part in some of the strike sorties, few details about their scope and frequency have been made public.
The unclassified portion of material about Libya that the White House sent to Congress last week, for example, said “American strikes are limited to the suppression of enemy air defense and occasional strikes by unmanned Predator” drones, but included no numbers for such strikes.
The New York Times reports:
Reports that a guard at the hotel housing foreign journalists here had been fatally shot sent a tremor of anxiety through the Qaddafi government’s media operation on Monday.
While Qaddafi loyalists said the guard accidentally shot himself with his own weapon while eating a late dinner at the end of the hotel two days earlier, at least two people working for the government said on the condition of anonymity that he was killed by rebel snipers.
The guard had been assigned to protect a prominent state television commentator known for his outspoken criticism of the rebels. The commentator, Yousef Shakeer, had taken refuge with his family inside the safety of the hotel because of rebel death threats against him.
In a brief interview, Mr. Shakeer said the government had identified his would-be assassin as a past member of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, a jihadist group that dates back years, and he affirmed the government’s account that the guard accidentally shot himself on Saturday night.
While the details of the shooting could not be confirmed, it came amid growing reports of episodes of violence between local rebels challenging the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his security forces. Some Tripoli residents said Monday that the sense of danger from the ground was compounding the effect of the escalation of NATO strikes from above.
A tribute to anti-war campaigner Brian Haw, driven by revulsion at the murder of innocents
Andy Worthington writes:
When I was a child, I read the Guinness Book of Records, and marvelled at the stories of the people who, in ancient times, removed themselves from everyday reality, like Saint Simeon Stylites, a Christian ascetic who lived on a tiny platform on top of a pillar in Aleppo, Syria for 37 years in the 5th century AD.
As I grew up, I continued to hear about people who had similarly removed themselves from the everyday world, and had come to be be regarded as prophets or as saints, appealing to those bound by the norms of everyday life — or in some cases vilified by them. However, they were always in countries that were not part of the so-called “first world,” where dissent is tolerated only so long as it is toothless, and the authorities have no patience for anyone who would occupy a public place in pursuit of a higher purpose.
Nevertheless, on June 2, 2001, Brian Haw, born in Barking, Essex, who was married with seven children, and, at the time, was 52 years old, took up residence opposite the Houses of Parliament, initially protesting about the British government’s involvement in the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, which, he maintained, were responsible for the deaths of 200 Iraqi children per day.
After a long battle with lung cancer, Brian Haw died on Saturday June 18, but for ten years he maintained his protest, along the way becoming a hero for anyone not convinced that Britain, the US and other countries in the West should be engaged in perpetual war, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians have died.