Oh what a lovely war.

With the Euro in shambles and America in recession it won't be long before a new war is provoked to kick start the military industrial complex of the West.
The prime target playground for this folly has without doubt got to be somewhere in the Middle East. As Libya proved to be a great venue to test and showcase the latest the West has to offer in Aerial death technology, and reconstruction profits start trickling back the thirst for more will play its role.
With tensions already high in Syria and Iran upping the rhetoric as well as the drama by seizing the British Embassy and raising their flag, it will only be a matter of time when someone somewhere will be responsible for sparking what could be another disastrous episode in history.
The dynamics for counter revolution are already surfacing in Egypt and have been apparent in the Gulf from the start. With the Turks experiencing a new Ottoman resurgence, the Russians and Chinese will not be sidelined this time round.There will be no long term winners only a few war profiteers suckling on the nipple of an exhausted Mother Earth.
Well nobody got rich without war.

Libya's water.

The pillaging of Libya has begun, and Hilary Clinton has staked Americas Claim.
Though the French , British and Turks had sent higher ranking delegations you were left in no doubt that La Clinton meant business.
Everything from building schools, treating war veterans, to boosting civil society ,Tourism  to integrating them into a modern economy to women's rights was mentioned.
A panacea for our time, this American cure all  was a shot across the bow for all have been eying Libya's two greatest assets, oil and water.
Though oil is generally recognised as being a major factor for the coalitions rapid support  for the overthrow of  Gadaffi  in order to secure future Libyan oil for Europe  it is water that is the secret long term asset. The Nubian Sandstone aquifers that lie under the Eastern Sahara contain enough ground water to literally turn the desert green and make Libya, Chad ,Sudan and parts of Egypt a breadbasket of the Middle East and the world.
When the Great Man Made River project was embarked upon in 1983, to supply water to the coastal regions and for irrigation it was ridiculed as a waste of resources another White Elephant. 
How wrong they were. This engineering marvel will without doubt give Libyans in the first phase food security and then as they hone their agricultural techniques be used as a spring board to feed their neighbours and beyond and thus greatly enhance Libya's standing in the world  and as a Gateway to Africa.
With China either buying or leasing agricultural land in overseas countries for large scale farming to feed its ever growing populations food needs the race is on to have control of vast fresh water reserves and Libya's deposed dictator realised this. 
The Libyan revolution was not only about freedom but the first of many wars to control the essence of life.

A thousand and one prisoners.

A thousand plus Palestinians are being freed from Israeli jails in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured some five years ago. No doubt their respective families have welcomed this especially as we approach the holiday season.
Again no doubt those involved in the negotiating process faced numerous obstacles till the conditions for an agreement suited both the Israelis and Hamas and their ultimate masters.
It is not that the Israelis value human life more than their Palestinian counterparts or that Hamas were brilliant at negotiating. There are practical considerations on both sides. The cost of incarceration and the erosion of human values on both parties has been high.
Hundreds of Palestinians denied due process and a young Israeli soldier kept in incommunicado  exposes the worst in our frail humanity.
 Rumor  and counter rumor surround  the politics involved behind the swap, from the distancing of Hamas from Syrian / Iranian patronage and American need to have closer ties to Islamic groups ,to the desire of Netenyaho to humiliate Abu Mazin for his unilateral application for full membership to the U.N despite American threats to exercise their veto at the Security council. Whilst there may be truth in these, and many more fanciful theories , the extent of subterfuge and backstabbing particularly as details emerge of the close working relationships between the intelligence agencies of America Israel Egypt and Palestine never fails to impress.

Let us hope that Marwan Barghouti is also released and this era heralds better understanding between all the parties involved. The value of human life is important and nobody has a monopoly on that.

Extrajudicial killings and a one term President

The extrajudicial  killing of two American citizens in Yemen, ordered by President Obama has set  another dangerous precedent  that has serious and far reaching implications for the US Constitution and its controls on the restraint of executive power.
At some point the American government changed its policy of kidnapping terrorist suspects and flying them to Guantanamo for trial,  to just killing them. The presumption of innocence until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial or even unfair trial blown out the window by the drones they employ or in the case of Bin Laden the Navy seals that made up the assassination squad.
This must surely be a deeply disturbing development and Obama's refusal to allow the advice he was given to be interrogated publicly bodes badly for his presidency.
For an eloquent man he has become increasingly incompetent and unable to convert his vision either at home or abroad.
The economy is in shambles, his confused and hypocritical foreign policy especially with regard to the Arab Spring and his continued blind support for Israel , is isolating America and harming its long term interests. From a man of promise he has become a man of promises.
Gone are the chants of " Yes we can"  and now only faint echoes of the man who was elected can be heard.
Whether it is the office of the Presidency that has caused this insolence or whether the advice he is receiving is tainted and corrupt only time will tell, however this looks increasingly like a one term Presidency.
In the meantime, as he reflects on his opposition to a Palestinian state or he grapples with the murders he has ordered for political gain he would do well to remember the following thought from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: "There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic…but one must take it because it is right".

Women lashes and the vote in the Kingdom

Recently the Custodian of the the Two Holy places (a.k.a) King Abdullah bin Abdel Azziz Al Saud overturned a court decision that sentenced a woman to ten lashes for breaking an unwritten rule of  females driving in the Saudi Kingdom upsetting many of the conservative and religious elements in the country.
S&M enthusiasts apart, this was the right decision by the ageing King.
Then in a surprise move he announced that women will soon be able to vote in Saudi Arabia, and even though they still can't drive a car, they will be allowed to vote in municipal elections and will also be allowed to hold office.
I can't help but feel there is a fundamental flaw in this cunning reform move though I cant quite put my finger on it.
As one grump proclaimed "Now it's driving [women want]. After five years it will be taking off the abaya [all-covering veil and gown], after 10 years they will ask to be allowed to wear short skirts. This is how it's going, that is how I feel."

Whatever next?

Palestine's Rosa Parks moment

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, age 42,an African American civil rights activist who would later be referred as "the mother of the freedom movement",refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and she became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation.
Today September 23rd, 2011 at the United Nations, NY, NY, Mahmoud Abbas , the President of the Palestinian  Authority will submit Palestine's application for full membership to this world body.
The Americans despite their magnificent rhetoric in the past have openly stated they will oppose and if necessary veto this application. Domestic political considerations aside the Americans have finally showed what everyone knew that they can not be the honest broker they claim. With a fine disregard to the rules he set out Obama once again will bow down to Israeli pressure and AIPAC donations.
It is a pity that the morally right thing to do is yet again being bypassed for political pragmatism and the freedoms enjoyed by the United States are consistently being denied to the Palestinians.
This is our Rosa Parks moment, an important symbolic and peaceful gesture to let the world know we will no longer sit at the back of the bus.
God bless Palestine. 

Palestine and the miracle of statehood.

Two recent articles sum up what recently is on my mind one in the observer and an article by Henry Siegman. I have posted both below.

Henry Siegman writes:

"Is there anyone familiar with the history of the Israel-Palestine peace process who still believes that this Israeli government would defy the over half-a-million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — by far the most influential political force in Israel — and their networks of supporters within Israel, and present Palestinians with a reasonable peace plan for a two-state solution that would be acceptable to even the most moderate and accommodating of Palestinian leaders?

Shelly Yachimovich, an Israeli Knesset Member who is a leading candidate for the Labor Party’s leadership, recently declared that Israel’s settlement project is “not a sin or a crime” since it was initiated by a Labor government, and therefore “a completely consensual move.” Leaving aside the bizarre notion that the consensus of thieves legitimizes their theft, if these are the views of candidates for Labor Party leadership in today’s Israel, what prospect can there possibly be for an acceptable peace accord to emerge from the peace process?

And is there anyone who witnessed the frenzied applause that greeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most recent speech before the U.S. Congress in which he left no doubt about his government’s intentions for East Jerusalem and for the West Bank, or heard President Obama’s assurances to AIPAC’s conventioneers that the ties that bind the U.S. to Israel are forever “unbreakable,” who still believes that the U.S. will ever exert the kind of pressure on Israel that will finally change its cost/benefit calculations with regard to its colonial project?

These incontestable realities give the lie to America’s absurd insistence — expressed most recently by President Obama on September 12 — that a Palestinian state can be achieved only as a result of an agreement between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. Surely President Obama must know that left to their own devices, Netanyahu and Abbas will never reach a two state agreement, and that the only purpose a resumed “peace process” would serve is to continue to provide a cover for further Israeli land grabs in the West Bank."

For the Zionist movement seeking an independent state of Israel, desire became reality in November 1947, when the General Assembly of the United Nations passed Resolution 181 supporting the establishment of a Jewish state in a partitioned Palestine.

That state was declared on 14 May 1948 by David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish people's council in a Tel Aviv museum. The state of Israel was recognised that evening by President Truman of United States and by the Soviet Union a few days later.

More than six decades later, Palestinians, who at first refused to accept the partition plan of the newly minted UN, are seeking similar recognition, firstly in front of the Security Council, asking for their own state based on the 1967 borders free from occupation and settlement by half-a-million Israelis, able to determine their own affairs.

The idea of a Palestinian state should be uncontroversial. The United States supports the notion, as does the UK. Indeed, in his 2009 Cairo speech, President Barack Obama insisted: "Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's."

Yet Obama appears determined to veto the move towards Palestinian statehood, while Britain has hinted it is likely to abstain in a Security Council vote.

Should the Palestinian request fail at the Security Council, it will then go to the General Assembly, where it seems likely that close to 130 states will vote to support a Palestinian resolution which will be able only to grant an enhanced status to become the equivalent of the Vatican – an "observer state". It will, however, be a deeply symbolic moment providing a political, moral and diplomatic victory for the Palestinian cause that the world will find difficult to ignore.

It will, significantly, also allow Palestine to become a signatory to the International Criminal Court, permitting it to pursue claims against Israel.

While it seems certain that European countries such as France and Spain will support recognition, what is less clear is how the UK will vote in the General Assembly, amid increasing speculation that it might support an enhanced Palestinian status of "observer state" with the right to complain to the International Criminal Court, but only if cases cannot be raised retrospectively.

The objections to a Palestinian state – driven by Israel with the support of the US – are dangerous and transparently self-serving ones, not least in the midst of an Arab Spring where the US and Europe have tried to present themselves as being supporters of democracy, freedom and justice.

The only valid mechanism for the creation of a Palestinian state, this argument goes, is the ongoing peace process, but in fact it is a moribund peace process, which Israel has done its best to smother under the obstructionist leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Equally contentious is the claim by some supporters of Israel that in seeking their own state through the declaration of the international community rather than direct talks, Palestinians are seeking to "delegitimise" Israel.

The reality is that what those opposing the moves at the UN are demanding is that Palestinians adhere to a non-existent peace process in the good faith that at some time it might be revived in the future under American guidance.

They also require Palestinians to refrain from moves that would expose the double standards of the White House and Congress which, while supporting a two-state solution in words, has not only failed to deliver one but now threatens actively to block that outcome.

Palestinians are right to be wary of the vague promise that things might be better in a revived peace process at some unspecified time in the future. Despite Oslo and 20 years of peace negotiations, as comparison of maps makes only too clear, the space available for a Palestinian state has only shrunk with each passing decade as Israel has continued to appropriate more land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The actions of the Israeli army in the occupied territories, as the recent book of a decade's worth of soldiers' testimonies by the servicemen's group Breaking the Silence has recently demonstrated, have not changed in the desire to control and disrupt ordinary Palestinian life on a daily basis.

The truth is that the occupation has become self-sustaining, both for the Israeli army which is implementing the policy, and for a partly militarised society and its politicians, who cannot persuade themselves to bring the occupation to an end.

There are risks, inevitably, in taking the issue of statehood to the UN, even in the end if it is only for the upgrading of its observer status. Moves on statehood threaten the long-fractious relationship between Fatah and Hamas, the latter of which opposes the statehood moves, particularly in its stronghold, Gaza, raising the risk of more political violence between the rival factions.

There is the danger, too, that the tactic will feel like a damp squib on the day after when Palestinians wake up to see nothing in their lives has changed.

But already the strategy has shed important light on a Middle East peace process in which a United States that has long cast itself as an impartial broker (while vetoing every crticism of Israel raised at the UN) is a far from neutral referee, even as its influence in the region has appeared diminished.

That new reality was dramatised last week with the explicit threat by Saudi Arabia that its important relationship with the US will be downgraded should America choose to use its veto. As in November 1947, we stand at a crossroads of history.

As British ministers deliberate how they will vote in the Security Council, they are confronted with the choice between what is morally right – supporting a Palestinian state – and hypocrisy justified in the name of pragmatism.

The state of Israel was founded amid risk and uncertainty, which those who supported it fully recognised. They did not argue that a Jewish homeland was possible only in the most ideal and secure conditions. That argument should not be used to further delay Palestinian statehood."

Maybe Mahmoud Abbas has finally found his backbone by his unilateral move and the Americans can finally shake off the AIPAC yoke that has been hindering their role as an honest broker. We not only have to believe in miracles but to rely on them.