Here in Moscow I recently received a dark-blue folder dated 1975. It contains one of the most well-buried secrets of Middle Eastern and of US diplomacy. The secret file, written by the Soviet Ambassador in Cairo, Vladimir M. Vinogradov, apparently a draft for a memorandum addressed to the Soviet politbureau, describes the 1973 October War as a collusive enterprise between US, Egyptian and Israeli leaders, orchestrated by Henry Kissinger. If you are an Egyptian reader this revelation is likely to upset you. I, an Israeli who fought the Egyptians in the 1973 war, was equally upset and distressed, – yet still excited by the discovery. For an American it is likely to come as a shock.

According to the Vinogradov memo (to be published by us in full in the Russian weekly Expert next Monday), Anwar al-Sadat, holder of the titles of President, Prime Minister, ASU Chairman, Chief Commander, Supreme Military Ruler, entered into conspiracy with the Israelis, betrayed his ally Syria, condemned the Syrian army to destruction and Damascus to bombardment, allowed General Sharon’s tanks to cross without hindrance to the western bank of the Suez Canal, and actually planned a defeat of the Egyptian troops in the October War. Egyptian soldiers and officers bravely and successfully fought the Israeli enemy – too successfully for Sadat’s liking as he began the war in order to allow for the US comeback to the Middle East.

He was not the only conspirator: according to Vinogradov, the grandmotherly Golda Meir knowingly sacrificed two thousand of Israel’s best fighters – she possibly thought fewer would be killed — in order to give Sadat his moment of glory and to let the US  secure its positions in the Middle East. The memo allows for a completely new interpretation of the Camp David Treaty, as one achieved by deceit and treachery.

Vladimir Vinogradov was a prominent and brilliant Soviet diplomat; he served as  ambassador to Tokyo in the 1960s, to Cairo from 1970 to 1974, co-chairman of the Geneva Peace Conference,  ambassador to Teheran during the Islamic revolution, the USSR Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. He was a gifted painter and a prolific writer; his archive has hundreds of pages of unique observations and notes covering international affairs, but the place of honor goes to his Cairo diaries, and among others, descriptions of his hundreds of meetings with Sadat and the full sequence of the war as he observed it unfold at  Sadat’s hq as the big decisions were made. When published, these notes will allow to re-evaluate the post-Nasser period of Egyptian history.

Vinogradov arrived to Cairo for Nasser’s funeral and remained there as the Ambassador. He recorded the creeping coup of Sadat,  least bright of Nasser’s men, who became Egypt’s president by chance, as he was the vice-president at Nasser’s death. Soon he dismissed, purged and imprisoned practically all important Egyptian politicians, the comrades-in-arms of Gamal Abd el Nasser, and dismantled the edifice of Nasser’s socialism. Vinogradov was an astute observer; not a conspiracy cuckoo. Far from being headstrong and  doctrinaire, he was a friend of Arabs and a consistent supporter and promoter of a lasting and just peace between the Arabs and Israel, a peace that would meet  Palestinian needs and ensure Jewish prosperity.

The pearl of his archive is the file called The Middle Eastern Games. It contains some 20 typewritten pages edited by hand in blue ink, apparently a draft for a memo to the Politburo and to the government, dated January 1975, soon after his return from Cairo. The file contains the deadly secret of the collusion he observed. It is written in lively and highly readable Russian, not in the bureaucratese we’d expect. Two pages are added to the file in May 1975; they describe Vinogradov’s visit to Amman and his informal talks with Abu Zeid Rifai, the Prime Minister, and his exchange of views with the Soviet Ambassador in Damascus. Vinogradov did not voice his opinions until 1998, and even then he did not speak as openly as in this draft. Actually, when the suggestion of collusion was presented to him by the Jordanian prime minister, being a prudent diplomat, he refused to discuss it.

The official version of the October war holds that on  October  6, 1973, in conjunction with Hafez al-Assad of Syria, Anwar as-Sadat launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces. They crossed the Canal and advanced a few miles into the occupied Sinai. As the war progressed, tanks of General Ariel Sharon  crossed the Suez Canal and encircled the Egyptian Third Army. The ceasefire negotiations eventually led to the handshake at the White House.

For me, the Yom Kippur War (as we called it) was an important part of my autobiography. A young paratrooper, I fought that war, crossed the canal, seized Gabal Ataka heights, survived shelling and face-to-face battles, buried my buddies, shot the man-eating red dogs of the desert and the enemy tanks. My unit was ferried by helicopters into the desert where we severed the main communication line between the Egyptian armies and its home base, the Suez-Cairo highway. Our location at 101 km to Cairo was used for the first cease fire talks; so I know that war not by  word of mouth, and it hurts to learn that I and my comrades-at-arms were just disposable tokens in the ruthless game we – ordinary people – lost. Obviously I did not know it then,  for me the war was a surprise, but then,  I was not a general.

Vinogradov dispels the idea of  surprise: in his view, both the canal crossing by the Egyptians and the inroads by Sharon were planned and agreed upon in advance by Kissinger, Sadat and Meir. The plan included the destruction of the Syrian army as well.

At first, he asks some questions: how the crossing could be a surprise if the Russians evacuated their families a few days before the war? The concentration of the forces was observable and could not escape Israeli attention. Why did the Egyptian forces  not proceed after the crossing but stood still? Why did they have no plans for advancing? Why there was a forty km-wide unguarded gap between the 2d and the 3d armies, the gap that invited Sharon’s raid? How could Israeli tanks sneak to the western bank of the Canal? Why did Sadat refuse to stop them? Why were  there no reserve forces on the western bank of the Canal?

Vinogradov takes a leaf from Sherlock Holmes who said: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. He writes: These questions can’t be answered if Sadat is to be considered a true patriot of Egypt. But they can be answered in full, if we consider a possibility of collusion between Sadat, the US and Israeli leadership – a conspiracy in which each participant pursued his own goals. A conspiracy in which each participant did not know the full details of other participants’ game.  A conspiracy in which each participant tried to gain more ground despite the overall agreement between them.

Sadat’s Plans

Before the war Sadat was at the nadir of his power: in Egypt and abroad he had lost  prestige. The least educated and least charismatic of Nasser’s followers, Sadat was isolated. He needed a war, a limited war with Israel that would not end with defeat. Such a war would release the pressure in the army and he would regain his authority. The US agreed to give him a green light for the war, something the Russians never did. The Russians protected Egypt’s skies, but they were against wars. For that, Sadat had to rely upon the US and part with the USSR. He was ready to do so as he loathed socialism. He did not need victory, just no defeat; he wanted to explain his failure to win by deficient Soviet equipment. That is why the army was given the minimal task: crossing the Canal and hold the bridgehead until the Americans  entered the game.

Plans of the US

During decolonisation the US lost strategic ground in the Middle East with its oil, its Suez Canal, its vast population. Its ally Israel had to be supported, but the Arabs were growing stronger all the time. Israel had to be made more flexible, for its brutal policies interfered with the US plans. So the US had to keep Israel as its ally but at the same time Israel’s arrogance had to be broken. The US needed a chance to “save” Israel after allowing the Arabs to beat the Israelis for a while. So the US allowed Sadat to begin a limited war.

Israel        

Israel’s leaders had to help the US, its main provider and supporter. The US needed to improve its positions in the Middle East, as in 1973 they  had only one friend and ally, King Feisal. (Kissinger told Vinogradov that Feisal tried to educate him about the evilness of Jews and Communists.) If and when the US was to recover its position in the Middle East, the Israeli position would improve drastically. Egypt was a weak link, as Sadat disliked the USSR and the progressive forces in the country, so it could be turned. Syria could be dealt with militarily, and broken.

The Israelis and Americans decided to let Sadat take the Canal while holding the mountain passes of Mittla and Giddi, a better defensive line anyway. This was actually Rogers’ plan of 1971, acceptable to Israel. But this should be done in fighting, not given up for free.

As for Syria, it was to be militarily defeated, thoroughly. That is why the Israeli Staff did sent all its available troops to the Syrian border, while denuding the Canal though the Egyptian army was much bigger than the Syrian one. Israeli troops at the Canal were to be sacrificed in this game; they were to die in order to bring the US back into the Middle East.

However, the plans of the three partners were somewhat derailed by the factors on the ground: it is the usual problem with conspiracies; nothing works as it should, Vinogradov writes in his memo to be published in full next week in Moscow’s Expert.

Sadat’s crooked game was spoiled to start with. His presumptions did not work out. Contrary to his expectations, the USSR supported the Arab side and began a massive airlift of its most modern military equipment right away. The USSR took the risk of confrontation with the US; Sadat had not  believed they would because the Soviets were adamant against the war, before it started. His second problem, according to Vinogradov, was the superior quality of Russian weapons in the hands of Egyptian soldiers  — better than the western weapons in the Israelis’ hands.

As an Israeli soldier of the time I must confirm the Ambassador’s words. The Egyptians had the legendary Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, the best gun in the world, while we had FN battle rifles that hated sand and water. We dropped our FNs and picked up their AKs at the first opportunity. They used anti-tank Sagger missiles, light, portable, precise, carried by one soldier. Saggers killed between 800 and 1200 Israeli tanks. We had old 105 mm recoilless jeep-mounted rifles, four men at a rifle (actually, a small cannon) to fight tanks. Only new American weapons redressed the imbalance.

Sadat did not expect the Egyptian troops taught by the Soviet specialists to better their Israeli enemy – but they did. They crossed the Canal much faster than planned and with much smaller losses. Arabs beating the Israelis – it was bad news for Sadat. He overplayed his hand. That is why the Egyptian troops stood still, like the sun upon Gibeon, and did not move. They waited for the Israelis, but at that time the Israeli army was fighting the Syrians. The Israelis felt somewhat safe from Sadat’s side and they sent all their army north. The Syrian army took the entire punch of Israeli forces and began its retreat. They asked Sadat to move forward, to take some of the heat off them, but Sadat refused. His army stood and did not move, though there were no Israelis between the Canal and the mountain passes. Syrian leader al Assad was convinced at that time that Sadat betrayed him, and he said so frankly to the Soviet ambassador in Damascus, Mr Muhitdinov, who passed this to Vinogradov. Vinogradov saw Sadat daily and asked him in real time why he was not advancing. He received no reasonable answer: Sadat muttered that he does not want to run all over Sinai looking for Israelis, that sooner or later they would come to him.

The Israeli leadership was worried: the war was not going as expected. There were big losses on the Syrian front, the Syrians retreated but each yard was hard fought; only Sadat’s passivity saved the Israelis from a reverse. The plan to for total Syrian defeat failed, but the Syrians could not effectively counterattack.

This was the time to punish Sadat: his army was too efficient, his advance too fast, and worse, his reliance upon the Soviets only grew due to the air bridge. The Israelis arrested their advance on Damascus and turned their troops southwards to Sinai. The Jordanians could at this time have cut off the North-to-South route and king Hussein proposed this to Sadat and Assad. Assad agreed immediately, but Sadat refused to accept the offer. He explained it to Vinogradov that he did not believe in the fighting abilities of the Jordanians. If they entered the war, Egypt would have to save them. At other times he said that it is better to lose the whole of Sinai than to lose a square yard on the Jordan: an insincere and foolish remark, in Vinogradov’s view. So the Israeli troops rolled southwards without hindrance.

During the war, we (the Israelis) also knew that if Sadat  advanced, he would gain the whole of Sinai in no time; we entertained many hypotheses why he was standing still, none satisfactory. Vinogradov explains it well: Sadat ran off his script and was waited for  US involvement. What he got was the deep raid of Sharon.

This breakthrough of the Israeli troops to the western bank of the Canal was the murkiest part of the war, Vinogradov writes. He asked Sadat’s military commanders at the beginning of the war why there is the forty km wide gap between the Second and the Third armies and was told that this was Sadat’s directive. The gap was not even guarded; it was left wide open like a Trojan backdoor in a computer program.

Sadat paid no attention to Sharon’s raid; he was indifferent to this dramatic development. Vinogradov asked him to deal with it when only the first five Israeli tanks crossed the Canal westwards; Sadat refused, saying it was of no military importance, just a “political move”, whatever that meant. He repeated this to Vinogradov later, when the Israeli foothold on the Western bank of became a sizeable bridgehead. Sadat did not listen to advice from Moscow, he opened the door for the Israelis into Africa.

This allows for two explanations, says Vinogradov: an impossible one, of the Egyptians’ total military ignorance and  an improbable one, of Sadat’s intentions. The improbable wins, as Sherlock Holmes observed.

The Americans did not stop the Israeli advance right away, says Vinogradov, for they wanted to have a lever to push Sadat so he would not change his mind about the whole setup. Apparently the gap was build into the deployments for this purpose. So Vinogradov’s idea of “conspiracy” is that of dynamic collusion, similar to the collusion on Jordan between the Jewish Yishuv and Transjordan as described by Avi Shlaim: there were some guidelines and agreements, but they were liable to change, depending on the strength of the sides.

Bottom line

The US “saved” Egypt by stopping the advancing Israeli troops. With the passive support of Sadat, the US allowed Israel to hit Syria really  hard.

The US-negotiated disengagement agreements with the UN troops in-between made Israel safe for years to come.

(In a different and important document, “Notes on Heikal’s book Road to Ramadan”, Vinogradov rejects the thesis of the unavoidability of Israeli-Arab wars: he says that as long as Egypt remains in the US thrall, such a war is unlikely. Indeed there have been no big wars since 1974, unless one counts Israeli “operations” in Lebanon and Gaza.)

The US “saved” Israel with military supplies.

Thanks to Sadat, the US came back to the Middle East and positioned itself as the only mediator and “honest broker” in the area.

Sadat began a violent anti-Soviet and antisocialist campaign, Vinogradov writes, trying to discredit the USSR. In the Notes, Vinogradov charges that Sadat spread many lies and disinformation to discredit the USSR in the Arab eyes. His main line was: the USSR could not and would not  liberate  Arab soil while the US could, would and did. Vinogradov explained elsewhere that the Soviet Union was and is against offensive wars, among other reasons because their end is never certain. However, the USSR was ready to go a long way to defend Arab states. As for liberation, the years since 1973 have proved that the US can’t or won’t deliver that, either – while the return of Sinai to Egypt in exchange for separate peace was always possible, without a war as well.

After the war, Sadat’s positions improved drastically. He was hailed as hero, Egypt took a place of honor among the Arab states. But in a year, Sadat’s reputation was in tatters again, and that of Egypt went to an all time low, Vinogradov writes.

The Syrians understood Sadat’s game very early: on October 12, 1973 when the Egyptian troops stood still and ceased fighting, President Hafez el Assad said to the Soviet ambassador that he is certain Sadat was intentionally betraying Syria. Sadat deliberately allowed the Israeli breakthrough to the Western bank of Suez, in order to give Kissinger a chance to intervene and realise his disengagement plan, said Assad to Jordanian Prime Minister Abu Zeid Rifai who told it to Vinogradov during a private breakfast they had in his house in Amman. The Jordanians also suspect Sadat played a crooked game, Vinogradov writes. However, the prudent Vinogradov refused to be drawn into this discussion though he felt that the Jordanians “read his thoughts.”

When Vinogradov was appointed  co-chairman of the Geneva Peace Conference, he encountered a united Egyptian-American position aiming to disrupt the conference, while Assad refused even to take part in it. Vinogradov delivered him a position paper for the conference and asked whether it is acceptable for Syria. Assad replied: yes but for one line. Which one line, asked  a hopeful Vinogradov, and Assad retorted: the line saying “Syria agrees to participate in the conference.” Indeed the conference came to nought, as did all other conferences and arrangements.

Though the suspicions voiced by Vinogradov in his secret document have been made by various military experts and historians, never until now they were made by a participant in the events, a person of such exalted position, knowledge, presence at key moments. Vinogradov’s notes allow us to decipher and trace the history of Egypt with its de-industrialisation, poverty, internal conflicts, military rule tightly connected with the phony war of 1973.

A few years after the war, Sadat was assassinated, and his hand-picked follower Hosni Mubarak began his long rule, followed by another participant of the October War, Gen Tantawi. Achieved by lies and treason, the Camp David Peace treaty still guards Israeli and American interests. Only now, as the post-Camp David regime in Egypt is on the verge of collapse, one may hope for change. Sadat’s name in the pantheon of Egyptian heroes was safe until now. In  the end, all that is hidden will be made transparent.

Postscript. In 1975, Vinogradov could not predict that the 1973 war and subsequent treaties would change the world. They sealed the fate of the Soviet presence and eminence in the Arab world, though the last vestiges were destroyed by  American might much later: in Iraq in 2003 and in Syria they are being undermined now. They undermined the cause of socialism in the world,  which began its long fall. The USSR, the most successful state of 1972, an almost-winner of the Cold war, eventually lost it. Thanks to the American takeover of Egypt, petrodollar schemes were formed, and the dollar that began its decline in 1971 by losing its gold standard – recovered and became again a full-fledged world reserve currency. The oil of the Saudis and of sheikdoms being sold for dollars became the new lifeline for the American empire. Looking back, armed now  with  the Vinogradov Papers, we can confidently mark 1973-74 as a decisive turning point in our history.

ISRAEL SHAMIR has been sending dispatches to CounterPunch from Moscow.

Subpoenas were issued to compel antiwar protestors to testify before grand juries as prosecutors set about building their case that opposing Washington’s wars of aggression constitutes giving aid and comfort to terrorists.  The purpose of the raids and grand jury subpoenas was to chill the anti-war movement into inaction.

Last week in one fell swoop the last two remaining critics of Washington/Tel Aviv imperialism were removed from the mainstream media. Judge Napolitano’s popular program, Freedom Watch, was cancelled by Fox TV, and Pat Buchanan was fired by MSNBC.  Both pundits had wide followings and were appreciated for speaking frankly.

Many suspect that the Israel Lobby used its clout with TV advertisers to silence critics of the Israeli government’s efforts to lead Washington to war with Iran.  Regardless, the point before us is that the voice of the mainstream media is now uniform. Americans hear one voice, one message, and the message is propaganda.  Dissent is tolerated only on such issues as to whether employer-paid health benefits should pay for contraceptive devices. Constitutional rights have been replaced with rights to free condoms.

The western media demonizes those at whom Washington points a finger. The lies pour forth to justify Washington’s naked aggression:  the Taliban are conflated with al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi is a terrorist and, even worse, fortified his troops with Viagra in order to commit mass rape against Libyan women.

President Obama and members of Congress along with Tel Aviv continue to assert that Iran is making a nuclear weapon despite public contradiction by the US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate.  According to news reports, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta told members of the House of Representatives on February 16 that “Tehran has not made a decision to proceed with developing a nuclear weapon.”  However, in Washington facts don’t count.  Only the material interests of powerful interest groups matter.

At the moment the american Ministry of Truth is splitting its time between lying about Iran and lying about Syria. Recently, there were some explosions in far away Thailand, and the explosions were blamed on Iran.  Last October the FBI announced that the bureau had uncovered an Iranian plot to pay a used car salesman to hire a Mexican drug gang to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the US. The White House idiot professed to believe the unbelievable plot and declared that he had “strong evidence,” but no evidence was ever released. The purpose for announcing the non-existent plot was to justify Obama’s sanctions, which amount to an embargo–an act of war–against Iran for developing nuclear energy.

As a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy. IAEA inspectors are permanently in Iran and report no diversion of nuclear material to a weapons program.

In other words, according to the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the US National Intelligence Estimate, and the current Secretary of Defense, there is no evidence that Iran has nukes or is making nukes.  Yet, Obama has placed illegal sanctions on Iran and continues to threaten Iran with military attack on the basis of an accusation that is contradicted by all known evidence.

How can such a thing happen? It can happen because there is no Helen Thomas, who also was eliminated by the Israel Lobby, to question, as a member of the White House press, President Obama why he placed war-like sanctions on Iran when his own CIA and his own Secretary of Defense, along with the IAEA, report that there is no basis for the sanctions.

The idea that the US is a democracy when it most definitely does not have a free watchdog press is laughable.  But the media is not laughing.  It is lying.  Just like the government, every time the US mainstream media opens its mouth or writes one word, it is lying. Indeed, its corporate masters pay its employees to tell lies. That is their job. Tell the truth, and you are history like Buchanan and Napolitano and Helen Thomas.

What the Ministry of Truth calls “peaceful protesters brutalized by Assad’s military” are in fact rebels armed and financed by Washington.  Washington has fomented a civil war. Washington claims its intention is to rescue the oppressed and abused Syrian people from Assad, just as Washington rescued the oppressed and abused Libyan people from Gaddafi. Today “liberated” Libya is a shell of its former self terrorized by clashing militias. Thanks to Obama, another country has been destroyed.

Reports of atrocities committed against Syrian civilians by the military could be true, but the reports come from the rebels who desire Western intervention to put them into power. Moreover, how would these civilian casualties differ from the ones inflicted on Bahraini civilians by the US supported Bahraini government, the military of which was fortified by Saudi Arabian troops? There is no outcry in the western press about Washington’s blind eye to civilian atrocities committed by its puppet states.

How do the Syrian atrocities, if they are real, differ from Washington’s atrocities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo prison, and secret CIA prison sites?  Why is the american Ministry of Truth silent about these massive, unprecedented, violations of human rights?

Remember also the reports of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo that Washington and Germany used to justify NATO and US bombing of Serbian civilians, including the Chinese consulate, dismissed as another collateral damage.  Now 13 years later, a prominent German TV program has revealed that the photographs that ignited the atrocity campaign were grossly misrepresented and were not photographs of atrocities  committed by Serbs, but of Albanian separatists killed in a firefight between armed Albanians and Serbians. Serbian casualties were not shown.

The problem that truth faces is that the western media continually lies. On the rare instances when the lies are corrected, it is always long after the event and, therefore, the crimes enabled by the media have been accomplished.

Washington set its puppet Arab League upon Syria in order to establish Syria’s isolation among its own kind, the better to attack Syria. Assad forestalled Washington’s set-up of Syria for destruction  by calling a nationwide referendum on February 26 to establish a new constitution that would extend the prospect of rule beyond the Ba’athists (Assad’s party).

One might think that, if Washington and its Ministry of Truth really wanted democracy in Syria, Washington would get behind this gesture of good will by the ruling party and endorse the referendum.  But Washington does not want a democratic Syrian government.  Washington wants a puppet state.  Washington’s response is that the dastardly Assad has outwitted Washington by taking steps toward Syrian democracy before Washington can obliterate Syria and install a puppet.

Here is Obama’s response to Assad’s move toward democracy: “It’s actually quite laughable–it makes a mockery of the Syrian revolution,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Obama, the neoconservatives, and Tel Aviv are really pissed. If Washington and Tel Aviv can figure out how to get around Russia and China and overthrow Assad, Washington and Tel Aviv will put Assad on trial as a war criminal for proposing a democratic referendum.

Assad was an eye doctor in England until his father died, and he was called back to head the troubled government. Washington and Tel Aviv have demonized Assad for refusing to be their puppet.  Another sore point is the Russian naval base at Tartus. Washington is desperate to evict the Russians from their only Mediterranean base in order to make the Mediterranean an american lake. Washington, inculcated with neocon visions of world empire, wants its own mare nostrum.

If the Soviet Union were still extant, Washington’s designs on Tartus would be suicidal.  However, Russia is politically and militarily weaker than the Soviet Union. Washington has infiltrated Russia with NGOs that work against Russia’s interests and will disrupt the upcoming elections. Moreover, Washington-funded “color revolutions” have turned former constituent parts of the Soviet Union into Washington’s puppet states. Shorn of communist ideology, Washington does not expect Russia to push the nuclear button. Thus, Russia is there for the taking.

China is a more difficult problem.  Washington’s plan is to cut China off from independent sources of energy.  China’s oil investment in eastern Libya is the reason

Gaddafi was overthrown, and oil is one of the main reasons that Washington has targeted Iran. China has large oil investments in Iran and gets 20% of its oil from Iran. Closing down Iran, or converting it into Washington’s puppet state, closes down 20% of the Chinese economy.

Russia and China are slow learners. However, when Washington and its NATO puppets abused the “no-fly” UN resolution concerning Libya and violated the UN resolution by turning it into armed military aggression against Libya’s armed forces, which had every right to put down a CIA sponsored rebellion, Russia and China finally got the message that Washington could not be trusted.

This time Russia and China did not fall into Washington’s trap. They vetoed the UN Security Council’s set-up of Syria for military attack.  Now Washington and Tel Aviv (it is not always clear which is the puppet and which is the puppet master) have to decide whether to proceed in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition.

The risks for Washington have multiplied. If Washington proceeds, the information that is conveyed to Russia and China is that they are next in line after Iran. Therefore, Russia and China, both being well-armed with nuclear weapons, are likely to put their foot down more firmly at the line drawn over Iran. If the crazed warmongers in Washington and Tel Aviv, with veins running strong with hubris and arrogance, again override Russian and Chinese opposition, the risk of a dangerous confrontation rises.

Why isn’t the american media raising questions about these risks?  Is it worth blowing up the world in order to stop Iran from having a nuclear energy program or even a nuclear weapon?  Does Washington think China is unaware that Washington is taking aim at its energy supply? Does Washington think Russia is unaware that it is being encircled by hostile military bases?

Whose interests are being served by Washington’s endless and multi-trillion dollar wars?  Certainly not the interests of the 50 million americans with no access to health care, nor  the 1,500,000 american children who are homeless, living in cars, rundown motel rooms, tent cities, and the storm sewers under Las Vegas, while huge amounts of public funds are used to bail out banks and squandered in wars of hegemony.

The US has no independent print and TV media. It has presstitutes who are paid for the lies that they tell. The US government in its pursuit of its immoral aims has attained the status of the most corrupt government in human history. Yet Obama speaks as if Washington is the font of human morality.

The US government does not represent americans. It represents a few special interests and a foreign power.  US citizens simply don’t count, and certainly Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Somalians, Yemenis, and Pakistanis don’t count.   Washington regards truth, justice, and mercy as laughable values.  Money, power, hegemony are all that count for Washington, the city upon the hill, the light unto nations, the example for the world.

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached through his website. 

China was instrumental in creating the low- wage, and low-labor standard globalization that cost the United States many jobs. In recent years, the Chinese government, however, made efforts to give “made in China” a new meaning and to dispel the negative image of the country as a hub for abusive 19th Century capitalism in the age of globalization. American multinational corporations opposed these changes.

China is gradually abandoning the earlier labor practices as it moves towards the creation of a domestic market and a middle class society. Given the size of China’s labor force and the country’s prominence in the world economy, any improvement in labor relations will have a substantial effect on wages and standards in the rest of the world. China and the world economy are at a historical threshold.

The Chinese government has been supporting steady improvement in wages and labor standards. In the city of Shenzhen, the home of Foxconn, the main local supplier of Apple, the government-set minimum wage more than tripled from an average of $70 a month in 2005, to $240 in 2012. Wage increases have surpassed the inflation rate. They continued even after the 2008 crisis.

Beijing also made concrete efforts to improve workplace standards. In April 2006, the government released for public discussion the first draft of The Labor Contract Law. The draft law was an important step in protecting workers’ rights, and establishing basic rules of fair play sought by President Obama.

The draft law restricted the use of temporary labor, limited the ability of employers to randomly fire their workers, and gave workers the right to collective bargaining for wages and benefits. It demanded all employers to provide their workers with a contract.

The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (AmCham) and the U.S.-China Business Council lobbied against the draft on behalf of many large U.S.-based corporations they represented. They criticized the draft for reducing labor market flexibility and increasing the cost of production. In a public statement, the U.S.-China Business Council challenged the draft law for reducing employment opportunities for Chinese workers, and negatively impacting China’s competitiveness and appeal as a destination for foreign investment.

In the 1980s and 1990s, American multinationals used the threat of relocating to China as a bargaining chip in their wage and benefits negotiations with their workers in the United States. Years later, they used the threat of India, Vietnam, and others against the Chinese workers. The threat succeeded in part. After months of lobbying and negotiations, a weaker version of the draft became law in April 2007.

China has come a long way from the extreme abusive labor practices of the past. A deeper transformation of labor relations and the application of labor rights common in Western democracies will be a difficult and bumpy road. The journey, however, has already begun. It is imperative that the American multinationals do not weaken this trend. President Obama and the U.S. legislature can play a constructive role.

The United States’ economic policy towards China is largely framed through the prism of international trade. The United States’ trade with China, however, has gone through fundamental structural changes in recent years.  A growing part of the increase in imports, and the subsequent loss of American jobs are now caused by the global investment and production of the large U.S. firms. Escaping progressive labor standards at home, U.S.-based corporations have been setting up complex global supply chains with different degrees of labor rights abuses. Conventional trade policy is inadequate for addressing job losses and the trade arising from globalization.

By allowing imports with sub-standard workplace practices, free trade penalizes the fair players while it rewards the others. Conventional protectionist policy, however, penalizes both the violators and non-violators of labor rights. President Obama can save American jobs and help the creation of a fairer globaliztion by supporting a trade policy that focuses on workplace practices of large U.S. firms and their suppliers in China and elsewhere.

The new policy would be employer-specific, focusing on how imports are produced. Import duties would be levied on those brands that violate the existing national labor laws in different parts of the supply chain, or minimum standards set by a committee of the WTO. The United States should present the new policy for discussion and enactment by the WTO.

This is a win-win policy that helps China move towards more internationally accepted norms, reduce the ability of large corporations to shop around the world for lowest wages and labor standards, and save the American jobs that would have been lost to unacceptable labor practices elsewhere in the world.

BEHZAD YAGHMAIAN is a professor of political economy at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and the author of Embracing the Infidel: Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West and the forthcoming The Accidental Capitalist: A People’s Story of the New China (March 2012). He can be reached at behzad.yaghmaian@gmail.com.

The watchword for the 2012 election is jobs, jobs, jobs.  Culture-war issues, “values,” are suppose to be less important this year then in 2010 or 2008.  Yet, they keep raising their ugly heads.  First, it was abortion choice and marriage equality; then it was pledges of marital fidelity; then it was extra-marital infidelities; now its Catholic bishops seeking to police sexual intimacy.

Each of the four remaining Republican candidates make periodic pilgramages to a schrine of Christian devotion, taking the high-profile PR opportunity to proclaim that they are more of a Christian conservative then the next guy.

Amdist this political climate the latest frothy tale of yet another sexual exploit by John F. Kennedy has captured tabloid headlines.  Mimi Alford’s recently-released memoir, Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath (Random House), combined with a primetime NBC interview by Meredith Vieira and the accompanying media attention, has made JFK’s sexual exploits the talk of the nation.

In this election season, it has rekindled a questioned that has haunted national politics since the nation’s founding: How “moral” does a president have to be?  Or, put a different way, could Kennedy be elected today?

* * *

Kennedy once allegdly complained, “I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day.”  The illicit sexual conduct involving the rich, powerful and famous was once discretely hidden, public secrets often alleged but never confirmed.  The press accepted limits to how much they could report on the goings-on of those with power or influence.  Thus, it was inappropriate to discuss FDR’s polio and extra-marital relations or Ike’s wartime intimacy with Kay Summersby.

Most remarkable, JFK’s extra-marital adventures went unreported.  The list of women who he ostensibly had sex with keeps growing.  The recent revelation by Mimi (Beardsley) Alford adds to the earlier allegation about his out-of-wedlock child with Mary Evelyn Bibb Worthington.  These add to stories of his trysts with actresses Marilyn Monroe and Angie Dickinson; Inga Arvad, a Danish journalist; the stripper, Blaze Starr; Judith Exner Campbell, mistress to mob boss Sam Giancana; and White House secretaries Priscilla Weir and Jill Cowan, who he referred to as “Fiddle” and “Faddle.”

The nation’s most celebrated public birthday party was for JFK at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962.  It is long remembered for featuring the hyper-eroticized movie goddess, MM, singing the most salacious version of “Happy Birthday Mr. President” ever performed.  The only one missing from the festivities was Mrs. JFK, Jackie.  Such a public spectacle could not happen today.

[The song -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIZ51DX2hS4]

Media discretion also applied to the politically powerful.  The homoerotic intimacy between J. Edgar Hoover, the nation’s toughest, most masculine cop, and his “life partner,” Clyde Tolson, was hidden during the Boss’ reign.  Today, their intimacy is a ho-hum sub-plot of a major Hollywood release, J. Edgar, staring Academy-Award winner Leonardo DiCaprio.  Surely, something has changed with regard to America’s moral values.

Not long ago the sins of the mighty, like an illicit sexual indulgence or marital infidelity, remained a private, hidden matter.  Now, a politician’s indiscretions quickly become the fodder of mass-market gossip, instantaneous shared through an increasing array of media formats, uniting the nation in a common spectacle.  Last year, Reps. Anthony Weiner and Chris Lee got burned playing with the fire of narcissistic display; this year, Gingrich carries on, sheading his past like a snake sheds its skin.

Political scandals have become like summer showers, momentarily blowing up, followed by a downpour of moral judgment, and then the sun comes out and all is forgotten.  The scandal happens, the media pours on the color commentary and innuendo, and (after an appropriate time and sufficient mea culpa) the rehabilitated pol is back on stage.  Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer and, most especially, Gingrich are, again, in the game.

The “rehabilitation” of men who are outed for engaging in what is considered immoral behavior is a measure of just how far the boundaries of moral order have shifted.  More telling, Gingrich got 243,000 votes in the South Carolina primary, including from Tea Party and evangelical folk.  And this in spite of the fact that everyone knew he is a serial philanderer.  What does this tell us about the relationship between morality and politics in the election of 2012?

* * *

One of the great moments in the 2012 Republican presidential campaign was when Herman Cain endorsed Gingrich.  Allegations of Cain’s extra-marital escapades had broken only a few weeks earlier, but they sunk his presidential bid; while Gingrich, in his famous shoot-out with CNN’s John King, turned his dubious past into a virtue.  One can only wonder if Gingrich has tougher skin or if “immorality,” when linked to a black candidate, kills a candidacy?

Gingrich’s showing in the CNN debate and his support in the SC primary suggest that sexual morality is not a principal issue in the 2012 campaign.  A woman’s right to an abortion remains the only lightning-rod issue being pushed among Republcian conservatives and candidates; gay marriage and teen sex have essentially disappeared.

The issue of abortion took an unexpected turn with the recent controversy over the Komen Foundation’s defunding of Planned Parenthood; Komen reversed itself, recommitting to Planned Parenthood and the principal backer of the failed measure, the anti-choice activist, Karen Handel, resigned.  If this is an indication of how the issue of sex is to be fought out in the 2012 election, the Christian right is really floundering.

In a similar spirit of election-year fictitious moral outrage, the Republican Congressional leadership and three of the Republican presidential candidates (i.e., Gingrich, Romney and Santorum) have been huffing-and-puffing in support of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to the Obama administration decision to require employer health insurance plans, included those of religious organizations like Catholics, to include support for birth control. (The bishops never mention how much federal monies they get to fulfill their “mission.”)  The right is desperate for a moral issue to galvanize conservative voters and this might be the one.

Gingrich, a reborn Catholic, declared: “This is a tremendous infringement of religious liberty. Every time you turn around the secular government is shrinking the rights of religious institutions in America.”  And the grand flip-flopper, Romney, went so far as calling religious freedom America’s first right, intentionally falsefying the First Amendent.  It identifies a handful of anchoring rights, including prohibing the establishment of a state religion as well as the rights of speech, press and assembly.  Nowhere in the Amendment is religion distinguished as a “first right.”  Missing from the pronoucement of these high-minded pols is mention of the role of the Catholic Bishops in attempting to coverup the pedophile scandal that rocking the Church.

* * *

The 2012 Republican presidential campaign is marked by a pecular reliance of pledges, personal moral testimants of commitment.  Their most widely reported one, “A Pledge to America,” promised to halt an increase in the federal debt and almost torpedoed the government.

However, a number of plegdes concern sex and they are illustrative of how morality has become captive to the rightwing political agenda.

“The Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family,” popularly known as the Marriage Vow, was introducd last summer as the Republican race was taking shape.  It is a 14-point pledge calling for candidates to denounce same-sex marriage, pornography, same-sex military accommodations and forms of Islamic law.

The pledge insists that “enduring marital fidelity between one man and one woman protects innocent children, vulnerable women, the rights of fathers, the stability of families and the liberties of all American citizens.”  When introduced, it was immediately endorsed by former candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA).  However, Romney and Paul refused to endorse it.

Within days of its release, the pledge faced widespread criticism.  One challenge involved its moral hypocrisy.  Its call for marital fidelity put into question the candidacy of thrice-married Gingrich.  In an artful dodge to square the circle, the pledge’s proponent, a dubious Iowa group, the Family Leader, formerly the Iowa Family Policy Center, grandfathered Gingrich in as one who had “fallen short” in the past, but now was clean.  Gingrich endoresd it.

More troubling was its claim that a black slave “was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president.”  This clearly ignorant and racist statement drew widespread criticism from liberals and even conservative commentators.

The pledge failed to acknowledge that slaves were considered private property, 3/5^th a person, forbidden from marrying (especially after slave importation ended in 1808) and were often sold at auction, separated from their family members.   Mounting a hurried retreat, Bachmann quickly issued an apology for the Family Leader, acknowledging the false historical references.  Faced with such criticism, the Marriage Vow faded from the political scene.

Many of those who’ve signed on to the Marriage Vow also support the Susan B. Anthony Pledge.  It commits politicians to appoint antiabortion cabinet officers and cut off federal financing to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.  Guess whose signed on?  The usual suspects: Gingrich, Paul, Romney and Santorum.

Morality In Media, a conservative group, pushed a new pledge last fall, the “War on Illegal Pornography” – not sure what “legal” porn is, but that’s another matter.   It called for politicians to commit to strict enforcement of obscenity laws.  And three of the four Republican candidates, Gingrich, Romney and Santorum, immediate signed up.

* * *

The watchword for the 2012 election is jobs, jobs, jobs.  Culture-war issues, “values,” are less important this year then in 2010 or 2008.  Each of the four remaining Republican candidates make periodic pilgramages to a schrine of Christian devotion, taking the high-profile PR opportunity to proclaim that they are more of a Christian conservative then the next guy.

Most revealing, the issue of values (as reflected in abortion and gay marriage) does not drive the 2012 election.  Last April, the Barna Group released findings from a public-opinion survey it conducted regarding the issues that mattered to religious Americans with regard to the presidential election.  The top four concerns were:

§  health care (64%)

§  tax policies (60%)

§  terrorism (50%) and

§  employment policies (50%).

The second tier of four concers were:

§  immigration policies (45%)

§  education policy (44%)

§  wars in the Middle East (43%) and

§  America’s dependence upon foreign oil (38%).

The four concerns that were the least likely to influence how they would vote were:

§  domestic poverty policies (37%)

§  abortion (27%)

§  environmental policy (26%) and

§  gay marriage (24%).

“Values” are not what they used to be.

* * *

The media accomodation to politician’s sexual indiscrations ended on July 18, 1969, the night Ted Kennedy took the ill-fated car ride with Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick, MA.  The Kennedy scandal represented the moral crisis of traditional American hush-hush political values.

This value system found expression not in what occurred, whether an accident or not, but in the need to cover it up in order to preserve a political legacy. It was a value system that was challenged by the 1960s’ cultural and political crises and a new type of of headline-grapbbing scandal journalism.

This gentlemen’s-agreement value system collapsed amidst a wave of scandals involving politicians during the 1970s.  Democratic Congressmen were undone by scandal. Among these worthies Wilbur Mills (D-AK) and Wayne Hays (D-OH) as well as John Young (D-TX) and Allan Howe (D-UT).  Each was driven from office.

Three decades later, during George W. Bush’s tenure, Republican politicians succumb to a similar fate.  In 2006, the sexual exploits of Mark Foley (R-FL) and Don Sherwood (R-PA) captivated the nation.  In 2007, it was the goings-on of David Vitter (R-LA) and Larry Craig (R-ID) that undermined Republian claims to moral superiority.

The moral crisis facing the Republcians came home with a vengence with Obama’s victory in 2008.  Prior to the 2010 midterm election, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) committed the party to a “zero-tolerance policy” regarding ethical, and especially sexual, transgressions.  When, in early 2011, word and image of Rep. Chris Lee’s dubious hanky-panky spread through the media, Republican-party bosses, especially Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), ordered Lee to resign and, as a good foot soldier, he followed orders.  (For those with short memories, Lee fled from office when word got out that he had e-mailed a snapshot of his bare macho-man chest to a prospective illicit love object.)

When, later last year, the Democrats found themselves embroiled in a similar scandal with Anthony Weiner, the Democratic leadership, led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), declared the need to launch an ethics inquiry, ultimately forcing Weiner from office.

In 2012, the experiences of Cain and Gingrich speak to how divided the Republican party and its hardcore conservative base appear to be with regard to sex.  While holding dearly to culture-war values, for the base are, after all, “value voters,” values are no longer the political weapon they once were.  Something deeper, more proufound it taking place across the country

America is in the midst of a 4^th sexual revolution, this one pushing further the revolutions of the 1840s, 1920s and 1960s.  A handful of examples illustrate the depth and breath of this change.  Pornography is a booming, $10-plus billion business, including print, TV/cable, DVD and online service.  The 1970s swinging scene is back; NASCA International, a swingers association, identifies 168 swingers clubs throughout the U.S.  Gentlemen’s clubs are no longer limited to Las Vegas; TUSCL, a website of strip clubs, lists 2,800 operating throughout the country.  Explicit adult “safe sex” clubs for gays and straights operate throughout the country; specialized fetish clubs catering to b&d, s&m and other once-perverse tastes operate in many major cities, often hosted by a professional dominatrix.   And, most intriguing, sex toys, costumes and lotions are a multi-million dollar business, with Amazon the nation’s largest purveyor; such Passion Parties are popular among religious conservatives.

For all the ranting of the religious right and Republican politicians, something is happening in American.  Conservative forces have been incredibly effective promoting anti-choice, anti-marriage equality and anti-sex ed legislation in state houses throughout the country, often implement model bills supplied by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

But on a deeper, more fundamental level they are losing the war with regard to the more intimate values and sexual practices taking place between consenting adults.  One must work to turn this change in real values into a new political campaign that is based on personal, informed choice and practice.  Only this will ultimately defeat the puritan right.

David Rosen is the author of Sex Scandals America:  Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming and is a regular contributor to CounterPunch, Brooklyn Rail and Filmmaker.  He can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net.

Disturbing as that figure is, it’s not going to surprise anyone who’s been following organized labor for the last quarter-century or so.  Since the salad days of the Reagan administration, America’s unions have been fighting for their lives, clawing and scratching just to stay afloat.  While part of that fight has been waged against corporate predators, part of it, unfortunately, has also been directed against negative public opinion.

From an ideological standpoint one can understand why banks, businesses, business associations, and the corporate media trash organized labor.  From an ideological perspective, trashing labor makes sense.  But it’s demoralizing to hear regular, workaday people doing the same thing.  It’s demoralizing and it’s frustrating.

People who freely (or grudgingly) acknowledge that unions were once required to “level the playing field” will now tell you that unions are no longer necessary, that they’ve more or less outlived their usefulness.  They’ll tell you that, while unions once upon a time provided a valuable service, they are today not only an embarrassing anachronism, but a dangerous impediment.

It becomes even more frustrating when you expose these people to the hard, cold facts of life.  When you show them the correlation between middle-class income and union membership—when you demonstrate, through graphs and charts, that as union membership rolls have dwindled, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the middle has been dragged inexorably toward the bottom—they look at you blankly or, worse, give you the stink-eye.  They refuse to acknowledge that labor unions are a necessary component of a thriving, well-distributed economy.  And we’re not talking about rich people here here; we’re talking about regular working people.

As to the silly notion of unions having “outlived” their usefulness, just imagine saying the same thing about the U.S. Constitution.  Imagine suggesting that, while it was a noble and well-meaning document that had once been “very helpful in ensuring our rights,” the Constitution has outlived its usefulness and should be put in mothballs.  People would go berserk.  [No they wouldn’t. We’ve heard progressives denounce the Constitution as an archaic impediment to progress. AC/JSC. ] Yet, when the suggestion is made that maybe it’s time for unions to be phased out, you’ll find many people (gleaned from that 55 per cent who don’t view unions “favorably”) shrugging and more or less agreeing.

The two most common complaints about unions are:  (1) They are self-serving and corrupt, and (2) they’ve ruined the American economy by pricing themselves out of the market and forcing employers to relocate overseas.

Given our memories of watching beefy union goons doing the perp walk on TV, and the stories of lurid, on-going criminal activity in some of the East Coast construction  and longshore trades, it’s easy to understand why people might view unions as corrupt.  But this is cherry-picking at its most primitive. It’s taking the corrupt few and using them to smear the whole group.

Not only are the overwhelming majority of unions honest, but people tend to get confused about what corruption is.  When I ask people to give an example of “corruption,” they’ll list occasions where union officers broke promises to them, or failed to show up at a meeting, or where the union forgot to file a grievance in a timely manner, or a union official tried to pass the buck.  That’s not corruption, folks—that’s laziness and inefficiency, old-fashioned human frailty.  And not to burst anyone’s bubble, but organized labor ain’t the only institution guilty of it.

As to the complaint about unions forcing companies to pull up stakes and relocate overseas, nothing could be further from the truth.  That’s not only a pathetic argument, it’s a toxic lie, one that maybe wasn’t invented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but was certainly propagated by it.  Companies that move to a Third World or “emerging” country do it NOT to avoid paying a union wage, but to avoid paying an American wage.  After all, what American can compete with the $1.85 per hour paid to a Bangladeshi?

Let’s be clear:  Unions aren’t merely historical artifacts; they’re the vital social instruments that give workers a fair shot at achieving a semblance of economic equality.   Consider this imperfect analogy.  The U.S. Constitution is to American liberty what labor unions are to working people’s welfare.  Close enough.

DAVID MACARAY, an LA playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy:  Essays on Modern Labor”), was a former union rep.   He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.  He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net

My job was as an instructor in the intensive English language program for Iranian army trainee pilots and mechanics. After the Iranian trainees had successfully completed their one year English language program utilizing helicopter parts the graduates would go on to train directly with helicopter pilots or mechanics.

When we arrived in Iran there was a cultural orientation program for us conducted by an American and its brevity of a few hours with its limited scope minimized its effectiveness.

The job site was an Iranian military base in Isfahan, Iran and my students were young Iranian army recruits dressed in green fatigues whose youthful energy and alertness made the job of teaching them both challenging and interesting. Instructors also had a uniform, light blue shirts and navy pants.

Soon after arriving in Iran it became apparent that few Americans working in Iran spoke Farsi. I met only one American who spoke Farsi and he was a former Peace Corps volunteer in Iran. Most of the Americans working in Iran as helicopter mechanics and helicopter pilots had little or no experience in a Muslim country and the stress of a foreign culture was evident in their impatience with and sometimes disdain for the Iranians‚ lack of technological knowledge and English. It seemed to me that culture shock was very real for many Americans, especially those formerly based in Texas, the headquarters of the helicopter manufacturer. Instructors who were former U.S. Peace Corps volunteers adjusted and accommodated themselves to the Iranian culture more easily with their extensive cross-cultural training and experience.

The employees of the major American companies lived in American ghettoes, newly constructed housing projects complete with fast food chains selling hamburgers, chicken and pizzas. Americans were bringing their culture with them to Iran, setting up enclaves in a foreign country, further isolating themselves from Iranian culture and people. Those of us who were working with subcontractors had to find housing by renting from Iranians. Slowly but surely, some Americans began developing an antipathy and dislike for the country and culture they were residing in. The language, religion with its daily audible call for prayers and even the dress of Iranian women seemed to be almost an affront to some Americans who were there to teach their technology to the backward Iranians. Unfortunately, many Americans including the highest levels of government in both the elected and career positions did not realize and know that their ultimate employer were these same “backward” Iranians and a commitment to understanding their culture was as important as imparting advanced technology in Iran.

The Iranian army recruits were mostly teenagers who sought to improve their lives by joining the military. They were exuberant and rowdy at times, but their youth and fun loving nature was like fresh air. The structured classroom techniques were dominated by student participation in order to show that the students had acquired a grasp of the English language and helicopter parts. Entire sections and parts of a helicopter were on display in the classroom and used in lessons to learn English.

There was a popular restaurant where Americans frequented, which was owned and managed by an enterprising South Korean. The food was strictly American fare. I remember one meal because the actor Anthony Quinn had eaten it. Mr. Quinn was in the country making the movie of James Michener’s book, Caravans, and the owner had told us that Mr. Quinn had just departed the restaurant minutes before we had arrived. I asked what table Mr. Quinn had eaten at, what had he eaten and sat down at Mr. Quinn’s chair and ordered ham and pineapple with mashed potatoes.

One day Empress Farah of Iran visited the military base and a throne chair was in the back of an open military truck and the soldiers in the truck were anxiously trying to locate her by driving rapidly around the base.

On one occasion a few of us went on a hike in the countryside and we passed through small villages and the children seemed inadequately dressed for the cold weather and the poverty of the people was evident in their housing and clothes.

Over the coming weeks and months incidents of American arrogance in their treatment of Iranians became evident, leading to even a few episodes of street fights between Americans and Iranians. Good salaries attracted Americans to Iran at that time and the negative attitude communicated by a few Americans toward Iranians prompted Iranians to resent the Americans’ presence.

I have talked to Americans who had visited Iran prior to the arrival of large numbers of Americans in Iran and there was a general consensus of a very favorable view of Americans by Iranians. At the time I was in Iran I was unaware that the U.S. government had actively helped overthrow the democratically elected government of President Mossadegh in 1953 because he had proposed nationalizing the oil fields.

It was a time when the Shah’s reign was supreme and his Secret Police, the Savak, kept communists and dissidents from challenging his rule. The Savak headquarters, a sturdy well-built brick building in Isfahan, was pointed out to me by an Iranian as we were driving through. He told me that when someone goes into that building he seldom returns home. He was working with a U.S. petroleum refinery company and he told me that Iranian workers had gone on strike to complain not only about wages but also that Americans repeatedly called them “jackasses or donkeys.”

What had happened to the Iranians’ pro-American views? Why the change from a favorable view of Americans? A superpower with a vast and powerful military- industrial complex without a vast and equally powerful humanitarian-cultural complex is like a giant hobbled by a crippled or lame foot. Few dare mention to the giant his imperfection because his power and financial resources are enormous and his stride encompasses the globe and he does not tolerate criticism because he says it is Un-American and unpatriotic.

The famous adage is still applicable: Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Henry Pelifian received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Geneseo, NY in English/Drama and Education, an MBA in International Managment from Thunderbird, Garvin School of International Management in Arizona. He served in the U.S. Army with one year in Qui Nhon, South Vietnam. A former Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, he worked for several more years overseas, primarily in Thailand in the U.S. Refugee Program. He is now writing novels, plays and short stories.

This article originally appeared on History News Network.

This view has been confirmed by the fact that the debtor countries have missed target after target and that growth has consistently come in far below projections. (Actually, the crises countries have been contracting for much of the last two years.)  This could leave analysts guessing as to what economic reasoning lies behind the troika’s conditions.

Last week I got the answer when I had occasion to meet with a high-level EU official. There is no economic reasoning behind the troika’s positions. For practical purposes, Greece and the other debt-burdened countries are dealing with crazy people. The pain being imposed is not a route to economic health; rather it is a gruesome bleeding process that will only leave the patient worse off. The economic doctors at the troika are clueless when it comes to understanding a modern economy.

The basic story of the crisis countries is simple. Their economies became uncompetitive with the rest of the eurozone in the last decade as inflation in these peripheral countries outpaced inflation in the core eurozone countries of northern Europe, most importantly Germany. This created a large gap in price levels that caused peripheral countries to run massive current account deficits.

In some countries, like Greece and to a lesser extent Portugal, the current account deficit corresponded to excessive public-sector borrowing. In Spain and Ireland the current account deficit was associated with a massive private-sector borrowing boom.

The remedy for this situation is obvious, even if getting from here to there may not be simple. The peripheral countries have to regain competitiveness by having their prices fall relative to prices in the core countries. If these countries still had their own currencies, this could be accomplished quickly through a devaluation of the currencies of the peripheral countries.

However, being part of the eurozone rules out this option. With a single currency the only route for the peripheral countries to regain competitiveness is to have a lower inflation rate than the core countries.

This would be a doable task if the core countries were prepared to run inflation rates in the range of 3-5 percent annually. If the peripheral countries kept their inflation rates in a range of 1-2 percent, they would soon be able to restore their competitiveness.

But the core countries have zero intention of allowing their inflation rate to increase from the current 1-3 percent range. As I learned from my conversations with this EU official, low inflation is viewed as the equivalent of a commandment from God. He could not even see the logic of deliberately allowing the inflation rate to rise.

He viewed the idea of 4-5 percent inflation as being like a dreaded disease, as though there was not a long history of countries experiencing robust growth with inflation rates in this range or even higher.

The alternative route suggested by this EU official was that Greece and other peripheral countries would bring about a restructuring of their economy. This would lead to lower costs and higher productivity, and thereby a return to competitiveness.

There is little doubt that there are many inefficiencies in the peripheral economies that should be eliminated or reduced. But the idea that this can be quickly done, in the context of economies that are rapidly contracting, is more than a little fanciful. There certainly is no precedent for a successful restructuring like this anywhere in the world.

The country that some proponents of this route hold up as a model is Latvia. Latvia has seen its economy contract by more than 20 percent, although it is now seeing respectable growth. Still, its unemployment rate is well into the double-digits. Furthermore, Latvia’s unemployment rate would undoubtedly be much higher if close to 10 percent of its workforce had not emigrated to other countries in search of work.

If people on the left proposed a set of economic policies that has so little theoretical or empirical support they would be laughed out of public debate. In this case, because the people pushing such policies hold the highest positions in government and the European economic establishment, they end up as official policy.

The people in Greece and peripheral countries must wake up to the fact that they are not dealing with reasonable people at the other side of the negotiating table. The notion of leaving the euro cannot be a pleasant one, but the troika is giving the peripheral countries little choice.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy and False Profits: Recoverying From the Bubble Economy.

This article originally appeared on Al Jazeera.

Some make ridiculous statements such as that you must enjoy the pressure. What is probably meant to be a compliment is an insult. Only someone who is nuts enjoys constant stress and sleepless nights.

Frankly, I would be delighted if others would step up. No one enjoys constantly working as if there were no more tomorrows.  No one enjoys sandwiching in writing and teaching, and never having enough time to edit and reflect – the tension of being constantly on stage gets to you.

I often wish that I would have become a monk. But, as a member of a community – a husband, father, grandfather, and teacher – I have no choice but to fight.  The bottom line is that I care about the kind of world we leave behind.

Many of my Latino friends tell me not to worry; the Latino population is booming, and we are the future. Today Latinos are just over 15 percent of the population – over 50 million. If we were a nation, we would be the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. By 2050 Latinos will be almost a third of the U.S. But will it really make a difference?

Knowing history I realize that what we do today will affect 2050. Population is not a silver bullet, and this growth is precisely what worries me.

In the 1970s I had a conversation with the late Willie Velásquez, the founder of the Southwest Voter Registration Project, who was at the time leading a drive to register more Mexican Americans. I asked Willie if he were not being overly optimistic about the importance of registering and voting Mexican Americans. We could register more Latinos, but what was being done about the quality of representation once we turned out the voters?

Willie responded that everything went in cycles, and we first had to register our people. Over the years I have thought about this conversation. Looking at the outcome, I think Willie is probably turning over in his grave when he sees the quality of our political representives, especially the trend of some Latinos running as Republicans.  Who would have thought in the 1970s that Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking people would today be Hispanics?

As a group Latino politicos have not been especially progressive. Indeed, they have been less than courageous when it comes to police brutality and capital punishment. Latino politicos have been invisible during the escalation of tuition that is killing access to higher education for most.  Few have spoken out on the Middle Eastern wars thus empowering President Barack Obama as he wags the dog’s tail.

In 2050, the Latino population will reach 30 percent. Surely, the gene pool will get darker; today in Los Angeles the probability of a first grade male marrying or partnering up with a Latina is about fifty percent. The only factors slowing down this process are where people live, go to school and economic class.

Has the political awareness of Latinos and Mexican Americans grown proportionately?  I don’t think so! Political consciousness is like vocabulary — it is learned and acquired, and it is not cultivated through the use of third grade clichés such as the Decade of the Hispanic or Chicana/o power. It is learned through political education and awareness.

The growth or development of political consciousness depends on individual and group experiences. The media has a lot to do with this socialization process.

However, when we look at the content of most programs Latinos have access to, it is disastrous.  Univision, the largest of the Spanish language networks, is run by conservative investors, and its content is heavily influenced by right wing Cuban Americans in Miami.  Consequent to this, the most informative pundit is Jorge Ramos, a Mexican transplant who is progressive on immigration but to right of center on Latin American and domestic issues. This begets programs such as Don Francisco that features contests such as Señorita Colita (Miss “Little Tail”).

The Democratic Party and the left have done very little to fill the vacuum in the Latino’s political education, although it is becoming its largest bloc of voters. It takes Latinos for granted because they have no other place to go, given the racism of the Republican Party.

Truth be told, the left media like poverty has fed off the Latino’s misery while reaping the benefits of their votes. It sheds tears over racism and inequality, theorizing about it and doing little more.

Aside from “Democracy Now,” there is not a prominent Latino writer nurtured by this gaggle of left
media that includes The Nation, Mother Jones as well as others. The tragedy is that, if and when the Latino community votes Republican, there will be expressions of shock and blaming the victim.

What I have learned during my years of struggle is that I don’t have enough money, or  prestige to change the group. I probably would have even less influence if I were at a a pampered professor at a prominent university, so I make changes through teaching working class students and by example.

At the moment I am concentrating on Mexican American and Central American students, a sector that includes most Latinos. According to the 2010 Census, Mexican Americans are officially 63 percent, and could be as high as 70 percent of the total Latino population. The Mexican origin population will grow the fastest during the next forty years due to Mexico’s proximity to the United States and the median age of Mexican women.

U.S. births are disproportionately Latino, accounting for one-in-four of the nation’s newborns in 2008. The growth is driven by Mexican Americans women who account anywhere from about 20 percent to 50 percent more children than non-Mexican Latinas.

The median age of Mexican origin women in the U.S. is 25, compared with 30 for non-Mexican-origin Latinas, 32 for blacks, 35 for Asians and 41 for whites. The typical Mexican American woman, ages 40 to 44, gives birth to 2.5 children versus 1.9 non-Mexican-Latinas.

Demographers predict that most future growth in the U.S. among Latinas will come from women with documents.  Most of the growth within the Mexican American community will be poorer, less educated and concentrated in the working class sector.

The reality is simply that it is becoming more hazardous and costly for working class Latin Americans to migrate to the U.S. through the Mexican corridor that has been closed to them by drug gangs spawned by U.S. policy that has channeled the drug trade through Mexico.

In this scenario, the Mexican American middle-class plays an exceedingly important role. Necessarily they have to advocate for the civil rights of those not enjoying their privileges. However, the increase in tuition is threatening the stairway we built in the late 1960s for more Mexican Americans and Latinos going to college. There are also class divisions that occur among people of all color.

The only factors slowing this down assimilation are food and group consciousness, which lasts only so long.

Arizona as in the case of California Proposition 187 (1994) reminds the group that racism still exists. It defines who the bad guys are. However, this political education has to go much further.

In the past couple of years I have been writing pieces on Arizona to educate a small circle on the importance of that struggle.  Good education is often a case of redundancy. It is the practice of constantly deducing and then applying lessons – much like the conjugation for verbs in Latin.

That is why we are taking students to Arizona. We want to educate them, and the best way is for them to experience it. In the last two trips, we have also been taking Asian students with us because we live in a multi-racial society, and we have to learn to work together. We share humanity.

Many of the students who have gone on the trips had never been out of California, some had never been out of LA.  This effort will pay off because they in turn will use a more sophisticated political vocabulary, which they will teach their family members and eventually their children.

RODOLFO ACUÑA, a professor emeritus at California State University Northridge, has published 20 books and over 200 public and scholarly articles. He is the founding chair of the first Chicano Studies Dept which today offers 166 sections per semester in Chicano Studies. His history book Occupied America has been banned in Arizona. In solidarity with Mexican Americans in Tucson, he has organized fundraisers and support groups to ground zero and written over two dozen articles exposing efforts there to nullify the U.S. Constitution. 

It is avidly watched by the moviegoing population of this sprawling and diverse nation of more than 300 million people, and by millions more around the world. Hollywood sets styles, captures imaginations, touches dreams. Worldwide, movies provide people with much of what they think about America.

Yet, the 5,765 voting members of the Academy are far from representative of the moviegoing public. They are more akin to the old packed juries of the segregated South. A remarkable investigation by Los Angeles Times reporters pierced the screen of secrecy to reveal that the voting members are a stunning 94 percent Caucasian and 77 percent male. Only 2 percent are African American, and less than 2 percent are Latino. Their median age is 62, and only 14 percent are younger than 50.

The Academy’s leaders say the organization is trying to do better, but it is hard to see any evidence of that. Since 2004, the names of 1,000 invitees have been published: 89 percent white, and 73 percent male. The 43 member Academy Board of Governors has all of six women, one of whom is the sole person of color. The Academy’s executive branch is 98 percent white, as is its writers branch. Corporate boardrooms do better than that.

Defenders of the Academy say its membership reflects a combination of legacy (memberships are for life) and achievement. But the sad reality is that the membership reflects hiring patterns that are equally skewed. The Times story quotes writer/editor Phil Auden Robinson, who concludes: “If the industry as a whole is not doing a great job in opening up its ranks, it’s very hard for us to diversify our membership.”

Not surprisingly, the voting tends to reflect the composition of the voters. In the 83 years of the Academy, the Times reports, only 4 percent of Oscars have been awarded to an African American. Only one woman has received the award for directing.

In 2011, not a single minority person was among the 45 nominees for the major awards: best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, director, original and adapted screenplay. More astounding, the Academy failed to identify even one black male presenter for the awards. African-American actors were not only shut out of the awards; they were shut out of the attention that comes from presenting them.

This year, at least, minorities will not be shut out. Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Mexican-born Demian Bichir will contend for major acting awards.

It is long past time for the industry to open up and for the Academy to reach out. It was long past time back in 1996 when the Rainbow Coalition organized a nationwide protest over the lack of minority Oscar nominees. Women and minorities dream of becoming directors, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors just as white men do. Young talent drives Hollywood and our popular culture more than the established older generation. And Hollywood’s audience across the country and around the world is young and diverse.

Hollywood defines what is hip. But when it comes to diversity, the Academy is about 50 years behind the times.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson is founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Dear President Abbas,

There was visible and audible euphoria at the UN General Assembly in September when you announced Palestine’s application for UN membership, at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters in October when Palestine was admitted as a member state and at UNESCO again in December when the Palestinian flag was formally raised in your presence (and mine).

Since then, nothing …

It is understood that you agreed with the Quartet to freeze Palestine’s diplomatic initiatives until January 26 to permit a final effort to initiate meaningful negotiations with Israel. Predictably, that effort failed. However, January 26 has long passed. Still, nothing …

I shared your surprise that, with nine of the states on last year’s UN Security Council having already extended diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine, you could not line up even the nine affirmative votes for Palestine’s admission as a member state necessary to force the United States to choose between a veto (infuriating the Muslim world and much of mankind) and an abstention (infuriating Israel and its American supporters).

However, even though the turnover of five non-permanent members on January 1 does not appear to have changed the eight-affirmative-votes-only reality, this does not mean that there is nothing that Palestine can constructively do to recover the initiative and positive momentum of last fall.

You could proceed promptly to the UN General Assembly to obtain an overwhelming vote to upgrade Palestine’s status from “observer entity” to “observer state”. The memberships of the UN and UNESCO are substantially identical, and only 14 states voted against Palestine’s admission as a UNESCO member state. Logically, even fewer states should oppose “observer state” status for Palestine at the UN.

Immediately after having Palestine’s “state status” confirmed at the UN, you could make a formal — and historic — statement comprising at least the following three elements:

(i) The announcement of the merger or absorption of the Palestinian Authority into the State of Palestine;

(ii) An undertaking by the State of Palestine, during a one-year period in which the State of Palestine would seek in good faith to achieve a definitive agreement with the State of Israel on all modalities for ending the occupation on a two-state basis, to assume and perform all of the functions, rights and obligations previously assumed and performed by the Palestinian Authority under existing agreements between the PLO and the State of Israel, including security cooperation if the State of Israel is willing to cooperate with the State of Palestine; and

(iii) A commitment by the State of Palestine, in the event that a definitive agreement with the State of Israel on all modalities for ending the occupation on a two-state basis is not reached within this one-year period, to consult the Palestinian people by referendum as to whether they prefer continuing to seek to end the occupation through partition, with a sovereign Palestinian state on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine, or  henceforth seeking the full rights of citizenship in a single democratic state in all of historical Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race, religion or origin and with equal rights for all.

If there remains any hope of actually achieving a decent two-state solution on the ground, presenting the issue and the choice, both before Israel and before its Western supporters, in this manner should stimulate the most intensive effort imaginable to actually achieve it. If, even with the issue and choice presented in this manner, a decent two-state solution were to prove impossible to achieve, the Palestinian leadership and people, having acted reasonably and responsibly, would be standing firmly on the moral high ground, ready to shift their goal to the only other decent alternative with the maximum conceivable support of the rest of mankind.

During this decisive year, you could also seek admission of the State of Palestine, successively, to several more carefully chosen UN agencies, such as the World International Property Organization, the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and, potentially, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and even the Commonwealth, choosing those targets which both appear most constructive in practical and strategic terms and in which success is highly likely.

You could leave the Security Council waiting, always open for a vote at a moment of your choosing, perhaps after a change of government in a member state. In this context, you will surely have noticed that François Hollande, tipped by the polls to become the next French president in May, has included in his campaign booklet ”My 60 Pledges for France” the following pledge: “I will support international recognition of the Palestinian state.”

Necessarily, you would stop issuing “Palestinian Authority” passports and start issuing “State of Palestine” passports.

By proceeding in this way, you would affirm the existence and reality of the state in multiple ways, through a steady succession of manifestations of statehood, while building a tangible record of “successes”, avoiding any visible “failure” and keeping Palestine and the imperative need to end the occupation on the “front burner” of the world’s attention.

In addition, an overwhelming General Assembly vote in support of “statehood status” for Palestine, coupled with a steady succession of ”facts on the ground” manifestations of statehood, would make it more difficult for Security Council members to resist or block full UN membership for Palestine at such time as you may deem it opportune to seek it.

As always, I wish you courage and wisdom in seizing the initiative and setting the agenda so as to achieve, finally, some measure of justice and a decent future for the Palestinian people.

Respectfully,

John V. Whitbeck

John V. Whitbeck is an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel.

Kwazi said that only a teaspoon of the concoction was so strong that soon he was running to the toilet, vomiting and with a running stomach. Each time he went to the toilet because of the imbiza – which was several times – while on the toilet seat, there would be a bucket in front of him: he would “be shitting and vomiting simultaneously”.

Now, my brother is a strong and healthy person. So, imagine what can happen to a person like Faith ka-Manzi who is living with an immune system hosting the AIDS virus, and whose body at some stage had been incapacitated by this pandemic – death.

My brother continued and said afterwards he had to drink water, and it took him a year to finish a whole cup, because each time he took a sip, there was hellish pain in his throat, like it was on fire. My guess is that his throat may have been burned by the stuff.

He said that “after the shitting and vomiting was over,” he peed blood for a while.

The other man also took a spoonful of imbiza and, like my brother, bled so much that he had to go to the hospital. The one who introduced them to imbiza was not so lucky. He died after having had a spoonful. My uncle, similarly obstinate, did exactly what he was told would kill him. He mixed ARVs with imbiza.

Now, he’s dead.

I don’t even feel like I failed, since I would spend my last penny on the best HIV facility, on him. But he thought he knew better. It is only his sisters who are devastated. The rest of us who were there for him every step of the way just feel let down by his death.

Don’t worry OH, who is not HIV positive these days?

A great many people that I know closely avoid going for testing, by drinking imbizas. They say they would rather stay healthy by virtue of their imbizas than go for HIV tests. To those of us who are open about our status, they say, “Don’t worry OH (a township term of endearment) – who is not positive these days?”

This is done to make us feel better about ourselves. But this is a lot of bull, because at the end of the day the sooner you know your status the better you can manage it.

Having said that, I am no saint.

You see, I used traditional herbs for eight years before taking ARVs. But at least the herbs I took worked quite well. It had been researched well. Like others – selected from the Valley of the 1000 Hills, I was even part of a trial, used as a guinea pig for a woman’s Masters Degree in Medical Technology at the Durban University of Technology, during 2004/2005, registered with the South African Medical Council.

I can’t believe that as I’m writing this, I’m having one of my indulgences – an almost hot bubble bath: the whole works, foam and all. Yeah, this is the life. And if I go for a while without taking a bath, just showers, I get depressed.

I know as an activist, this would be wrong – seen as wasting water. But, please! I grew up until last year always having to use a big plastic pail for washing my body: part of apartheid’s plan for us. Well, they didn’t give us RDP houses, only RDP toilet-baths, enough for a toilet seat and a plastic pail.

So bathing has always meant boiling water, taking it to the pail and cooling it. But now we have a bath (which we invested in since our RDP house has an even smaller RDP toilet-bath) and solar heating.

So, this is my luxury. I worked for it and I’m going to enjoy it!

Faith ka-Manzi is a South African writer and poet who has been living in Cato Manor for more than a decade. Born almost 44 years ago in Durban, she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities at the then University of Natal (now UKZN) in 1999 majoring in English and History.  Faith is now based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she writes and translates works mainly advocating socio-economic, political and environmental issues pertaining to civil society, especially the poor.

This essay originally appeared in The Africa Report.

An as-yet confidential report submitted by the European consuls in Jerusalem and Ramallah raises urgent concerns over the “forced expulsion” of Palestinians – a particularly strong term for European diplomats to use –from Area C of the West Bank (the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control but which today contains less than 5% of the Palestinian population). Focusing particularly on the rise in house demolitions by the Israeli authorities and the growing economic distress of the Palestinians living in Area C, the report mentions the fertile and strategic Jordan Valley (where the Palestinian population has declined from 250,000 to 50,000 since the start of the Occupation), plans to relocate 3000 Jahalin Bedouins to a barren hilltop above the Jerusalem garbage dump and the ongoing but accelerated demolition of Palestinian homes (500 in 2011).

At the same time the “judaization” of Jerusalem continues apace, a “greater” Israeli Jerusalem steadily isolating the Palestinian parts of the city from the rest of Palestinian society while ghettoizing their inhabitants, more than 100,000 of which now live beyond the Wall. Some 120 homes were demolished in East Jerusalem in 2011; over the same period the Israeli government announced the construction of close to 7000 housing units for Jews in East and “Greater” Jerusalem. “If current trends are not stopped and reversed,” said a previous EU report, “the establishment of a viable Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders seems more remote than ever. The window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing….”

In fact, it closed long ago. In terms of settlers and Palestinians, the Israeli government treats the whole country as one. Last year it demolished three times more homes of Israeli citizens (Arabs, of course) than it did in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The demolition of Bedouin homes in the Negev/Nakab is part of a plan approved by the government to remove 30,000 citizens from their homes and confine them to townships.

None of this concerns “typical” Israelis even if they have heard of it (little appears in the news). For them, the Israeli-Arab conflict was won and forgotten years ago, somewhere around 2004 when Bush informed Sharon that the US does not expect Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders, thus effectively ending the “two-state solution,” and Arafat “mysteriously” died.

Since then, despite occasional protests from Europe, the “situation” has been normalized. Israelis enjoy peace and quiet, personal security and a booming economy (with the usual neoliberal problems of fair allocation). The unshakable, bi-partisan support of the American government and Congress effectively shields it from any kind of international sanctions. Above all, Israeli Jews have faith that those pesky Arabs living somewhere “over there” beyond the Walls and barbed-wire barriers have been pacified and brought under control by the IDF. A recent poll found that “security,” the term Israelis use instead of “occupation” or “peace,” was ranked eleventh among the concerns of the Israeli public, trailing well behind employment, crime, corruption, religious-secular differences, housing and other more pressing issues.

A for the international community, the “Quartet” representing the US, the EU, Russia and the UN in the non-existent “peace process” has gone completely silent. (Israel refused to table its position on borders and other key negotiating issues by the January 26^th “deadline” laid down by the Quartet, and no new meetings are scheduled). The US has abandoned any pretense of an “honest broker.” Months ago, when the US entered its interminable election “season,” Israel received a green light from both the Democrats and Republicans to do whatever it sees fit in the Occupied Territory. Last May the Republicans invited Netanyahu to address Congress and send a clear message to Obama: hands off Israel. That same week, Obama, not to be out-done, addressed an AIPAC convention and reaffirmed Bush’s promise that Israel will not have to return to the 1967 borders or relinquish its major settlement blocs in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He also took the occasion to promise an American veto should the Palestinians request membership in the UN – though that would merely amount to an official acceptance of the two-state treaty that the US claims it has been fostering all these years. No, as far as Israel and Israeli Jews are concerned, the conflict and even the need for pretense is over. The only thing remaining is to divert attention to more “urgent” global matters so that the Palestinian issue completely disappears. Voila Iran.

Oh, but what about the “demographic threat,” that “war of the womb” that will eventually force a solution? Well, as long as Israel has the Palestinian Authority to self-segregate its people, it has nothing to worry about. While the Palestinian Authority plays the “two-state solution” game, Israel can simply herd the Palestinians into the 70 tiny islands of Areas A and B, lock the gates and let the international community feed them – and go about placidly building a Greater Land of Israel with American and European complicity. Indeed, nothing demonstrates self-segregation more than Prime Minister Salem Fayyad’s neoliberal scheme of building a Palestinian …something… “from the ground up.” By building for the well-to-do in new private-sector cities like Rawabi, located safely in Area A, by building new highways (with Japanese and USAID assistance) that respect Israeli “Greater” Jerusalem and channel Palestinian traffic from Ramallah to Bethlehem through far-away Jericho, by expressing a willingness to accept Israeli territorial expansion in exchange for the ability to “do business,” Fayyad has invented yet a new form of neoliberal oppression-by-consent: viable apartheid (viable, at least, for the Palestinian business class). And as in the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa, the Palestinian Authority maintains a repressive internal order through its own American-trained/Israeli-approved militia, a second layer of occupation. (During the 2008 assault on Gaza, one of the few places in the world in which there were no demonstrations was the West Bank, where they were forbidden by the Palestinian Authority. Then-Prime Minister Olmert crowed that this was evidence of how effectively the Palestinians had been pacified.)

Indeed, by clinging to the two-state solution and continuing to participate in “negotiations” years after they have proven themselves a trap, the Palestinian leadership plays a central role in its own people’s warehousing. The reality – even the fact – of occupation gets buried under the diversions set up by the fraudulent yet unending “peace process.” This only enables Israel not only to imprison the Palestinians in tiny cells; witness today’s mini-ethnic cleansing, just one of thousands of micro-events that have the cumulative effect of displacement, expulsion, segregation and incarceration. It also enables Israel to then blame the victims for causing their own oppression! When a Palestinian leadership assumes the prerogative to negotiate a political resolution yet lacks any genuine authority or leverage to do so, and when, in addition, it fails to abandon negotiations even after they have been exposed as a trap, it comes dangerously close to being collaborationist. For its part, Israel is off the hook. Instead of going through the motions of establishing an apartheid regime, it simply exploits the willingness of the Palestinian Authority to perpetuate the illusion of negotiations as a smokescreen covering its virtual imprisonment of the Palestinian “inmates.” Once the current mopping up operations are completed, the process of incarceration will be complete.

Today the only alternative agency to the Palestinian Authority is segments of the international civil society. The Arab and Muslims peoples for whom Palestinian liberation is an integral part of the Arab Spring, stand alongside thousands of political and human rights groups, critical activists, churches, trade unions and intellectuals throughout the world. Crucial as it is for keeping the issue alive and building grassroots support for the Palestinian cause that will steadily “trickle up” and affect governments’ policies, however, civil society advocacy is a stop-gap form of agency, ultimately unable to achieve a just peace by itself. We, too, are trapped in the dead-end personified by the two-state solution, reference to a “peace process” and their attendant “negotiations.” There is no way forward in the current paradigm. We must break out into a world of new possibilities foreclosed by the present options: a “two-state” apartheid regime or warehousing.

In my view, while advocacy and grassroots mobilization remain relevant, several tasks stand before us. First, we must endeavor to hasten the collapse of the present situation and subsequently, when new paradigms of genuine justice emerge from the chaos, be primed to push forward an entirely different solution that is currently impossible or inconceivable, be that a single democratic state over the entire country, a bi-national state, a regional confederation or some other alternative yet to be formulated. The Palestinians themselves must create a genuine, inclusive agency of their own that, following the collapse, can effectively seize the moment. Formulating a clear program and strategy, they will then be equipped to lead their people to liberation and a just peace, with the support of activists and others the world over.

A necessary and urgent first step towards collapsing the otherwise permanent regime of oppression in Israel/Palestine is that we stop talking about a two-state solution. It’s dead and gone as a political option – if, indeed, it ever really existed. It should be banned from the discourse because reference to an irrelevant “solution” only serves to confuse the discussion. Granted, this will be hard for liberals to do; everyone else, however, has given up on it. Most Palestinians, having once supported it, now realize that Israel will simply not withdraw to a point where a truly viable and sovereign state can emerge. The Israeli government, backed by the Bush-Obama policies on the settlement blocs, doesn’t even make pretence of pursuing it anymore, and the Israeli public is fine with the status quo. Nor does the permanent warehousing of the Palestinians seem to faze the American or European governments, or the Arab League. Even AIPAC has moved on to the “Iranian threat.”

Behind the insistence of the liberal Zionists of J Street, Peace Now, the Peace NGOs Forum run out of the Peres Center for Peace and others to hang on to a two-state solution at any cost is a not-so-hidden agenda. They seek to preserve Israel as a Jewish state even at the cost of enforcing institutional discrimination against Israel’s own Palestinian citizens. The real meaning of a “Jewish democracy” is living with apartheid and warehousing while protesting them. No, the liberals will be the hardest to wean away from the two-state snare. Yet if they don’t abandon it, they run the risk of promoting de facto their own worst nightmare of warehousing while providing the fig-leaf of legitimacy to cover the policies of Israel’s extreme right – all in the name of “peace.” This is what happens when one’s ideology places restrictions on one’s ability to perceive evil or to draw necessary if difficult conclusions. When wishful thinking becomes policy, it not only destroys your effectiveness as a political actor but leads you into positions, policies and alliances that, in the end, are inimical to your own goals and values. Jettisoning all talk of a “two-state solution” removes the major obstacle to clear analysis and the ability to move forward.

The obfuscation created by the “two-state solution” now out of the way, what emerges as clear as day is naked occupation, an apartheid regime extending across all of historic Palestine/Israel and the spectre of warehousing. Since none of these forms of oppression can ever be legitimized or transformed into something just, the task before us becomes clear: to cause their collapse by any means necessary. There are many ways to do this, just as the ANC did. Already Palestinian, Israel and international activists engage in internal resistance, together with international challenges to occupation represented by the Gaza flotillas and attempts to “crash” Israeli borders. Many civil society actors the world over have mobilized, some around campaigns such as Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), others around direct actions, still others engaged in lobbying the UN and governments through such instruments as the Human Rights Council, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and international courts. There have been campaigns to reconvene the Tribunal that, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, has the authority and duty to sanction Israel for its gross violations. Dozens of groups and individuals alike engage in public speaking, mounting Israel Apartheid Weeks on university campuses and working through the media. And much more.

And here is where Palestinian civil society plays a crucial role, a role that cannot be played by non-Palestinians. If it is agreed that the Palestinian Authority must go if we are to get beyond the two-state trap – indeed, the dismantling of the PA being a major part of the collapse of the present system – then this call must originate from within the Palestinian community. Non-Palestinians must join in, of course, but the issue of who represents the Palestinians is their call exclusively.

Non-Palestinians can also suggest various end-games. I’ve written, for example, about a Middle East economic confederation, believing that a regional approach is necessary to address the core issues. The Palestinian organization PASSIA published a collection of twelve possible outcomes. It is obvious, though, that it is the sole prerogative of the Palestinian people to decide what solution, or range of solutions, is acceptable. For this, and to organize effectively so as to bring about a desired outcome, the Palestinians need a new truly representative agency, one that replaces the PA and gives leadership and direction to broad-based civil society agency, one that has the authority to negotiate a settlement and actually move on to the implementation of a just peace.

As of now, it appears there is only one agency that possesses that legitimacy and mandate: the Palestinian National Council of the PLO (although Hamas and the other Islamic parties are not (yet) part of the PLO). Reconstituting the PNC through new elections would seem the most urgent item on the Palestinian agenda today – without which, in the absence of effective agency, we are all stuck in rearguard protest actions and Israel prevails. Our current situation, caught in the limbo between seeking the collapse of the oppressive system we have, and having a Palestinian agency that can effectively lead us towards a just resolution, is one of the most perilous we’ve faced. One person’s limbo is another person’s window of opportunity. Say what you will about Israel, it knows how to hustle and exploit even the smallest of opportunities to nail down its control permanently.

“Collapse with agency,” I suggest, could be a title of our refocused efforts to weather the limbo in the political process. Until a reinvigorated PNC or other representative agency can be constituted, a daunting but truly urgent task, Palestinian civil society might coalesce enough to create a kind of interim leadership bureau. This itself might be a daunting task. Most Palestinian leaders have either been killed by Israel or are languishing in Israeli prisons, while Palestinian civil society has been shattered into tiny disconnected and often antagonistic pieces. At home major divisions have been sown between “’48” and “’67” Palestinians; Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank have been effectively severed; and within the West Bank restrictions on movement among a bewildering array of “areas” – A, B, C, C-Restricted, H-1, H-2, nature reserves, closed military areas – have resulted in virtual, largely disconnected Palestinian mini-societies. Political divisions, especially among secular/traditional and Islamic factions, have been nurtured, not least by Israel. Overall, the Palestinian population, exhausted by years of sacrifice and resistance, impoverished and preoccupied with mere survival, has been left largely rudderless as many of its most educated and skilled potential leaders have left or are forbidden by Israel to return.

For its part, the Palestinian leadership has done little to bridge the wider divisions amongst those falling under PA rule, Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents of the refugee camps and the world-wide Diaspora, divisions that have grown even wider since the PLO and the PNC fell moribund. Indeed, major portions of the Palestinian Diaspora (and one may single out especially but not exclusively the large and prosperous communities of Latin America), have disconnected from the national struggle completely. The Palestinian possess some extremely articulate spokespeople and activists, but they tend to be either a collection of individual voices only tenuously tied to grassroots organizations, or grassroots resistance groups such as the Popular Committees that enjoy little political backing or strategic direction.

Ever aware that the struggle for liberation must be led by Palestinians, our collective task at the moment, in my view, is to bring about the collapse of the present situation in Palestine in order to exploit its fundamental unsustainabilty. The elimination of the Palestinian Authority is one way to precipitate that collapse. It would likely require Israel to physically reoccupy the Palestinian cities and probably Gaza as well (as if they have ever been de-occupied), bringing the reality of raw occupation back to the center of attention. Such a development would likely inflame Arab and Muslim public opinion, not to mention that of much of the rest of the world, and would create an untenable situation, forcing the hand of the international community. Israel would be put in an indefensible position, thus paving the way for new post-collapse possibilities – this time with an effective and representative Palestinian agency in place and a global movement primed to follow its lead.

But given the underlying unsustainability of the Occupation and the repressive system existing throughout historic Palestine – the massive violations of human rights and international law, the disruptive role the conflict plays in the international system and its overt brutality – collapse could come from a variety of places, some of them unsuspected and unrelated to Israel/Palestine. An attack on Iran could reshuffle the cards in the Middle East, and the Arab Spring is still a work in progress. Major disruptions in the flow of oil to the West due an attack on Iran, internal changes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, instability in Russia and even the fact that China has no oil of its own could cause major financial crises worldwide. Sino-American tensions, environmental disasters or Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban with unpredictable Indian reactions may all play an indirect yet forceful role. Who knows? Ron Paul, President Gingrich’s newly appointed Secretary of State, might end all military, economic and political support for Israel, in which case the Occupation (and more) would fall within a month.

Whatever the cause of the collapse – and we must play an active role in bring it about – it is incumbent upon us to be ready, mobilized and organized if we are to seize that historic moment, which might be coming sooner than we expect. Effective and broadly representative Palestinian agency will be critical. Collapse with agency is the only way to get “there” from “here.”

Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.

And that’s not all. If borrowers stay current on their payments after their loans are restructured, the banks could qualify for additional government funds which (according to the FT) “could then turn a profit for the banks according to people familiar with the settlement terms.”

How do you like them apples? Leave it to the bank-friendly Obama administration to turn a penalty into a windfall. In effect, the settlement will help the banks avoid losses on mortgages that are vastly overpriced on their books and which were probably headed into foreclosure anyway.
Taxpayers will stump up the money for the principle writedowns that will allow the banks to extract even more tribute from underwater homeowners. What kind of penalty is that?

Here’s how Mark Gongloff sums it up over at Huffington Post:

“Banks will get government cash as an incentive to work down mortgages as part of a settlement that is supposed to punish them for their malpractice. Banks have been getting taxpayer money under loan modification programs like HAMP all along: $615 million in modification incentives so far. Those incentives were tripled on Jan. 28 just days before the mortgage settlement was announced, making the deal appear even sweeter for the banks.

“You can’t say this settlement has anything to do with deterrence or is punitive in nature if money is flowing into banks from taxpayers as part of the settlement,” said New York University Law professor Neil Barofsky, former special inspector-general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.” (“Mortgage Foreclosure Settlement: Who Pays?”, Huffington Post)

Of course, no one knows for sure how many perks and “bennies” the banks will eventually nab,  because the written copy of the settlement still hasn’t been released. Our guess is that the banks’ will come out smelling like a rose and that the 50 Attorneys General will end up looking like fools for taking their victory lap too soon.

Keep in mind, that the banks are really only on the hook for $5 billion in cash. The rest of the $25 billion settlement will be shrugged off onto investors in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) many of who are retirees and pensioners. They’re going to get clobbered while the perpetrators of this nationwide crime walk away Scott-free.

It’s also worth reviewing what this case is all about, which is industrial-scale fraud directed at millions of people whose lives have been ruined by the banks. Here’s a clip from an article in Reuters that helps to put it all in perspective:

“A report this week showing rampant foreclosure abuse in San Francisco reflects similar levels of lender fraud and faulty documentation across the United States, say experts and officials who have done studies in other parts of the country.

The audit of almost 400 foreclosures in San Francisco found that 84 percent of them appeared to be illegal, according to the study released by the California city on Wednesday.

“The audit in San Francisco is the most detailed and comprehensive that has been done – but it’s likely those numbers are comparable nationally,” Diane Thompson, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, told Reuters.

Across the country from California, Jeff Thingpen, register of deeds in Guildford County, North Carolina, examined 6,100 mortgage documents last year, from loan notes to foreclosure paperwork.

Of those documents, created between January 2008 and December 2010, 4,500 showed signature irregularities, a telltale sign of the illegal practice of “robosigning” documents.” (“Foreclosure abuse rampant across U.S., experts say”, Reuters)

Repeat: “84 percent of them appeared to be illegal …(and) those numbers are comparable nationally.”

So, why are we talking about “mortgage foreclosure settlements” instead of criminal prosecutions? Why hasn’t anyone gone to jail with evidence this compelling?

Look: The banks have been foreclosing on homes they don’t even legally own. That’s what robosigning is. Would you be willing to accept a measly $2,000 for being tossed out of your home and onto the street by someone who doesn’t even own the mortgage? Of course, not.

9 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2007, and there will be another 9 million before we’re done. Homeowners have lost $8 trillion in home equity (in the last 4 years) and 11 million people are currently underwater on their mortgages. All of this is unprecedented. All of this is the result of fraud.

Forget about the mortgage-foreclosure settlement. It means nothing. Someone has to go to jail. That’s what matters.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Karzai has proposed the latter option, with Afghan forces carrying out most of the raids, but the U.S. military has rejected that possibility, according to sources at the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.

Karzai’s persistence in pressing that demand reflects the widespread popular anger at night raids, which means that Karzai cannot give in to the U.S. insistence on continuing them without handing the Taliban a big advantage in the political-military maneuvering that will continue during peace talks.

The dilemma for both the United States and Karzai is that the United States has been planning to leave SOF units and U.S. airpower – the two intensely unpopular elements of U.S.-NATO presence in the country – as the only combat forces in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Karzai gave no evidence of backing down on his demand regarding night raids and the closely related issue of U.S. troops taking and holding Afghan prisoners. Karzai identified the issues involving “Afghan sovereignty” as “civilian casualties, attacks on Afghan homes, raids on Afghan homes, taking prisoners and keeping prisoners”.

Karzai warned there could be no “partnership” agreement with the United States until those issues were resolved.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta had confirmed that fact in Congressional testimony Tuesday, admitting that U.S. and Afghan negotiators “still have difficulties” with the issues of night raids and the transfer of U.S.-run detention facility to the Afghan government.

Panetta said he was hopeful the two sides would work out a compromise on those issues in the coming weeks.

In his speech to a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of leaders from around the country, which he convened last November, Karzai said he would insist on “an end to night raids and to the detention of our countrymen” by the U.S. as conditions for a “partnership”.

The Jirga, which was generally considered to be packed with supporters of Karzai, approved those two conditions and called for U.S. troops who committed crimes to be held accountable in Afghan courts.

But Karzai has been warned by advisers that he cannot continue to insist on an end to night raids. He has little hope of surviving without continued U.S. military presence and large-scale assistance. And Panetta suggested last week that the Obama administration wants to end the U.S. combat role even before 2014, further weakening Karzai’s bargain hand with Washington.

People close to the Karzai administration said they had advised Karzai that he must give in to the U.S. on the issue.

“We need (the U.S.) support and presence in Afghanistan,” said one unofficial adviser, “so Karzai should relent on the night raids issue.”

Instead of demanding an end to targeted raids, the adviser said, Karzai should propose that the U.S. train Afghan forces to carry out such operations.

In fact, Afghan Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi revealed during a visit to Ghazni province in mid-January that Karzai had proposed that the United States turn over most targeted raids to Afghan forces, but that U.S. units would be allowed to carry them out, in cooperation with Afghan forces, in certain “urgent” circumstances.

But officials at the U.S. Central Command have vetoed ending the raids or putting them under Afghan control, according to a military source close to those officials.

“They’re not going to give them up,” the source said. “This is the last offensive tactic we will have available,” he added, “and the Taliban have yet to put anything on the table that would justify giving it up.”

Officials of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the U.S.-NATO military command in Afghanistan, claim to have responded to the Karzai government’s concerns by including Afghan units in nearly all of them. Last December, the spokesman for ISAF, German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, said, “Ninety-five percent of all night operations at this stage are already partnered.”

But Afghan officials complain that the Afghan forces are merely brought along on raids that are still based completely on U.S. targeting, planning and execution. The Afghan troops are not even told what the target will be before being taken along, the Afghan officials complain.

If Karzai does finally give in to U.S. insistence on the freedom of action for SOF units in Afghanistan, Afghans expect the night raids issue to play a key role in eventual negotiations on ending the war. One unofficial adviser told IPS that the Taliban will definitely demand an end to such raids, and said Karzai might support that demand in return for an end to Taliban suicide bombings, planting of mines and agreement to renounce Al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, popular Afghan anger at U.S. night raids has continued to grow as the pace of those raids has risen steeply in recent years, and thousands of families still suffer the consequences of long-term detention because of the raids.

Haji-Niaz Akka, 48, a shopkeeper in Kandahar city, spoke about a two a.m. raid on his home almost eight months ago in which U.S. forces tied up all four males in the house and took them away. Two of them were released two days later, but the other two, his nephew and son-in-law, were taken to Bagram air Base and remain in detention.

“These night raids violate our customs,” Akka said, expressing a common Afghan view. “It’s better to be killed than to be searched at night while sleeping with (one’s) wife and kids. This is absolutely unacceptable.”

Zahir Jan Ustad, a resident of Kandahar’s Panjwai district, is still angry about two of his brothers being detained in two separate night raids in Kandahar City and in Panjwai last September.

“We don’t know why the Americans are disturbing us by night raids which we hate,” he told IPS in an interview. “They are coming at night and searching our women. Our women are our honour, and we really hate (the U.S.) for that,” Usted said.

The Afghan anger at night raids is also a major factor in the antagonism felt by Afghan army officers and soldiers as well as police toward foreign troops that has resulted in 40 attacks by Afghan security personnel on U.S. troops since 2007, three-fourths of them in the past two years. Nearly 100 U.S. and NATO personnel have been killed or wounded in such attacks.

A study done for the U.S. military by behavioural scientist Jeffrey Bordin in late 2010 and early 2011 revealed that night raids and house searches were mentioned more frequently than any other issue by Afghan troops as a reason for serous altercations with U.S. forces.

The study, originally unclassified but classified by ISAF in the latter half of 2011, showed that more than one-third of the groups of participating Afghan security personnel in 19 locations in three Eastern provinces had recounted instances of serious altercations with U.S. troops over U.S. night raids and house searches.

The study reported that many Afghan troops and police expressed the view that U.S. troops, who they regard as “infidels”, should never enter an Afghan’s home. Most of the Afghan security personnel participating in the study expressed the view that any raids on homes should be led by Afghan police in the presence of local community leaders.

GARETH PORTER is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.  
   

Shah Noori is a journalist based in Kabul.

As Greeks waited for a second eurozone rescue package to finally be agreed in Brussels today, many were blaming Germany and France for encouraging and benefiting from some of the much-criticized profligate spending that reduced Greece to near bankruptcy.

About 1000 protesters gathered in front of the Greek Parliament in central Athens yesterday, while riot police waited to see if there would be a fresh confrontation. But, in general, Greeks are resigned to the new package of austerity measures which will cut jobs in public service and slash pensions and the minimum wage.

Hopes are high that the eurozone ministers’ meeting today will agree to the €130 billion bailout after Athens detailed the new budget cuts.

While most Greeks are critical of the reforms on which the troika of the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank are insisting, many also feel that Germany and France share some of the blame for Greece’s overspending.

Over much of the past decade, Greece – which has a population of 11 million – has been one of the top five arms importers in the world.

Most of the vastly expensive weapons, including submarines, tanks and combat aircraft, were made in Germany, France and the United States.

The arms purchases were beyond Greece’s capacity to absorb, even before the financial crisis struck in 2009. Several hundred Leopard battle tanks were bought from Germany, but there was no money to pay for ammunition for their guns. Even in 2010, when the extent of the financial disaster was apparent, Greece bought 223 howitzers and a submarine from Germany at a cost of €403 million.

In the new bailout agreement, Greece will pledge to reduce its defense spending by some €400 million. Eurozone leaders have hitherto been notably more tolerant of Greece’s arms expenditure – though this is twice the size of the NATO average as a proportion of GDP – than they have of excessive spending on health or pensions.

“It is easily forgotten when Greece is criticized that there has been not very subtle pressure from France to buy six frigates,” says Thanos Dokos, director-general of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy.

He adds that Greece was unwise to be the first buyer of new weapons systems, such as German submarines, that still had technical glitches.

There is now a serious disparity between the limited resources of the Greek state and its expensive weapons. Exercises are being cancelled to save small sums of money.

Greece also has the world’s largest merchant marine, but its navy is cutting back on its anti-piracy patrols to protect vessels in the Indian Ocean.

The justification for Greece’s large army – 156,000 men compared with 250,000 in the German army – is the perceived threat from Turkey, which requires the Greeks to keep some form of military parity with a nation with seven times as many people.

There has never been a debate in Parliament about the extent to which a Turkish threat really exists.

PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of “Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. 

Yet, in reality, Lerner frequently speaks of his devotion to Israel and states that his actions are taken in considerable part to protect it.

A while ago Lerner explained the difference in his feelings about Israelis compared to his feelings about Palestinians. “[T]here is a difference in my emotional and spiritual connection to these two sides,” Lerner said.

“On the one side is my family; on the other side are decent human beings. I want to support human beings all over the planet but I have a special connection to my family.”

This statement comes to mind when one considers the New York Times bureau chiefs who cover Israel-Palestine.

The most recent person to be chosen for this powerful post at arguably the most influential newspaper in the United States is Jodi Rudoren. She takes the place of Ethan Bronner, who was preceded by Steven Erlanger, who was preceded by James Bennet, who was preceded by Deborah Sontag. All, according to an Israeli report, are Jewish.

Most Americans — particularly those who would object to only white reporters covering racial issues or only male reporters covering gender issues — are reluctant to discuss the potential bias in such a profoundly un-diverse system, having been conditioned to fear that such discussion would be “anti-Semitic” or would open the commentator to this extremely damaging accusation.

In Israel, however, it is considered appropriate to discuss the Jewish roots of American politicians and journalists since Israel was created specifically to be “the Jewish state,” Jews have elevated status in it, and the vast majority of Israeli land is officially owned by “world Jewry” (although some individuals have publicly opted out).

An article on the Jerusalem Post website, a major Israeli newspaper, focuses on this aspect. The article, “Judaism at the New York Times”, reports that “all New York Times’ bureau chiefs for at least the last fifteen years have been Jewish.”

The article’s author, Ashley Rindsberg, notes that “the Times doesn’t consistently send Russian Americans to its Moscow bureau… or Mexican Americans to lead its Mexico City bureau…” and asks, “Why does the New York Times consistently send Jewish journalists to head their central office in the Jewish State?”

Rindsberg, who like many conservative Israelis considers the Times’ reporting anti-Israel, provides a somewhat convoluted answer. The Times’ Jewish owners, Rindsberg posits, are uncomfortable with their Jewish identity. Therefore, he claims, they “would just as soon as not have reporters who could be identified for their Jewishness. And to prove it, they send Jews to the Jewish State to report in a most un-Jewish way.”

The Times’ history of pro-Israel coverage

Despite Rindsberg’s view of Times, analysis shows its coverage to be consistently pro-Israel. A 2005 study found that the Times reported on Israeli deaths at rates up to seven times greater than its reports on Palestinian deaths, even though Palestinian deaths occurred first and in far greater numbers.

A 2007 study of the Times’ coverage of various international reports on human rights violations by Israelis and by Palestinians found that the Times covered reports condemning Israeli human rights violations at a rate only one-twentieth the rate that it covered reports condemning Palestinian human rights violations. The investigation found that during the study period there had been 76 reports by humanitarian agencies condemning Israel for abuses and four condemning Palestinians for abuses. The Times carried two stories on each side.

In its early years the Times specifically avoided assigning Jewish reporters to cover Israel out of concern that such journalists would have an inherent conflict of interest. This policy was reversed in 1979 after Abe Rosenthal became the paper’s executive editor and explicitly decided to choose Jewish journalists for the position.

While his first attempt failed (he had thought his choice, David Shipler, was Jewish), the Columbia Journalism review reports that most of the journalists who succeeded Shipler, beginning with Thomas Friedman, have been of Jewish ethnicity. The article notes that “for a century [the Times] has served, in effect, as the hometown paper of American Jewry.”

Former NY Times executive editor Max Frankel, who was an editor at the Times from 1972 through 2000, admitted in his memoirs: “I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert … Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognized, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.”

An article by star reporter and author Grace Halsell describes her firsthand experience with pro-Israel bias at the Times in the early 1980s.

Halsell had written books about the plight of Native Americans, African Americans, and undocumented Mexican workers. She was a great favorite of New York Times matriarch Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, whose father had acquired the Times in 1896, whose husband and then son had run it next, and whose grandson is now in charge.

When Halsell next wrote a powerful book describing the Palestinian plight, she incurred Mrs. Suzberger’s displeasure and was quickly dropped by the Times. Halsell writes: “I had little concept that from being buoyed so high I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered—from her point of view—the ‘wrong’ underdog.”

In her article Halsell quotes a revealing statement by an Israeli journalist following Israel’s 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Lebanon that killed more than 100 civilians sheltering in it: “We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own.”

Since 1984 New York Times bureau chiefs have lived in a house that was acquired for the Times by then Jerusalem Bureau Chief Thomas Friedman (now the Times’ lead foreign policy columnist). The building originally belonged to a Palestinian family forced out in Israel’s 1947-49 founding war. Israel afterward prevented the family from returning and reclaiming their home. Therefore, Times’ bureau chiefs are in the strange position of living in a home that was stolen from Palestinians (acquiring property by violent conquest is illegal in today’s world).

Recent Situation: Bronner, Kershner, & Khader Adnan

Rudoren’s predecessor as Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, has a son who enlisted in the Israeli military. When this conflict with impartiality was exposed, even the Times’ own ombudsman suggested that journalistic ethics required that Bronner be moved to a different beat. Yet, Times then-editor Bill Keller insisted that this gave Bronner “special sophistication” and kept him in his position.

Bronner’s colleague at the bureau has been Isabel Kershner, who will apparently be staying on. J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Forward, writes: “Isabel Kershner immigrated to Israel from her native England as a young woman and spent a couple of decades in Israeli journalism and Jewish education before joining the Times a few years ago. By now she’s thoroughly Israeli (and, for full disclosure, a friend).”

While pro-Israel Zealots vehemently attack Bronner and Kershner when they cover Palestinian victimization, the truth is that they overlook a great many instances. For example, a 33-year-old Palestinian father of two young girls (another child is on the way) was on a hunger strike that lasted for 66 days. He was was near near death when he finally decided to end it on Feb 21.

The young man, Khader Adnan, was protesting his imprisonment by Israel – he was never charged with a crime – and the beatings and humiliations he endured from Israeli  interrogators. There was an extended international campaign about him that grew even more urgent when doctors began warning after 45 days that he was at risk of death. Eventually, there was so much pressure world wide (including by  UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk and EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton) that Israel  announced it would release Adnan at the end of his “sentence.”

Yet, Bronner and Kershner – and Times columnists who frequently bemoan the alleged lack of a Palestinian Gandhi – did not publish a single story on Adnan until the 66^{th (}and last) day of his hunger strike  – after the Washington Post had finally carried a report two days before. The Times’ headline was the very bland, “Hearing for Palestinian on Hunger Strike Is Set.

While Adnan’s is the longest Palestinian hunger strike on record, through the years there have been hundreds of hunger strikes by multitudes of Palestinians in Israeli prisons; the Times almost never reports on them. It’s revealing to compare their numerous stories on the Israeli tank gunner captured by Palestinians, Gilad Shalit, to the sparsity of their reporting on Adnan and others.

Overall, the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel seem largely to have been invisible to Times’ reporters. While there have been gruesome reports of their torture for decades, there is little indication that Bronner or Kershner have investigated this or made much, if any, effort to visit Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

Who is Jodi Rudoren?

Now that Bronner’s four-year term has come to an end (he says he initiated the transfer himself and was not pushed out over conflict of interest), it is not clear what went into new editor Jill Abramson’s decision to choose Rudoren for this powerful position.

A cum laude graduate from Yale, Rudoren’s journalistic experience appears to be limited to domestic subjects. Most recently she had been head of the Times’ Education bureau. She speaks what she calls “functional Hebrew” but no Arabic. It’s unknown how much time, if any, she has spent in Israel, whether she has family there, or whether she has family members in the Israeli military.

When Rudoren received a tweet by Palestinian-American author Ali Abunimah, who noted that she would be moving into stolen Palestinian property, she responded: “Hey there. Would love to chat sometime. About things other than the house. My friend Kareem Fahim [a New York Times associate] says good things.”

This friendly but somewhat flip response to a serious subject has caused Israel zealots to attack her. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg somewhat hysterically equated Abunimah, an author known for his intellectual analysis, with Israeli Jewish supremacists known for their violence.

Goldberg suggested that Rudoren should have “twinned” her tweet to Abunimah by reaching out to Kahanists — a group listed by both Israel and the U.S. as terrorists. Goldberg should be pleased to learn that Rudoren said she had done just that, telling the Jerusalem Post, “One of the people I followed before reaching out to Abunimah was David Ha’ivri.”

Ha’ivri is an extremist settler rabbi who was involved with Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane’s Kach terror group, celebrated the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he had begun to make peace with Palestinians, and was convicted some years ago for desecrating a mosque.

Abunimah, on the other hand, has written a book called “One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse,” in which he describes how Israelis and Palestinians can live together in peace.

Rudoren’s knowledge of Hebrew may have been bolstered by her summertime attendance at Camp Yavneh, a Jewish camp in New Hampshire that has an Israeli flag at the top of its website and boasts of its “strong Israeli programming.” It features a six-weeks “summer in Israel” program, though it’s unknown whether Rudoren attended this.

The camp website states that the current boys’ head counselor “grew up in Gush Etzion, Israel, and has served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Israeli Army in charge of 150 soldiers in the Givatti Brigade.” Another counselor is a resident of the Israeli settlement of Efrat, which, like all Israeli settlements, is built on confiscated Palestinian land and is illegal under international law.

Despite an upbringing that appears to have included considerable immersion in Zionist mythology, indications are that Rudoren may be working to widen her view. She raves about a book by Peter Beinart called “The Crisis of Zionism” and retweeted a message by blogger Sami Kishawi. It’s interesting to note that the Times’ only other female Jerusalem bureau chief, Deborah Sontag, often provided exemplary coverage; her term seems to have ended early.

Tweeting like a J-Street official?

Jeffrey Goldberg – who moved to Israel, became an Israeli citizen, joined the Israeli army, and worked as a prison guard at one of Israel’s most brutal prisons – assures readers that Rudoren is still within the pro-Israel fold, commenting, “I don’t know Rudoren… I do know her sister, from synagogue, mainly, and I don’t think Jodi is some sort of anti-Israel activist…”

Goldberg is concerned, however, that she is tweeting “as if she’s a J Street official.” For Goldberg this veers dangerously toward anti-Israelism.

In reality, however, J Street is a pro-Israel organization whose positions are dictated by what is good for Israel. Its founder has just published a book entitled “A New Voice for Israel.” If Goldberg’s assessment of Rudoren is accurate, then it appears that once again the Times has a person at the helm of its reporting on Israelis and Palestinians for whom Israelis are “family.” Quite possibly, literally.

Rudoren may be intending to cover the region accurately and with fairness. To do so, however, it appears that she will need to overcome enormous ingrained bias, relentless and vitriolic objections of the organized pro-Israel community (quite likely including friends and family), and pressure by many powerful Times advertisers and colleagues.

On top of this, unless she chooses a different lifestyle than her predecessors’, she will be living in Israel, her children will go to Israeli schools, and her home will be one of the thousands confiscated from Palestinians who are now living and suffering largely out of sight, their daily humiliations and victimization for the most part invisible.

These winds may be so strong that even when Rudoren believes she has stood upright against them, an outside view may show her tilted far over in the Israeli direction, her reporting on Israel-Palestine, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, covering the gamut from A to C.

Let us hope that this doesn’t occur.

Let us hope Rudoren understands that good reporting does not equate a false narrative with a factual one; that she will not be, in Abunimah’s words, yet “another New York Times reporter for whom Palestinians are just bit players in someone else’s drama.”

Let us hope she understands that living in stolen property is not a good base from which to report honestly; that “balance” achieved by under-reporting Palestinian suffering while exaggerating that of Israelis is not balance, it is distortion. Let us hope, most of all, that she does not view some human beings as more important than others, but instead views all, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, as family.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and president of the Council for the National Interest. She can be reached at contact@ifamericanslknew.org. Bulk reprints of this article can be obtained from orders@ifamericansknew.org

As if that was not enough. Israel’s Energy and Water Resources Minister Uri Landau intervened with his own comment, calling “India’s support for the Palestinians at the UN a mistake,” and that he intended to “persuade” the Indians to change their stand. And Israel reportedly asked India to help sponsor a resolution against Iran in the UN Security Council, of which India is an elected member at present.

A full-scale Israeli offensive to force a complete overhaul of Indian foreign policy was under way. In the unlikely scenario of it happening, such an event would be a geopolitical earthquake. India’s reliance on oil producers who are firmly in the U.S. camp would be dangerously high. There would
be other consequences in the short run. An audacious attack by Israel on Iran, with or without U.S. support, could be nearer, and so would the prospects of a wider Middle East conflict. For these reasons, India now stands between the present and the worst case scenario.

Police investigations were only beginning in Delhi when Israeli ministers spoke with such shocking certainly––the worst kind of megaphone diplomacy. For those sitting in the Indian capital, certain inferences were difficult to avoid. India had recently announced that it would abide by the UN sanctions against Iran, but would not obey additional sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union. India would continue to buy oil from Iran, and an Indian trade delegation would visit Tehran in coming weeks.

Delhi was by no means alone in asserting an independent stance. Other countries, too, have been resisting what they consider to be strong-arm tactics by the anti-Iran bloc of nations to force reluctant governments to toe the line. The United States, the European Union and Israel are far from happy about this.

That the affair threatened India’s massive trade with Iran, and could derail India’s capacity to formulate its foreign policy, was not lost in Delhi. A number of Indian politicians and senior officials made the government’s position clear. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said that terrorism and trade were “separate issues,” and that business with Iran would continue. A former diplomat of India and now a leading commentator, M. K. Bhadrakumar, described the Israeli offensive as a “smear campaign” that “Tehran’s agents had been going about placing bombs in New Delhi, Tbilisi and Bangkok.”

Meanwhile, police investigations, and a visit by an Israeli Mossad team to Delhi, were continuing. Indian officials insisted that there was no “conclusive evidence” to link the attack to any particular group or country. And a senior police officer was categorical in saying that there was no link between the Delhi bomb and explosions that occurred in Bangkok the day after.

The Indians are normally too polite to engage in crude public diplomacy. But when ministers of a country of under 8 million, albeit advanced and heavily militarized, try to dictate policy to a nation of 1.2 billion people, it is perhaps too much for the Indian sensitivities.

I am on record as saying that, in the challenging 1990s decade when the Soviet Union collapsed, India was hasty and ill-advised to build a “flyover” to Israel, and from Israel straight on to the United States. Over the years, Israel’s multi-billion dollar sales of weapons based on American and Russian technologies, and intelligence sharing, have given India easy access to arms bazaar. But there is a cost. India can be vulnerable to pressure, and has ignored its interests in the Muslim world. In other words, successive Indian governments put too many eggs in the (Israeli–U.S.) basket.

Now that India asserts its strategic interests independent of the United States and Israel, with the other members of the group called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), it faces a trial of strength. The outcome will depend on whether Delhi can establish its capacity to turn away from what look like instant gains, and promises for future, to secure its long-term interests that are essential for India’s place on the world stage.

DEEPAK TRIPATHI is the author of Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism (Potomac Books, Incorporated, Washington, D.C., 2011) and Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan (also Potomac, 2010). His works can be found at: http://deepaktripathi.wordpress.com and he can be reached at:dandatripathi@gmail.com.  

“The World Cup will be great business, but only for the big sporting goods companies and those authorized to sell food and drinks,” Morales laments.

Morales is part of the Popular Committee of the World Cup that was created when people decided to resist being forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for new facilities for the Panamerican Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2007. “We began to see that evictions aren’t the only problem with hosting big events– we also saw other problems, such as corruption. The new facilities for the Panamerican Games were supposed to cost 300 million reales but they ending up costing 3.5 billion.” That’s a total of nearly two billion dollars.

This situation is especially visible in Rio de Janeiro–one of the main sites for the 2014 World Cup and the host of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Popular Committees have been formed in all 12 of the cities that will host games for the World Cup, and they are mobilizing under the banner that demands that “The World Cup and the Olympics must respect human rights.”

On Dec. 12, the committees presented officials of the twelve site cities with a dossier entitled “Mega-events and Human Rights Violations in Brazil.” The documents analyze issues ranging from the right to housing, to labor rights for the workers who build the new facilities, to the lack of environmental impact studies on projects that are running up against the clock.

The Right to Housing

Brazil has a housing deficit of 5 million units. The construction projects for the World Cup, from the new stadiums to airport and highway renovations, will cost 20 billion dollars—all for a tournament that will last less than a month. To put this amount in context, that’s nearly half of Uruguay’s annual GDP. This colossal investment will be extracted from all tax-paying Brazilians for the benefit of a few select corporations.

Even though the government hasn’t given out any information on how many families will be evicted by the new projects, it is estimated that they will affect 170,000 people. The group of Popular Committees has detected a pattern that is repeated in all of the cities where evictions will occur. They claim that “The lack of prior information and notification generates instability and fear with respect to the future,” which paralyzes the at-risk families and puts them at the mercy of speculators and powerful interests.

Nearly all who will be affected live in poor neighborhoods and often times in precarious, informal housing arrangements. In the metropolitan area of Curitiba, 1,173 properties will be affected by the construction of the new 52-kilometer Metropolitan Corridor, new rail access points, and the reconstruction and widening of various avenues and highways. The expansion of the airport and its parking lots implies the removal of 320 homes, but not a single one of the inhabitants has been informed about the compensation they will receive or where they will be relocated.

In Belo Horizonte a giant real estate development is being built that takes up a full 25,000 acres of fertile land to construct 75,000 apartments. This development will be called Cup Village and will originally serve as the lodging place for the different delegations, tourists, and journalists attending the World Cup. In the city of Fortaleza, 15,000 families will be affected; 10,000 of which will have to be resettled, but they still haven’t been informed of where they will live.

The majority of those affected will be displaced as a result of expanding existing roads or building new ones. The Fortaleza Expressway will cross through 22 neighborhoods to connect hotels to the Castelâo stadium. This group of displaced families can choose between an indemnity, a unit in a housing project, or an exchange for another property in a neighborhood in Brasilia. Even though 70 percent have chosen the housing project, societal pressures have stopped the entire process until a better solution, with better conditions, is presented.

Hundreds of homes slated to be demolished this year around the periphery of Fortaleza have been marked with green ink, but the inhabitants of those homes haven’t heard a single word from the officials about when the demolitions are going to happen.

The Popular Committees of the World Cup affirm that the government is applying “strategies of war and persecution” in 21 villas and favelas in seven host cities, “such as the marking of houses for demolition without explanation, warrantless home invasions, and the undue appropriation and destruction of property.” This is on top of threats, the cutting-off of services, and other acts of intimidation.

The work being done for the World Cup facilitates a kind of “social cleansing” motivated by property speculation and the eviction of families that have lived in their homes for four or five decades. It’s happening in San Pablo with the construction of the Parque Lineal Llanos del Tietê, a flood zone where 4,000 families have already been removed and another 6,000 will soon be expelled.

Given the experience of previous mega-sports events in both developed and developing countries, the cost of living will rise and real estate speculation will take off as development displaces some and attracts those who can afford more expensive property. The thousands of displaced are merely pushed to the periphery.

State of Exception

The Brazilian Parliament is being forced to pass the “General Law of the World Cup” that establishes the rules that will govern how the Confederations Cup of June 2013 and the World Cup of the following year are carried out. But even after months of debate, the law still hasn’t even been passed out of the special committee in the House of Representatives that was assigned to analyze it. The Sports Minister, Aldo Rebelo, has since promised the Secretary General of FIFA, Jerome Valcke, that the bill would be voted on after more deliberation in March.

The bill was presented in the Brazilian Congress by the executive branch, using criteria established by FIFA. On Dec. 6, 2011 it was brought to a general vote by the Representatives, but the vote was delayed because a number of representatives deemed the bill contradictory to existing Brazilian law. For example, the sale of alcohol is prohibited in stadiums, but FIFA demands lifting the restriction, which, according to some Brazilian legislators, could lead to violent consequences.

Another sticking point revolves around FIFA’s refusal to allow the special deal that grants students, retirees, recipients of state assistance, and handicapped people half-priced entrance. Additionally, the so-called “Pelé Law” that gives professional athlete unions 5 percent of income generated by the broadcasts of sporting events would be completely suspended for the World Cup games.

FIFA is also demanding that the host country grant visas and work permits to all of the delegation members, invitees, employees of the respective soccer confederations, journalists and spectators of other countries that have purchased tickets to the World Cup. These special permits expire on December 31st of 2014, six months after the end of the World Cup. In sum, a great deal of the country’s national legislation must be suspended to attend to the demands of FIFA.

The report from the Popular Committees of the World Cup also denounces the violation of the rights of workers in the informal sector (almost two-thirds of Brazilians). Article 11 of the Law of the World Cup prohibits the sale of any kind of merchandise in “official competition locations, in their immediate surroundings, and their main access ways,” without the express authorization of FIFA.

The definition and limits of the “exclusive areas” for the sale of FIFA products will have to be demarcated by individual cities “taking into account the requirements of FIFA or of authorized third parties.” Street vendors will be expressly excluded from these areas. The exact perimeters of these restrictive zones still hasn’t been defined, but based on previous experience, it can be estimated that the “exclusion zone” will be two kilometers.

Article 23 penalizes bars that try to transmit World Cup games without the appropriate authorization or that promote certain brands not authorized by FIFA. The National Business Confederation and vendor unions have expressed their strong opposition to the Law of the World Cup.

Perhaps the most troubling part of all is that the bill provides that through Article 37 “Special trials for the processing and judgment of cases related to the events may be formed.” Finally, Article 38 provides that FIFA, its legal representatives, consultants and employees “will remain free from costs, emoluments, fees, and other expenses to the institutions of Federal Justice, Labor Justice, Military Justice,” and other branches of Brazilian government.

The vassalage that FIFA insists on imposing on host countries might lead to the delay of the law’s approval and generate problems in the government’s allied base, perhaps even in the ruling Partido Trabajadores (Workers Party).

The International Olympic Committee has similar demands. In 2009, Law 12.035 was passed which, in addition to the previously mentioned provisions, establishes the transfer of public real estate funds to the Olympic Games, the transfer of exclusive public property spaces, and “the designation of resources to cover the eventual operational deficits of the Organizing Committee of the 2016 Rio Games.”

The law declares that between July 5 and Sept. 26 “advertising contracts in public spaces in airports or in federal areas that are of interest to the 2016 Rio Games” are null and void.

The power accumulated by sports federations in recent decades is capable of imposing its will on millions of citizens across the world—the people who sustain them in the first place—and on powerful countries of every continent, without being subject to public debates that could bring to light the framework of interests behind the many abuses.

Upscaling the stadiums

Around 203,000 people attended the 1950 World Cup final in Macaraná. At the time, that represented about 8.5% of the total population of Rio de Janeiro. The “general” and “popular” seating sections where middle and working class people watched the game, represented 80% of the total seating. Spectators watched the whole game standing up, making room for one another in a stadium that had a maximum capacity of 199,000.

The stadiums where diverse sectors of society used to mix began to change in the 1990s. The justification for this kind of “Europeanization” of the stadiums was security and comfort, and it was part of a global campaign in which FIFA, local soccer federations, and clubs (spurred by private sponsors) participated. Towards the end of the decade, ticket price rose, making it more and more difficult for working-class families and the lower middle-class to attend games.

The legendary Macaraná stadium saw its capacity reduced almost by half, to only 103,022 people, after a remodeling project in 1999 undertaken to host the Club Word Cup in 2000. That project installed individual seating in the top ring of the stadium. Between April 2005 and January of 2006, the stadium was closed for renovations to host the 2007 Panamerican Games. This time the “general admission” section— where the audience used to stand— was replaced with individual seating, further reducing the capacity to just 82,238. But at least the seats are reclinable.

Before the current remodel, Maracaná was a “multipurpose arena” that hosted not only sporting events but also concerts and a wide range of shows. Above the grandstands they have built luxury boxes with great views of the field, and glass walls that separate the VIPs from the rest of the spectators. They’re equipped with bars, televisions, and air conditioning and are usually rented out to businesses that invite their associates and functionaries. They have the privilege of arriving directly in their cars, via a private ramp, without having to put up with even the slightest contact with the “masses.”

Maracaná is currently suffering through a new remodel in preparation for the 2014 World Cup final and the 2016 Olympic Games. Since mid- 2010 the stadium has been closed to make changes that comply with the dictates of the “FIFA master,” which demands that all of the stadiums have enclosed roofs. The whole roof of the stadium must now be modified.

In reality, the stadium was gutted and only the shell remains- a shell considered to be national patrimony. The reconstruction will be handled by private interests, cost billions of reales (at least 600 million dollars), and will have even less seating that will only get more and more expensive.

More than a soccer stadium, it will be a theater. A theater with numbered seats where you cannot follow the game on your feet. As a result, the collective, creative spaces for the fans—fun-loving, lively, impassioned and rowdy as they are— have been abolished. And in their place there only remains the prospect of pre-hashed choreography like “the wave” and the dull display of little individual flags.

From once being the maior do mundo (largest in the world), Macaraná fell to a modest 14th place, far behind the two largest stadiums on the planet: the Rungrado May Day (North Korea) with a capacity of 150,000 and the Salt Lake of Calcutta (India) with 120,000 seats. But most telling of all, Macaraná has ceased to be a place of public recreation and has become a tool for business and spectacle—aspects that have very little to do with soccer’s original popular spirit.

Raul Zibechi is an international political analyst from the weekly Brecha de Montevideo, a professor and researcher on grassroots movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to many grassroots groups He writes the monthly “Zibechi Report” for the Americas Program http://www.cipamericas.org

Syria’s strategic location and alliance with Iran means its internal violence could evolve from the regional to a larger stage. The West’s intervention formula, starting with a UN Security Council resolution condemning the regime, its killing of civilians and demanding President Bashar al-Assad step down, got derailed by Russian and Chinese vetoes.

The UN vote coincided with Syria’s attack on Homs, a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold like neighboring Hama, where in 1982 Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, had wiped out 10,000 (Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent says 20,000) of his armed foes. The Brotherhood had rebelled against Assad’s ruling Alawite clique (a Shiite sect).

At a party in Damascus, in 2004, I asked a Syrian businessman to assess Hafez al-Assad’s ruthlessness.

“He didn’t kill enough of them.” He didn’t smile.

Did my face show my feeling of horror? Nearby party guests, members of Syria’s commercial elite nodded in agreement. These people had kids in Ivy League schools and wives who shopped in New York.

“How do you rule a country of Sunnis, Shias, Druze, Christians, and in 1982 even Jews?” another businessman asked. “Persuade religious fanatics to disarm and tolerate different beliefs? English settlers and black slaves made the United States. America had immense land to diffuse conflict – and still you had bloody civil war.

“Syria lived for Centuries under the Ottoman Empire [16^th Century until 1920]! The League of Nations chose France to govern Syria The French divided city and country people, destroyed homes of suspected insurgents and punished entire villages for the actions of one man. And they bombed cities — even Damascus.”

I reflected on the businessmen’s words after US, French and British UN Ambassadors righteous perorations. All of them had bombed civilians.

I had asked my host about Bashar’s regime. He elbowed me to a corner. “Corrupt, undemocratic, clumsy,” He whispered. “But you can do business with them. Bush (referring to W) crazy democracy talk only encourages the fanatics who want power.”

A doctor, married to one of the businessman, wearing a in a low-cut dress, confronted me. “You poll people in Damascus and Aleppo. I would bet the majority wants to keep Assad. With him women wear comfortable clothes, get education, become doctors and have rights. Those Sunni fanatics in Hama want Syria to return to earlier Centuries, strip women of rights, deport Christians and probably kill the minority Alawites. What happened in Iran would look moderate compared to what would happen here.” (Conversation while filming SYRIA: BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE, 2004)

Eight years later, in January 2012, a YouGov Siraj poll showed 55% of Syrians wanted Assad to remain in power. But the majority was motivated by fear of civil war, not fondness for his regime, said the poll, funded by the Qatar Foundation. (Jonathan Steele Guardian, January 17, 2012).

Ironically, Qatar’s Emir had “just called for Arab troops to intervene” in Syria. Steele thought it was a “pity” that the poll was “ignored” by almost all western media outlets whose governments demanded Assad resign. The poll also showed the majority wanted free elections and more rights.

The US media’s context-free reporting offers simplified (distorted) presentations of Syria and Assad as representing another Libya and Qaddafi. The good guys (peaceful citizen protestors who hate dictatorship, joined by noble army deserters) fight the bad guys (the power-hungry President Assad and his army).

Headlines scream about very real daily violence occurring in several Syrian cities. Most news reports have attributed the killing of peaceful citizens almost exclusively to government forces.  But in January Arab League monitors, from mostly Sunni countries eager to destroy the Syrian-Iran Alliance, saw armed “protesters” doing some of the Syria killing, un-reported by most US media.

“In Homs and Dera‘a, the Mission observed armed groups committing acts of violence against government forces, resulting in death and injury among their ranks. In certain situations, Government forces responded to attacks against their personnel with force. The observers noted that some of the armed groups were using flares and armour-piercing projectiles.”

“In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed … the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil… A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed.”

The Mission also “noted that many parties falsely reported that explosions or violence had occurred in several locations. When the observers went to those locations, they found that those reports were unfounded.”

The Mission also witnessed armed attacks against “Syrian security forces and citizens, causing the Government to respond with further violence. In the end, innocent citizens pay the price for those actions with life and limb.”

Peaceful protestors? UN Ambassador Susan Rice excluded these passages when she denounced Russia’s “willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant [Assad].” Secretary of State Clinton called Russia’s veto “a travesty.” Washington has used the veto 83 times, mostly on resolutions condemning Israeli actions. Now that Al-Qaeda supports the anti-Assad movement does US “disgust” got hurled at both sides?

In 2111, Saudi troops invaded Bahrain and killed unarmed protestors. US officials uttered no “disgust” sounds. Disgust applies to disobedient states. So, end the hypocrisy.

The West should not use “humanitarian” pretexts to intervene in Syrian affairs. But together with Russia and China they should stop outside arms shipments from entering Syria, and urge Assad to end government-backed violence.

Syria needs truly free elections and Syrians need to have basic rights. These include ending corruption — Assad cronies collect the money. Sincere parties – including Washington and Moscow — should welcome a chance to let peace and democracy actually work in an Arab country.

Saul Landau, an Institute for Policy Studies fellow, produced Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up (Cinema Libre Studio).  CounterPunch published his Bush and Botox World. 

Rick Santorum, who has been a steady challenge to Romney, said that Romney’s comments about the poor “sent a chill down my spine”. Romney, who not only comes from the world of finance capital but also is its preferred candidate, has been unable to grasp the deep crisis of everyday life for millions of Americans.

The “safety net” that Romney mentioned has been frayed beyond recognition since the 1980s. One of the most grotesque problems is hunger. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that in 2010 about 17.2 million households in the U.S. did not have the resources to buy food (that is about 14.5 per cent of all households).

Additionally, about 6.4 million households reduced or disrupted their eating habits because of a lack of access to food. To seek food, the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed, people had sought refuge in emergency food pantries. During the recession’s early years, 2007 to 2009, use of these pantries increased by 44 per cent. The Agriculture Department’s September 2011 report on “Household Food Insecurity in the United States” showed that one in six Americans do not have the money to feed themselves. The problem is acute.

Charity fills in the gap left by an inadequate governmental response. But here the challenge is enormous. With anxiety about the economy, charitable giving has dropped significantly (by 11 per cent to the big charities). Donations to organisations that help the very poor have dropped even further. According to the Nonprofit Research Collaborative, the charities with less than $3 million to spend saw their donations fall the most. These charities, such as homeless shelters and food pantries, are the ones that serve the very poor. They are in dire straits.

The children’s TV show “Sesame Street” has introduced a new puppet, Lily, whose task is to speak on the problem of food insecurity once a week to the children who tune in. She does not get enough to eat. She will share her story with children who are in her predicament. At least the puppet is concerned for the very poor.

Paternity

Building on his surge in the Republican primaries, Santorum went to give a big speech in Colorado Springs, the heartland of the new American conservatism. Santorum, who went on to win the primaries in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, told the thousand people in the Biggs Centre that he wanted to distinguish between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. The French had a three-part slogan, two of which Santorum was happy with: Liberty and Equality. The third, Fraternity, was not appropriate because it suggested that people in community would be able to
create codes to live by. Santorum preferred Paternity to Fraternity, with the Father being God. God’s law should precede human law. No one amongst the Republicans challenged this anti-democratic tendency towards theocracy.

Rather than deal with the serious problems of hunger and homelessness, the right wing has tried to shift the debate toward what are known as “social issues”. These include abortion rights, marriage rights for gays and lesbians, discussions about birth control and sexuality in schools, as well as the teaching of diversity in schools. The Right remains fixated on the body and on sexuality, with a morality that is out of touch with the everyday lives of people. No wonder that one of the problems for the Right has been the constant eruption of scandals among its leadership, with this or that spokesperson for an anachronistic morality found with sex workers or with pornography. Hypocrisy is the touchstone of an obsolete morality.

As part of his health care overhaul, President Barack Obama announced a rule that all health care providers (including religious hospitals) needed to provide free contraception for their employees. They did not have to provide contraception to their customers, but their employees had to be covered by federal mandates. A 2010 study in Vital and Health Statistics showed that 99 per cent of women aged 15 to 44 in the U.S. had used at least one contraceptive method. In other words, contraception use is universal among women in the U.S. It seemed as if the Obama policy was, therefore, quite straightforward and of great use to the 62 million women of childbearing age in the U.S.

Nevertheless, the Right went ballistic, calling the Obama policy an infringement on religious freedom. This is fairly typical of the Right, which masquerades its social suffocation as freedom. Santorum’s linkages between liberty and equality with the sanctity of God’s Law is an example of this unhappy marriage.

With Obama having been painted as anti-religion, it was impossible for the White House to stand firm on its principle. Harder for Obama to navigate this issue with one in five Americans of the erroneous view that Obama is a Muslim. Instead, Obama had to compromise with the Right and allow religious health care providers to sidestep this provision. Despite Obama’s surrender to the Right, Romney tried to fan the fire of this issue, “I will reverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent life in this country.”

The Right has gone ballistic on contraception but is virtually silent on the home foreclosure crisis and on the criminal activity by banks. Millions of Americans have been turned out of their homes as a result of the collapse in the home mortgage market.

As part of the neoliberal transformation of the U.S., low-rent, government-provided homes disappeared from the 1980s, with the private sector coming in as the main provider of homes. But with wage incomes stagnant since the 1970s, and with little wealth in the hands of ordinary people, the only way for them to get the keys to a home was through no-money-down, balloon payment mortgages. Banks devised these schemes to ensnare desperate people into homes, and then moved their mortgages into the secondary and tertiary financial markets as securities to be traded. These securities were given good bond ratings from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, whose culpability has not been fully addressed.

When it became clear that these securities were built on unsustainable dreams, the housing market collapsed. Banks received bailouts (along the grain of the neoliberal view that the government must make sure to remove Bad Money from the financial system and replace it with Good Money). There was no bailout for the millions of Americans. They were evicted from their homes.

Popular outrage at the criminal behaviour of the banks forced an investigation of financial activity. Banks were afraid that they would face a series of lawsuits from public interest litigants and from those among the foreclosed that might be gathered together into class action lawsuits. This was the spur for the banks to begin negotiations with the government for a deal.

The Obama administration and several Attorneys General of the different States sealed a bargain with the banks in early February, where the banks promised to pay $5 billion into a fund, which would include $21 billion taxpayers’ money. This fund would be used to pay out between $1,500 and $2,000 per borrower foreclosed upon, between September 2008 and December 2011. It is a ridiculously small amount of money both from the banks and to the victims of the foreclosure epidemic. That means the government believes that the fine to banks for forging and fabricating documents is no more than $2,000. The government decided to settle with the banks (including the worst offender, Bank of America) without any serious investigation of their offences.

Foreclosures slowed down in 2011 in anticipation of this bank deal. “Foreclosures were in full delay mode in 2011,” notes Brandon Moore of RealtyTrac, which follows the housing market very closely.

“The lack of clarity regarding many of the documentation and legal issues plaguing the foreclosure industry means that we are continuing to see a highly dysfunctional foreclosure process that is inefficiently dealing with delinquent mortgages – particularly in States with a judicial foreclosure process. There were strong signs in the second half of 2011 that lenders are finally beginning to push through some of the delayed foreclosures in select local markets. We expect that trend to continue this year, boosting foreclosure activity for 2012 higher than it was in 2011, though still below the peak of 2010.”

This is a very chilling thought, that the bank deal will not stem the foreclosure crisis but intensify it.

Occupy movement

Police action against the Occupy movement has cleared out most of the encampments. The Occupy movement has now shifted its focus towards much more focussed, local political endeavours (including fights against eviction).

One year ago, in Wisconsin, a massive social upsurge promised to open up a new dynamic in America. With the labour movement as its backbone, the Wisconsin demonstrations that began in March 2011 showed what was possible when the people refused to back down before the politics of cruel austerity (the story is captured in a new book edited by Mari Jo and Paul Buhle, It Started in Wisconsin: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Labor Protest, Verso, 2012). One hundred and fifty thousand people, mainly those affiliated with trade unions, stood in the cold and occupied the State House against their Governor Scott Walker.

Seven months later, in New York, the Occupy movement took off and spread across the country. It was grounded in the many facets of social distress in the U.S.

The initial position of both the Wisconsin protests and the Occupy movement was to change the conversation from the defence of the banks and the question of “social issues” to the broad questions of freedom and justice in the country. When the state decided to respond to these protests with police pressure, the immediate issue before the protesters was to deal with the forces of repression. The conversation around social suffocation and economic distress had to be set aside.

The battle lines were drawn between the police and the protesters, when the real contradiction is between the people (the 99 per cent) and the powerful (the 1 per cent). As cruel austerity cuts into the social lives of Americans, it is likely that the full range of issues that debilitate the well-being of Americans will return to the table. The tragedy is that neither of the two mainstream parties is capable of holding a real debate over these issues. They have other obligations, other priorities.

VIJAY PRASHAD is Professor and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. This Spring he will publish two books, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press) and Uncle Swami: Being South Asian in America (New Press). He is the author of Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New Press), which won the 2009 Muzaffar Ahmed Book Prize.

Our group (from Italy, Malawi, Britain and South Africa) had been invited by our lovely Zimbabwean friend ‘F’ to hang out at one of the best ‘braai’ or BBQ stands, in Harare. The braai stands, with rows of well-skewered customers on wooden benches, frequently act as gourmet cooks to Harare’s poor and not-so-poor people – ministers, businessmen, wannabes and in-betweeners – despite being located in the deprived Warren Park area in the heart of kwaMereki.

For a ‘cooking’ fee – about $16 for two kilograms of steak bought from across the road, ‘Mama’ got to work, flaming up a world-class braai, served on two metal trays. No utensils were provided and, until the very end, there was no light in the area, save from store-signs across the road and cars, some of them Mercedes, parked near the stands. Our enterprising Italian ‘G’, proffered up a lighter for our viewing pleasure; and a pen knife; and then it was our turn to work – eat, quickly, to free up a table.

Meanwhile, kwaMereki’s business-minded youth were being their usual resourceful selves, as they made a killing walking to and fro the 50 metres between the liquor stores and food stands, selling alcohol and soft drinks to thirsty diners. It appeared that beer made diners more thoughtful and largely immobile. Though the business of selling drinks was done in almost complete darkness, somehow, they would notice whenever a drinker approached the bottom of the bottle and offer to top-up.

Before and after we ate, our hands were bathed by a woman who walked around with a jug filled with lukewarm water and a bucket. There was no bathroom. Men migrated to far corners for their business. The women had it much more difficult and, when not able to escape to a discrete spot, often waited until they were able to return home. ‘It is not always safe across the road, in the dark, with all of these people,’ said one Zimbabwean woman.

While the gourmet restaurateurs pay $5 rent to the council (and city) on a monthly basis, like much of Zimbabwe, the area has several times prior been stricken by illnesses stemming from various structural problems – mainly the lack of toilet facilities and tap water. Since the early 1990s, save for negotiating use of bathrooms available in the mainly liquor and butcheries across the road, customers have been using the same area as a place of convenience. Problems are myriad. When it rains, amongst other things, the great wash of human release floods the vegetable gardens in the area. Cholera outbreaks sometimes occur, in Mereki and surrounding areas. All of a sudden, the delicious crunchy green vegetables from the gardens in our plates conjure horror.

But where are the rolling toilets?

With a piece of crunchy green salad in my mouth, it occurred to me then that Warren Park and Mereki went hand in glove with toilet capitalism. Sometime back, one Zimbabwean, in partnership with a South African, purchased mobile toilets from South Africa for Mereki, charging customers R5 a hit. He would go on to win an award. We inquired, but did not see, these award-winning toilets. Several younger chaps confirmed the rumour: ‘the rolling toilets? It has come through here, but I cannot say the whereabouts now.

Certainly, the mobile toilet would have been a welcome addition and brilliant short-term solution – but at what cost? “What we want,” said Mama, “is for them (government) to put in toilets and taps.” From Thursdays to Fridays, she said, the place was jam-packed.

Of course, Warren Park is not special: one of my earliest memories is running almost straight into a ‘flying toilet’ in Nairobi, which until 2008 had just 150 public toilets for over 3.5 million people. The public toilets then, were a scene of physical chaos, later dubbed by a friend, visiting India – where over 800 million have little access to sanitation facilities, ‘toilet warfare’. Historically, the power imbalances underpinning the structural layout of public worlds have reflected economic inequalities in areas characterised by those lacking political capital.

Similar to environmental racism, evidencing landfills, slaughterhouses and the like, situated in the poorest areas, lack of waste sanitation is often interlocked with lack of access to clean water. In her book, ‘The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters’, detailing the waste sanitation crisis, Rose George writes, ‘I thought a toilet was my right. It was a privilege.’ But as every African knows – this is untrue. Access to clean water and safe sanitation is a fundamental human right, only the quality of that provision (such as Japan’s high tech toilets) is a privilege.

This much was confirmed by the UN’s General Assembly, which bemoaned in the UN’s usual toothless way, that as much as 2.6 billion people globally have no access to waste sanitation. A situation that results in 2.2 million deaths annually, of which 1.5 million are children – excluding the numerous consequences of illnesses such as cholera, frequently affecting African countries.

Like Uganda’s Kampala – which hosted just 108 public toilets for a population of more than 2 million people, and privatised public toilets several years ago, in Zimbabwe, the scene is ripe for private waste sanitation companies or toilet capitalists.

According to one development worker I bumped into, waste sanitation apparently rests under the mandate of the country’s National Water Department via the Harare Water Supply Division. This was allegedly inherited from the City Council of Harare, thereafter further devolved to local councils. But neither department seems overly anxious to claim the responsibility of upgrading, connecting and developing, what is actually a matter of life and death. Of late, it seems China – anxious to secure platinum reserves allegedly worth US$40 billion, had negotiated a US$144m deal with China Exim and the government to finance three phase development of basic needs including sewer and waste sanitation systems.

This was also allegedly discussed with the local councils. But when I asked a receptionist at a guesthouse about the interest of the city and local councils in the constituencies, she responded in the negative, saying that right now, while things had greatly improved, the battle between ‘those who wanted power for good, and those who were good at having power’, had drained the life from Zimbabwe’s political scene, corrupting many in the process. The people on the periphery of these political battles – particularly women like Mama, not only had no political say, but also, no financial choice to opt for private or portable toilets.

Where did the money go?

Cumulatively, since the 1970s, Africa has lost over US$730 billion – money that should have been invested in infrastructure, to illicit flight. More than 60 per cent of the continent’s annual wealth is lost to corporate mispricing – your everyday respectable multinationals looting through respectable institutions. In 2008, as a vicious cholera epidemic swept through Zimbabwe much of the country’s GDP was siphoned through illicit flight, while the political situation deteriorated.

Revenue leakage not only drains nations of funds required for basic needs – and decent and dignified lives, but is also the symptom of a corruption that is global in architecture, and globally pervasive in nature. This reality is reflected in the indignity of having no toilets, no water, not enough food and no medicines.

I got the chance to speak with police chiefs and soldiers. I got the chance to speak with students. I got to speak with everyday people. And forefront in their minds is access to basic services: even in good areas, electricity cuts were common. Basic services – the kind that provide the architecture of living (water, waste sanitation, schools etc) may just become possible soon enough, if diamond revenue could be caught before gross revenue leakage, already pegged at US$1 billion. The legitimisation of Zimbabwe’s diamond industry, considered the gravy train of Zanu PF chaps, is pegged by Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, to generate upward of US$1 billion annually.

The dollarisation of the economy, and almost sole reliance on imported goods, particularly from South Africa, has rendered the economy a landscape of exploitation – to the point where Finance Minister Tendai Biti has banned importation of second-hand underwear. Like the cost of food, Zimbabwe’s toilet capitalism is symbolic of the structural inequalities that constitute the character profile of the political economy. Everywhere, vulnerability was evident.

By the time I left, I began to harbour – nonsensically – a hatred against ATM machines, bizarre boxes that poured magically, not to the deserving, the hungry, the fearful, but to the right code. I was extremely grateful to our hosts and a friend, who previously lived in Zimbabwe for decades, for bringing us out of the usual ‘tourist sphere’, and into the lives and worlds of real Zimbabweans – the grocery markets, food stalls, neighbourhoods, townships, and bars. Though many South Africans from an early age, witnessed a mass divide between those dispossessed, and those with the mansions, the Zimbabwean divide is seemingly greater. While we did not visit the richest areas, the semi-rich area suburbs were dotted with opulent mansions and gardens so large, I presumed, initially, to the amusement of my hosts, that it was an area filled with beautiful guesthouses.

Khadija Sharife is a journalist; visiting scholar at the Center for Civil Society (CCS) based in South Africa and contributor to the Tax Justice Network. She is the Southern Africa correspondent for The Africa Report magazine, assistant editor of the Harvard “World Poverty and Human Rights” journal and author of Tax Us If You Can (Africa). 

This article originally appeared in Africa Report.