just commentary october 2013
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Vol 13, No.10 October 2013
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ARTICLES
ISRAEL’S HISTORY OF CHEMICALWEAPONS USE
.NAIROBI AND PESHAWAR: THE FUTILITY OF TERROR TACTICS BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR........................P4STATEMENTS
. ‘FATWA ACTIVISM’ VERSUS ‘EDUCATIONAL ACTIVISM’BY MAULANA WAHIDUDDIN KHAN........................P 9
. ‘SHUTDOWN’: CHINA’S XI UPSTAGES OBAMA’S ASIA PIVOT
BY NILE BOWIE...................................................P 6
By Elias Akleh
. “THE OIL IS OURS”- BUT ITS SECRETS ARE THE NSA’SBY FABIANA FRAYSSINET......................................P 7
.THE CHARITABLE- INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
BY PETER BUFFETT.................................................P 10
The UN chemical weapons inspectors,who went to Syria to investigate the
use of chemical weapons, should havestopped on their way at OccupiedPalestine (Israel), where Israeligovernment has the largest stockpile ofchemical and other WMD in the entireMiddle East. They would have found alot of evidence and witness accounts ofIsraeli use of chemical, as well asbiological and nuclear, weapons againstthe Palestinians and their Arabneighbors. The attacks started in May1948 and are still going on in one form oranother.
The Zionist gangs under the directiveand leadership of David Ben-Gurion, whobecame the first Israeli Prime Minister, hadadopted a military policy of genocide,extermination and total destruction of theindigenous Palestinian inhabitants andtheir towns in order to evacuate the landfor outsider Zionist Jewish occupiers.The first WMD they used was biologicalweapons as documented by the
International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC).
In May 1948 the Zionist gangs besiegedthe well-fortified Palestinian city of Acre,which could stand the siege for a longtime. The city water supply came from anearby village name Kabri through anaqueduct. To shorten the siege and toenter the city, the Zionist gangs injectedtyphoid in the aqueduct. ManyPalestinians and some 55 British soldiers,who were in the city, got infected. Thiscrime was called operation “ShlachLachmecha” as described by the Israelimilitary historian Urin Milstein [Wendy
Barnaby’s “ The Plague Makers: TheSecret World of Biological Warfare” ,London, Vision Paperbacks, 1997, pp 114-116]
The ICRC delegate Mr. De Meuron, senta series of reports under the reference ofG59/1/GC, G3/82, from 6 th to about 19 thof May 1948 describing the conditions ofthe city population as struck by a suddentyphoid epidemic and requested effortsto combat it. The minutes of an emergencymeeting between Mr. De Meuron and theBritish Medical Services officers statedthat the infection was “water borne”.Burdened by the epidemic the city felleasy prey to the Zionist gangs, who wentinto a killing spree and a systematic lootingcampaign as reported by LieutenantPetite, a French UN observer. He reportedthe cold-blooded murder of at least 100Arab civilians, who refused to evacuatethe city as ordered by the Zionists. Someof them were captured by the Zionistterrorists and were forced at gun point to
.THE SYRIA DEAL: DANGERS AND OPPORTUNITIES BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR......................P5
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L E A D A R T I C L E
drink cyanide; the case of Mohamed
Fayez Soufi is one example as
documented in “The Palestinian
Catastrophe” by Michael Palumbo.
This crime of poisoning Acre’s water
supply leading to the fall of the city, the
forceful evacuation of its inhabitants, and
the looting of its treasures, whetted the
appetite of the Zionists to repeat the
crime. They tried it again in Gaza against
the Egyptian forces, but failed. The two
Zionist infiltrators, who were sent on this
mission, were captured by the Egyptians.
The following cable was sent from the
commander of the Egyptian Forces in
Palestine to the General Headquarters in
Cairo:
“15.20 hrs, 24 May [1948]. Our
Intelligence forces captured two Jews,
David Horeen and David Mizrahi,
loitering around army positions. They
were interrogated and confessed they
had been sent by officer Moshe to poison
the army [and the peoples’] water supply.
They carried with them water bottles
divided in the middle. The top part has
potable water and the bottom part has a
liquid contaminated with typhoid and
dysentery, equipped with a rear opening
from which the liquid can be released.
They confessed they were members of
the 20-strong team sent from Rehovot for
the same purpose. Both have written their
confession in Hebrew and signed it. We
have taken the necessary medical
precautions.”
In his book “War Diary” Ben Gurion
confirmed the attack in an entry found
on 27 th of May 1948 where he stated:
“[Chief of Staff Yigal Yadin] picked up a
cable from Gaza saying they captured
Jews carrying malaria gems and gave
instructions not to drink water.” The
Israeli author Yeruham Cohen wrote more
about this cable in his book “ In Daylight
and Night Darkness” ; Tel Aviv, 1969,
pp66-68 (in Hebrew). The two Zionist
agents; Horeen and Mizrahi, broke out
of prison but were captured again and
executed.
The Zionist crimes did not stop then, but
targeted Egypt and Syria. On 22 nd of
July 1948 the [Palestinian] Higher Arab
Committee (AHC) submitted a 13-page
report to the UN accusing the Jews (the
term Israelis was not used then) of using
“inhumane” weapons and waging a
genocidal war against the Arabs through
the use of bacteria and germs. The report
accused the Jews of spreading Cholera
in Egypt and Syria in 1947/48. The award-
winning journalist, Thomas J. Hamilton
of the New York Times picked up the story
and published it on 24 th of July 1948.
During the summer of 1947 the United
Nations Special Committee on Palestine
(UNSCOP) was sent to Palestine and its
neighboring Arab states proposing the
partition of Palestine giving about 54%
of the land to new Jewish immigrants who
controlled only 6% of Palestine. Their
proposition was met with fierce
opposition from the only two strong Arab
countries; Egypt and Syria, recently freed
from the French Mandate. Syria was the
center of Arab resistance to foreign
occupation of any Arab country. Syria
had established training centers in
Qatana to prepare Arab volunteers to join
the Arab Rescue Army in Palestine.
Egypt and Syria, thus, became the main
targets of Zionist gangs.
In his 220-page continually updated
report under the title “Bioterrorism and
Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological
Agents since 1900” Dr. W. Seth Carus of
the Center for Counterproliferation
Research, National Defense University,
Washington, DC, lists the following
subtitle p. 87: “Case 1947-01: Zionist
Terrorists 1947-1948.” He mentioned that
the cholera outbreaks in Egypt and Syria
had received extensive attention in the
press. The first report about the cholera
in Egypt was published in the Times of
London on 26 th September 1947 p.4. By
the time the final cases appeared in
January 1948 about 10,262 people had
died.
The cholera outbreak in Syria was first
reported by the New York Times on 22 nd
of December 1947 p. 5, but was limited to
only two towns, Carus stated. The Syrian
army formed a cordon sanitaire and the
casualties were limited to 44 including 18
deaths. Soon after, the Orient, a Lebanese
French-language newspaper reported
that several Zionist agents, who
employed the cholera germs to disrupt
the mobilization of the volunteers army
were arrested.
Assi, the son of Israeli General Moshe
Dayan, wrote in his memoir published in
Yediot that during the war his father
brought home tubes containing typhus .
He explained that the intent was to drop
these tubes into the water supply of the
Jordanian Legion. Before the plan was
implemented one of the tubes broke and
Assi got infected.
Naeim Giladi is an Iraqi Jew, who was lured
to Israel by Mossad agents in early
1950s. He was a zealot Zionist, who later
on left Israel after discovering its
barbarism and immigrated to the US. He
told the editor of The Link in New York
that he discovered that within the Israeli
Ashkenazi establishment “there was not
much opportunity for those of us who
were second class citizens. I began to find
out about the barbaric methods to rid the
fledgling state of as many Palestinians
as possible. The world recoils today at
the thought of bacteriological warfare,
but Israel was probably the first to
actually use it in the Middle East. Jewish
forces would empty Arab villages of their
population often by threats, sometimes
by gunning down a half-dozen young men
so that the Arabs could not return. The
Israelis put typhus and dysentery
bacteria in the water wells to prevent the
refugees from returning.” [The Link, Vol.
31 Issue 2, April-May 1998]
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L E A D A R T I C L E
Avner Cohen, a senior member at the
Center for International and Security
Studies, and the Program on Security and
Disarmaments at the University of
Maryland, wrote a comprehensive paper
on Israel’s chemical and biological
weapons. His paper titled “Israel and
Chemical/Biological Weapons: History,
Deterrence, and Arms Control” was
published in the Non-Proliferation
Review in autumn of 2001.
Cohen stated that Israel’s chemical
weapon started with David Ben Gurion’s
doctrine: “the destruction of the
Palestinian society in Palestine is a
necessary condition for the
establishment of the state of Israel on its
ruins. If Palestinians cannot be removed
by massacres and expulsion, they shall
be removed by extermination.” To
accomplish this extermination Ben Gurion
wrote a letter to Ehud Avriel, a member in
the Jewish Agency in Europe, ordering
him to recruit East European Jewish
scientists, who could “either increase
capacity to kill masses or to cure masses;
both are important.” Experts in
microbiology such as Ernst David
Bergmann, Avraham Marcus Klingberg
and the brothers Aharon and Ephraim
Katachalsky, were recruited to form the
Sceince Corps in the Haganah which later
was named HEMED. Later a new branch
within HEMED, devoted to biological
weapons was formed and called HEMED
BEIT. This branch is publically known as
Israel Institute for Biological Research
(IIBR) and it expropriated the mansion of
Shukri Al Taji; a Palestinian, near the
settlement of Nes Ziona as its research
center.
For years the IIBR center was developing
chemical and biological weapons in secret
until 4 th October of 1992 when El Al Flight
1862 crashed into a high-rise apartment
complex in Bijlmer, Amsterdam while on
its way to Tel Aviv carrying three
crewmen, one passenger and 114 tons of
freight. The crash was considered the
worst air disaster in Dutch history killing
at least 47 and destroying the health of
3000 Dutch residents. Cases of
mysterious illnesses, rashes, difficulty
in breathing, nervous disorders and
cancer began to sprout in that
neighborhood. After several years of
deep investigation Karel Knip, the
science editor in the Dutch daily NRC
Handelsbland, published in November
1999 the most detailed and factual report
about the workings of the IIBR.
Knip revealed that the plane was carrying
a shipment from Sokatronic Chemicals
of Morrisville, Pennsylvania to IIBR,
under the US Department of Commerce
license, in violation of the Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC). Among
the shipment there were 50 gallons of
DMMP; a substance used to make a
quarter ton of the deadly nerve gas Sarin,
20 times as lethal as cyanide. He
discovered that at least 140 biological
weapon scientists from the IIBR have
strong links with Walter Reed Army
Institute, the Uniformed Services
University, the American Chemical and
Biological Weapons Center in Edgewood
and the University of Utah. He also
discovered close cooperation between
IIBR and the British-American biological
weapons programme, as well as extensive
collaboration on biological weapon
research with Germany and Holland,
which explains the reason for the Dutch
officials keeping silence over the crash
over Amsterdam.
The numbers and details of the Israeli
chemical and biological attacks against
Palestinians are many and require large
volumes to document. During the
Palestinian Intifada the Palestinian
youths were used as test subjects for
new chemical weapons; toxins and
incapacitants. James Brooks of “Just
Peace in Palestine/Israel” gave detailed
accounts of these attacks on civilians
day by day as they happened; describing
the severe convulsions, the burning
sensation, the difficulty to breathe, the
vomiting and pain the victims of these
attacks had suffered. The documentary
“Gaza Strip” , shot by the American
filmmaker James Longley, documents
Israel’s use of chemical weapons on Gaza
residents. Such attacks were repeated in
the West Bank cities of Al-Bireh and
Nablus. Dr. Khamis Al-Najjar, the director
of Cancer Research Center of the
Ministry of Health in Ramallah, Palestine,
highlighted in his February 3rd . 2003
report an alarming increase in cancer
cases, especially among women and
children. The report covers the period
between 1995-2000 and shows 3,646
cases, mostly women.
Israel’s continuous use of chemical/
biological weapons against Palestinians
was most prominent in March 2001,
October 2003, and June 2004 as
investigated by these reports. Israel also
used poison gas attacks against unarmed
Palestinian civilians in Gaza in February
2001 as documented here . Israeli Mossad
agents had also used chemical weapons
in their assassination attacks against
Palestinian leaders such as Hamas Leader
Khaled Mesh’al , and Mahmoud al-
Mabhouh, and are highly suspected of
using nuclear poison in assassinating
Yasser Arafat.
The whole world knows very well that
Israel has been manufacturing chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons, and has
the largest stockpile of these WMD in
the Middle Eastern region. In March 2003
the BBC television presented the
documentary “Israel’s Secret Weapon”
investigating Israel’s development of
chemical/biological/nuclear (CBN)
weapons.
The successive American
administrations are very well familiar with
Israel’s CBN weapons. The US Congress
Office of Technology Assessment titled
“Proliferation of Weapons of Mass
Destruction: Assessing the Risk” , pages
63-65, records Israel as a country
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NAIROBI AND PESHAWAR: THE FUTILITY OF TERROR TACTICS
STATEMENTS
L E A D A R T I C L E
possessing an offensive biological
warfare capability and a long-term,
undeclared biological warfare program. In
1983 the CIA produced a special report
on Israel’s weapons program, but deleted
this page dealing with the chemical
weapons.
With Syria giving up its chemical
weapons, now is the perfect opportunity
to enforce the chemical weapons
convention on all the countries in the
region, including Israel, to free it from
this WMD. Contrary to what Obama said,
the convention does not specifically
refer to just the use of chemical weapons,
but also to its production and storage.
Will Obama, the peace-prize winner,
prove that “the United States has been
the anchor of global security … for
nearly seven decades” as he claimed in
his speech and demonstrate that the
Americans are really “exceptional” as he
boosted, or will he turn a blind eye to the
Israeli criminal chemical attacks and the
largest stockpile of WMD, like his many
predecessors???
17 September, 2013
Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a
Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-
Jala. His family. He is living now in exile in
the US and publish articles on the web.
Source: Countercurrents.org
The dastardly carnage in Nairobi and
Peshawar proves yet again the utter
futility of resorting to terror tactics in
order to secure one’s political goals.
In Nairobi, the brazen attack on a
shopping mall by Al-Shabaab, a group
based in Somalia, purportedly linked to
Al-Qaeda, on 21 September 2013, has
left at least 62 people dead and around
175 injured. This cruel slaughter of
innocent men and women has elicited
worldwide condemnation. It has
heightened the anger of the Kenyan
people against Al-Shabaab. Kenyan
authorities are now more determined than
ever to intensify their role in the African
Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)
under whose auspices the Kenyan army
had invaded Somalia in October 2011 with
the aim of defeating Al-Shabaab.
If Al-Shabaab’s terrorism on 21 September
was to force Kenya to withdraw from
Somalia, it has failed badly. Neither has it
succeeded in making the people of Somalia
more antagonistic towards the government
in Mogadishu which Al-Shabaab alleges
serves the interests of the US, other
Western powers and Israel who are seeking
to tighten their grip over Somalia and the
Horn of Africa. If anything, through its
barbaric conduct, Al-Shabaab has,
ironically, brought Israel closer to the
Kenyan government since Israeli
commandos are helping Kenyan troops to
eliminate terrorists from the shopping-mall.
Al-Shabaab has often denounced Kenya’s
ties with Israel. In other words, Al-
Shabaab’s wanton terrorist assault has
undermined its own position.
The massacre outside the All Saints
Anglican Church in Peshawar on 22
September as Christian worshippers were
coming out of the Church perpetrated by
two suicide bombers from a group known
as Jandullah, linked to the Pakistani
Taliban, resulted in 80 deaths, including
37 women and 7 children. This heinous
crime against the innocent has incensed
the people of Pakistan. Thousands have
participated in protests in all major cities
in the country. They are demanding firm
action from the State against terrorist
groups of whatever hue.
If the terrorist attack in the precincts of
the Peshawar Church was intended as a
protest against US drone assaults along
the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, it is
unlikely that it will compel the US to
change its policy. On the contrary, this
brutal act has diverted attention from
drones and other pressing national issues
to the vulnerability of the miniscule
Christian minority in Peshawar and
Pakistan as a whole. It has brought to
the fore the depravity and the viciousness
of terrorist groups such as the Jandullah.
The Nairobi and Peshawar episodes
demonstrate vividly that terror tactics do
not help to advance the struggle against
hegemony or foreign intervention or
external aggression. On the contrary, they
weaken the quest to protect a people’s
sovereignty and independence.
Terrorism should be rejected by people
everywhere. The struggle against
injustice should be through peaceful,
non-violent means, however difficult it
may be.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,
President,
International Movement for a Just
World (JUST)
24 September, 2013
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THE SYRIA DEAL: DANGERS AND OPPORTUNITIES
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Commentators tell us that there is a
palpable sense of relief in Damascus and
in other parts of Syria in the wake of the
Russia-US deal over Syria’s chemical
weapons. The citizens of Damascus ¯
the world’s oldest, continuously inhabited
city ̄ know that they will not be bombed
for the time being.
The deal in brief will lead to the
destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons
by mid-2014 to be supervised by the UN.
Syria will become a party to the
Convention on the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons which outlaws their
production and use. If the deal is
breached, the violation would be
brought to the notice of the UN Security
Council for action.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei
Lavrov, and the US Secretary of State, John
Kerry, hope that the deal will culminate in a
conference that will bring together all the
main actors in the Syrian conflict. An
amicable solution will be sought guided to
a large extent by the principles adopted at
an earlier Geneva meeting.
For now, let us find out why a deal was
struck, the dangers facing its
implementation and the larger
opportunities it presents.
Deal
For each of the actors involved in the
conflict, the deal offers something. For
the Bashar government, apart from
staving off a powerful US led
bombardment of Syria’s chemical
weapons and military assets, the deal has
in a sense temporarily preserved his
position. For Iran, even a limited military
strike against Bashar could unleash
forces that would weaken his grip upon
power and lead to the ouster of Iran’s
closest ally in the Arab world. Equally
important, eliminating chemical weapons
is very much in consonance with Iran’s
policy since it was a victim of chemical
gas attacks 25 years ago. For Russia, the
deal also helps to protect a longstanding
ally with whom it has forged enduring
military and security ties for decades.
How has the deal benefitted the Obama
Administration? It saved Obama from
ignominy since the majority of Americans
are opposed to military action against
Syria. His request for authorisation to
strike Syria, according to analysts,
would have been defeated in the House
of Representatives. The Senate also
appears to be divided on the issue.
If there is opposition to military action
among legislators and the people, it is
mainly because of the mess the US and
its allies have created in Iraq and the
grave uncertainty that prevails in
Afghanistan. Simply put, they do not
want another military adventure. Add to
this, the gloom generated by an economy
that is still in dire straits. After all, it is
partly because of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq that US debts have
shot through the roof, making it the
world’s biggest debtor nation.
It is not just the American people who are
reluctant to embark upon a military
adventure. Parliament in Britain ̄ the US’s
closest ally in Europe ̄ has voted against
military action reflecting popular sentiment.
The vast majority of French people are also
opposed to war. So are the people in almost
every other European state.
Prominent personalities have also
spoken out against war. The most
notable among them is Pope Francis, the
Head of the Catholic Church, who has
held a mass prayer meeting to urge world
leaders to refrain from military action. His
clarion call has had some impact upon
US legislators and the general public. The
UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who
is almost always supportive of
Washington, has on this occasion
cautioned against the use of force.
It is also possible that given the
monumental weaknesses in the range of
opposition groups pitted against Bashar
Al-Assad, the Obama Administration may
have come to the conclusion that the
military option could precipitate
consequences that would eventually
undermine US ¯ and Israeli ̄ interests.
Not only are the armed rebels hopelessly
fractured; the most potent among them is
intimately linked to Al-Qaeda. The Jahbat
Al- Nusra through its brutal, often
barbaric acts of violence has instilled fear
among the Syrian population and
generated a great deal of uneasiness
among the opposition’s foreign backers
in Washington, London and Paris.
This is why all said and done the deal
between the US and Russia on Syria’s
chemical weapons may be a way out for
the US and certain Western governments.
Dangers
The implementation of the deal is however
fraught with dangers. It is quite conceivable
that the opposition which rejects the deal
will try to sabotage it. Some factions among
the armed rebels could employ chemical
gases against the populace and then put
the blame upon the Bashar government. It
is believed that having failed to draw the
US into a bombing spree against Bashar
through the 21 August episode these rebels
are now preparing another false flag
operation ¯ this time against Israel ¯ in
order to change the balance on the battle-
ground in their favour. In this regard, it
should be emphasised that there is
increasing empirical evidence to show that
21 August was contrived and manipulated
to suit the rebels’ diabolical agenda.
Elements within the Israeli establishment
may be willing to collude with the rebels on
this. For while Prime Minister Netanyahu
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‘SHUTDOWN’: CHINA’S XI UPSTAGES OBAMA’S ASIA PIVOTBy Nile Bowie
has cautiously welcomed the move to
eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, he and
others are still as determined as ever to break
the Bashar- Hezbollah-Iran bond which
they view as the greatest obstacle to Israel’s
regional dominance. There are well-placed
individuals in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, among other states in West Asia,
who for different reasons are also
disappointed that that there has been no
US-led military action to bring down Bashar.
Pressure from these and other
individuals and groups, especially if it is
expressed through some dastardly
incident, directed at Washington and
other Western capitals could torpedo the
Syria deal. There are after all influential
lobbies in the US, linked to Zionist and
Christian Zionist interests who may also
want to push for the military option.
Peace activists in the West and elsewhere
should be ever vigilant to their
machinations.
Opportunities
If attempts to subvert the deal fail, and
the deal holds, it may open up
opportunities for peace that go far
beyond the deal itself.
One, it may be possible to strengthen the
people’s movement against war. If a war
is averted over Syria, it would mean that
the people of the world had played a
major role in stopping a war. Seen in
context, if in 2003, millions of people
managed to de-legitimise the Iraq War ̄
it took place without UN authorisation ¯
then in 2013, “we the people” succeeded in
preventing a war.
Two, the Syria deal also provides us with
the opportunity to give meaning and
substance to international law and
international institutions. All nations
without exception should act within the
ambit of the law and through bodies like
the UN. “Exceptionalism” has no legitimacy
and should be rejected totally.
Three, chemical weapons and all other
weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
should be eliminated completely from
West Asia and North Africa (WANA) and
the rest of the world. No nation in WANA
should be exempted from observing this
prohibition. Israel which has huge stocks
of WMD, including nuclear weapons,
should take the lead. Peace activists
should make this ¯ the elimination of
WMD from every nook and cranny of
the earth ¯ their topmost agenda.
If all this begins to happen, the Syria deal
may well emerge as a turning-point in
history.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,
16 September, 2013
ARTICLES
When the clock stroke midnight on
October 1st, one would find plenty more
optimism in Beijing than in Washington.
In China, people gathered in Tiananmen
Square to celebrate the anniversary of
the country’s founding. In the US, the
situation was fairly grimmer. A kabuki
theatre of incompetence brought about a
federal government shutdown which has
failed hundreds of thousands of
government employees while cutting
billions in spending on social programs,
and now Washington faces the very real
scenario of a default. The problems posed
by the US domestic situation are so dire
that Obama was forced to cancel high-
profile trips to Asia-Pacific countries in
fear of the debt ceiling crashing down on
his presidency. Obama was supposed to
visit the APEC Summit in Bali, the ASEAN
meeting in Brunei, as well as visits to
Malaysia and the Philippines – two
countries that feature prominently in the
“Pivot to Asia” policy unveiled in 2011.
Instead, he sent the court jester, John
Kerry, in his place.
With Obama’s wings clipped and Air
Force One grounded, China’s President
Xi Jinping swooped in and stole the show,
cutting billion-dollar deals on landmark
visits to Indonesia and Malaysia, and
securing the spotlight for the APEC and
ASEAN conferences. While Xi came arm-
in-arm with his classy wife for a massive
charm offensive that topped headlines in
Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, Obama
twiddled his thumbs in the Oval Office
and played the blame game with
Republicans like warring adolescents.
Given the extreme value placed on the
concept of saving or losing face in
Chinese culture, this can only be a “paper
tiger” moment for Obama when viewed
through the lens of Beijing. Obama’s no-
show is yet another symbolic indication
of the winds of global power blowing
eastward, as the two largest economies
vie for influence in military affairs and
markets throughout the Asia-Pacific, this
century’s global locomotive for
economic development.
Sorry, we’re closed
Obama’s foreign policy has been one
‘epic fail’ after the next, and the shutdown
debt-drama unfolding in Washington
doesn’t exactly reflect the self-professed
‘exceptionalism’ of a power trying to pass
itself off as a model for leadership in the
Asia-Pacific. The structure of the much-
lauded Asia pivot rests on a dual-
pronged approach; the muscle angle calls
for increasing rotational US military
presence in the region; the market angle
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calls for roping emerging Southeast
Asian economies into Washington’s
sphere through the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP), a secretive free trade
agreement written to give US
multinationals a major leg up. How can
“America’s Pacific Century” be taken
seriously when the commander-in-chief
himself is too occupied with preventing
his ceiling from collapsing to even visit
the region for a few days? To use the
Chinese proverb, Obama’s predicament
is a case of “lifting a rock only to drop it
on one’s own feet.”
No one can deny the push for a more
multipolar world emerging, and for
developing countries, a giant ‘CLOSED’
sign over the mantle of American
leadership may hasten a more equitable
multilateral global economic order. In a
recent speech during the UN General
Assembly, Foreign Minister Wang Yi laid
out the basis of Chinese diplomacy as
being focused on multilateral
participation between developing
countries based on equal footing, and
forging new international systems
around the principle of non-interference
and win-win partnerships. In other
words, countries like Malaysia and
Indonesia have more incentive doing
business with Beijing – which invests
billions in infrastructure deals to promote
transportation, health services and
education – rather than being locked into
to the over-financialized sovereignty-
eviscerating terms and conditions of the
Washington consensus and the TPP. As
the geopolitical landscape develops in
Southeast Asia, it will soon be clear whether
countries will play along with Obama’s
China-containment doctrine or reject it –
much of that equation depends on how
Beijing can maneuver its hairy territorial
disputes in the South China Sea.
Obama’s Asia Pivot vs. Xi’s Maritime
Silk Road
Chinese President Xi Jinping became the
first foreign leader to address the
Indonesian Parliament on his trip to
Jakarta, where he proposed a common
destiny for the China-ASEAN community
by constructing a new Maritime Silk Road
of the 21st century. In his address, Xi
made clear that territorial disputes in the
oil-and-gas rich South China Sea should
be handled through dialogue and trust-
building, invoking the Indonesian
proverb, “Money can be easily earned
but not friendship.” The thrust of Xi’s
message is that mutually beneficially
exchange trumps military disputes, and
that comprise is possible. Xi also pledged
to boost trade with ASEAN to a mammoth
US$1 trillion by 2020 and partake in mega-
projects such as the construction of the
ambitious 90,000-hectare dam in West
Java; he also cut US$30 billion deals in
mining and port construction with
Indonesian President Susilo Yudhoyono,
and secured contracts for Chinese
companies to build the long-overdue
Jakarta monorail project.
Malaysia has long been China’s biggest
trading partner in the ASEAN bloc, and
upon landing in Kuala Lumpur, Xi
announced that bilateral ties would be
elevated to a comprehensive strategic
partnership aimed at tripling trade to $160
billion by 2017, including new military-
to-military ties and cooperation.
Malaysia’s PM Najib Razak – the
country’s most pro-US leader to date – is
engaging in a delicate balancing act and
remains faithfully pro-China. Najib has
green-lighted greater cooperation with
the US military, and has taken part in the
negotiations for the TPP, but asserts that
Malaysia may pullout of the deal over
concerns of protecting national
sovereignty. The forecast for
implementing the TPP looks all the more
bleak after Obama has blown his chance
to create a domino effect that threatens
the neoliberal centerpiece of Obama’s
Asia-Pacific economic strategy.
The subject of Washington versus
Beijing in the Asia-Pacific will be the
geopolitical question of the next two
decades – it can be encapsulated as
unipolarity versus multipolarity. Beijing
professes that it is not aiming for
hegemony, but for a political framework
centered on mutual respect, win-win
cooperation, and the absence of conflict.
China’s long-term relations with Asia-
Pacific countries will measure the success
of this multilateral strategy. As China
gears toward more dramatic financial
reform and economic structural
transformation, Beijing is readying itself
for the responsibilities of global
economic leadership as the world’s
largest economy through a philosophy
of “crossing the river by feeling the
stones” – an enduring pragmatism. As
confidence dwindles in the USD & Euro
as the two legs of a wobbly global
economy, China is positioning itself as a
third leg that can hopefully offer greater
stabilization and prudency. To borrow the
Chinese folk saying, “Either the east wind
prevails over the west wind or the west
wind prevails over the east wind.” Only
fools will deny the way the wind is
blowing.
5 October, 2013
Nile Bowie is a Kuala Lumpur- based political
analyst and columinst with Russia Today.
“THE OIL IS OURS”- BUT ITS SECRETS ARE THE NSA’SBy Fabiana Frayssinet
continued next page
Rio de Janeiro , Sept. 16, 2013 : Reported
US spying on Brazil’s Petrobras oil firm
revived the controversy over opening up
the company, a symbol of Brazilian
sovereignty since the 1950s, to foreign
investment.
“The oil is ours” was the cry that arose
with the discovery of oil and gas during
the government of Getulio Vargas (1930-
1945) and that became the slogan of the
A R T I C L E SI N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D
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continued from page 7
founding of Petrobras in 1953.
It took on new force in 1997, when then
president Fernando Henrique Cardoso
(1995-2003) declared the end of the state
monopoly and opened the company up
to local and foreign private investment.
It began to be heard again in 2007, when
Petrobras discovered massive offshore
oil reserves 180 km from the coast and
7,000 km below sea level, under a thick
layer of salt.
And then again in 2010, when then
president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-
2011) replaced the current concessions
system, under which companies bid for
the rights to explore new oil blocks, with
a production-sharing regime between the
state and private companies.
The Brazilian government is the largest
shareholder in Petrobras, a publicly
traded company whose closely guarded
secrets – such as the volume of reserves
or the deep water exploration technology
it has developed – may already be in the
hands of the US government and its allies.
Rio-based US journalist Glenn Greenwald
revealed earlier this month that leaked
National Security Agency (NSA)
documents indicated that it had spied on
Petrobras – Brazil ‘s largest company and
the world’s fourth largest oil company.
Secret documents from 2012 that were
given to Greenwald by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden reportedly
show that Petrobras was at the top of a
list of targets for intelligence gathering.
The documents, part of a presentation
used to train new agents on how to breach
private computer networks, do not show
to what extent NSA deciphered secret
information from Petrobras’ computers.
But they do undermine the explanation
presented by the US agency with respect
to earlier reports that it had intercepted
the private communications of Brazilian
citizens and of President Dilma Rousseff
herself.
“Without a doubt, Petrobras does not
represent a threat to the security of any
country,” Rousseff said. “What it does
represent is one of the world’s largest oil
assets, a heritage of the Brazilian people.”
“It is clear that the motive was not security
or fighting terrorism, but economic and
strategic interests,” the president added.
The vulnerability of the company’s
secrets has once again fanned the
sentiment that “the oil is ours”, as well as
arguments in favor of and against a
greater opening to private investment in
Petrobras.
One of the focuses of the controversy is
the Libra oil field in the Santos Basin, one
of Brazil’s richest offshore sub-salt
deposits, set to be opened up to bidding
in October.
The Brazilian government denied that the
bidding would be suspended due to fears
that leaked information could favor US or
British companies, as newspaper reports
claimed.
The president of the association of
Petrobras engineers, Silvio Sinedino, told
IPS that “We are opposed to any bidding.
We have long demanded that our oil
should not be handed over the way it is
here, and especially not in a fabulous
oilfield where there is no risk because it
has already been explored and has a
confirmed capacity of 12 to 15 billion
barrels of oil.”
Brazil ‘s sub-salt reserves are estimated
at 80 to 100 billion barrels – enough to
supply the country for 40 to 50 years, he
noted.
Sinedino said the Cardoso
administration’s “privatization” of
Petrobras and telecommunications left
Brazil more exposed to espionage.
“Even our military communications go
through US satellites, which are
obviously controlled by agents from
that country,” he added.
Adriano Pires, a consultant with the
Brazilian Infrastructure Centre, said
Petrobras was targeted by spying
because “after 50 years of
monopoly…no one knows the
technological secrets of deep water oil
drilling like Petrobras does.”
Describing the company as “number
one” in that area, Pires told IPS that “no
one knows more about the probability
of finding oil.”
That knowledge, he said, is coveted at a
time when possible sub-salt reserves off
the coast of West Africa are being
disputed.
But using the revelations of espionage
to once again discuss the merits of
opening up Petrobras to private
investment is “foolishness”
characteristic of “extreme nationalist”
rhetoric, he argued.
“There is a great deal of noise and
speculation about the espionage, fuelled
even by people inside the government,
to once again allege that the United
States is trying to seize Brazil ‘s wealth,”
he said.
“The sub-salt reserves are huge, and
Petrobras cannot exploit them by itself,
with its liquidity issues. We need U.S. ,
Swedish, British, Norwegian or
Australian companies to tap the
reserves,” Pires said.
Tullo Vigevani, a political science
professor at the São Paulo State
University , said he was not surprised
by the news of the alleged industrial
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continued from page 8
‘FATWA ACTIVISM’ VERSUS ‘EDUCATIONAL ACTIVISM’By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
There is much talk these days about
different kinds of activism. One hears of
political activism, social activism,
community activism, media activism,
judicial activism, and so on. A section of
Muslim religious leaders have launched
a new form of activism of their own—
what can be called ‘fatwa activism’. They
think that by issuing a flurry of Fatwas
they can reform Muslim society. So, one
hears of scores of Fatwas against un-
Islamic dress, Fatwas against women
being present at certain religious places,
Fatwas calling for the killing of people
accused of traducing the Prophet, Fatwas
demanding the banning of books by
controversial authors, Fatwas declaring
some persons as apostates and insisting
on their social boycott, Fatwas
announcing television or other things to
be Haram or forbidden, Fatwas declaring
banking to be un-Islamic and so on.
Fatwas of these sorts have been issued
in their thousands in recent years, but
almost all of them have proved to be
practically without any impact. They
have not been able to produce the
changes that they intended to.
In the modern period I know of just
one instance where a Mufti refused to
give a fatwa despite being asked to do
so. I am of the opinion that this approach
is the right one. This instance concerns a
noted Indian Islamic scholar, Maulana
Abdul Haq Haqqani, who died in 1831.
He was the author of a commentary on
the Quran. In his period, the British had
replaced gold and silver coins with paper
money. This new form of money appeared
to be unacceptable according to the rules
of traditional Fiqh or Muslim
jurisprudence. The Maulana was asked
to issue a fatwa on the matter to judge
whether this was Islamically-acceptable
or not. However, he declined to give the
fatwa, and simply said, ‘My fatwa [in this
regard] won’t work. Instead, the paper
money will.’ In such matters, this is the
correct Islamic approach to take.
The literal meaning of the word fatwa is
‘opinion’. A fatwa can take two forms. The
first is in the form of a question asked to
a Mufti by a person with a regard to a
matter directly concerning himself or
herself with the intention of gaining
guidance thereby. For instance, a
sportswoman asks a Mufti what he feels
is an islamically- legitimate sports-dress
for her. It is proper and appropriate for
the Mufti to give a fatwa in response to
this form of request.
The second way of eliciting a fatwa
relates to a particular social evil in the
wider society, regarding which an
individual approaches a Mufti for a fatwa
on his own. It is not proper for the Mufti
to give a fatwa in response to this sort of
question. If he does so, the fatwa is
unlikely to have any positive role or
influence in correcting the social ill that
it seeks to address. Instead, it can turn
out to be a cause for giving Islam a bad
name. This has happened in numerous
cases. To paraphrase the words of
Maulana Abdul Haq Haqqani whom I
referred to earlier, such Fatwas did not
work and the social ills they sought to
combat remained as before. Thus, scores
of Fatwas have been delivered on a
variety of social ills, against bida’t or
wrongful innovations in religion, against
polytheistic customs, against dowry,
against television and cinema, against
loudspeakers in mosques, against
interest on bank deposits, against men
shaving their beards, against wearing
Western clothes, against English
education and so on. But, needless to
say, all these Fatwas proved to be of little
or no effect.
According to what I have studied so far,
only a person who has a question relating
directly to himself or herself should
approach a mufti for a fatwa. A Mufti
espionage because “the energy question
is a central focus of U.S. policy.”
“It is one of the key issues of politics at a
global level,” he told IPS. “And information
is an essential element. The new discoveries
in Brazil , especially in the sub-salt area,
require tight surveillance.”
Vigevani said that above and beyond the
Brazilian government’s demand for
explanations, any solution to defend the
country’s strategic interests must be
long-term in nature.
In view of what appears to be inevitable,
he said, Brazil should invest more in
developing science and technology
“autonomously, in developing skills, and
in developing systems that are more
immune to intrusions.”
23 September, 2013
Fabiana Frayssinet has been a
correspondent for Inter Press Service since
1989 in Central America, and since 1996 in
Brazil, where she served as a contributor for
various international media outlets in radio,
print and television, including CNN en
Español, IPS, UNIVISION, Telefé de
Argentina, Radio Suecia and Radio Nederland.
Source: Inter Press Service
A R T I C L E SI N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D
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continued from page 9
should issue Fatwas only in such cases. A
fatwa must not be asked or issued when
the matter does not directly concern the
person who requests it. For instance, if a
person approaches a mufti, asking him if it
is permissible to say prayers behind the
imam of a particular mosque whose beard
is short, it is not right for the mufti to issue
a fatwa in this regard. To do so might well
cause strife and chaos (Fitna).
The question then arises of what the
proper Islamic method of social reform
is. This proper method is one of
persuasion and guidance, through
writings and lectures, and not through
delivering condemnatory Fatwas. People
should be addressed in such a way that
the advice given to them impresses itself
in their hearts and they then recognize
and act on that advice on their own. In
today’s terms, this could be termed as
‘educational activism’. Islam’s approach
to solving social ills is through this sort
of educational activism, rather than
‘fatwa activism’.
A guiding principle in this matter is to be
found in a narration which is contained
in the Sahih al-Bukhari. According to this
report, Hazrat Ayesha (r.a.) said that the
Quranic verses that were revealed in the
initial stages of Islam dealt with heaven
and hell so that in this way people’s
hearts would be softened enough to
receive the Islamic message. Then,
gradually, after people had developed
adequate capacity to accept Divine laws,
the Quranic commandments prohibiting
adultery and the consumption of alcohol
were revealed. Had these commandments
been revealed in the initial stages of Islam,
people may not have accepted them, and,
instead, might have refused to give up
adultery and consuming alcohol.
From this instance one can understand
that general social reform cannot happen
through delivering Fatwas against social
ills. Rather, for this sort of work, people’s
capacity and willingness to accept and
act on divine guidance must first be
developed. Only after this can religious
laws be enforced. To issue orders, in the
form of Fatwas, in the absence of
developing people’s capacity to accept
religious guidance is no solution at all.
Often, it is not ignorance of religious
rulings that causes social ills. Rather, the
basic cause is the lack of the appropriate
spirit among people.
This is why social reform cannot begin
with the issuing of Fatwas. Rather, it has
to begin with seeking to inculcate and
promote the right spirit among people and
to ignite their consciousness and their
capacity and willingness to abide by the
teachings of the faith. Only after this
work has been sufficiently done should
issues be explained to people using the
language of the religious law. Without
developing this inner spirit among
people, seeking to cure social ills by
issuing Fatwas from without would be of
no use. This is putting the cart before
the horse.
The only criterion for judging ‘fatwa
activism’, or, for that matter, any other
form of activism, is its efficacy in
producing the hoped-for results. Only
those methods of activism are
worthwhile that actually succeed in
achieving their goals. Action must
always be result-oriented. The present-
form of ‘fatwa activism’ must be seen and
evaluated in the light of this basic
principle.
This is a translation of Maulana
Wahiduddin Khan’s essay titled Fatwa
Activism Ya Educational Activism? in his
book Islam Aur Intihapasandi (‘Islam and
Extremism’) (Positive Thinkers Forum,
Bangalore, n.d., pp. 14-17)
14 August, 2013
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is a well
known Islamic scholar from New Delhi, India.
By Peter BuffettTHE CHARITABLE- INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
I HAD spent much of my life writing
music for commercials, film and television
and knew little about the world of
philanthropy as practiced by the very
wealthy until what I call the big bang
happened in 2006. That year, my father,
Warren Buffett, made good on his
commitment to give nearly all of his
accumulated wealth back to society. In
addition to making several large
donations, he added generously to the
three foundations that my parents had
created years earlier, one for each of their
children to run.
Early on in our philanthropic journey, my
wife and I became aware of something I
started to call Philanthropic Colonialism.
I noticed that a donor had the urge to
“save the day” in some fashion. People
(including me) who had very little
knowledge of a particular place would
think that they could solve a local
problem. Whether it involved farming
methods, education practices, job
training or business development, over
continued next page
I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S
11
and over I would hear people discuss
transplanting what worked in one setting
directly into another with little regard for
culture, geography or societal norms.
Often the results of our decisions had
unintended consequences; distributing
condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a
brothel area ended up creating a higher
price for unprotected sex.
But now I think something even more
damaging is going on.
Because of who my father is, I’ve been
able to occupy some seats I never
expected to sit in. Inside any important
philanthropy meeting, you witness heads
of state meeting with investment
managers and corporate leaders. All are
searching for answers with their right
hand to problems that others in the room
have created with their left. There are
plenty of statistics that tell us that
inequality is continually rising. At the
same time, according to the Urban
Institute, the nonprofit sector has been
steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011,
the number of nonprofits increased 25
percent. Their growth rate now exceeds
that of both the business and
government sectors. It’s a massive
business, with approximately $316 billion
given away in 2012 in the United States
alone and more than 9.4 million
employed.
Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle
to level the playing field and has
generated a growing number of
gatherings, workshops and affinity
groups.
As more lives and communities are
destroyed by the system that creates
vast amounts of wealth for the few, the
more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s
what I would call “conscience
laundering” — feeling better about
accumulating more than any one person
could possibly need to live on by
sprinkling a little around as an act of
charity.
But this just keeps the existing structure
of inequality in place. The rich sleep
better at night, while others get just
enough to keep the pot from boiling over.
Nearly every time someone feels better
by doing good, on the other side of the
world (or street), someone else is further
locked into a system that will not allow
the true flourishing of his or her nature
or the opportunity to live a joyful and
fulfilled life.
And with more business-minded folks
getting into the act, business principles
are trumpeted as an important element to
add to the philanthropic sector. I now hear
people ask, “what’s the R.O.I.?” when it
comes to alleviating human suffering, as
if return on investment were the only
measure of success. Microlending and
financial literacy (now I’m going to upset
people who are wonderful folks and a few
dear friends) — what is this really about?
People will certainly learn how to
integrate into our system of debt and
repayment with interest. People will rise
above making $2 a day to enter our world
of goods and services so they can buy
more. But doesn’t all this just feed the
beast?
I’m really not calling for an end to
capitalism; I’m calling for humanism.
Often I hear people say, “if only they had
what we have” (clean water, access to
health products and free markets, better
education, safer living conditions). Yes,
these are all important. But no
“charitable” (I hate that word)
intervention can solve any of these
issues. It can only kick the can down the
road.
My wife and I know we don’t have the
answers, but we do know how to listen.
As we learn, we will continue to support
conditions for systemic change.
It’s time for a new operating system. Not
a 2.0 or a 3.0, but something built from
the ground up. New code.
What we have is a crisis of imagination.
Albert Einstein said that you cannot
solve a problem with the same mind-set
that created it. Foundation dollars should
be the best “risk capital” out there.
There are people working hard at
showing examples of other ways to live
in a functioning society that truly creates
greater prosperity for all (and I don’t mean
more people getting to have more stuff).
Money should be spent trying out
concepts that shatter current structures
and systems that have turned much of
the world into one vast market. Is
progress really Wi-Fi on every street
corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl
on the planet gets sold for sex. But as
long as most folks are patting themselves
on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got
a perpetual poverty machine.
It’s an old story; we really need a new
one.
26 July, 2013
Peter Buffett is a composer and a chairman
of the NoVo Foundation.
Source: The New York Times
continued from page 10
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