April 12th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
China seems to be coming under heavy pressure with the world leaders threatening to keep away from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this summer. The latest on the list is Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations. The Independent newspaper describes this “as capping an extraordinary week of public relations disasters for the Chinese government as it struggles to contain international anger over its policies towards Tibet and Sudan.”
“Yesterday, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing lashed out at the United States Congress for passing a resolution on Wednesday urging China to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama. ‘It is confusing black with white and is vicious-minded of certain members of the US House of Representatives to not only fail to condemn the attacks, smashing, looting and arson in Lhasa … but rather to point the spear at the Chinese government and people.’
“Mr Brown (British PM) would be among world leaders not attending the opening ceremonies in Beijing. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy is also said to be considering staying away, while Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had earlier made it clear she would not attend the opening. In the US, all three candidates for the White House, including John McCain, the Republican nominee, have urged President George Bush to decline the invitation.”
Meanwhile Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama does not advocate a boycott of the Beijing Olympics over the Chinese crackdown in his homeland, but says it is for the individual leaders to decide whether to attend the Games. ”I basically wish that their (China’s) world event should take place smoothly.” He said his main message to China was ”We are not against you. And I’m not seeking separation.”
Chinese President Hu Jintao told the visiting Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: “Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem. It is a problem either to safeguard national unification or to split the motherland.”
Mr Hu repeated China’s position that it was ready to meet the Dalai Lama, but only if he met certain pre-conditions, such as desisting from trying to “split the motherland”, “incite violence” and “ruin the Beijing Olympics”.
So if both the Chinese president and the Dalai Lama are “willing to meet” to sort out the problem what’s the hitch? Why don’t the world leaders confront both the Chinese president and the Dalai Lama and decide on the date and venue for the meeting? Why wait?
China has put up an interesting/informative Olympics Games website…click here.
With the most significant NATO summit in decades about to begin, among other issues, the problem of what to do about Afghanistan is high on the list. Chief among European concerns in this regard is the apparent lack of a strategy beyond killing members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. For France’s Liberation, Bernard Guetta writes of British plans that France should take part in:
“The Taliban have learned from the defeat they suffered in 2001 … They now realize that they will achieve nothing if they persist with their cocktail of jihad and Sharia; they have become less fanatical, more political, and we could in a word, seek a compromise with them.” As far as the Americans are concerned, Guetta writes, “This is where the French reinforcements could play not only a military role, but a political one as well. They could permit the assertion of a Franco-British pole in Afghanistan, which would be so significant that it could encourage George Bush’s successor to endorse this strategy.”
By Bernard Guetta
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
April 1, 2008
France - Liberation - Original Article (France)
Attention! Everything seems to plead - naturally - against sending more French troops to Afghanistan. But the Atlanticism of Nicolas Sarkozy is so compulsive, his foreign policy so confused, this war in particular - so close to being completely lost - that we have no choice but to conclude that to do so is merely an intolerable, dangerous, positive gesture toward George Bush. As it is, this decision is nothing but troubling, but beware! Contrary to the Iraqi adventure, the Afghan intervention was approved by the United Nations. It’s legal. It is, above all, legitimate, since the Taliban not only protected the organizers of the September 11 attacks, but seven years later, their victory would become a tragedy for this country and would complete the destabilization of neighboring Pakistan. Even worse, it would strengthen the networks of Jihadists giving them a territorial sanctuary and more importantly, nourish their myth about the inevitable defeat of the “crusaders” before the rising masses of Islam. Read the rest of this entry »
How difficult will NATO’s upcoming annual summit be? According to this analysis from Russia’s Novosti news service, beyond the issue of getting more NATO troops to the danger zone in Afghanistan, there is the touchy subject of NATO expansion and the somewhat mysterious decision - made on March 6 - that neither Ukraine nor Georgia will be considered for admission this year. Novosti’s Andrei Fedyashin writes in part, “Germany could potentially ‘break lots of dishes’ … The U.S. and Britain have been unable to persuade Berlin to send German Army units to the south where there is a real war. … The Greeks are threatening to ruin the picture with an issue that seems extremely ridiculous … The Greeks are flatly refusing to permit Macedonia’s entry into NATO until it changes its name. Greece argues that Macedonia is part of northern Greece, is the birthplace of Alexander the Great, and that it won’t allow anyone to take that glorious name away from them!’
By Andrei Fedyashin
Translated By Igor Medvivev
March 3, 2008
Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)
MOSCOW: So, NATO foreign ministers at a working meeting in Brussels decided - for the time being - not to add Georgia and Ukraine to the Membership Action Plan. The plan represents something like a formal “road map” for NATO. By following the road signs and landmarks, potential candidates should eventually reach the gates of alliance headquarters in Brussels. But Ukraine and Georgia haven’t made it to the roadside yet. That decision was taken at a NATO meeting on March 6, which was called to discuss the upcoming NATO summit in April in Bucharest.
NATO, it must be said, hasn’t given up on plans to bring Yushchenko’s Kiev and Saakashvili’s Tbilisi into the alliance. Rather, this is a postponement. In practice it means that they won’t be any closer to NATO for at least a year, and so can’t become members for at least another four years. The arithmetic is simple: implementing the plan’s requirements usually takes a year or two, so another two years pass before candidates receive official invitations to NATO, which is usually done at the annual summit.
There are several reasons for the decision in Brussels. Although the U.S. is pressing for early admission, NATO veterans like France and Germany strongly recommended this delay, in order - to quote a German diplomat, “not to further antagonize Moscow, with which relations are bad enough due to the ‘Kosovo precedent,’ quarrels over new [U.S.] missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic and differences over conventional arms control in Europe.”
European diplomats of “old NATO” didn’t hide their views that to alienate Russia further in order to please Tbilisi and Kiev, would be a serious mistake. Especially when in Moscow a new President - Dmitry Medvedev — is taking the reins of power. For whatever reason, in Europe he is widely perceived to be pro-Western, unlike Putin. So it is thought that accession provide a “good opportunity” to revive relations with Moscow, which have greatly deteriorated over the past four years.
All of these lines of reasoning are valid. But, there’s one more issue that now seems to outweigh all other considerations. That is the forthcoming NATO summit in Bucharest in April. The allies head to the summit so heavy with differences, simply no one wanted to squeeze the ” Georgia-Ukraine trifles” onto the agenda.
The thing is that this summit simply must be a success. After all, it is slated to be the largest in the history of the alliance. Moreover, it will be attended by all 26 heads of state and government. The invited participants include all the non-NATO countries of the anti-terrorist coalition in Afghanistan, financial donors such as Japan, in addition to officials from the United Nations and the European Union. Also waiting in Budapest will be outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin. The media are already emphasizing that this will be the first time that Russia will officially participate at a NATO summit.
February 15th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
This is a Guest Voice column by Alan Boswell, an American college student who has been studying in Kenya since August 2007. Guest Voice posts to not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
What’s Really Happening In Kenya
by Alan Boswell
“Tribal violence”? “Ethnic cleansing”? These words have been splashing in the international headlines recently as Kenya’s flawed presidential election in late December has opened up its suppressed undercurrents of inequality and tribal politics for all the world to see.
For the West, these types of headlines are startling and seem radiated from a different world, a different age. If these phrases don’t end up resurrecting age-old philosophical questions on human nature, then they tend to just lend to the further dismissal of the entire “dark continent” by the rest.
However, such quick off-handedness is unfortunate.
In Kenya, these headlines are misleading, and its recent events are neither inexplicably inhuman nor are they really fundamentally tribal in nature. Instead, its quick drop into instability was a political fall caused by a complexity of economic, social, and historical factors intertwining into the tangled mess the world is currently watching.
Historically, contemporary ethnic communities in Kenya (and similarly in much of Africa) are as much a creation of their colonial masters (in Kenya’s case, the British) as any pre-colonial ethnic identity. Through a divide-and-rule strategy that attempted to pre-empt broad dissent, the British firmly separated Kenya into different tribes, cementing what was previously often much more ambiguous and shifting social constructions.
The British policies of separation instead of unification created tribal animosities in the battle over scarce economic resources and political privileges, purposely stunting any nationalist sentiment from forming and threatening its rule. For instance, national associations and political parties were not allowed; instead, only intra-tribal groups could organize and lobby their colonial rulers.
Today, these colonial policies are all too evident in the post-colonial Kenyan state and have taken on new dimensions since independence. In a country where governance and rule have operated largely on a patron-client system, these tribal groups (clients) rally behind their political leaders (patrons) in the expectation of receiving a larger piece of the pie in proportion with greater political power. This demon of tribal politics has proven tough to kill.
In short, the current animosities stem from frustrations of economic inequalities and political back-handedness, not from any pre-colonial, age-old hostilities between tribes.
But how, though, in a nation as developed and civilized as Kenya—which was considered a beacon for the rest of the region until now—could all this “barbarism” break out? Read the rest of this entry »
December 31st, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
There are many unanswered questions regarding Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. The latest is the AP report that senior American officials have revealed that “the United States provided a steady stream of intelligence to Benazir Bhutto about threats against her before the former Pakistani prime minister was assassinated and advised her aides on how to boost security, although key suggestions appear to have gone unheeded.”
The report adds that even the Pakistan government was provided this information. “The Bush administration has quietly joined calls for Pakistan to allow international experts to join the probe into Bhutto’s Dec. 27 slaying. The officials said they expected an announcement soon that investigators from Britain’s Scotland Yard would be asked to play a significant role. Any U.S. involvement would be limited and low-key, they said.
“Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said Monday that his government would welcome outside experts to help investigate the assassination, according to The New York Times. But Durrani said his government would not endorse a separate, outside investigation.” More here…
(Meanwhile The Indian Express reports: “Accusing the Pakistan government of trying to spin its way out of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, her husband and PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari has said that the Pervez Musharraf regime had the most to gain from the former premier’s death. Click here for more…)
The Independent has published an article by Tariq Ali, a radical Pakistani who made a name for himself in Europe : “Meanwhile there is a country in crisis. Having succeeded in saving his own political skin by imposing a state of emergency, Mr Musharraf still lacks legitimacy. Even a rigged election is no longer possible on 8 January despite the stern admonitions of President George Bush and his unconvincing Downing Street adjutant.
“What is clear is that the official consensus on who killed Benazir is breaking down, except on BBC television. It has now been made public that, when Benazir asked the US for a Karzai-style phalanx of privately contracted former US Marine bodyguards, the suggestion was contemptuously rejected by the Pakistan government, which saw it as a breach of sovereignty.
“Now both Hillary Clinton and Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are pinning the convict’s badge on Mr Musharraf and not al-Qa’ida for the murder, a sure sign that sections of the US establishment are thinking of dumping the President.”
“A solution to the crisis is available. This would require Mr Musharraf’s replacement by a less contentious figure, an all-party government of unity to prepare the basis for genuine elections within six months, and the reinstatement of the sacked Supreme Court judges to investigate Benazir’s murder without fear or favour. It would be a start.”
Roger Cohen offers an intereting analysis on Pakistan…Click here…
Another reports says: “The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in rigging the country’s upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.”
Does the most recent U.S. intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear program demonstrate once again the politicization of American espionage? According to this op-ed article from Le Figaro by the director and research director of the French Research Center on Intelligence, ‘The new NIE is a fake. Iran continues to pursue its nuclear weapons program, but the Americans have decided to backtrack to save face. Confronted with catastrophic consequences for the balance of power in the Middle East, Washington abandoned the military option. This [NIE] is deliberate American disinformation.’
By Éric Denécé and Alain Rodier, director and research director, respectively, of the Research Center on intelligence Matters (a Paris-based research institute).
Translated By James Jacobson
December 20, 2007
France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)
On December 3, the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI), a body attached to the White House that centralizes information provided by all American intelligence agencies, issued a report (a National Intelligence Estimate or NIE ) which guessed that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in the autumn of 2003. This document, drafted in mid-2007, says that for the immediate future, Iran in not a nuclear threat, and that the Iranian regime is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than the U.S. had thought back in 2005. But the report stressed that Teheran continues to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, and it estimates that if the Iranian military effort were launched again, the country could produce nuclear warheads between 2010 and 2015.
This is a radical about-face. Released in 2005, the previous NIE on the Iranian nuclear program emphasized Teheran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons. It was on the basis of this report that President Bush called for more sanctions and was contemplating the use of force against Teheran.
The NIE is a summary of what the various U.S. intelligence agencies forecast on topics of major interest. It is drafted at the request of the political authorities or members of Congress and is not the result of a jointly-executed analysis. The report is prepared by DNI analysts. The text is then circulated to the agencies concerned to collect their input. This is a process that necessarily takes several months. Sometimes the services that supply intelligence on the subject don’t even recognize their contributions to the final report.
The intelligence at the heart of this NIE comes mainly from intercepted telephone conversations between Iranian military officials, in which they complain about the decision to halt weapons development. These wiretappings were allegedly collected by the Government Communications Headquarters , the British eavesdropping service.
In the world of intelligence, it is customary to attribute to the interception services, information obtained from human sources that one wants to protect. Along these lines, it is legitimate for one to consider the case of Ali Reza Asghari, the Revolutionary Guard general who defected at the beginning of the year .
SEVERAL ASSUMPTIONS CAN BE FORMULATED
It is important to treat the content of this report with great caution. Indeed since the end of 2002, the politicization of American intelligence, which has been under constant pressure from the authorities, has prompted the presentation of the facts based on points of view that favor the political objectives of the White House or the Pentagon. A few examples: the creation of the Office of Special Plans in order to justify the war in Iraq; the masquerade February 2003 session at the United Nations, where despite the presence of director George Tenet beside Colin Powell, members of the CIA were shocked by the assertions of the Secretary of State WATCH ; the revelation of the real position [outing] of CIA officer Valérie Plame in order to undermine her husband, a diplomat whose report pointed out that Iraq didn’t acquire uranium from Nigeria, and so on. Examples of the manipulation of the facts by American authorities are legion. As a result, several assumptions can be made about the effect sought by releasing this latest NIE.
Residents of a county that calls itself the American Riviera will start drinking sewage today. Recycled, refined and filtered through aquifers, but still…
The Orange County Water District in southern California will turn on the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water. The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the dubious, will be getting close scrutiny from authorities elsewhere.
Water shortages have been making news this year, not only in California, but Florida, Georgia and across the country. The federal government projects that at least 36 states will face shortfalls within five years from a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl and waste.
The problem is universal. A UN report has predicted that more than half of humanity will be living with water shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines within 50 years.
New technology may ease the problem, but awareness and conservation will be required, even more so than with global warming, where changes in public behavior can do only so much to help. (For a start, we could re-think excessive lawn-watering, car-washing, etc. with tap water that might be used for drinking rather than environmentally damaging bottled water.)
“The need to reduce water waste and inefficiency is greater now than ever before,” says Benjamin Grumbles of the Environmental Protection Agency. “Water efficiency is the wave of the future.”
November 11th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
An outspoken critic of the Burmese junta, the United Nations human rights envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro arrived in military-ruled Myanmar on Sunday, his first visit in four years. He would investigate alleged abuses during September’s bloody crackdown on democracy protests, says Reuters.
“One aide said the Myanmar authorities, who responded to international outrage at their suppression of the monk-led protests by granting Pinheiro a rare visa, had shown ‘cooperative engagement’.
“He is due to report back to the U.N. Human Rights Council at its next session on December 10-14, but was expected to hold a news conference in Bangkok on November 16 immediately after his trip.” More here…
Meanwhile Amnesty International said Friday it had new evidence of ‘grave and ongoing’ human rights violations in Myanmar despite government claims that normality had returned to the country. Read on…
Another report says that efforts in recent years by the United Nations to achieve reconciliation between the ruling military and pro-democracy forces in Myanmar have been punctuated by frustration, false hopes and failure.
The Guardian says: “Detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi received rare front-page billing Saturday in Myanmar’s state-controlled press, which said the ruling military junta was ‘putting energy” into democratic reforms demanded by the international community.
“Suu Kyi, under house arrest, was allowed to meet leaders of her opposition party Friday for the first time in more than three years and told them she believes the generals intend to work toward democracy.
“It was the third time in a month that Suu Kyi’s image has appeared in state-controlled media, which refused for years to print her picture or even refer to her by name. Suu Kyi has been detained for 12 of the past 18 years, and continuously since May 2003.”
“Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the U.N.’s independent rights investigator for Myanmar, had been barred from visiting the country since November 2003. He has said he will abandon his current visit unless he gets full support from the junta.”
Photo above: UN envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro (Courtesy Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/Getty Images)
November 9th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Is there a thaw emerging between Burma’s (Myanmar) Aung San Suu Kyi and the military Government? A latest news report says that detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has expressed her readiness to work with the military Government in the process aimed at bringing political reconciliation.
“In the interest of the nation, I stand ready to cooperate with the Government in order to make this process of dialogue a success and welcome the necessary good and welcome role of the United Nations to help facilitate our efforts in this regard,” Suu Kyi said in a statement which was released by United Nations Envoy Ibrahim Gambari on her behalf.
According to The Times of India: “The statement was given to Gambari by Suu Kyi during their meeting in Yangon yesterday. Gambari read out the statement on arrival in Singapore.
“In an encouraging sign that the military junta might be softening its stand, it invited Gambari for another visit which, a United Nations spokesperson said, would take place within the next few weeks. It also allowed Suu Kyi to meet with her party leaders.”
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for four years, and has spent 11 years in detention since her party - the National League for Democracy - and its allies won the 1990 election with over 80 per cent of the parliamentary seats. But the military junta refused to recognize the elections.
Another news report says that similar apparent breakthroughs have occurred in the past and optimists have been proved wrong each time. For details click here…
The IHT reports: Aung San Suu Kyi met Friday with members of her party, the National League for Democracy, for the first time in three years and held talks with Aung Kyi, the general appointed as a liaison by Myanmar’s military government, news agencies reported from Yangon.
October 14th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
A Conversation with Dr. Jack Kornfield, American Buddhist Teacher trained in Thailand, Burma and India…on Burma, Buddhism, H.H. the Dalai Lama, and non-violence.
Kornfield is one of the foremost teachers of Theravada Buddhism in the West. He was trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India (He is on the far right in the photo). He graduated from Dartmouth in 1967, joined the Peace Corps in Public Health Service in northeast Thailand, home to some of the last forest monasteries of Buddhist monks and nuns.
There Buddhist master Ajahn Chah became his teacher for many years. Returning to the United States, Kornfield took a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and became a founding teacher of the Buddhist Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California.
I met Jack some years ago when we were both teaching at a symposium in D.C. His father suddenly took a turn for the worse, and Jack was called away. I joined in teaching Jack’s group in order to help, and we have had a friendship since then.
Now 62 years old, he is a soft spoken, devout man with a secular sense of humor lurking beneath the surface, a wonderful trait in a religious. He meets yearly with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and has published twenty books.
Here is a part of our conversation from October 9, 2007, about the use of violence against violence; the potential use of violence to effect change in Burma… from one man’s deeply Buddhist point of view.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés: “Jack, Buddhists often seem simpatico with others I grew up amongst and admired; Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Dunkards, priests, brothers and nuns of The Holy Cross … most all being people who often managed to act calmly in helping to aright injustices in the midst of mayhem all around. It’s one thing to be calm in a peaceful mountain monastery, and quite another to act calmly on a festering street corner in East L.A.
“But, right now, looking between the worlds at the murderous mayhems of our times, many hearts are breaking for the millionth time, Jack, and this time, it’s Burma again. On the newsblog I write for, Themoderatevoice.com, some thoughtful commenters have said, amongst other cogent ideas, that the Burmese monks and nuns perhaps ought arm themselves and overtake the junta.
“As an old believer, I know a literal warrior pledges to strive to act with courage in the face of scorn, ridicule and aggression… but not to act in violence. Yet, I know there are warrior traditions in my faiths, amongst them, the Knights, and that there is a warrior-monk tradition in Buddhism from times of old too, as amongst some of the Samurai. Neither of these ancient traditions are portrayed well in modern works, seeming instead to have been severed from their mystical underpinnings…
“… But, thinking of the Burmese again, can holy monks and nuns arm themselves in aggression? Can this be integrated somehow in the non-violent heart of Buddhism?”
Jack Kornfield:”I’d tell you a story about His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. A group of young Tibetans came to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. They told him they were very distraught by the suffering of the Tibetans, and thought they should go back into Tibet armed. They said, We have lost temples, nuns, monks, our culture. We want Stinger missiles for we have nomads who know the mountains and the Chinese don’t know our mountains, and we can launch from there.
“The Dalai Lama put his head in his hands and wept. He reminded them of the Buddhist precept of no killing, no harming living beings, the precept the Dalai Lama has taught all his life as the incarnate head of Buddhism. His Holiness told the young Tibetans, I don’t know if I have done the right thing; but I’ll step down if I have done it wrong. If I believed I have taught untruth, I would resign.
“I’ll tell you another story. We have in our history as Buddhists, many times of being treated unjustly… Yet, I knew Maha Ghosananda, the holy man of Cambodia. After Pol Pot, one-third of the population of Cambodia was massacred. Ninety-five percent of the monks and nuns were felled.
“We were in Thailand at the time, and traveled to where refugees were from Cambodia. And Maha Ghosananda came as the elder to the refugee camps, and he asked permission from UN to reopen a Buddhist temple right there in the camps.
“It was dangerous to do. The Khmer Rouge were underground in the refugee camps. The KR said to the refugees, You go to this man, this ceremony, and we will kill you later.
“But, there in the midst of thousands and thousands of tiny bamboo huts, Maha Ghosananda rang a sacred bell.
“25,000 refugees came; the ones who’d’ had their village temples burned, the ones who’d survived the murders by the Khmer Rouge of their elders, their children, their sisters, brothers, parents, so that now a family was one grandparent and two children left, or one uncle and one niece, left.
“Mahan Ghosananda chanted in Cambodian and Sanskrit, chanting from the Dhammapada, that Hatred never ceases by hatred, that hatred is conquered by love, that this is the ancient and eternal law…
“25 thousand Cambodians who had not heard the holy scripture aloud in years, were chanting and weeping. Read the rest of this entry »
October 12th, 2007 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
Mainstream media outlets have already moved on from Burma. What is it now, to them, but a story of the past? What more, to them, is there to say?
Not much, not much at all, there are new and far more sensationalistic stories to tell, upon which to report. And for the mainstream media outlets of our sensation-driven society, what is important about the news is what is new.
This is a generalization, of course, and something of an exaggeration. The reporting continues, to a point, to a limited extent, to the extent that serious outlets like the BBC continue to focus on what is not an isolated but an ongoing story, one that requires out ongoing attention.
And there is news, activity, something upon which to report, a slap on the wrist, less than that, from the U.N.:
The UN Security Council has adopted a statement deploring Burma’s military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
The agreement came after China lifted its objections to a statement first drafted by the US, UK and France.
It represents the first time the 15-nation body has taken any formal action over Burma.
The move indicates a shift of position by China, which had previously used its veto to stop the council from criticising Burma’s military junta.
The statement “strongly deplores the use of violence against peaceful demonstrators” in Burma and calls on the junta and all other parties “to work together toward a de-escalation of the situation and a peaceful solution”.
It also calls for the early release of “all political prisoners and remaining detainees”, urging the junta to prepare for a “genuine dialogue” with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The statement — which, unlike a resolution, requires the consent of all 15 council members to be adopted — was issued by Ghana’s UN Ambassador Leslie Christian, the council’s president.
A statement. Great. Ooooooooh. I’m sure the totalitarians are trembling in fear. Some comments: Read the rest of this entry »
October 4th, 2007 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
A U.N. special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, has held talks with the totalitarian regime in Burma and has also met with Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and one of the leaders of the pro-democracy movement in that country:
[Gambari] had waited four days to see Gen Than Shwe before the chairman of Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) made himself available.
No details have emerged but Mr Gambari was intending to urge the general “to cease the repression of peaceful protest”, release detainees and embrace democracy and human rights, a UN spokesman said before the talks.
The US called on the UN envoy to press upon the military the need for a “real and serious political dialogue with all relative parties”.
The SPDC — i.e., the totalitarian military junta — has no interest in democracy and human rights. As I and many others have argued before, it will take tough international sanctions and above all the support of China and India, the two major powers propping up the SPDC, for any such pressure to work, that is, to bring about real change.
September 30th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The video and YouTube age makes if more difficult for cover stories. One of the images literally flashing around the world is of Cameraman Nagai Kenji being shot dead from the back. It’s there for everyone to see - a graphic document of repression:
Once upon a time if outrages occurred, they could be contained. Governments, organizations, celebrities or security forces could put out tidy cover stories and most people wouldn’t notice.
But then came the video camera revolution which spread the word throughout the county and often beyond. Then came the 24-news cycle with cable news networks craving more new info and images to fill hours naysayers once scornfully said pioneer CNN could NEVER fill and keep audiences.
And now we’re into the YouTube era, where anyone official or otherwise can post an image on the Internet that will be carried throughout the world — not just influencing those (particularly young people) who increasingly get news online, but television programs, print news editors and television news directors who find interesting tidbits that spark program or story ideas.
Myanmar is now being pitchforked into the headlines with more and more stories each day. For instances, as you read this:
China is the key to political change in Myanmar, not UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari who has met the military junta, the former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said here.
But there was no sign that Beijing would change tack and pressure the junta, Bolton told BBC television while attending Britain’s opposition Conservative party conference in Blackpool, England.
‘I think it’s very unclear that (Gambari) will be able to achieve anything. I have a lot of respect for Ibrahim Gambari personally but he’s in a very difficult position because the Security Council is divided,’ he said.
Gambari was dispatched to Myanmar at the weekend by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to intervene after the junta unleashed a military campaign to shut down mass protests several days ago, leaving at least 13 dead and hundreds arrested.
A worried Pope Benedict XVI added his voice Sunday to calls from abroad for Myanmar’s military leaders to peacefully end their crackdown on protesters demanding democracy.
Benedict made his first public comments on the deadly crackdown a few hours after a U.N. envoy met with some Myanmar government leaders and detained opposition leader Aung San Sui Kyi, whose steadfast, peaceful challenge to the regime earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She has spent years under house arrest.
“I am following with great trepidation the very serious events” in Myanmar, the pope told pilgrims at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.
He expressed his spiritual closeness to the “dear” people of Myanmar during their “painful trial” and he asked the entire Catholic Church to follow his lead in praying intensely for them.
He said he “strongly hoped that a peaceful solution can be found for the good of the country.”
And he should worry: according to Al-Jazeera, the military’s control is tighter than ever:
Ahmadinejad Invites U.N. Inspectors to Search for Homosexuals
Permits Use of Advanced Gaydar
Just days after asserting that there are no homosexuals in Iran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today invited United Nations inspectors into his country to search for homosexuals.
“We have nothing to hide,†Mr. Ahmadinejad said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. “You can search the entire country – even the airport bathrooms.â€
While some senior U.S. diplomats expressed skepticism about the Iranian president’s offer to allow U.N. inspectors to search his country for homosexuals, Mr. Ahmadinejad attempted to silence the skeptics by permitting the use of “advanced gaydar technology†as part of the proposed inspections.
“In Iran we have the most advanced gaydar in the world and we are prepared to share it with you,†he said.
Hollywood activists are easy targets, often earnestly silly and self-congratulating, but a shining exception is Mia Farrow and her work to stop the genocide in Darfur. This week, her efforts provoked two world powers-—the People’s Republic of China and Steven Spielberg.
During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.
Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.
One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.
In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: “Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur’s genocide?”
A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.
She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.
If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.
July 24th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Some musicians seem like they’re made to lead the world. Some seem born citizens of the earth, regardless whichever country, heritage, religion they’re born into. Regardless what their parents wanted for them; regardless of childhood introjects… they travel the world, often as what I’d call ‘rememberers,’ musicians who help us remember that water can flow through stone.
If spoken words are capable of too easily offending some, destroying and dividing us, then music seems far more often able to unite, to cross tightly controlled checkpoints that bar babblers and blabbers, but let through musicians carrying a stringed, wind, or percussion instrument… like water through stone. Maybe the musicians who are Rememberers could for a while, lead the detente talks, the conciliation talks, the cease fires and peace agreements. Arion of Methymna and Orpheus of Thrace are celebrated in song to this day, for Arion surrounded Thebes with walls by the power of music, and Orpheus tamed the wild beasts by the mere might of song. Some element inside the mythic is always very real.
Tisha B’av is about mourning what has been destroyed and finding a way to build a new, even more beautiful temple, whether cultural, personal, religious or creative. Here are some musicians who are pylons and piers and guy wires and girders for bridges across roiling waters:
Jewish-Muslim music: Gerard Edery…”I’m not naive about the political reality, or about how polarized Jews and Arabs have become.” Edery is a singer and classical guitarist …Standing before a room full of Muslims, this Jewish musician launched into “a very Jewish song” in Hebrew about Elijah the prophet. Then, “without even thinking,” he started teaching the audience the words. “At first, I sensed a hesitation from the audience… After a few measures…700 to 800 Muslims [were] singing with me in Hebrew.” Edery, who was born in Casablanca, moved to Paris at age 4 and then the United States at age 8… Like those of Central Asia, Jews and Muslims in pre-Inquisition Spain, the place of Edery’s maternal ancestry, “shared similar, musical, poetical and artistic” license. There was a tolerance and a cross-pollination…”I’m not a politician or a scholar. I’m a musician. And I believe in doing what I can through music…: “We should all delve into our past and embrace all our traditions, whether Jewish or Muslim. Let me sing to you in Arabic and you can sing to me in Hebrew and let’s realize, very specifically, that we Jews and Arabs are from the same soil.”
Hindu-Muslim music: Bismillah Khan’s ancestors were court musicians who played in Naqqar khana in the princely states of Bhojpur. His father was a shehnai player in the court of Maharaja Keshav Prasad. Despite his fame, Khan’s lifestyle retained old world Benares: his chief mode of transport was the cycle rickshaw. A man of tenderness, he believed in remaining private, and that “musicians are supposed to be heard and not seen.” He was a pious ShiÃa Muslim and also, like many Indian musicians regardless of creed, a devotee of Mother Saraswati. He often played at various temples and on the banks of the river Ganga in Varanasi, besides playing outside the famous Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. Khan is one of the finest musicians in post-independent Indian Classical music and one of the best examples of Hindu-Muslim unity in India. He said, “Even if the world ends, the music will still survive… Music has no caste”.
AfricanAmerican-Jewish music: In New York, The American Symphony Orchestra wove this: concerts that “contribute to the current political debate by presenting a moment of history when matters were different. Not nostalgia, but rather the exploration of different models from which to draw inspiration for the present and future. The composers on this program born into Jewish families who integrated African-American materials in their work–Gershwin, Gruenberg and Gould–did so in ways which earned the respect and admiration of their African-American contemporaries and colleagues. The composers of African-American descent–Price, Ellington and Kay–who integrated European traditions with African-American traditions, did so in ways which earned the respect and admiration of their non-African-American contemporaries and colleagues. Read the rest of this entry »
Where does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it’s grown sick and cynical — partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values.
At a session in Geneva last week, the council — established a year ago in an attempt to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission — listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both “rapporteurs” in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a “consensus” in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord.
While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” In other words, Israel (or “Palestine,” in the council’s terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That’s in keeping with the record of the council’s first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government [My emphasis].
Genocide in Sudan, child slavery and religious persecution in China, mass repression in Zimbabwe and Burma, state-sponsored murder in Syria and Russia — and, for that matter, suicide bombings by Arab terrorist movements — will not receive systematic attention from the world body charged with monitoring human rights. That is reserved only for Israel, a democratic country that has been guilty of human rights violations but also has been under sustained assault from terrorists and governments openly committed to its extinction.
The old human rights commission, which was disparaged by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan for casting “a shadow on the United Nations system as a whole,” frequently issued unbalanced condemnations of Israel but also typically adopted half a dozen resolutions a year aimed at the worst human rights abusers. For the new council, Israel is the only target. Eighteen of the 19 states dubbed “the worst of the worst” by the monitoring group Freedom House (Israel is not on the list) were ignored by the council in its first year. One mission was dispatched to examine the situation in Darfur. When it returned with a report criticizing the Sudanese government, the council refused to endorse it or accept its recommendations.
The regime of Gen. Omar al-Bashir, which is responsible for at least 200,000 deaths in Darfur, didn’t just escape any censure. Sudan was a co-sponsor on behalf of the Arab League of the latest condemnations of Israel, adopted last week.
This record is far darker than Kofi Annan’s “shadow.” You’d think it would be intolerable to the democratic states that sit on the council. Sadly, it’s not. Several of them — India, South Africa, Indonesia — have regularly supported the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement in their assaults on Israel and defense of Cuba, Belarus and Sudan. The council’s chairman, who rammed through last week’s decisions without a vote, is a diplomat from Mexico.
The European Union includes countries holding eight of the council’s 47 seats. It has made no serious effort to focus the council’s attention on the world’s worst human rights violators. According to a report by the independent group UN Watch, the European Union “has for the most part abandoned initiating any country-specific resolutions.” At one point before last week’s meeting, the European Union threatened to quit the council, effectively killing it. Yet when the meeting ended, Europe’s representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, said that while the package of procedural decisions singling out Israel “is certainly not ideal . . . we have a basis we can work with.”
What about Western human rights groups — surely they cannot accept such a travesty of human rights advocacy? In fact, they can. While critical of the council, New York-based Human Rights Watch said its procedural decisions “lay a foundation for its future work.” Global advocacy director Peggy Hicks told me that the council’s focus on Israel was in part appropriate, because of last year’s war in Lebanon, and was in part caused by Israel itself, because of its refusal to cooperate with missions the council dispatched. (Sudan also refused to cooperate but was not rebuked.) Hicks said she counted only nine condemnations, not 11.
Never mind how you count them: Is there a point at which a vicious and unfounded campaign to delegitimize one country — which happens to be populated mostly by Jews — makes it unconscionable to collaborate with the body that conducts it? “That could happen, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near there,” Hicks said.
That’s the human rights movement, seven years into a century that’s off to a bad start.
I disagree with Diehl on only one point. He says the target of the delegitimization effort is a country that “happens” to be populated mostly by Jews. I would use the word “because” instead. Perhaps that’s what he really means; if so, why not come out and say it?
June 23rd, 2007 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
The outgoing UN envoy for the Israel-Palestinian conflict thinks he’s figured out where the UN is going wrong: it’s too “tender” towards Israel and allows them to make “unrealistic” demands of the Palestinians like…recognition.
