Author: Mike

The storming of the school in North Ossetia, by Russian forces to ‘free’ hostages taken by suspected Chechen rebels, is exceptionally tragic. Hundreds of hostages – school children, their teachers and other school staff – have been killed or wounded.



Of course, the unimaginable grief of that community will turn to incomprehensible anger and calls for even more violence against the Chechens.

Sensing the mood, Vladimir Putin’s address to the Russian people was full of promises of tightening security because ‘ We (Russia) showed weakness, and weak people are beaten‘. Vowing to defeat the ‘hostage-takers’ and ‘terrorists’, all that can be expected now from Mr Putin is an even harsher repression of the Chechens.

By targeting the unquestionably innocent – the children, Chechnya’s freedom fighters have converted most of the international community’s sympathy for their cause to angry disbelief. Conscientious observers of the Chechen struggle cannot help but be repulsed by the taking of child hostages, nor of the ensuing terror caused to them. By the same token, Russian forces do not have a track record of negotiation – so despite their claims that no storming of the school was planned, it is possible that they provided a devastating catalyst to bloody conclusion.

What propels a human being to carry out a suicide bombing, the terrorism of children and such desperate acts is often depicted variously as fanaticism, intensive brainwashing of the impressionable youth etc . These seem to me to be simple but unsatisfactory answers, however well they read as headlines. Very rarely does one find reference to historical injustices that have condemned entire generations of a group to subservience and oppression, nor of blame of those that wield power.

Condemned to abject poverty and devoid of an identity, how are the youth of such oppressed groups such as the Chechens and the Palestinians expected to be anything but fanatical to a cause of liberation or any means thereof that may deliver liberation of their kin.

In any conflict, it serves little purpose to split hairs on the damage of battles. Sure, the way a battle is fought must be observed and recorded to ensure that ,even in conflict, human rights are upheld. But in terms of non-violent conflict resolution, which is what negates the need for war in the first place, honest and open discussions must be allowed. Injustice and oppression must be brought to light, acknowledged and resolved before any lasting peace can be achieved. This is as true in Chechnya as it is in Palestine and as it has been seen to work (see various international tribunals) in South Africa (in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission). The past must be exorcised for the promise of the future.

The Russian government, unfortunately, does not have the maturity to make the bold moves required to end the hostilities and atrocities in Chechnya. Vladimir Putin, as other premiers before him, is lost in the red haze of battle. He can see no other way to resolve the issue in Chechnya except through ever increasing repression of the Chechens independence struggle.

What troubles me the most in my ongoing analysis of international affairs is this- if I and other activists for global justice – not particularly qualified in international diplomacy and politics but simply fueled by a sense of fairness, justice and humanity; can reach sound conclusions about non-violent means of promoting peaceful resolutions to conflict, what stops those actually tasked with delivering counse to the powerful from arriving at the same conclusion and if well advised, what stops the powerful from acting on such advice?

Perhaps it is the same age-old problem of not letting the snake guard the eggs – what interest would those persons, whose very livelihood is conflict resolution, have in resolving conflict and reducing fear? I think none. What interest would a government, whose budget is significantly funded by the arms industry have in removing markets for weapons? I think very little.

Finally, what incentive is there for a company capable of destabilizing an entire nation and plunging it into civil war – so that it can plunder its resources when a cooperative junta is in power? Very little indeed.

It takes strength of character to be a leader, to make the tough decisions; to be able to recognise when one has taken the wrong path and to say sorry ,to amend injustice. That is why there are so few truly inspirational leaders in the world today. It seems that the qualities required to lead a country of varying social needs – formed from many strands of many cultures have been substituted with the qualities required to be a hard nosed successful CEO of a global corporation – concerned only with the accumulation of profit and the creation of wealth for a select few at the cost of everyone else.

A different approach is long overdue. The longer the old systems persist, the more school sieges will grace our television screens and the greater the fear we all will live under. One that will recognise the futility of repressing a peoples’ inalienable right to self determination; that promotes the establishment of fair laws and their equal enforcement of such laws.

Reading various reports that ‘terrorists’ have threatened to launch terror attacks to disrupt US presidential elections scheduled for November fill me with so much cynicism and immediatedly ignite the torch of consipiracy theories in my brain.

Homeland Security ‘experts’ are exploring the options available to them in the event of such an attack (aside from the obvious – attack Afghanistan, invade Iraq. Perhaps Cuba would now be ‘found’ to have links with al-Qaeda). Critical to this planning is the possibility of postponing the elections, the final major test of Mr Bush’s unpopularity.

The idea that al-qaeda or any other serious-minded terrorist organisation might want to cause a postponement of the US elections fills me with dread. For the simple reason that, Mr Bush should not be offered the opportunity to remain President (which he clearly does not have the aptitude for) for a moment longer than his allotted tenure.

It is often the simplest clearest frauds that are the easiest to get away with. Who would have thought that Hapless George and his team would have the kahones to launch massive and decisive electoral fraud in Florida – his brother’s state. Surely the suspicion would immediately fall on them. But no, kahones they grew and presidency they stole!

So it does not seem impossible to me (cynic and certified conspiracy theorist that I am) that they (HG and his merry madmen) would try to delay the election and perhaps sift another war from the smoke generated.(think illusion here).

Recent events in the world – Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, DR Congo and the Sudan have highlighted gross human right violoations. These occur so often now, are so widespread and commonplace as to be considered textbook violations. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass rapes and other crimes have become expected outcomes of conflict.

Whilst attention is rightly focused on these violations of human rights – the International Court of Justice at the Hague has formed tribunals for the investigation and trial of crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations – efforts must also be made towards understanding and bringing to account those violations of human rights at a lower level or indirect violations.

By this I mean events that lead to the violation, restriction or denial of human rights as a result of indirect action taken by say, for example, a global corporation. When an investigation into human rights abuse occurs, it is not often the case that such an investigation is concerned with whether abuses took place – that is given, it is merely to determine the extent and more importantly the cause and who is responsible.

Article 25 of the UN’s UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) – which forms the basis of international human rights, briefy states that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living – this includes food, clothing and housing. Article 26 states that everyone has the right to education. These are but two of the thirty articles within the declaration, but they are adequate for the illustration of my point.

If we are all entitled to food, housing , clothing and education; it would seem a crime if anyone was deprived of these necessities. In a direct sense, in the event of a war and subsequent occupation, if the occupying power was to deprive the occupied population of its food, housing and education (a little like what the Israeli’s are doing to the Palestinians – who incidentally have no nationality – something the UDHR also states is a universal human right), then this would be considered a violation of Human Rights and subject to legal account. However, would it be less of a violation if there was no war and the violation of such rights was commercial policy rather than any other factor?

Many third world countries are heavily indebted to the world’s primary lenders – the IMF and the World Bank (both effectively US agencies). The nature of this debt is generally fraudulent – treasuries pillaged by thieving dictators, IOU’s taken by rogues in the name of the citizenry. I have no doubt that the lenders , with all their political and economic statistics, would have known that many of their clients were dodgy. Yet the lending continued unabated. When payments then become impossible to make, the lending agencies exercise their ‘legal’ right to step in and dictate economic policy to the borrowing state to facilitate the repayment plan. This means that the IMF and the World Bank effectively order countries to divert national spending from health, agriculture and education to servicing debt. The suffering caused by this widespread use of the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) is well documented and recognised, even by the organisations themselves (although they convince themselves that such hardships are short term and worth it for long term benefits). Aside from the direct diversion of state budgets , there is also the question of the capitalist model of opening up new markets in the debtor nation to foreign producers – more often than not – American industry. This practice has seen untold suffering in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Tanzania , Russia and many other Structurally Adjusted economies. Yet more human rights are violated, this time not by wars and soldiers, but by capitalism and economists. Does it make a difference how the rights are violated, who instigates the violation?

So, if a child in a third world state cannot be fed, housed or educated because the government’s already meagre and much mismanaged budget for these social responsiblities has now been diverted by order of the lending bodies; that child’s declared human rights have been violated and some one needs to be held accountable. The issue of who to make accountable is a tricky one. Some might argue that the government of the borrowing state needs to be held accountable for failing to meet its social obligations to its people. But what if it could, if given the freedom from the heavy burden of debt servicing. Does this not indicate that responsibility for the denial of declared universal rights to those who are entirely innocent of any crime should be laid at the feet of those that encouraged the peonage that has trapped these countries?

Article 4 of the UDHR states that ‘No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.’ – the conditions that result in the abuse of many of today’s Human Rights are inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty that is perhaps caused, but certainly exercibated, by capitalism and the promotion of wealth and profit over humanity and ethics. With all their declared good intentions, the IMF and World Bank, if judged by their results – can be considered to have brought grinding poverty to more nations , faster than any other factor. Not only do their unfavourable loan terms condemn entire countries to long term servitude. Their defaulting policies and the Structural Adjustments that cause Western business to exploit the resources of the debtor nation unchecked; all make this seem a well orchestrated strategy that results in the violation of human rights within debtor nations.

Whilst genocide, ethnic cleansing make great headlines and stir the western soul, we would do well to remember that all rights declared within the UDHR have equal standing and are all to be applied to everyone.

So called justice was done today as the Israeli legal system sentenced Marwan Barghouti to five life terms AND forty years for a range of offences including attempted murder, murder and membership of a terrorist organisation.

Marwan Barghouti is a key member of Fatah – the Yasser Arafat led Palestinian liberation group. An active member of the current Intifidah and a tipped successor to Yasser Arafat, he is seen by many as a pragmatist and someone with whom, despite the rhetoric, a lasting peace could be forged.

So many things, on so many levels are wrong with this judgment. Not only with this judgment , but with the entire legal process of convicting Marwan Barghouti and of course, the wider Occupation of Palestine.

Firstly, only a fool would think that the judiciary of Israel is separate from its executive or indeed, the military. They are all weaned on the milk of paranoid defensiveness and the catastrophic Zionist vision of the ‘promised land’. The separation of the judiciary from the executive is a key principle of democracy – this is not so in Israel. By their words their deeds, the Israeli judiciary has consistently supported the illegal Occupation of Palestine since the occupation began. Neither has it stepped in when, not only have national laws been broken, but also when International Human Rights law has been violated.

Torture and repeated Human Rights violations are the norm in Israel – sanctioned both by the executive,the judiciary and , of course, the military. The US also lends it support with the eternal chorus of ‘…Israel has a right to defend itself against terror’ – what about the terror it causes in Palestine?.

Within the Israeli justice system, Arab cases – worse still Palestinian Arab, are special. To be tried under different personal mindsets. Lady Justice is not blind when an Arab is up on trial, it sees clearly. Conviction is a certainty. A system that is so tainted with national bias must have relished the opportunity to try Marwan Barghouti – to paint a picture of legal upstanding and democratic principle, with one of the most wanted Fatah members. Well the picture is flawed, because unless the legitimacy of the armed struggle against Occupation is recognised by the Israeli judiciary, all forms of resistance will be considered illegal and thereby guilty as charged. Unless the Occupation is considered unjust, illegal and immoral, any resistance against it will be doomed to go the way of Marwan Barghouti.

Marwan Barghouti is unrepentant even in defeat. He has consistently not recognised the jurisdiction of the Israeli court. By the accords that made the Palestinian Authority a reality (of sorts), he , as a member of the Palestinian parliament, is safe from prosecution. This has not been respected. What good are we as a society if we cannot abide the very rules we set ourselves?. He is remaining outspoken against the continued Occupation of Palestine by Israel. The continued intimidation and ghettorisation of Gaza and other occupied lands will never guarantee Israeli’s peace, but will score a deep and lasting hatred of Israelis and Jews by generations of Palestinians and the wider Islamic nation.

The campaign to free Marwan Barghouti will not falter, even when all seems dire. Even though he is not appealing the verdict to a higher court – what would be the point?, This is a judiciary in which the outcome was a certainty – an enemy of Israel is guilty. Period.

Those who have supported him and the wider call for making the Israelis accountable for the atrocities in Palestine will not give up. We will keep shouting.

Get out the blankets, hell has frozen over. Radio the tower, the pigs are landing.

Today Mr Blair suggested in his latest speech, that the incoming Iraqi (interim) administration would His exact words – ‘The final political control remains with the Iraqi government. That’s what the transfer of sovereignty means.’ would suggest a scenario of Iraqi political control over US and UK occupation forces.

That is like saying the Vichy French government of collaborators had political control over their Nazi occupiers.

Either Mr Blair is

a) lying to maintain a failing facade of legitimacy on the occupation of Iraq; or

b) clearly ignorant of US military history – US forces anywhere have never, are never nor will ever be subject to any other political control than the occupier of the White House; or

c) absolutely right that all occupation forces will fall under the political control of the Interim Administration, he accepts this because the Interim Administration is neither elected nor accountable to the Iraqi people. They are all appointees by the Coalition Provision Authority headed by Paul Bremer. It would seem to me that the Interim Administration would be politically subservient to their defacto advisers (US and UK).

Whatever the case

If you woke up this morning

with more health than illness,

you are more blessed than the

million who won’t survive the week.

If you have never experienced

the danger of battle,

the loneliness of imprisonment,

the agony of torture or

the pangs of starvation,

you are ahead of 20 million people

If you attend a church meeting

without fear of harassment,

arrest, torture, or death,

you are more blessed than almost

three billion people in the world.

If you have food in your refrigerator,

clothes on your back, a roof over

your head and a place to sleep,

you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank,

in your wallet, and spare change

in a dish someplace, you are among

the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.

If your parents are still married and alive,

you are very rare,

especially in the United States.

If you hold up your head with a smile

on your face and are truly thankful,

you are blessed because the majority can,

but most do not.

If you can hold someone’s hand, hug them

or even touch them on the shoulder,

you are blessed because you can

offer God’s healing touch.

If you can read this message,

you are more blessed than over

two billion people in the world

that cannot read anything at all.

I started this article over a year, under the original title of ‘A Final Blind Eye’. Out of frustration, my contention was that the world should just turn a blind eye to the extermination of the Palestinians since it is so complacent in helping resolve the middle east crisis and stands idly by as Israel deploys almost every weapon in its state-military arsenal against what are are clearly resistance freedom fighters.

My frustration persists till today.

Since 1948, when Palestine was carved up to draw out a state for the European Jews – themselves victims of xenophobic extermination by Nazi Germany, no single Israeli government has had the political will to make peace with the Palestinians, let alone propose an equitable solution to the crisis.

The modern history of Israel’s paranoid militarisation is extremely well documented and experts on all sides of the crisis abound. The suffering of Palestinians – most of whom are refugees in their own land, is also well documented and acknowledged both by state departments as well as independent agencies like the UNCHR, Amnesty International and others. I have no intention of spewing statistics of the number of innocent civilians killed in the conflict since records began nor of the numbers of refugees in camps within Israel who are effectively stateless and have been refugees for going on four generations now. These are people born into captivity.

This has gone on for long enough, support for Israel by the US and most of Europe is not in any danger of waning and the small hushed voice of the rest of the world, already cowering under US bully boy tyranny, can hardly raise objections that matter. The UN is powerless to act, it must rely on the agreement of the various councils – chiefly the Security Council, to do anything that could remotely be considered as effective rebuke of Israel. With the US and its pantomime horse backside, the UK, it is extremely unlikely that any resolution will ever be adopted calling for military action against Israel nor even trade sanctions against it. Ain’t gonna happen.

So, why not cut the crap and quit mouthing the words. Give Israel clear go-ahead to annihilate the Palestinians – so we can all go home and watch something else. The world has had 50 years to help the Palestinians and has done nothing. Resolutions from the ’60s still sit gathering dust in the UN, unenforced and forgotten by all but the most naive activists. We have let the Palestinians down at every turn, the political will to stand up for them is not present in the courts that matter, so why not just do the decent thing and let Israel kill them all. Seems to me what they want after all.

We are getting close to the acceptable annihilation of the entire Palestinian civilisation. Thousands of innocents dead since the troubles began in 1948. With every new incursion into Occupied Territories and even into the so called Palestinian Authority zone, the world gets harder of hearing. Israel does not even need to come up with any more excuses. The War on Terror saw to that. So why delay the inevitable? Why take up valuable air time with the daily reports of dead Palestinians – innocent civilians killed by a military apparatus? Why pretend to care when it is clear that Palestinian suffering does not even register with most of the world. Even Arab governments have stopped their muffled cries of ‘Justice for Palestinians’.

Let Israel kill all the Palestinians, wipe them out. Who would care? Sure, the handful of activists who are the collective conscience of this miserable peace of dirt would shout and scream – they have been ignored so far, so what. Just think of the advantages – terrorism would be defeated once and for all in the Middle East, investment into Israel would skyrocket and fundamentalist Jewish sentiment would reign supreme. They are, after all the chosen people, so no it isn’t genocide or a modern Holocaust. It is simply their God vanquishing the enemies of his chosen people.

All the pieces are moving into place to allow the final solution to the Palestinian problem. We have the Christian fundamentalist pliable US President, guided by neo conservatives, funded by Zionist money. It is already supporting Israel militarily by billions of dollars in military aid annually. Europe is as ever, too fragmented to ever raise more than the hint of objection. The UK is subject to a smaller, more silent , yet equally potent Zionist lobby. In any case the special relationship it enjoys with the US means that it will broadly echo US sentiments and will not act to avert the destruction of the Palestinians. China, India and Pakistan (all nuclear players and possess massive armies) are too economically dependent on US trade to stand in the way. So any time now would be fine. Go for it. Kill them all. Maybe then Israel will have satisfied its bloodlust. Maybe then it would feel safe and secure in its stolen lands.

The pictures have been published – some of them anyway. The shock , horror and revulsion that professional soldiers could have debased and humiliated prisoners in Iraq with such inhuman callousness and perversion has been acknowledged and condemned. Public statements that this is not what soldiers do, certainly not what American soldiers should do, have been made by the political big shots (Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld!). Well, clearly American soldiers did do this abuse against innocent Iraqis (yes, they are prisoners , but they are not charged with any crime. In any case they are innocent till proven guilty).

What is striking, across the entire US political spectrum, is the distinction that ‘American soldiers’ do not commit war crimes. As though they are somehow incapable of the worst of human behavior. Of course, greater expectations are made of them – as representatives of the self appointed bastion of democratic principles. But great expectations are rarely satisfied. Once we start to distinguish between expected levels of human behavior, we go down a very dangerous course. A road I fear we, as a civilisation, lack the maturity to steer effectively.

A far simpler view would be to say that human beings should not abuse other human beings in this way. Its not just a crime according to military law, its a crime against basic human law (no such thing exists, the closest we have is the Geneva Conventions!).

Like an embarrassed father having to come to school to scold his child, Donald Rumsfeld makes a ‘surprise’ visit to Iraq (of course, under the tightest security). With his military commander in tow, they have come ‘…to ensure that detainees were being treated properly and US soldiers were behaving right’. He insists that he was not in Iraq to cover up the scandal. He couldn’t if he tried. The cynic in me knows that they would have tried to cover this up. Given the fact that they (the US and the UK command structures) knew internally (from allegations made by other soldiers) and externally (from reports submitted by independent agencies) for a while and only now is the truth about the extent and depth of depravity coming out. After all, this is the same government that had to be forced by the US supreme court to release pictures of coffins containing the remains of US casualties in Iraq.

In the lead up to the Iraqi invasion, Mr Rumsfeld was one of the most eager supporters of the action. His vociferous support for ‘getting Saddam’ was notable even amongst his peers within the neo-conservative think tank that is the Project of a New American Century.

Presumably whilst in Iraq he will scold commanders in his ‘tell it like it is’ manner. But at the end, he will deliver a message praising the efforts of the vast majority of decent soldiers helping to restructure Iraq under very difficult conditions. He will insist that the US will stay the course. Nothing will be said of compensation to the victims; nor of a changing of the mass detention policy in Iraq that has seen tens of thousands detained unlawfully.

Along with his government, Mr Rumsfeld has opposed the International Criminal Court, principally on the grounds that it could be used as a political tool to prosecute US military personnel such, the US does not recognise the jurisdiction of the court. In effect saying, we will roam the earth as we please, do what we like under the guise of humanitarianism and in the name of good, but we will not be held accountable for atrocities we commit.

Well, he may disapprove all he likes. But the responsiblity for the Iraqi war and all actions subsequently, lies squarely at the doors of his government. His war mongering plays no small part in all of this.