Alternatives International

“Neo-Colonial Land-Grab”

Aman Sethi — 2013-05-19T12:09:45Z

Last August, Ojulu sat smoking a cigarette outside his thatch-roofed hut in Pino village when a rising tide of water seeped through the reed fence. “The water came in the morning,” Ojulu said, “And stayed for a month.”

As Ojulu and his neighbours scrambled to higher ground the Baro river swirled through the village, gathering in force until it breached a series of dykes, built by Bangalore-based Karuturi Global, and swamped the company's vast 100,000-hectare farm. “Karuturi blocked the natural route of the water [with the dyke], so the water came into our village,” Ojulu said. “Karuturi was the cause of the flood.”

Karuturi contested this account. The Ethiopian government says an investigation into the causes of the deluge is underway, but the flood threatens to sink a headline agricultural project that supporters see as the path to a modern, food-sufficient Ethiopia, but detractors characterise as an exploitative, neo-colonial land-grab.

In January 2008, Karuturi Global was trading at Rs. 39 on the NSE; the company had a flourishing floriculture business headquartered out of Kenya and hoped to use their land in Gambella to become one of the largest food producers in the world. This Friday, the stock closed at Rs. 3.15. The company is saddled with Rs. 753 crore of debt and re-scheduled a $55 million foreign currency bond at a time when global financial markets have tightened and European flower demand has contracted.

Karuturi's defence

In recent years, the Ethiopian government has announced its intention to lease millions of hectares of land for export-oriented commercial plantations. Indian companies like Karuturi and Shapoorji Pallonji responded by committing to invest $4.4 billion in Ethiopia, with 40 percent earmarked for agriculture.

Karuturi's farm is a rectangular strip of land along the floodplain of the Baro river near the South Sudan border. In 2011, a flash flood destroyed Karuturi's first crop and caused Rs. 39 crores of damage and Rs. 70 crore in lost revenue, according to the company's financial reports. The company responded by building dykes that allegedly diverted floodwaters into nearby villages, including Ojulu's.

“Eighty per cent of land in our concession is a flood plain. There is little data available of past flooding and rainfall,” said Ram Karuturi, Karuturi Global's Chairman, adding the company was developing a flood-management plan and was growing a large crop of flood-resistant jute this year. Mr. Karuturi said the company was concerned about the cascading effects of the dykes on neighbouring villages, but said an investigation by the Ministry of Water Resources proved the company was not responsible for the flood.

The persistent inundation has stymied Karuturi's ambitious plans of clearing and developing the entire 100,000-hectare plot in two years, as stipulated by the contract signed with the government. In January 2012, the company claimed it would cultivate nearly 60,000 ha of land over two seasons, but ultimately planted corn on only 5000 ha of land, or 5 per cent of their lease area. The limited harvest translated into limited revenues, further hobbling the project.

Two months ago, 92 Ethiopian workers filed a complaint with the Department of Labour and Social Welfare. “Workers complained their salaries were delayed by up to 20 days and said the company did not provide identity cards, safety equipment, medical treatment or proper residence,” said Labour Inspector Beyane Assefa.

The department found workers living in cramped metal shacks without proper ventilation and is investigating allegations that employee pensions deducted from workers salaries by the company were not deposited with the relevant government department.

“I think we live in a prison,” said a Karuturi machine operator, who said that the Indian management was disrespectful to Ethiopian staff. After investing almost Rs. 1000 crore in the project, with Rs. 270 crore spent on farm equipment alone, workers said the company was so short of cash that they didn't have diesel for their tractors. Instead of developing their own lands, workers said, the company was leasing out their equipment to other investors in Gambella.

Mr. Karuturi said Ethiopian operations had been temporarily short of working capital due to a management transition that was now complete. Any administrative lapses concerning worker safety would be immediately rectified, he said.

The company has also fallen foul of the local administration over Karuturi's federal contract. In 2008, the company was originally granted 300,000 hectare by the regional government. Two years later, the federal government —citing a change in land policy — revised the contract to 100,000 ha for 50 years. Karuturi pays 20 Birr (Rs. 60) per hectare per year as land tax, the same rate as a subsistence farmer, while newer investors pay 111 Birr per hectare. A dispute over the land demarcation and federal tax holiday, officials claim, means the company has not paid any land tax at all for two years.

“We are in deficit… The big tax source in this woreda (administrative centre) is land tax,” said Oman Olay, a local administrator, explaining that the tax dispute with Karuturi has severely affected their budget, adding “the big problem is shortage of salaries, even capital to maintain schools is a big challenge.”

Mr. Oman said that Karuturi had promised to send local children to Nairobi to further their studies, to build a school, and to donate 500 quintals of grain to the community flooded by their dykes, but did not fulfill their promises. The company has, however, provided a generator and fuel to the local school.

Mr. Karuturi said the company paid its tax every year during the contractually agreed period. The local administration had asked for its tax early this year to tide over a deficit, a request the company could not meet. The federal government, by contrast, has supported Karuturi in its tax dispute.

“Karuturi is one of the pioneers of investment in Gambella, or even the nation. If they have any challenge, our ministries are there to resolve whatever problems they may have,” said Shiferaw Teklemariam, Ethiopia's Minister of Federal Affairs.

'Villagisation' and the rights question

The Ethiopian government's unstinting support for Karuturi has both helped and hindered the project. Rights groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Oakland Institute have attacked Karuturi as the most visible symbol of a violent government campaign to move 45,000 rural households into consolidated communes and to lease these lands to commercial farmers like Karuturi.

The Ethiopian government has denied any link between commercial agriculture and the “Commune Centre Development Plan”, or ‘villagisation'. Government officials say the region has amongst the lowest population densities in the country, and the commercial farms are on empty land. No villages have been displaced to make way for Mr. Karuturi's farm and the company is not involved in any land grab.

Shiferaw Teklemariam, Ethiopia's Minister of Federal Affairs said villagisation would provide schools, clinics and drinking water to Gambella's population of shifting agriculturalists and pastoralists by relocating them into fixed settlements.

Approximately 35,000 households have been villagised thus far. A visit to sites around Gambella revealed villages struggling with makeshift infrastructure. Most settlements had at least one tube well and some sort of school or clinic, but were unable to farm as the land provided by the government was thickly forested and hence uncultivable. Villagers note that the ‘empty land' given to investors is vital for a community that relies on forests and grasslands for grazing animals, hunting and foraging.

There was no overt violence in the process, villagers said, but local officials sometimes intimidated them. Some said they moved because they heard reports of violence elsewhere.

“Nobody fears the government, what the government says is to the advantage of all,” said an old woman obliquely, as if explaining the nature of power in a patriarchal society, “Since the government is like a father, you can accept whatever he says.”

The villagisation process seems less a corporate conspiracy, and more a state-building project. “Most states…are younger than the societies they purport to administer,” notes anthropologist James Scott inSeeing like a state. “States therefore confront patterns of settlement, social-relations and production… that have evolved largely independent of state plans.”

The state's tendency is to recast these myriad patterns of life into a static legible population that can be educated, immunized and deployed into the formal economy in the guise of development.

Yet, Gambella's geography and proximity to Sudanese borders and the migratory arcs of itinerant pastoralists restrict the ambitions of both state and capital. On an overcast day this month, the scrublands not far from the river shook with the sudden appearance of a band of Bororo Fulani cattle herders from Sudan fleeing both Murle cattle raiders from South Sudan and federal soldiers from Ethiopia.

“We travel in search of pasture for our cattle,” said Ali Barka Hassan, “When the flood comes in Gambella, we return to our lands in Sudan.” Ultimately everyone must set their clock by the river — the farmer, the herder, the soldier, and commercial investors like Karuturi.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/when-the-levee-breaks/article4727827.ece

Hawking and a Brief History of Boycotts

Ramzy Baroud — 2013-05-16T17:17:31Z

It is an event "of cosmic proportions", said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description regarding Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated on May 8 by Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor.

Hawking is a world-renowned cosmologist and physicist. His scientific work had the kind of impact that redefined or challenged entire areas of research from the theory of relativity, to quantum mechanics and other fields of study. This towering figure is also wheelchair-bound - suffering from complete physical paralyses caused by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease. For Hawking, however, such a painful fact seems like a mere side note in the face of his incredible contributions to science, ones that are comparable to only few men and women throughout history.

What is considered a prestigious scientific conference in Israel is hosted by President Shimon Peres, most remembered by Lebanese and Palestinians for ordering the shelling of a United Nations compound near the village of Qana in South Lebanon in 1996. The compound was a safe heaven, where civilians often sought shelter during Israeli strikes. Not that time around, however. 106 innocent people that were mostly children and women were killed and 116 wounded, including UN forces. That harrowing event alone would have sent Peres, then Israel's prime minister, to serve his remaining years in jail.

But of course, Israel is above the law, or so the Israeli government believes and thus it has consistently behaved accordingly in the last 65 years with a price tag of uncountable lives, untold destruction and protracted suffering of entire nations. Hawking's response to the boycott call was immensely important. The man's legendary status aside, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has proved more durable and successful than its detractors - mostly Israel's apologists - want to believe.

Hawking's decision was also a testament that reason and morality should and must go hand in hand. Israel's boasting of its scientific accomplishments should mean zilch if such technology is put to work to advance state violence, tighten military occupation and make killer drones available to other countries, thus exporting violence and mayhem. The same "science" was used in abundance in Israel's latest two wars on Gaza (2008-09 and 2012) which claimed thousands of lives between the dead and wounded.

Cambridge University, perhaps wary of a possible backlash, tried to mask Hawking's decision as one that was compelled by health reasons, which, of course, was not the case at all. The university eventually retracted the statement, for the British scientist wished to make his decision crystal clear. The UK Guardian newspaper reported on Hawking's rebuff of the conference, citing a statement by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, as it had coordinated with Hawking's office: "We understand that Professor Stephen Hawking has declined his invitation to attend the Israeli Presidential Conference Facing Tomorrow 2013, due to take place in Jerusalem on 18-20 June. This is his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there."Unlike other acts of boycott, sometimes dismissed by Israeli officials as insignificant, this one was manifestly shocking for Israel. Yigal Palmor, spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry was quoted by the New York Times saying "never has a scientist of this stature boycotted Israel".

And since it was unexpected, Hawking's respect of the boycott generated disorganized Israeli and pro-Israeli responses, ranging from demeaning jokes and insults pertaining to his illness, unwarranted accusations and even shaming him for using technology supposedly developed in Israel to combat his deteriorating ALS condition.

Never before has the country lost control over its carefully tailored narrative of its military occupation and violations of human rights in Palestine as is the case these days. While on one hand, Israeli officials speak of "peace", they continue to issue tenders to build more settlements or expand existing ones, all built illegally on Palestinian land.

On the very day that Hawking's decision to boycott the conference was announced, the "civil administration" in Israel agreed to the construction of 296 new housing units in the illegal settlement of Beit El, thus entrenching military occupation and ethnic cleansing.

Israeli officials and media still insist that there are no links whatsoever between such stark violations of international and humanitarian law and the rising boycott movement. They indefatigably accuse their critics of "anti-Semitism" (which is hardly effective anymore) and warn of attempts at the "de-legitimatization" of Israel, as if they expect the world to remain completely oblivious to its perpetual war crimes, illegal occupation and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine and Israel.

The dialectics of Hawking's decision are also important. It is a proof that civil society remains relevant, can be effective and also shows that official venues are not the only platforms in which the occupation of Palestine can be discussed and justly addressed. Nearly 20 years have passed since the Oslo Accords were signed, yet the Israeli occupation seems much more rooted than it was in 1993.

There is little doubt that the boycott movement is in constant growth and not simply because of the recurring news of artists and academics refusing to visit Israel, or take part in Israeli-sponsored events. Equally significant is the existence of strong layers of support being provided by civil society that makes it possible for artists, academics and others to adhere to the call of boycott, without fearing serious repercussions.

It was revealed that a letter to Hawking, aimed at dissuading him from joining the conference was signed by 20 top academics from many universities, including MIT, Cambridge, London, Leeds, Southampton, Warwick and Newcastle. The professors told Hawking they were "surprised and deeply disappointed" that he had agreed to take part in the conference, which is also to be attended by former British prime minister Tony Blair and former US president Bill Clinton, each with his own record of war crimes accusations spanning from Sudan, to Afghanistan, to Iraq.

Criticism of Hawking is not only emanating from Israel and its predictable circle of diehard supporters. It is also coming from some of those who count themselves as members of the Palestinian solidarity camp. The latter group, which is shrinking in number and outreach, argue that boycotting all aspects of Israel's academic, cultural and political life will play into Israel's "anti-Semitism" and "de-legitimization" arguments.

But can the solidarity movement limit its boycott to few Israeli companies with links to West Bank settlements and expect to achieve tangible, long-term results? Those who think that boycotting the occupation is enough, seem not to understand the nature of the relationship between West Bank setters and the Israeli government.

Israel treats the settlements and its well-armed inhabitants as part and parcel of the Israeli state and economy. They are residents of Israel, even if they live near Ramallah. There is no separation whatsoever except for some imaginary "Green Lines" and such. And now with the Apartheid Wall, even that separation is being blurred and redefined.

Palestinians in Gaza or Nablus don't see any difference between a solider who lives in an illegal Jewish settlement or another who lives inside Israel. They are all capable of committing murder, as many surely have, unhampered by geography or borders. International civil society should not fall into the trap of illusory distinctions. This also makes Hawking's decision to boycott an Israel-based conference "of cosmic proportions". It is morally defensible and ethically sound, qualities befitting a formidable man of reason.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press)

A Good Day For Democracy

Feroz Mehdi — 2013-05-13T17:57:43Z

May 11, 2013 was an important day for Pakistan and a good day for democracy. My five years old daughter will remember this day when she grows up, not only because it is her birth day but also because it was a promising day for the people of her mother's country of birth. General elections were held which saw the first transition between civilian governments in a country since 66 years of its existence.

The Pakistani Taliban party Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), had vowed to target the participants of the electoral process specifically those associated with the secular political parties. These included the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM). The run up to the elections saw over 130 people killed. On the day of the election itself 30 people died due to bomb blasts. Despite these threats and violence and the fear it caused, over 60 percent of the electorate came out and voted. It was a massive exercise indeed that saw millions of people voting in hundreds of polling stations all across the country.

As the DAWN newspaper's editorial on 12 May noted, “That the Pakistani public has embraced democracy as the way forward despite all manners of threats and assaults on the democratic system is perhaps the single most reassuring development for the democratic project going forward”.

Back in 1999, the government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML(N)), was overthrown by a military coup engineered by the then chief of the Army General Pervez Musharraf. The General ruled till 2008 after which he had to hold elections amidst rising protests. In the electoral campaign that followed, leader of the PPP, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The General was accused of deliberately not providing security for the deceased leader. The elections were held on February 18, 2008 and brought PPP to power. Musharraf fled to London in a self-imposed exile.

For the first time in the history of Pakistan, the government completed its five year term. As per the rules agreed upon by all participating political parties, an interim government was installed whose task was to organize the elections that were held on May 11, 2013.

Ironically, Pervez Musharraf came back from London, formed a political party and made an application to contest elections. His application was rejected and he was charged with unlawful activities during his dictatorship and confined to house arrest. The man whom he had ousted in the military coup in 1999, Nawaz Sharif and his party PML (N) has won these elections and in days to come will be sworn in as the next Prime Minister of Pakistan.

A relatively new entrant in parliamentary elections the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has made its mark in these elections. Although it got extraordinary coverage during the election campaign, some urban media even predicting the party as a possible coalition partner in the government, it got only 34 seats while PML (N) bagged 126 seats out of a total of 272 seats in the National Assembly. The outgoing PPP managed to win only 33 seats.

Indian and Pakistani politicians bash each other's country, especially during election campaigns, in order to excite their nationalist voters. There was no India bashing during the election campaign in Pakistan and after having won, Nawaz Sharif extended an invitation to the Indian Prime Minister to attend his swearing-in ceremony.

Interview: Phyllis Bennis on Stephen Hawking

2013-05-10T19:30:32Z

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this edition of The Bennis Report with Phyllis Bennis, who now joins us from Washington, D.C. Phyllis is a fellow and the director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. She's the author of the books Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the War on Terrorism and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.

JAY: Thanks for joining us again, Phyllis.

BENNIS: Great to be with you, Paul.

JAY: So Stephen Hawking's announced he will not attend a conference in Israel. What's that about? And how significant is that?

BENNIS: This is an extraordinary move on his part. This is probably the highest profile participant in the longstanding academic and cultural boycott that's part of the global movement for what is known as BDS, boycott, divestment, and sanctions, a Palestinian civil society call that came out in 2005 urging people to bring nonviolent economic and social and cultural pressure to bear on Israel until it stops its violations of international law and human rights. For someone of Stephen Hawking's stature to make a decision like this and be very clear that this was not because of ill health, it was specifically because of, as he put it in a statement, what he knows about Palestine and the recommendations that he sought from his Palestinian academic colleagues, this is huge. This was not really an academic conference.

JAY: Phyllis, just one sec. I'll just jump in with a quote from The Guardian which I've just seen, where this apparently is an article that was written about this and approved by Hawking. This is what he said. It describes the cancellation as, quote, "his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there".

BENNIS: It's an amazing thing to not only decide not to participate—and, again, this was not an academic conference per se; this was a thoroughly political conference. It's the annual president's conference that they hold in Israel every year under the auspices of now Israeli President Shimon Peres. And he was to be the keynote speaker. It always brings together global famous people of all different kinds—cultural workers, scientists, writers, artists, etc. And for someone of Hawking's stature to make this decision and make that statement that he's doing it independently in respect of the boycott, that's huge. This is going to be a huge move forward for the boycott movement overall, and I think it's going to move very close to making Israeli people, ordinary people, recognize the cost that their occupation and their apartheid policies are having on them; it's not only something that happens to the government. You know, this is very similar, Paul, to the period in the late '80s—sorry, the late '70s and throughout the 1980s of the South Africa anti-apartheid movement. At the time when boycotts and divestment campaigns were underway, much of them focused on the banks and the corporations. But it was the sports boycott that really engaged white South Africans, because sports, and particularly South Africa's role in the international sporting world, was hugely important for ordinary South Africans.

JAY: Well, this is what I was going to ask you. There's been some critique from especially, you could say, left-of-center liberal Israeli academics who themselves have been very critical of the occupation. But they've critiqued the cultural part of the boycott. They agree with the sort of commercial boycott, but they say by the cultural boycott, and especially boycotting universities, it isolates many of the academics in Israel who are in fact critical of the policy. What do you make of that?

BENNIS: That's true. As far as it goes, that's a true statement. It does isolate to some degree those individual academics. The boycott is very clear. The boycott call is not aimed at individual academics. It doesn't call for no one to talk to Palestinian academics, for example, or—sorry. It does not call for no one to talk to Israeli academics or Israeli scientists. The boycott aims at institutions, Israeli government and academic institutions. But there is no question that the pain of the boycott will be felt by individual Israelis. And the theory is—and this is, again, where it comes very close to the models that we saw during the South African era anti-apartheid movement—when South African, ordinary South African whites were affected by the sports boycott, they began to finally reconsider the cost to them of apartheid. In the Israeli instance, it means that Israelis who see Israeli culture and science and technology, the great accomplishments of Israeli society and what they're most proud of, perhaps, in their society, that when that starts to be affected by this global boycott, when you have instances of people like Stephen Hawking saying, I will not participate in an official institutional Israeli [incompr.] because there is a boycott designed to force Israel to stop its violations of international law and human rights, that's a huge reality.

JAY: Given how seriously Israel takes its science and scientists, the fact that Hawking and for—I assume most people know, but I think we should mention for those who don't, Hawking is one of the world's leading physicists and cosmologists. He's a serious brain.

BENNIS: And probably the most famous scientist of any scientist in the world today, who's alive today. He's an extraordinary genius of a man. And the stature of that kind of a decision makes this inordinately important. And I think it very much parallels how white South Africans felt about the sports boycott. It was like the end of their world as they knew it. When that starts to happen with ordinary Israelis, when they start to realize that they are paying a price for these Israeli policies, they will begin to demand a change.

JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Phyllis.

BENNIS: Thank you.

JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Naya Pakistan, An Old Fable

Ayesha Siddiqa — 2013-05-10T14:48:44Z

The renowned television anchor Quatrina Hosain was in tears. A day after the incident of her being sexually assaulted at a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) jalsa by party workers in Wah Cantonement, she talked about how the bruises may heal but not her emotional scars. She was covering election rallies and got invited by a PTI candidate Mohammad Sarwar to his rally in Wah. It was a sudden plan so no one could have conspired to misbehave. This is important to note, as many PTI workers have subsequently tried to blame the incident on Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)'s workers. However, when confronted with facts, PTI workers tried to hide behind the argument that women should not provoke people by coming out and mixing with them.

Hussain planned to raise the issue in a television programme. Her argument was, ‘Criticise us (women) for how we dress but that does not give you a right to attack us physically.' She still hopes the PTI leadership will apologise publicly. I asked her if she was surprised given the arrogance and aggression of PTI supporters, especially on social media. The Christian Science Monitor correspondent Taha Siddiqui was viciously attacked and abused merely for suggesting that Imran Khan's fall from the forklift on May 7th was an accident caused due to mismanagement of his security personnel.

Welcome to naya (new) Pakistan these above stories are a part of. This is not to point fingers at PTI in particular because other parties have their fair share of rowdy supporters; the other day PML-N workers broke down the wall of a stadium in a city to make way for their leader Shahbaz Sharif. This is to argue that what is being posited as naya is in fact as stale as the old. Even if the PTI makes it to power, conditions are not likely to be too different from Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's naya Pakistan of the 1970s. The crowds which had risen on its feet for his support went totally out of control later, because Bhutto had told them about empowerment but not responsibilities. Consequently, the state used force to crush these people, resulting in such humiliating incidents like the police stripping students naked in Anarkali, Lahore, and beating them up.

Recently, PTI's Imran Khan had to abandon addressing a rally because of utter lack of discipline during the inauguration ceremony of the PTI office in Rawalpindi. His supporters even broke or stole the chairs that were placed in a rally in Kasur a few months ago. If the behavior of PTI supporters on social media is anything to judge by, Imran Khan's brigade will run riot whichever of the three possible scenarios come true for the party.

There is the ideal scenario that the Imran Khan ‘tsunami' sweeps the elections. Although, it is not likely to happen, we must shudder at the thought of what this storm might do in the name of change. Pakistan is a great country where the elite abuse others by calling them elite and thus worth targeting. The PTI support base will hound anyone and everyone who is not part of their elite base. The other possibility is for the PTI to get a maximum of 30-35 seats. This case involves a double whammy of not being the tsunami that was expected and being forced to make a coalition with the less perfect parties in order to then form the government. This is a case in which the PML-N may get around 90 seats, limiting Nawaz Sharif from making a coalition. Then the PTI would have to make a government in coalition with the PPP, JUI-F, MQM, ANP and JI. Under the circumstances, the PTI could opt to sit in the opposition, in which case it will do nothing but ensure that the government falls as quickly as possibly paving way for next elections. The third option, of course, is making coalition with some of these parties that Imran Khan has lambasted all this while. The third option could break the party as its ideological base will get frustrated and even whither away.

One of the pre-conditions of the change mantra is that the PPP will lose badly. Some enthusiasts have even predicted the party getting limited to ten seats in the entire country, which is wishful thinking. The party will make gains in Sindh even thought it is likely to lose about 15 odd seats there out of a total of 61. It is likely to gain another 15 or so from Punjab and perhaps 2-3 in KP. The total will then be over 75, which gives it a safe margin to form a coalition with the help of MQM, ANP and/or JUI-F.

Such a scenario is likely to en masse depression amongst those who hope for change. For them, it is unbelievable that the PPP could manage to form government again, given its lacklustre performance. It is indeed a fact that the People's Party did nothing to help ordinary people except provide jobs and other opportunities to its clients. This system contributed tremendously in damaging the fledgling education system in its own home province in Sindh where a large number of schools are used as stables or stores for the local waderas (landed-feudal). Some such schools will hopefully be vacated on orders of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to serve as polling stations. People in Sindh will vote for the PPP because the other alternative is hardly an option. Sindhis were of the view that the PPP at least they could abuse, but not the Pir Pagaro who is a spiritual leader and cannot be taken to task the same way as any other stakeholder.

Interestingly, the PPP is absent from the electoral scene. None of its leaders is out there campaigning. Bilawal Bhutto has security concerns and Asif Ali Zardari is barred from political activity. In any case, it would not benefit the party if Zardari's face is shown too often as part of the campaign. The party continues to use the dead Bhuttos to muster support. Lately, it has also engaged in negative publicity against the PML-N, a party that seems to be under fire from three sides: the Army, PTI and the PPP. The Sharif brothers and the larger Sharif family are bending backwards to showcase their successes such as the Metro Bus project in Lahore. This is a transport project that services north and south Lahore. While there is a lot of criticism of the project, it does provide relief to many in the city especially the lower-middle class.

The PML-N also distributed free laptops to students to check the PTI's growing popularity amongst the youth. In many ways, the PML-N is obsessed with Imran Khan, who appears to be the only one with the capacity to thwart their chance to rule the country for next five years. The Sharifs believe that they should now get an opportunity to form government.

Their obsession to return to power in Islamabad also pertains to the unfortunate way in which their government was ended in 1999 and they were packed off to Saudi Arabia in forced exile. Which is also why the army is divided in its support of the PML-N. It is popularly believed that the GHQ at Rawalpindi is likely to tolerate the younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif, over the older, Nawaz Sharif. The younger one is seen as a satisfactory administrator who will play ball with the army. It is the older brother that the generals don't like as he is the one who is ideologically poised and less willing to take it lying down from the army.

In a recent interview with the Indian journalist Karan Thapar, Nawaz Sharif talked about setting up an inquiry commission on Kargil. He is also not ready to forgive Pervez Musharraf and many generals feel he will not be compromising. Many observers, therefore, argue that Sharif's ascendency to power will offer a major challenge for civil-military relations. People in touch with inner circles of the army and the ISI talk about the apprehension that Nawaz Sharif's government will be a death knell for the military's influence. These sources even suggest that the confrontation could be avoided if Nawaz Sharif opts to become Pakistan's Sonia Gandhi and lets someone else from the party become prime minister. That, however, is not his style.

It is worth appreciating that forming a government is a matter of life and death for both PTI and PML-N (the PPP is psychologically and emotionally more of a spoiler this time). The Sharifs do not want to lose any seats. This compulsion is one of the many reasons that forced PML-N into a seat-adjustment alliance with the political wing of the banned Deobandi militant outfit, Sipha-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) which is contesting elections under the banner of Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat (ASWJ). The agreement is meant to capture thousands of SSP votes scattered all over Punjab and Sindh. It could also be argued that this partnership is a natural extension of the deal which was struck between the PML-N and the SSP way back in 2008. According to this deal, the SSP had agreed not to contest elections against Shahbaz Sharif and not to physically hurt the family in return for the party providing jobs to SSP workers and freeing one of its key leaders, Malik Ishaq, provided that the courts freed him. The agreement worked out well for both.

It was also this relationship that General Kiyani alluded to in one of his recent speeches. The only issue is that Kiyani's warning is too little too late. Allowing militant outfits to contest elections is bound to provide them greater depth and penetration in the society. It will further radicalisation, which does not bode well for religious minorities.

The final outcome of the elections is a big mystery. The answer depends on several imponderables, starting with where the youth will put its weight. However, every time I am asked to review the situation I am reminded of the scene at the Islamabad airport international departures. Since the authorities have decided to open only one gate, there are long queues especially as there are usually 3-4 flights checking in at the same time. The waiting in line is inevitably always accompanied with some fight as some people try to jump the queue. But once inside the building there is endless checking by the Anti-Narcotics force, followed by the Airport Security Force. By the time passengers are through with another queue for check-in they are fairly exhausted. Their patience runs out at the third queue for the immigration. There you can hear some people cursing the country and the immigration staff jeering at them for living abroad as ‘second class' citizens. This always ends in hot exchanges.

Naya Pakistan is like waiting in an endless series of queues. People get frustrated also because the bar in terms of expectation of change has been set too artificially high. No one is telling ordinary folk about the sacrifices they will have to make personally to bring the transformation. Making right choices in elections is just the first set of queues. Other lines have to be made to bring structural change that people expect will come from heavens, or with just the change at the top.

This in Pakistan is a time to vote and say a prayer for sanity.

(Ayesha Siddiqa is a Pakistani political commentator and author of Military Inc. She is@iamthedrifter on Twitter.)

Stephen Hawking: Furore Deepens over Israel Boycott

Harriet Sherwood and Matthew Kalman in Israel, and Sam Jones — 2013-05-09T18:59:28Z

The celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking became embroiled in a deepening furore today over his decision to boycott a prestigious conference in Israel in protest over the state's occupation of Palestine.

Hawking, a world-renowned scientist and bestselling author who has had motor neurone disease for 50 years, cancelled his appearance at the high-profile Presidential Conference, which is personally sponsored by Israel's president, Shimon Peres, after a barrage of appeals from Palestinian academics.

The move, denounced by prominent Israelis and welcomed by pro-Palestinian campaigners, entangled Cambridge University – Hawking's academic base since 1975 – which initially claimed the scientist's withdrawal was on medical grounds, before conceding a political motivation.

The university's volte-face came after the Guardian presented it with the text of a letter sent from Hawking to the organisers of the high-profile conference in Jerusalem, clearly stating that he was withdrawing from the conference in order to respect the call for a boycott by Palestinian academics.

The full text of the letter, dated 3 May, said: "I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster."

Hawking's decision to throw his weight behind the academic boycott of Israel met with an angry response from the organisers of the Presidential Conference, an annual event hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres.

"The academic boycott against Israel is in our view outrageous and improper, certainly for someone for whom the spirit of liberty lies at the basis of his human and academic mission," said conference chairman Israel Maimon. "Israel is a democracy in which all individuals are free to express their opinions, whatever they may be. The imposition of a boycott is incompatible with open, democratic dialogue."

Daniel Taub, the Israeli ambassador to London, said: "It is a great shame that Professor Hawking has withdrawn from the president's conference … Rather than caving into pressure from political extremists, active participation in such events is a far more constructive way to promote progress and peace."

The Wolf Foundation, which awarded Hawking the Wolf prize in physics in 1988, said it was "sad to learn that someone of Professor Hawking's standing chose to capitulate to irrelevant pressures and will refrain from visiting Israel".

But Palestinians welcomed Hawking's decision. "Palestinians deeply appreciate Stephen Hawking's support for an academic boycott of Israel," said Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. "We think this will rekindle the kind of interest among international academics in academic boycotts that was present in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa."

Palestinian academics sent a barrage of letters to Hawking in recent weeks in an attempt to persuade him to join the boycott movement.

Samia al-Botmeh, of Birzeit University in the West Bank, said: "We tried to communicate two points to him. First, that Israel is a colonial entity that involves violations of the rights of the Palestinians, including academic freedom, and then asking him to stand in solidarity with Palestinian academic colleagues who have called for solidarity from international academics in the form of boycotting Israeli academia and academic institutions."

Hawking's decision to withdraw from the conference was "fantastic", said Botmeh. "I think it's wonderful that he has acted on moral grounds. That's very ethical and very important for us as Palestinians to know and understand that there are principled colleagues in the world who are willing to take a stand in solidarity with an occupied people."

Comments on social media in Israel were overwhelmingly opposed to Hawking's move, with a small number engaging in personal abuse over his physical condition. A minority of commentators supported his stance on Israel's 46-year occupation of the Palestinian territories.

In addition to the letter sent by Hawking to the conference organisers, a statement in his name was sent to the British Committee for the Universities in Palestine, confirming his withdrawal from the conference for political reasons. The wording was approved by Hawking's personal assistant after consultation with Tim Holt, the acting director of communications at Cambridge University.

On Wednesday morning, following the Guardian's revelation that Hawking was boycotting the Presidential Conference, Holt issued a statement saying: "Professor Hawking will not be attending the conference in Israel in June for health reasons – his doctors have advised against him flying."

However, a later statement said: "We have now received confirmation from Professor Hawking's office that a letter was sent on Friday to the Israeli president's office regarding his decision not to attend the Presidential Conference, based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott."

In a telephone conversation with the Guardian, Holt offered "my apologies for the confusion".

This year's conference is expected to be attended by 5,000 people from around the world, including business leaders, academics, artists and former heads of state. Former US president Bill Clinton, former UK prime minister Tony Blair, former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev, Prince Albert of Monaco and Barbra Streisand have accepted invitations, according to organizers.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/08/hawking-israel-boycott-furore

The U.S. and Chemical Weapons: No Leg to Stand On

Stephen Zunes — 2013-05-02T20:19:01Z

If, as alleged, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, it would indeed be a serious development, constituting a breach of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, one of the world's most important disarmament treaties, which banned the use of chemical weapons.

In 1993, the international community came together to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention, a binding international treaty that would also prohibit the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, and transfer or use of chemical weapons. Syria is one of only eight of the world's 193 countries not party to the convention.

However, U.S. policy regarding chemical weapons has been so inconsistent and politicized that the United States is in no position to take leadership in response to any use of such weaponry by Syria.

The controversy over Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles is not new. Both the Bush administration and Congress, in the 2003 Syria Accountability Act, raised the issue of Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles, specifically Syria's refusal to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention. The failure of Syria to end its chemical weapons program was deemed sufficient grounds by a large bipartisan majority of Congress to impose strict sanctions on that country. Syria rejected such calls for unilateral disarmament on the grounds that it was not the only country in the region that had failed to sign the CWC—nor was it the first country in the region to develop chemical weapons, nor did it have the largest chemical weapons arsenal in the region.

Indeed, neither Israel nor Egypt, the world's two largest recipients of U.S. military aid, is a party to the convention either. Never has Congress or any administration of either party called on Israel or Egypt to disarm their chemical weapons arsenals, much less threatened sanctions for having failed to do so. U.S. policy, therefore, appears to be that while it is legitimate for its allies Israel and Egypt to refuse to ratify this important arms control convention, Syria needed to be singled out for punishment for its refusal.

The first country in the Middle East to obtain and use chemical weapons was Egypt, which used phosgene and mustard gas in the mid-1960s during its intervention in Yemen's civil war. There is no indication Egypt has ever destroyed any of its chemical agents or weapons. The U.S.-backed Mubarak regime continued its chemical weapons research and development program until its ouster in a popular uprising two years ago, and the program is believed to have continued subsequently.

Israel is widely believed to have produced and stockpiled an extensive range of chemical weapons and is engaged in ongoing research and development of additional chemical weaponry. (Israel is also believed to maintain a sophisticated biological weapons program, which is widely thought to include anthrax and more advanced weaponized agents and other toxins, as well as a sizable nuclear weapons arsenal with sophisticated delivery systems.) For more than 45 years, the Syrians have witnessed successive U.S. administration provide massive amounts of armaments to a neighboring country with a vastly superior military capability which has invaded, occupied, and colonized Syria's Golan province in the southwest. In 2007, the United States successfully pressured Israel to reject peace overtures from the Syrian government in which the Syrians offered to recognize Israel and agree to strict security guarantees in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Syrian territory.

The U.S. position that Syria must unilaterally give up its chemical weapons and missiles while allowing a powerful and hostile neighbor to maintain and expand its sizable arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons is simply unreasonable. No country, whether autocratic or democratic, could be expected to accept such conditions.

This is part of a longstanding pattern of hostility by the United States towards international efforts to eliminate chemical weapons through a universal disarmament regime. Instead, Washington uses the alleged threat from chemical weapons as an excuse to target specific countries whose governments are seen as hostile to U.S. political and economic interests.

One of the most effective instruments for international arms control in recent years has been the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which enforces the Chemical Weapons Convention by inspecting laboratories, factories, and arsenals, and oversees the destruction of chemical weapons. The organization's most successful director general, first elected in 1997, was the Brazilian diplomat Jose Bustani, praised by the Guardian newspaper as a “workaholic” who has “done more in the past five years to promote world peace than anyone.” Under his strong leadership, the number of signatories of the treaty grew from 87 to 145 nations, the fastest growth rate of any international organization in recent decades, and – during this same period – his inspectors oversaw the destruction of 2 million chemical weapons and two-thirds of the world's chemical weapons facilities. Bustani was re-elected unanimously in May 2000 for a five-year term and was complimented by Secretary of State Colin Powell for his “very impressive” work.

However, by 2002, the United States began raising objections to Bustani's insistence that the OPCW inspect U.S. chemical weapons facilities with the same vigor it does for other signatories. More critically, the United States was concerned about Bustani's efforts to get Iraq to sign the convention and open their facilities to surprise inspections as is done with other signatories. If Iraq did so, and the OPCW failed to locate evidence of chemical weapons that Washington claimed Saddam Hussein's regime possessed, it would severely weaken American claims that Iraq was developing chemical weapons. U.S. efforts to remove Bustani by forcing a recall by the Brazilian government failed, as did a U.S.-sponsored vote of no confidence at the United Nations in March. That April, the United States began putting enormous pressure on some of the UN's weaker countries to support its campaign to oust Bustani and threatened to withhold the United States' financial contribution to the OPCW, which constituted more than 20 percent of its entire budget. Figuring it was better to get rid of its leader than risk the viability of the whole organization, a majority of nations, brought together in an unprecedented special session called by the United States, voted to remove Bustani.

The Case of Iraq

The first country to allegedly use chemical weapons in the Middle East was Great Britain in 1920, as part of its efforts to put down a rebellion by Iraqi tribesmen when British forces seized the country following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. According to Winston Churchill, who then held the position of Britain's Secretary of State for War and Air, "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.”

It was the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, that used chemical weapons on a scale far greater than any country had dared since the weapons were banned nearly 90 years ago. The Iraqis inflicted close to 100,000 casualties among Iranian soldiers using banned chemical agents, resulting in 20,000 deaths and tens of thousands of long-term injuries.

They were unable to do this alone, however. Despite ongoing Iraqi support for Abu Nidal and other terrorist groups during the 1980s, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism in order to provide the regime with thiodiglycol, a key component in the manufacture of mustard gas, and other chemical precursors for their weapons program. Walter Lang, a senior official with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, noted how "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to President Reagan and other administration officials since they "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose." Lang noted that the DIA believed Iraq's use of chemical was “seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival.” In fact, DIA personnel were dispatched to Baghdad during the war to provide Saddam Hussein's regime with U.S. satellite data on the location of Iranian troop concentrations in the full knowledge that the Iraqis were using chemical weapons against them.

Even the Iraqi regime's use of chemical weapons against civilians was not seen as particularly problematic. The March 1988 massacre in the northern Iraqi city of Halabja, where Saddam's forces murdered up to 5,000 Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons, was downplayed by the Reagan administration, with some officials even falsely claiming that Iran was actually responsible. The United States continued sending aid to Iraq even after the regime's use of poison gas was confirmed.

When a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations committee staff report brought to light Saddam's policy of widespread extermination in Iraqi Kurdistan, Senator Claiborne Pell introduced the Prevention of Genocide Act to put pressure on the Iraqi regime, but the Bush administration successfully moved to have the measure killed. This came despite evidence emerging from UN reports in 1986 and 1987, prior to the Halabja tragedy, documenting Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians—allegations that were confirmed both by investigations from the CIA and from U.S. embassy staff who had visited Iraqi Kurdish refugees in Turkey. However, not only was the United States not particularly concerned about Iraq's use of chemical weapons, the Reagan administration continued supporting the Iraqi government's procurement effort of materials necessary for their development.

Given the U.S. culpability in the deaths of tens of thousands of people by Iraqi chemical weapons less than 25 years ago, the growing calls for the United States to go to war with Syria in response to that regime's alleged use of chemical weapons that killed a few dozen people leads even many of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's fiercest opponents to question U.S. motivations.

This is not the only reason U.S. credibility on the issue of chemical weapons is questionable, however.

After denying and covering up Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the late 1980s, the U.S. government—first under President Bill Clinton and then under President George W. Bush—began insisting that Iraq's alleged chemical weapons stockpile was a dire threat, even though the country had completely destroyed its stockpile by 1993 and completely dismantled its chemical weapons program.

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel—when they served in the U.S. Senate in 2002—all voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq, insisting that Iraq still had a chemical weapons arsenal that was so extensive it constituted a serious threaten to the national security of the United States, despite the fact that Iraq had rid itself of all such weapons nearly a decade earlier. As a result, it is not unreasonable to question the accuracy of any claims they might make today in regard to Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons.

It should also be noted that many of today's most outspoken congressional advocates for U.S. military intervention in Syria in response to the Damascus regime's alleged use of chemical weapons were among the most strident advocates in 2002-2003 for invading Iraq. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), whom the Democrats have chosen to be their ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was among the right-wing minority of House Democrats who voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction. When no such weapons were found, Engel came up with the bizarre allegation that “it would not surprise me if those weapons of mass destruction that we cannot find in Iraq wound up and are today in Syria.”

Engel is currently the chief sponsor of the Free Syria Act of 2013 (H.R. 1327), which would authorize the United States to provide arms to Syrian rebels.

UN resolutions

Unlike the case of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, there are no UN Security Council resolutions specifically demanding that Syria unilaterally disarm its chemical weapons or dismantle its chemical weapons program. Syria is believed to have developed its chemical weapons program only after Israel first developed its chemical, biological, and nuclear programs, all of which still exist today and by which the Syrians still feel threatened.

However, UN Security Council Resolution 687, the resolution passed at the end of the 1991 Gulf War demanding the destruction of Iraq's chemical weapons arsenal, also called on member states “to work towards the establishment in the Middle East of a zone free of such weapons.”

Syria has joined virtually all other Arab states in calling for such a “weapons of mass destruction-free zone” for the entire Middle East. In December 2003, Syria introduced a UN Security Council resolution reiterating this clause from 12 years earlier, but the resolution was tabled as a result of a threatened U.S. veto. As I wrote at time, in reference to the Syrian Accountability Act, “By imposing strict sanctions on Syria for failing to disarm unilaterally, the administration and Congress has roundly rejected the concept of a WMD-free zone or any kind of regional arms control regime. Instead, the United States government is asserting that it has the authority to say which country can have what kind of weapons systems, thereby enforcing a kind of WMD apartheid, which will more likely encourage, rather than discourage, the proliferation of such dangerous weapons.”

A case can be made, then, that had the United States pursued a policy that addressed the proliferation of non-conventional weapons through region-wide disarmament rather than trying to single out Syria, the Syrian regime would have rid itself of its chemical weapons some years earlier along with Israel and Egypt, and the government's alleged use of such ordnance—which is now propelling the United States to increase its involvement in that country's civil war—would have never become an issue.

Source: http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_us_and_chemical_weapons_no_leg_to_stand_on

Appeal to Authors to Boycott ‘Celebrating India in Israel' Festival at the University of Haifa

InCACBI — 2013-05-02T17:56:14Z

New Delhi, April 30, 2013

Dear Namita Gokhale and Amish Tripathi,

We, a group of artists, academics and activists in India, came together in 2010 to campaign against yet another apartheid regime by extending support to the Palestinian call for an international campaign for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel (see www.incacbi.in).

We understand that you are to participate in the festival “Celebrating India in Israel” organised by the Indian Embassy in Israel and Teamwork Productions, and that one of the events, an “authors in conversation” on May 9, 2013, will be at the University of Haifa
(http://www.celebratingindiaisrael.com/about_us.html andwww.haifa.ac.il).

We appeal to you, as writers of conscience, to boycott this event. We would like to clarify that the Palestinian call for an international boycott (www.pacbi.org) and our response to it is not against individuals; nor is it against visits to Israel. The boycott is on all events and projects that involve Israeli state institutions, or institutions that collaborate with the Israeli state.

Why single out the University of Haifa?

1. Haifa University serves as a “proud” home for Israeli security services as well as the Israeli military (see www.PACBI.org). In 2010, Haifa University announced the successful bid for an Israeli army tender to continue training students at the army's College for National Security for post-graduate studies. Haifa University thus confirmed, once again, the organic partnership between the Israeli academy and the state's system of colonial control, apartheid and occupation of Palestine. For more see (1) and (3).

2. A report released by the Arab Youth Association-Baladna documents the various facets of racial discrimination against Palestinian students at Haifa University, one of the Israeli universities branded as “a place of tolerance and diversity”. The report states that Haifa University has condoned, indeed invited, police suppression of legitimate political expression on the part of Palestinian student activists on campus. In the matter of admissions, the university specifies the minimum age of 20 for applicants to a number of specializations, thus discriminating against fresh Palestinian secondary school graduates who have not performed military service. The University's dormitory space allocation and financial aid disbursement policies also follow the same pattern. For more see (2), (4) and (5).

It is because of these reasons that the British Association of University Teachers called for a boycott of Haifa University in 2005 for "symbolizing aspects of the occupation."

Should Israel be admitted into the global cultural arena when it does not respect international law and recognize the Palestinian people's right to freedom, equality and justice? At a time when the international movement to isolate Israel is gaining ground in response to the escalation of Israel's colonial and racist policies, we urge you to reflect upon the ethical implications of your accepting an invitation to participate in an event at the University of Haifa. Your participation would inadvertently help whitewash Israel's practices, making it appear as though business with Israel should go on as usual.

Please don't let your writing be used to legitimize home demolitions, illegal raids, the use of white phosphorous, political and child imprisonments, racist marriage bans, piracy and execution in international waters, collective punishment, Occupation, checkpoints, roadblocks, and the bombing and closing of educational institutions. If you cancel your event at the University of Haifa, you will also be encouraging other writers, artists and academics around the world to follow your lead, and take a stand for justice and an end to apartheid.

For InCACBI

(Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) (www.incacbi.in)

Ayesha Kidwai, Convenor (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Mohan Rao, Convenor (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Gargi Sen, Convenor (Film-maker)

Githa Hariharan, Convenor (Writer)

N Pushpamala, Convenor (Artist)

Amar Kanwar (Film-maker)

Anand Patwardhan (Film-maker)

Arundhati Roy (Writer)

Dhruv Sangari (Singer)

Geeta Kapoor (Art Critic)

K Satchidanandan (Writer)

M.K. Raina (Theatre)

Ram Rahman (Artist)

Saba Dewan (Film-maker)

Saeed Mirza (Film-maker)

Sheba Chhachhi (Artist)

Vivan Sundaram (Artist)

Amita Kanekar (Writer)

Ayisha Abraham (Artist)

Brijesh Kumar (Theatre)

Ein Lall (Film-maker)

Geeta Kapoor (Art Critic)

Ira Bhaskar (Film-maker)

Meena Menon (Writer)

Moloyshree Hashmi (Theatre)

Saba Hasan (Artist)

Shashi Deshpande (Writer)

Sriram Ananth (Writer)

Terri Ginsberg (Film Scholar)

And 150 other members of InCACBI

[1]http://www.alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2677%3Ahaifa-university-proud-to-be-academic-home-of-israeli-security-forces&catid=119%3Aenglish&Itemid=878

[2] SOAS Palestine Society Report: "Tel Aviv University part and parcel of the Israeli Occupation," http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf

[3] Keller, U. (2009) the Academic Boycott of Israel and the Complicity of Israeli Academic Institutions in Occupation of Palestinian Territories. The Economy of the Occupation: A Socioeconomic Bulletin: Alternative Information Centre.

http://www.alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf

[4] Adva, Israel, A Social Report 2008-2009, http://www.adva.org/default.asp?pageid=1002&itmid=574 ; Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Education rights—Palestinian citizens of Israel, (2003), Shafa'amr, Israel; Human Rights Watch. Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools (2001), www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/

[5] Haifa University and the Policy of racial discrimination against Palestinian Students (May 2010); Arabic text at: http://www.momken.org/newsarticle.php?item=9923

[6] www.bdsmovement.net

To Reclaim Our Future, We Must Change the Present

Climate Space Steering Committee — 2013-05-01T22:18:39Z

Our Proposal for Changing the System and not the Climate

The capitalist system has exploited and abused nature, pushing the planet to its limits, so much so that the system has accelerated dangerous and fundamental changes in the climate.
Today, the severity and multiplicity of weather changes – characterized by droughts, desertification, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, forest fires and the melting of glaciers and sea ice – indicate that the planet is burning. These extreme changes have direct impacts on humans through the loss of lives, livelihoods, crops and homes, all of which have led to human displacement in the form of forced migration and climate refugees on a massive and unprecedented scale.
Humanity and nature are now standing at a precipice. We can stand idle and continue the march into an abysmal future too dire to imagine, or we can take action and reclaim a future that we have all hoped for.
We will not stand idle. We will not allow the capitalist system to burn us all. We will take action and address the root causes of climate change by changing the system. The time has come to stop talking and to take action.
We must nurture, support, strengthen and increase the scale of grassroots organizing in all places, but in particular in frontline battlegrounds where the stakes are the highest.
System Change means:
• Leave more than two thirds of fossil fuel reserves under the soil, as well as beneath the ocean floor, in order to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change.
• Ban all new exploration and exploitation of oil, tar sands, oil shale, coal, uranium, and natural gas.
• Support a just transition for workers and communities away from the extreme energy economy and into resilient local economies based on social, economic and environmental justice.
• Decentralize the generation and ownership of energy under local community control using renewable sources of energy. Invest in community-based, small-scale, local energy infrastructure.
• Stop building mega and unnecessary infrastructure projects that do not benefit the population and are net contributors to greenhouse gasses like, mega-dams, excessive huge highways, large-scale centralized energy projects, and superfluous massive airports.
• End the dominance of export-based industrial forms of food production, (including in the livestock sector), and promote small-scale integrated and ecologically sound farming and an agriculture system that ensures food sovereignty, and that locally grown crops meet the nutritional and cultural needs of the local community. These measures will help to cool the planet.
• Adopt Zero Waste approaches through promoting comprehensive recycling and composting programs that end the use of greenhouse gas emitting incinerators – including new generation hi-tech incinerators – and landfills.
• Stop land grabbing and respect the rights of small farmers, peasants and women. Recognize the collective rights of indigenous and tribal peoples consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including their rights to their lands and territories.
• Develop economic strategies that create new kinds of ‘climate jobs' - decent paying jobs that directly contribute to carbon reductions - in such sectors as renewable energy, agriculture, public transportation and building retrofits.
• Recover the control of the public sources to finance projects for people and nature like health, education, food, employment, housing, restoration of water sheds, conservation and restoration of forest and other ecosystems and others and stop the subsidies to dirty industries, agribusiness and military industry.
• Take cars off the roads by building clean public transport infrastructure that is adaptive to local, non-combustion energy sources, and make it accessible and affordable to everyone.
• Promote local production and consumption of durable goods to satisfy the fundamental needs of the people and avoid the transport of goods that can be produced locally.
• Stop and reverse corporate driven free trade and investments agreements that promote trade for profit and destroy the labour force, nature and the capacity of nations to define their own policies.
• Stop the corporate capture of the economy and natural resources for the profit of Transnational Corporations.
• Dismantle the war industry and military infrastructure in order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of warfare, and divert war budgets to promote genuine peace.
With these measures we will be able to achieve comprehensive employment for all because built into this systemic change there will be more and better quality jobs than currently exist within the capitalist system. With these measures we will be able to build an economy that serves the people and not the capitalists. We will stop the endless degradation of the earth's land, air, and water and preserve the health of humans and the vital cycles of nature. We will avoid forced migration and millions of climate refugees.
System change requires an end to the global empire of transnational corporations and banks. Only a society that has the type of democratic control over resources which is based on workers (including migrant workers), indigenous and women's rights and respects the sovereignty of the people will be able to guarantee economic, social and environmental justice. System Change requires a break from the patriarchal society in order to guarantee women's rights in all aspects of life. Feminism and ecology are key components of the new society that we are fighting for.
We need a new system that seeks harmony between humans and nature and not an endless growth model that the capitalist system promotes in order to make more and more profit. Mother Earth and her natural resources cannot sustain the consumption and production needs of this modern industrialized society. We require a new system that addresses the needs of the majority and not of the few. We need a redistribution of the wealth that is now controlled by the 1%. And we also need a new definition of wellbeing and prosperity for all life on the planet under the limits of our Mother Earth.
While there will still be a battle inside the international UN climate negotiations, the main battlegrounds will be outside and will be rooted in the places where there are frontline struggles against the fossil fuel industry, industrial agriculture, deforestation, industrial pollution, carbon offsets schemes, and REDD-type carbon offsets projects, all resulting in land and water grabbing and displacements taking place all over the world.
The United States, Europe, Japan, Russia and other industrialized countries, as the main historical carbon emitters, should implement the biggest emissions reductions. China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other emerging economies should also have targets for emission reductions based on the principles of common but differentiated responsibility. We do not accept that on behalf of the right to development several projects for more unsustainable consumption and exploitation of nature are being promoted in developing countries only to benefit the profits of the 1%.
The fight for a new system is also the struggle against false solutions to climate change. If we don't stop them they will disrupt the Earth's System and deeply affect the health of nature and all life. We therefore reject techno-fix “solutions” like geo-engineering, genetically modified organisms, agrofuels, industrial bioenergy, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, hydraulic fracturation (fracking), nuclear projects, waste-to-energy generation based on incineration, and others.
We are also in opposition to those proposals that want to expand the commodification, financialization and privatization of the functions of nature through the so-called “green economy” which places a price on nature and creates new derivative markets that will only increase inequality and expedite the destruction of nature. We cannot put the future of nature and humanity in the hands of financial speculative mechanisms like carbon trading and REDD. We echo and amplify the many voices that are urging the European Union to scrap the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), like Clean Development Mechanisms, is not a solution to climate change and is a new form of colonialism. In defense of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and the environment, we reject REDD+ and the grabbing of the forests, farmlands, soils, mangroves, marine algae and oceans of the world which act as sponges for greenhouse gas pollution. REDD and its potential expansion constitutes a worldwide counter-agrarian reform which perverts and twists the task of growing food into a process of “farming carbon” called Climate Smart Agriculture.
We must link social and environmental struggles, bring together rural and urban communities, and combine local and global initiatives so that we can unite together in a common struggle. We must use all diverse forms of resistance. We must build a movement that is based on the daily life of people that guarantees democracy at all stages of societies.
Many proposals already contain key elements needed to build new systemic alternatives. Some examples include, Buen Vivir, defending the commons, respecting Indigenous territories and community conserved areas, the rights of Mother Earth – rights of Nature, food sovereignty, prosperity without growth, de-globalization, the happiness index, the duties to and rights of future generations, the Peoples Agreement of Cochabamba and others.
We have all long hoped for the possibility of another world. Today, we take that hope and turn it into courage, strength and action - that together, we can change the system. If there is to be a future for humanity, we need to fight for it right now.
April 2013
Signed by the facilitators of the Climate Space
Alliance of Progressive Labor, Philippines
Alternatives International
ATTAC France
Ecologistas en Acción
Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria
ETC Group
Fairwatch, Italy
Focus on the Global South
Global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power and end TNCs' impunity
Global Forest Coalition
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Grupo de Reflexão e Apoio ao Processo do Fórum Social Mundial
Indigenous Environmental Network
La Via Campesina
No-REDD Africa Network
Migrants Rights International
OilWatch International
Polaris Institute
Transnational Institute

Concern Over China's Environment

Houda Chergui — 2013-05-01T22:18:34Z

China has been anything but immune to environmental criticisms in the past: from Melamine-tainted milk powder, to exploding watermelons, to pesticide-riddled vegetables and antibiotic-induced chickens; the country has already gained a negative environmental track record.

The newest alarming and strange episode involves thousands of pig, dog and duck carcasses found throughout Mainland China. Most recently, in early April, a total of 410 pig and 122 dog carcasses have been found in homes and farms in the village of Dongtun in Yanshi city, central Henan province.

This event occurred very shortly after more than 11,000 pigs were pulled from the Huangpu river in early March and then another 5,600 carcasses were discovered in neighbouring province, Jiaxing. Around 1,000 dead ducks were also found in the Southwestern province of Sichuan in the Nanhe River.

The government received copious amounts of criticism from bloggers for its slow response and explanations for the cause of the mass deaths.

It was first thought that the animals may have died of fumes radiating from nearby chemical factories. Though, after the factories were shut down for thorough investigation, it was revealed that this was not the cause of death. According to state media, it was determined by early lab results to be a specific brand of swine flu known as “porcine cicovirus” that killed the pigs in Huangpu. However, officials reassured that humans could not contract it and that the water had not been contaminated, as the Huangpu river supplies twenty percent of Shanghai's twenty-three million residents with tap water.

They explained that this phenomenon was due to increased regulation of the meat market, rather than its opposite. farmers selling dead animals that are later sold for consumption was common practice, now discontinued due to the intensification of regulations on the quality of meat.

On March 23, the state-run China Central Television (CCTV) revealed how illegally processed animals—notably pigs—have been sold on the black market for years. Instead of sending animals that die of disease to processing pits—as the law states—black market dealers buy the carcasses off of farmers and sell them for consumption. Forty-six people in Eastern Zhejiang province were arrested earlier in March for processing and selling meat from diseased animals. It was reported that the main instigator for illegally purchasing, slaughtering and selling the meat was charged with six and a half years of prison and fined 800,000 Yuan.

It is because of this crackdown that people have resorted to dumping the carcasses into the nearest body of water. Officials have been asserting that this is a sign that food regulations are improving.

Because an outbreak of a new avian flu strain deemed H7N9 surged suspiciously in tangent with these events, it had been thought that the two were possibly related. Officials have denied this relationship, stating that neither had anything to do with the other.

The H7N9 virus has killed around 23 people and infected 110 in Mainland China, but no evidence thus far has shown that it has spread between humans. Most of the cases were detected in eastern China, though there was also one case in Taiwan. Officials confirmed another outbreak in the central province of Hunan, and another in southern China. A diagnostic test and clinical trials to identify the virus are underway and due in July and August.

Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has praised the government for the manner in which it has handled this outbreak in contrast to when it was accused of denying the severity of the scale of the acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis in 2002-2003. “I am quite satisfied with the Chinese response” he has said, adding that the transparency has been “excellent.”

Whether or not the disposal of diseased carcasses and the virus outbreak were connected, the scandal arose amid growing concerns over the country's environment such as recent record smog levels in Beijing, and water and air pollution affecting nearby villages. It also aggravates the severe water quality issues, as Greenpeace East Asia estimated that 320 million people in the country lack access to clean drinking water. Out of a possible 118 cities, 64 were considered to have a “seriously contaminated” groundwater supply according to a 2011 study by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Any attempt to organize protests over the event's environmental consequences has been quelled over the months since the first discovery of carcasses was made. A Shanghai poet, Pan Ting, posting a call online for a mass walk along the Huangpu river. Soon after, she was called and detained for questioning by the police. She later posted, “I feel very disappointed. You even shut out a voice concerned about local pollution and your own lives.”

It is left to be known what effect the H7N9 outbreak will ultimately have However, what is certain is that thousands of diseased carcasses in China's rivers can do nothing but harm the country's water supply.