Palestinian Pundit

"BAGHDAD, 7 April 2009 (IRIN) - The remaining estimated 14,000 Palestinians in Iraq or holed up in camps on the Iraqi-Syrian border still face a precarious existence, despite a slowly improving security situation, say observers......

“We’ve been hearing such statements and promises since 2003 and nothing has happened. Instead, our life and situation have deteriorated.”

He said that in 2005 his father was gunned down in a Baghdad street: Hundreds of Palestinian refugees have been killed in ethnic attacks since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.....

Some 35,000 stateless Palestinians were living in Iraq before 2003, but many were intimidated or attacked by armed groups who accused them of loyalty to the Saddam Hussein regime. Killings, abductions and persecution have forced thousands to flee to Jordan and Syria, while others fled to makeshift refugee camps. A few have managed to get resettled abroad."

Netanyahu invited to Egypt

"Israeli sources reported late on Monday at night that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, received an invitation from the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, to visit the country and hold talks......

Netanyahu’s office reported that Netanyahu and Mubarak held a phone conversation, and Mubarak invited Netanyahu for talks at the Egyptian resort of Sharm Al Sheik. The two leaders did not set a date for the visit.

Meanwhile, the official Egyptian news agency stated that the conversation between the two leaders did not include an invitation, adding that the two leaders claimed to be determined to work for peace despite the recent tension caused by the statements of Lieberman, who also said that Israel should not be committed to previously signed peace deals......

Israel and Egypt are said to be determined to strengthen their ties......"

By Johann Hari
The Independent

"Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging.....

....Hidden in plain view

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?....."

Julia Kollewe
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 April 2009

"Billionaire investor George Soros has warned that bailing out banks could turn them into "zombies" that suck the lifeblood of the American economy, which he predicted is in for a "lasting slowdown".

He also cautioned that the recent rise in global stockmarkets is a "bear market rally because we have not yet turned the economy around"........"

This poll asks:

With over 500 responding so far, 63% said no.

By Chris Hedges

"If we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them......

.....We will become Weimar Germany. A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans. A cabal of proto-fascist misfits, from Christian demagogues to simpletons like Sarah Palin to loudmouth talk show hosts, who we naively dismiss as buffoons, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral renewal. The elites, the ones with their Harvard Business School degrees and expensive vocabularies, will retreat into their sheltered enclaves of privilege and comfort. We will be left bereft and abandoned outside the gates. "

By Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy

".....Look at this way: We have enough trouble getting reliable, efficient, and corruption-free government here at home (think Rod Blagoevich, Jack Abramoff, or the State Legislature here in Massachusetts, where the past two speakers had to resign in the face of scandals). So what makes us think we can root it out on the other side of the world? For that matter, what is the model of political transformation that we are selling to the world, given our inability to rebuild or restore deteriorating American cities like Detroit, and the serious problems of governance we observe in states like California? And that's in our own country, which we probably understand fairly well. To imagine that we know how to manage the politics of more than 200 million people in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- who are themselves divided into a diverse array of clans, tribes, and sects -- is the very definition of hubris......."

By Robert Fisk

"It's all supposed to be about campaign promises. Didn't Barack Obama promise to deliver an address from a "Muslim capital" in his first 100 days? It's got to be in a safe, moderate country, of course, but where better than Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secular/Islamist nation of Turkey, whose rulers talk to Syria as well as Israel, Iran as well as Iraq? But when the Obama cavalcade turned up in the heart of the old Ottoman Empire last night, he and all his panjandrums were praying that he did not have to use the "G" word.

The "G" word? Well, if it doesn't trip him up in Turkey today, Mr Obama is going to have to walk into a far worse minefield on 24 April when he has to honour another campaign promise: to call the 1915 massacre of 1,500,000 Armenian Christians by Ottoman Turkey a "genocide". Presidents Clinton and Bush jnr made the same pledge in return for Armenian votes, then broke their solemn promise when Turkish generals threatened to cut access to their airbases and major US-Turkish business deals after they were in office......."

"It seems that the repercussions of the Second Lebanon War in which Israeli occupation army faced a severe blow by the Lebanese resistance fighters and by the steadfastness of the Lebanese people who supported the resistance against the Israeli aggression in July 2006. The Washington Post reported Monday that the Second Lebanon War has become the subject of an increasingly heated debate inside the Pentagon which could alter how the US....."

Part II of "World Depression: Regional Wars and the Decline of the US Empire"

by Prof. James Petras
Global Research, April 5, 2009

"For Part I of this article, see World Depression: Regional Wars and the Decline of the US Empire, by Prof. James Petras - 2009-03-30

The worldwide depression has both common and different causes, affected by the interconnections between economies and specific socio-economic structures. At the most general-global level the rising rate of profits and the over-accumulation of capital leading to the financial-real estate-speculative frenzy and crash affected most countries either directly or indirectly. At the same time, while all regional economies suffered the consequences of the onset of the depression, regions were situated in the world economy differently and subsequently the effects varied substantially......

The Middle East: Depression and Regional Wars

The key to the crisis and breakdown of the Middle East is rooted in the imperial-Zionist regional wars and the collapse of commodity prices.

The oil producing countries accumulated vast ‘rents’, which they re-cycled into large-scale finance, real estate and military purchases in and out of the region. Profits concentrated in the hands of billionaire absolutist rulers led to highly polarized class relationships: super-wealthy rentiers and low-paid immigrant laborers limited the size and scope of the domestic markets. To break out of the crisis of over-accumulation and falling profits, the ruling elites adopted two strategies that temporarily avoided the crisis: Dependence on large-scale export of capital to rent, interest and dividend-yielding sites throughout the world – first to the US and Europe and later to Asia and Africa. The second strategy was to recycle profits into pharaonic real estate, tourist and banking centers in the Gulf States…leading to an enormous real estate bubble.

The collapse of the Middle East ‘rentier (or non-productive) oligarchies’ was detonated by the frenzied commodity oil boom, between 2004-2008, which heightened the process of over-accumulation – and the over-extension of debt and labor importation. The result was the onset of a regional economic crisis, in which budget and trade surpluses are replaced by mounting deficits. At no point did the Middle East economies diversify from their foundation based on ‘rents’ and create a diversified economy centered on production and the creation of a dynamic mass-based regional market. The rentier ruling classes face a growing mass of unemployed immigrant and domestic workers, the massive flight of thousands of expatriate European financiers, real estate professionals and other non-productive hangers-on.

No longer the beneficiaries of the petro-dollar boom – as prices, profits and rents collapsed - and no longer the powerful bankers and holders of debt, the Gulf Arab ruling class has few external and internal resources and outlets to project a ‘recovery program.’

Worse still, in the midst of this emerging economic collapse, the militarist state of Israel serves as a regional destabilizing force projecting its power and colonial ambitions throughout the region. Through one of world history’s most unique configuration of power, the economically insignificant state of Israel, operating through the activity of several tens of thousands of strategically-placed, highly organized, disciplined and ideologically committed loyalists in the Diaspora, control key levels of political power in the US government."

By Adam Makary
Al-Jazeera

"Philip Rizk, 27, a freelance journalist and blogger who has been reporting from Gaza since 2005, was arrested by Egyptian security forces after a pro-Palestinian rally in Cairo on February 6.

He was released a few days later without being charged.

While in Gaza, he filmed The Palestinian Life, a documentary highlighting non-violent means of resistance against the Israeli occupation.

The film is premiering at the London International Documentary Festival on April 4. Here are excerpts from an interview Rizk gave to Al Jazeera shortly before the film’s debut.......

I needed to go to Palestine to understand what was going on there. Studying and reading about it didn't make sense until I saw the wall, the settlements and physical occupation. After doing so, and going through the kinds of experiences I went through, I wanted to translate what I saw into the medium of film.

I'm also planning a film in West Africa, and then I'd like to focus on Egypt, which is a real police state. There's red tape everywhere so it's going to be a challenge."

Palestinian President Visits Baghdad

[Is a visit to Kabul and Karzai next?]

Al-Manar

"Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas arrived in Iraq on Sunday on the first visit by a Palestinian leader since the US-led invasion of 2003, state television said. Abbas was expected to hold talks with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on boosting ties. It is Abbas's first official visit to Iraq and comes six years after US occupation forces invaded the country....."

ياسر الزعاترة

"بعد إعلان الإستراتيجية الأميركية الجديدة لأوباما بشأن العراق صار بوسعنا التساؤل عن معالم القادم في سياسات الرجل، ليس فقط بسبب إعلانه الرحيل من أرض الرافدين مقابل زيادة القوات في أفغانستان، بل أيضا بعد التأكد من أن إستراتيجيته تقوم على احترام رأي المؤسسة العسكرية والأمنية، فضلا عن قادة الرأي الآخرين، وبينهم الجمهوريون، حتى لو انطوى ذلك على قدر من التخلي عن الشعارات والوعود التي أطلقها أثناء حملته الانتخابية
....
لا يعني ذلك أن أوباما سيشن حربا قريبة على إيران، لكن استبعادها تماما ليس ممكنا بحال، وسيعتمد الأمر على التطورات المقبلة، وقد يسمح للإسرائيليين في وقت من الأوقات بتنفيذ الضربة بأنفسهم إذا ملكوا الإمكانات مع بعض المساعدة اللوجستية. وإذا وقع شيء من ذلك فسيكون واحدا من أكبر أخطاء أوباما، فضلا عن الجهات العربية التي ستسانده إذا فعلت ذلك بشكل واضح.

المهم أن هذا الحشد ضد إيران، سيفرض على الولايات المتحدة الدفع من جيب مصالحها للصين وروسيا من أجل الحيلولة دون إسنادهم للموقف الإيراني، في حين لن يتجاوز الموقف في الحالة العربية الإبقاء على مسيرة المفاوضات مع الإسرائيليين حية، إضافة إلى السكوت على واقع البؤس الداخلي في الدول العربية ونسيان قصة الديمقراطية والإصلاح، وربما تمرير التوريث في الحالة المصرية.

على أي حال، فقد ورث أوباما تركة ثقيلة لا تشير سياساته إلى إمكانية النجاح في تجاوزها، لاسيما على صعيد الأزمة المالية الخانقة التي عصفت بالعالم أجمع، الأمر الذي يعني أن منحنى التراجع الذي بدأته الولايات المتحدة لن يتوقف، بصرف النظر عن مدى تسارعه خلال المرحلة المقبلة.
"

Corrupt new administration deepens and expands systemic criminalization and war agenda

A GOOD PIECE

by Larry Chin
Global Research, April 4, 2009

"To sober, clear-eyed observers of history and political deception, the ascension of Barack Obama held the promise for unprecedented new dangers: a revitalized New World Order, led by the Anglo-American empire’s neoliberal criminal faction and an iconic, deceptive new facilitator; and a continuation of Bush/Cheney criminality and war, under smarter and much more effective management.

Now, just months into their tenure, the Barack Obama administration has more than fulfilled the promises he made to his elite constituency, deepening the mass destruction of Bush/Cheney, while charming its victims all over the world into enjoying their own demise.

The empire’s facilitator

Beneath his seemingly boundless charisma and charm, Barack Obama has always been an utterly ruthless politician. He has been a compromiser who has danced with the darkest forces of political and criminal power, while winning over common people; a consensus-abiding chameleon and a “pragmatist”. Obama is the true model of what George W. Bush only claimed to be: “a uniter, not a divider”......

A call to resist

As this writer warned in “Obama: return to elite status quo”, written shortly following Obama’s victory:

“…the arrival of Obama as the new imperial figurehead of the Anglo-American empire is not a victory of, or for, the people. It will not signify a dramatic upheaval, in any way, and by no means is any sort of revolution at hand. This election was a necessary rotation of management, scripted at the highest levels of the Anglo-American elite.

“The “change” that a Barack Obama presidency will bring to America and the world will be one of style, not substance: a return to the centrist corporate globalism of the Clinton and Carter eras, complete with regurgitated Democratic Party elites from those administrations, and new neoliberal politicians touting similar ideologies.

“…The velvet gloves will be slipped back over the iron fists, but the fists will still be wielded aggressively. Within months, the global conquest that Bush-Cheney started will resume under the vastly more convincing and adored Obama, who has consistently stated his intention to intensify the war in Afghanistan, and “kill ‘terrorists’” across the Middle East.”

For those who have spent the past eight hellish years opposing and resisting the crimes of Bush/Cheney, prepare yourselves for worse: the “friendliest” fascism, and the most dangerous stealth messenger in history. "

An Excellent Piece

By Hazem Jamjoum, The Electronic Intifada, 3 April 2009

(Hazem Jamjoum is the editor of al-Majdal, the English language quarterly magazine of the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, Palestine.)

".....Many of the writings stemming from this analysis work to detail levels of similarity and difference with apartheid South Africa, rather than looking at apartheid as a system that can be practiced by any state. To some extent, this strong emphasis on historical comparisons is understandable given that boycott, divestment and sanctions is the central campaign called for by Palestinian civil society for solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, and is modeled on the one that helped end South African apartheid. However, an over-emphasis on similarities and differences confines the use of the term to narrow limits. With the expanding agreement that the term "apartheid" is useful in describing the level and layout of Israel's crimes, it is important that our understanding of the "apartheid label" be deepened, both as a means of informing activism in support of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, and in order to most effectively make use of comparisons with other struggles.

Colonialism and the role of comparison

I have argued that the question of whether apartheid applies cannot be determined by means of comparison with South Africa, but rather by legal analysis. This, however, does not mean that comparative study is not useful. Comparison is in fact essential to the process of learning historical lessons for those involved in struggle. A central point of comparison with South Africa is the fact that it was, and for the indigenous people of Palestine and the Americas, continues to be a struggle against colonialism.

Focusing on the colonial dimension of Israeli apartheid and the Zionist project enables us to maintain our focus on the issues that really matter, such as land acquisition, demographic engineering and methods of political and economic control exercised by one racial group over another. Comparison with other anti-colonial struggles provides the main resource for understanding this colonial dimension of Israeli oppression, and for deriving some of the lessons needed to fight it......

The push for the establishment and international recognition of an independent Palestinian state within the Palestinian Bantustan is no different from the South African apartheid regime's campaign to gain international recognition of Transkei or Ciskei. This is the core of the "two-state solution" idea. The major and crucial difference is that in the current Palestinian case, it is the world's superpower and its adjutants in Europe and the Arab world pushing as well, and armed with the active acceptance of Palestine's indigenous intermediaries."

By Ramzy Baroud
Palestine Chronicle

"It’s remarkable how some in the media can cleverly manipulate a story by avoiding its essence and focusing on marginal details. The chucking of a pair of shoes at former President George W. Bush by an Iraqi journalist, Muntazer al-Zaidi during a Baghdad press conference, on December 14, 2008 is a case in point.

Most Arab and Muslim media – and other media around the world, save mainstream western media – framed al-Zaidi’s deed within its proper context, that of a horrific, genocidal war, bloody and humiliating occupation and the colonial hubris of a superpower that gave itself the right and ‘moral’ justification to devastate a sovereign nation for the sake of oil, Israel and the desire for sheer hegemony.......

Al-Zaidi’s action was reduced in mainstream media, perhaps because he was an Iraqi fighter of a different type, the kind that fails to fit the media’s stereotype, that of the sectarian militant, blowing people up, gunning them down, or detonating their homes and houses of worship. Indeed, al-Zaidi didn’t only challenging Bush, the occupation and the quisling government of Iraq, but the media perception itself.

The true story, conveniently missed or reinterpreted by many in the media, was not about a pair of shoes, but a pair of narratives, that of the Iraqi court and the government it represents – compromising, self-serving and sectarian – and that of Muntazer al-Zaidi and the people he represents, occupied and oppressed, true, but daring, and exceptionally proud. "

Chavez in Iran: Obama Still Leads 'Empire'

"TEHRAN - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday that he has little hope of better relations with Washington under President Barack Obama, saying the United States is still acting like an "empire" in his eyes.

Chavez made the comments after arriving in Tehran on a two-day visit to Iran. In recent years, Chavez and Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - both well-known for their anti-U.S. rhetoric - have boosted economic and political ties....."

The Free Gaza Movement

"The Free Gaza Movement will again challenge Israel's illegal closure of the Gaza Strip by sailing a flotilla of passenger and cargo ships to Gaza in late May 2009. Please help support this important initiative. Our aim is to highlight the illegality of Israel’s sea blockade. This maritime siege is an act of collective punishment adding to the misery suffered by all inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.

Since August 2008, our small, yet committed group has completed five successful voyages, delivering human rights workers & humanitarian supplies to those in desperate need. Each voyage helps lessen Gaza's terrible isolation from the world.

When our governments fail to act, we - the citizens of the world - must stand up and make our voices heard.

At the end of May 2009, we are inviting all those who believe in the International Declaration of Human Rights to sail with us from Cyprus to Gaza. You will need to supply the ship, but we can help you to find an excellent crew. Our international flotilla will be called THE HOPE FLEET.

We need as many ships as possible to show the people of Palestine that the world is not deaf to their cries for justice. Please help fund a ship for this historic voyage.

If you are interested in joining or supporting this action, please email Iristulip(at)gmail.com. We are already collecting names and information as we prepare for this historic journey. With your help, we will make the HOPE FLEET a reality."

By John Pilger

"These are extraordinary times. With the United States and Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and committing to an endless colonial war, pressure is building for their crimes to be prosecuted at a tribunal similar to that which tried the Nazis at Nuremberg. This defined rapacious invasion as "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." International law would be mere farce, said the chief US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, "if, in future, we do not apply its principles to ourselves."

That is now happening. Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Britain have long had "universal jurisdiction" statutes, which allow their national courts to pursue and prosecute prima facie war criminals. What has changed is an unspoken rule never to use international law against "ourselves," or "our" allies or clients......"

It's hardly surprising that some want to trash the City, but to claim that the G20 protesters have no alternative is nonsense

Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Thursday 2 April 2009

"When mass protests exploded on the streets of Seattle in 1999 against the kind of globalisation embodied in the World Trade Organisation, their anti-capitalist message was widely portrayed as utopian. A decade on, as anti-capitalist demonstrators vented their fury yesterday on the social and ecological vandals of the City and prepared to do battle today outside the G20 meeting in the heart of what was once London's docks, it looks more like common sense.

The wreckage of the neoliberal order - which reached its zenith in the wake of Seattle and has generated the greatest global economic crisis since the 1930s - is now all around us. World trade is in free fall and, by some measures, collapsing faster than at the time of the Great Depression........"

Al-Manar

"The United States seems certain that Israel will eventually strike Iran although Washington “would be surprised if they (Israel) acted this year.” Top commander of US forces in Middle East David Petraeus told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday that the new Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu may ultimately see itself so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take preemptive military.....
An article in The Atlantic magazine indicated that Netanyahu was prepared to act unilaterally to prevent Iran from going nuclear. The introduction to the piece, written by Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that Netanyahu has given US President Barack Obama a challenge to stop the Islamic republic from developing nuclear weapons, “or else watch Israel do so.”

The quotes from Netanyahu, however, seemed more opaque and supportive of American attempts to use diplomacy and sanctions on Iran, but wouldn’t provide a timeline for American efforts. According to the article, an unnamed adviser said Israeli timelines were calculated in months, "not years," and estimated that Iran's defenses could be overcome - potentially without a green light from America. Goldberg quoted an adviser as saying, "The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action."........"