Air ticket tax - le bâton magique

Like an excellent magicien, Jacque Chirac is creating extra fortune for France's overseas development assistance (ODA) budget out of nothing with the touch of his bâton magique.

The French President annonced today that France will impose an international tax on air tickets, from next year, in order to finance development, especially on the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. ("Chirac : une taxe sur les billets d'avion pour financer le développement", in Libération, 29 August 2005.)

The idea of the air ticket tax was first proposed during a "high level dialogue meeting on fianancing on development" held in New York in July this year. Apart from France, Algeria, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Spain are also participating in this pilot project.

It means that if you fly from any of these countries, you will be paying this tax. It wasn't clear as to what the tax rate would be, just an indication that it would amount to an average of about 5 euros per economy class flight, 20 euros for business and first class. It is estimated to bring in about 10 billion euros per annum.

A quick fix on France less than perfect record in ODA. Currently France is spending 0.56% of its GNP on ODA. Thanx to some accounting genious, one third of this amount is, in fact, cancellation of debt services payment from poor countries, but it is now counted as expenditure.

Having said that, solidarity with developing countries and developmental problems are always welcome, only that we should not overlook the background story.

It has been 35 years since the UN adopted the resolution affirming that rich countries should progressively increase their spending with a target at reaching 0.7% of their GNP.

For a deeper reality check, see a recent article by Pekka Hirvonen, Stingy Samaritans: Why Recent Increases in Development Aid Fail to Help the Poor, published in the Global Policy Forum, August 2005

Categories: Development, Europe

Olé to Allah

ojalá = insha'ala?
olé = allah?

It's commonly known that many Spanish words have their roots in Arabic, such as medina, alceitun (olive), and not to mention names coming from Arabic which is (almost) ubiquitous in southern Spain, because of the Moorish past. But these two new discoveries really made my day!

Today I'm just cross posting a piece I read recently which I really like Olé to Allah: New York's Latino Muslims. It is about young latinos converting to Islam.

Categories: Culture

U.S. evangelist calls for assassination of Chavez

Conservative U.S. evangelist Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. (Reuters)

When I first read the report about the "Economic Hit Man" story (read my entry Building Hegemony, 22 August, 2005), immediately I became very worried about Chavez. Overworried, my office mate said, it wouldn't happen, because it would be too obvious that any such plot could not but have the US behind it. And now being in the information age, any such conspiracy would be exposed before it succeeds.

But think about it. Is it not exactly the Economic Hit Man's synopsis? The U.S. failed to buy in Chavez since he was elected President, then he became the fervent communist monster pictured by the US media. Then came the 2002 coup d'état, which again failed to bring Chavez down. Now the third strategy in line is assassination, because it is much cheaper than fighting a war which in any case the US can't afford now, being already deeply in trouble in Iraq (another case in point which proved the theory of the EHM, by the way).

And who is Pat Robertson? He's the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America. The programme is shown on the ABC TV network. And Robertson once ran for president in 1988!

If you want to read the exact words of Robertson, here is the link with the video clip. It's worth it, to see how far lies and propaganda can go.

Apart from offering a genuin eye-opener, the merit of Robertson lies on the fact that now the CIA perhaps will be more reticent in carrying out such plot, if there was any.

Categories: Empire, USA, Latin-America, Media

Wake up from the Development Lie

The neoliberal agenda embodied by the Washington Consensus has well been criticised, widely discredited by the experience of Latin American and African countries in the past few decades, and whose failure has even been admitted by International Monetary Fund itself.

Recently, Thabo Mbek, President of South Africa, took up this subject again when he spoke at the Progressive Governance Regional Conference held in Johannesburg, on 28 July 2005. First of all, who are these "Progressives" to whom was Mbek was speaking? - approximately 200 politicians, policy-makers and academics from progressive parties across the African continent, alongside 50 international participants.

He cited the example of the European Union's regional policy to assist the development of the poorer parts of Europe:

"The European Union['s position is]... that it is not possible to develop the undeveloped parts of the member states of the European Union without large resource transfers from the richer parts of the EU to the poorer parts ... You need a conscious intervention which is going to result in the transfer of resources [the poorer parts of the EU]... Otherwise it could not develop as it should."

He went on to say:

"And if this policy is correct within the context of fighting underdevelopment within the EU, it surely must be correct with regard to fighting underdevelopment globally ... if you are serious about development, you the developed world, have got to match that seriousness with those resource transfers."

Mbek went on about the stricking frankness of a Swiss minister's response some two years ago to his proposition of resources transfers to bring about development:

"...she said to me, Mr President, I agree with you. We need to do that. In reality, what we try do here in Switzerland to address this challenge of poverty, is indeed to transfer resources to the poor of Switzerland. But, Mr President, you are not going to get that money, she said. She says, you won't get it, because the challenge of poverty within the developed world, said the challenge of poverty here in Europe, is in fact quite serious. So, indeed, we will speak very favourably about the challenge of development, but you are not going to get the resources that you are asking for."

The message was clear - sisters and brothers, we can't leave it to the North, nor the free market ideology it preaches to bring about development of the South.

Mbek demanded : 'Progressives of all countries, unite'. - to "unite around a perspective, informed by the need to achieve the right power balance between capital on the one hand and the working people and the poor on the other".

This is the link to the transcript of the whole speech.

Categories: Africa, Europe, Development

Building Hegemony

"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions" is the story told by John Perkins on the radio programme by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! The interview was first broadcasted in 9 November 2004, and has been replayed several time since then. (in December 2004, May and July 2005).

After reading the transcript, honestly I want to read the book. Or, friends, if you have it, I would be really really grateful if you can lend it to me!

Below are extracts of the interview.

*****************************************

We play an interview with, John Perkins - author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" - who says he says he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies. [includes rush transcript]

The protests this week in Bolivia come as Latin America is seeing significant success among popular progressive movements. From Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Lula da Silva of Brazil to the changes of government in Uruguay and now Ecuador, there is a continent-wide trend that has Washington concerned. The US has long exploited countries throughout Central and Latin America for the natural resources, labor and land. Over the decades, this exploitation has been backed up by force and through devastating policies dictated to puppet regimes. Our next guest says he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries in Latin America and around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies. From 1971 to 1981, John Perkins worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main. He described himself as an "economic hit man." He"s written a memoir called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. When he joined us in our fire house studio, we asked him to begin with how he came to be recruited first by the National Security Agency - far larger than the C.I.A. - and then this so-called international consulting firm of Chas T. Main.
John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man."

Our next guest says he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries in Latin America and around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies. From 1971 to 1981 John Perkins worked for the international consulting firm, Chas Main. He described himself an “economic hitman.” He has written a memoir called Confessions of an Economic Hitman. When he joined us in our firehouse studio, I asked him to begin with how he came to be recruited first by the National Security Agency, far larger than the C.I.A., and then this so-called international consulting firm of Chas T. Main.

JOHN PERKINS: It was in the late 1960s, 1968. I was a student at business school and was recruited by the National Security Agency. They ran me through a series of tests - personality tests, lie detector tests -- very sensitive barrage of testing. And during that process, they discovered that I would be a great candidate for an economic hit man. I was in business school at the time. And also they discovered a number of weaknesses in my character. I think, I have weaknesses that are pretty typical of our culture, the three big drugs of our culture: money, power and sex. And they discovered these weaknesses in me. There's a lot in my book about my personal background that gets into that. Then they encouraged me to go into the Peace Corps. I lived in Ecuador for three years as a Peace Corps volunteer with indigenous people there, who today are at war with the oil companies. We were starting that process then, so I got some very good on-the-job training, so to speak. While I was still in Ecuador in the Peace Corps, a vice president from this private consulting firm in Boston that worked closely with the National Security Agency and the other intelligence communities came to Ecuador and continued my recruitment. When I got out of the Peace Corps, he recruited me. I went to work for his company in Boston, Charles T. Main and went through an extensive training program there with a remarkable woman, who is described in detail in the book, Claudine was her name. And she was extremely intelligent, extremely sharp, extremely seductive, and she hooked me. She knew exactly how to hook me. She benefited from all the tests that I'd gone through, knew my weaknesses. And she made it -- she, first of all, hooked me into becoming an economic hit man and at the same time, warned me that this is a very dirty business and you must be completely committed to it or you shouldn't take your first assignment in Indonesia.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, already people are going to be wondering, What is he talking about, economic hit man? Explain.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, really, over the past 30 to 40 years, we economic hit men have created the largest global empire in the history of the world. And we do this, typically -- well, there are many ways to do it, but a typical one is that we identify a third-world country that has resources, which we covet. And often these days that's oil, or might be the canal in the case of Panama. In any case, we go to that third-world country and we arrange a huge loan from the international lending community; usually the World Bank leads that process. So, let's say we give this third-world country a loan of $1 billion. One of the conditions of that loan is that the majority of it, roughly 90%, comes back to the United States to one of our big corporations, the ones we've all heard of recently, the Bechtels, the Halliburtons. And those corporations build in this third-world country large power plants, highways, ports, or industrial parks -- big infrastructure projects that basically serve the very rich in those countries. The poor people in those countries and the middle class suffer; they don't benefit from these loans, they don't benefit from the projects. In fact, often their social services have to be severely curtailed in the process of paying off the debt. Now what also happens is that this third-world country then is saddled with a huge debt that it can't possibly repay. For example, today, Ecuador. Ecuador's foreign debt, as a result of the economic hit man, is equal to roughly 50% of its national budget. It cannot possibly repay this debt, as is the case with so many third-world countries. So, now we go back to those countries and say, look, you borrowed all this money from us, and you owe us this money, you can't repay your debts, so give our oil companies your oil at very cheap costs. And in the case of many of these countries, Ecuador is a good example here, that means destroying their rain forests and destroying their indigenous cultures. That's what we're doing today around the world, and we've been doing it -- it began shortly after the end of World War II. It has been building up over time until today where it's really reached mammoth proportions where we control most of the resources of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, talk about your experience in Panama. You had the opportunity to meet the Head of Panama before he was killed, Omar Torrijos. How did you end up there?

JOHN PERKINS: Well, Panama was one of these pivotal countries at the time and Omar Torrijos, who was the President of Panama. He followed a long line of oligarchy dictators that basically were puppets of the U.S. government that we had installed 50 years prior when we took over the country. Omar Torrijos was the first one to break that cycle, and he was a very, very popular president. He was popular throughout much of the world. Many people believed he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize and might have had he not died or been killed. He protected the downtrodden everywhere. And the United States was at the time, President Carter was negotiating a new Canal treaty with Torrijos and ultimately that Canal treaty went through. But it caused a tremendous amount of turmoil in our own country. In fact, it was passed in Congress by only one vote, that won the ratification of the Canal. So, we economic hit men were really looking beyond that process, or how we could win Panama over regardless of what happened to the Canal Treaty. I was there before the treaty was signed in 1972 and I was trying to bring Torrijos around. I was trying to catch him. I was trying to get him. I was trying to hook him the way we hooked everybody else. He arranged for me to meet with him in this private bungalow one day, and this is described in detail, the conversation, in the book. But basically what he said to me is, Look, I know the game you guys are playing. I know what you're trying to do here. You're trying to saddle us with huge debts. You're trying to make us totally dependent upon you, and you're trying to corrupt me. I know what this game is and I'm not playing. I don't need the money. I'm not looking to get personally wealthy out of this. I want to help my poor people. I want you to build the projects that you're supposed to build, that you build in other countries, but I want you to build them for our poor people, not for our rich people. And he said, if you do that, I'll see to it that you and your company get a lot more work in this country. Good work that will help our people. Well, I was really conflicted at this because, as an economic hit man, I was supposed to get him under our control. I was supposed to hook him. But as a partner in this company and as the chief economist for this firm, I also wanted to get the work for the firm, and in this case it was very obvious that the economic hit men weren't going to get through to Torrijos, so I went along with him. But at the time, I was deeply concerned because I knew that this system is built on the assumption that leaders like Torrijos are corruptible and they are all over the world for the most part. When one stands up to the system as Torrijos was doing, it's not only a threat in his country, like Panama, that we're not going to get our way there, but it also may be seen as setting a very bad example for the rest of the world that once one leader stands up -- and at that time there was another leader standing up, too, who was the President of Ecuador, Jaime Roldos. They were both standing up to the U.S. government. They were both standing up to the oil companies and the economic hit men, and it was a very big concern to me. I knew in my heart that if this continued, something was going to give. Of course, it did. Both of these men were assassinated by what we call the jackals, C.I.A.-sanctioned assassins.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The conversation you had with Omar Torrijos as he goes through history, your conversation in the early 1970s. But talking about what happened in Guatemala, the overthrow of the democratically elected leader Arbenz by United Fruit and the C.I.A-backed coup there in 1954, and you reconstruct this conversation about George Bush's company Zapata Oil eventually taking over United Brands, which was United Fruit, and then he talks about giving your company the business, Omar Torrijos, saying that he believed the Japanese would finance the canal that would be built, though turning to your company. And he says "They provide the money, they will do the construction." And you write, "It struck me, Bechtel will be out in the cold." The biggest construction job in recent history. Omar Torrijos paused. Bechtel's President is George Schultz, Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury. You can imagine the clout he's got and the notorious temper. Bechtel is loaded with Nixon, Ford, and Bush cronies. I've been told that the Bechtel family pulls the strings of the Republican Party. You talk about the corporatocracy, the bringing together of government and corporate power.

JOHN PERKINS: Yes. Well, it got worse, of course. At that time, George Schultz was President of Bechtel. Casper Weinberger was their Chief Counsel, a senior officer in the corporation. They were opposed to Torrijos, not only on the U.S. turning the Canal over to Panama, but even more importantly perhaps because Torrijos was actively negotiating with the Japanese to build a new sea level canal. As you know, the current canal is based on locks and the larger ships in the world can't go through it. So, the idea was to build a sea level canal where every ship could go through, and the Japanese were offering to finance this. But if they financed it, it would be their construction companies, their engineering companies that would build it. Bechtel was incensed over this. They absolutely could not tolerate the idea of this happening. We knew this very strongly, we had to win Torrijos over. Now, then --

AMY GOODMAN: And then, as you said, Schultz becomes Secretary of State under Reagan, Casper Weinberger becomes Secretary of Defense under Reagan. They're the, you know, the heads of Bechtel Corporation.

JOHN PERKINS: Yeah. Yes. Carter negotiated the treaty and then lost the election, partly because of this treaty, partly because of what happened in Iran, which is another story that I was involved in. And then when Reagan became President, Schultz went from President of Bechtel to Secretary of State and Weinberger went from Chief Counsel of Bechtel to Secretary of Defense. They went back to Panama and said, Okay, Omar, now let's talk. We want the canal back, we want the military bases back in the canal zone and more than anything, we want you to stop talking to the Japanese. And Torrijos said, No, I'm a sovereign country. I am not opposing the United States. I'm not a socialist, I'm not a communist, I'm not siding with Cuba or Russia or China, I'm simply standing up for the rights of my people. We have the right to negotiate with whoever can build us the best canal. I have the right to negotiate with the Japanese. He took a very strong stand and within a few months, his plane crashed into a mountain, blew up and crashed into a mountain, and it was very strong evidence that it had been blown up by a tape recorder which was handed to him at the end that was full of explosives. There is no question in my mind and in the mind of much of the world that this was the jackals, the C.I.A.-sanctioned assassins. I've seen them work in many places. Just a couple of months before that, they had done the same thing to Jaime Roldos, President of Ecuador, the first democratically elected president of Ecuador in decades, had replaced a military junta, democratically elected, and he stood up to the U.S. oil companies. We economic hit men couldn't get through to him and his helicopter blew up then and there.

AMY GOODMAN: Why was he standing up to U.S. oil companies?

JOHN PERKINS: Because once again, he ran in the first democratic elections in Ecuador in many decades. He ran on a platform of sovereignty for his country. And if there is oil in Ecuador then, he said, the Ecuadorans should benefit from it. And once he became president, he began to introduce this. He set up a Hydrocarbons Act, he called it, which was basically a petroleum act that would ensure that if oil came out of Ecuador, the majority of the funds from that oil would go to his people. The oil companies would get a reasonable payment. But the majority would go to his people. He was setting a precedent that the oil companies couldn't stand, because throughout the world, they were exploiting all these countries, as they still are. And Roldos said, I'm not going to let that happen to my country. The oil companies couldn't bear to see that, not just because of Ecuador but, again, because of the precedent this would establish. And Roldos and Torrijos were really partners in a way. At the same time, they were supporting each other, and they both had to go. And they both went.

AMY GOODMAN: And what were your thoughts at the time? I mean, you continued doing this work.

JOHN PERKINS: It was a very pivotal point for me that -- throughout my work, as I describe in the book, my conscience was torn. And to me this is one of most interesting parts of my own personal story. I think of myself as a pretty good person. I grew up 300 years a yankee Calvinist in Vermont and New Hampshire. I come from a very patriotic background. I grew up in a very strictly Republican family, very conservative. I have very strong values. I'm very loyal to my country. And --

AMY GOODMAN: Descendant of Tom Paine and Ethan Allen?

JOHN PERKINS: That's right. They're distant relatives. And my parents steeped me in American history and in the values of our founding fathers of our country. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people, all over the world. I believed very strongly in this. And yet at the same time, I was very seduceable to money, power, sex. All these things came my way, and I was doing things that I was patted on the back for by the president of the World Bank, Robert MacNamara. And I was Chief Economist of a big consulting firm in Boston. I had 50 people working for me, PhDs, MBAs. I was doing work that macroeconomics in college had taught me was good work to do. It's all a scam.

AMY GOODMAN: Why have very few people heard of this company, Main?

JOHN PERKINS: We were a very quiet company. We had about 2,000 professional employees, which is not small. We were a closely held company, that means we were owned like a partnership, about 5% of us owned the company so we didn't have to disclose our books to the S.E.C. or anybody. We were a very private, very quiet company and we were serving the interests of empire. The company no longer exists. In the early 1980s, the partners sold out to a larger engineering construction firm, and so the company essentially went out of existence at that point. I think it was getting a little too hot for us at this point. But it was intentional. We were very strictly forbidden from talking to the press. I broke that rule at one point. I wrote an op-ed piece on the Panama Canal for the Boston Globe and was severely chastised within the company. So, it was intentional that we were very quiet.

AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

Categories: Empire, Latin-America, USA,

60th anniversary

Today is the 60th anniversay of "the end of World War II in the Pacific" (BBC), or "the defeat and surrender of Japan in the WWII" (Singtao, a Hong Kong local newspaper).

For the Chinese people, this date signifies the end of Japanese invasion and occupations and the sufferings caused by it. There are official and popular memorials and condemnations every year, calling the world to "never forget" about the atrocities and the lessons learnt.

Some friends asked me, "what exactly are the Chinese nagging about?" They don't quite understand why this is still causing diplomatic rolls between Japan and China as well as other Asian countries. The article "Japan's problem over the past", 15 August 2005, BBC News online summaries well:

"And unlike Germany, Japan has been equivocal about its apologies and the way it teaches its young people about what happened.

Although there are exceptions, Japanese school textbooks tend to skate over atrocities committed by their troops - a fact which prompts its neighbours to say Japan's apologies are insincere ...

Although that represents the hard-line end of Japanese nationalism, his sentiments are tacitly accepted by many Japanese.

This may explain why several high-profile Japanese politicians, including current Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, feel able to regularly pay their respects at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which along with other Japanese war dead honours 14 Class A war criminals. "

We are not very "nationalist" in Hong Kong, normally, but even a primary school pupil there can tell you the above arguement. But the acknowledging of such facts by Japanese people themselves and its being published by a dominant media like the BBC is definitely precious.

I also remember when I was very little, I used to feel thankful for the United States ending the war in Pacific - but then I grew up to learn that it wasn't all that straight forward - our salvation was accompanied by the massacre in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs, an equally atrocious crime committed by the only country on earth who has ever really put their nuclear weapons into use - and who now has been accusing other countries of having the intentions to build or use nuclear weapons.

Chinese always associate this date with the Nanjing Massacre. Whether it was Nanjing, Hiroshima or Nagasaki, it was massacre that took place. Let us all call things by its name.

Categories: Asia, China, History

From oil to development

A friend of mine is flying all the way from Geneva to Miami (correction: he said it's Daytona Beach) to take his pilot courses. Reasons: return trip ticket, visas, course fee, etc., everything taken into account, it is still cheaper to do the course there. Hourly rental including gasoline is about USD 90 .

How wonderful, that is the United States . My high school economics told me about supply and demand - no wonder the U.S. is the world leading consumer of oil: one fourth of the total global oil consumption, or a per capita consumption of 28 barrels a year ( as compared to two barrels a year for each Chinese citizen).

But where does this abundant supply comes from? 60% of the oil consumed in the U.S. are imported in 2002, doubled from the 30% in 1973. Yes, their local stock is running out, and they are keeping it for strategic purposes. So they are increasingly relying on imported oil.

Also no wonder so the "rumour" goes that the real intention of the U.S. in invading Iraq is for its black gold. See Dr. Abdul Hay-Zallom gave an interview to Aljazeera.net in 2003 about U.S. oil interests in Iraq.

Ironically, oil production in Iraq has dropped since the U.S. invasion because local resistance makes production in certain oil fields impossible, and some of the infrastructure is simply destroyed; while world oil prices have gone up. We may have reached the Peak Oil phase. And if we see only increasing conflicts over energy resources, we should not be surprised.

Sebastian Mallaby wrote earlier this week on the Washington Times "The Next Chinese Threat"

Last week congressional bullying drove China to abandon its bid for Unocal... China will redouble its efforts to buy energy and other resources in shaky developing countries. This will undermine Western efforts to promote transparency and fight corruption there, damaging U.S. interests and values far more than a Unocal takeover.

Omitting the usual demonisation of China (We're so used to this already... but maybe one day we can come back to this topic) and the democracy rhectoric (which anyone who has a brain would do anyway), there is probably some truth in this. The congressional bullying and ultimate selling of Unocal to Chevron is definitely against economic liberalistion the U.S. trompeted about. And China's growing demand for energies is not going to be tempered.

It is true that the "development" we seek for developing countries - the lifestyle and consumption pattern of what we see in Europe or North America, through industrialisation and economic growth - is simply impossible given the fossil fuels available on earth. (Remember the U.S. : China - 28 : 2 comparison above?) ; and we are not anywhere near to discovering alternative energies to substitute fossil fuels; and redistribution of resources smells too revolutionary...

That is why we problematise the "growing demand" from developing countries, especially the big ones like China and India - oh, by the way, oil is one thing, don't forget to control your population growth too, otherwise there would not be enough food for everyone! ( look also at how many people on earth are overweight and on regime).

And that is also probably why we keep paying lip-service to the whole array of development discourses.

Categories: China, Development, Economy, Empire, Imperialism, Iraq, United-States

Basis of unity

"North-South divide" - this terminology may looks simplistic at first glance - but the state of affairs suggests that the developed countries' pursuance of their interests has been and is being undoubtedly made at the expense of the developing world.

African leaders call for the unity of all african states as a solution to get Africa out of poverty (even though, obviously, we are very far away from it) The South Centre carried the speeches by Khadafi of Lybia and Obesanjo of Nigeria during the Sirte Summit of the African Union in June in its latest issue of the South Bulletin.

In Latin America, the Boliveraian Revolution is going strong in Venzuela. Its impact on a continental scale is yet to be seen but some are optimistic. See Sarah Wagner's Knocking over Dominos in Latin America" - "the good example threat", as it was called by Znet. And of course we would not forget the rum island's decades of sufferings under the embargo of the most powerful state of the world, because of the "threat" it once posed on turning the continent red. You don't have to be a socialist but you have to admit that Cuba probably has the best record in education (and especially in medicine) in the developing world.

And don't forget about the arabs - the calls for unity dated back to the the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, "thanks" to the existence of common enemies which were the colonial powers. Various movements gained momentum and intensified during the european mandates and reached its height before the defeat of the arabs in the hands of israel. Now panarabism exists only in nostalgies.

Pan-ism surely evokes some sceptism. But to unite doesn't mean to be brought under one nation which is afterall a human construct. As long as there is a common enemy (of course there are other things too, i skip it here), there can be a basis for unity, or solidarity if you like - in chinese the two words can have the same meaning - and so the saying goes "unity is power".

I think it's time to take a look at the ancient militarist strategist Sun's book on how to forge alliances and common fronts.

Categories: Africa, Development, Latin-America, Middle-East

An Iranian's point of view

Miscues set up nuclear crisis
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Publised in Asia Times Online Ltd

SAN FRANCISCO - Iran's resumption of uranium-processing activities and the EU-US warning of sanctions in response to Iran's rejection of the latest European proposal have set the stage for a full-scale international crisis engulfing the United Nations at a time the world organization can ill-afford the entanglement of this crisis.

Already, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned in a recent interview of a Security Council deadlock, given the potential Russia and China veto of any proposed Western sanctions against Iran. This would paralyze the UN at a sensitive time when the burning issues of UN reform could easily be made more complicated as a result of confluence with the Iran crisis.

Annan's latest statement, calling on Iran to show "nuclear restraint", should be heeded by the Iranian policymakers as they need to seriously explore the idea of self-restraint, even in the absence of external or internal limits to their nuclear program, whereby, for example, Iran would refrain from fuel fabrication, at least for a while, even after rescinding the suspension of its enrichment programs.

And even if the Security Council does adopt sanctions, "the implementation of economic sanctions against Iran is not such an easy thing", to quote Annan, given the rather poor history of UN-imposed sanctions. But the main worry is less the long-term effect of sanctions and more the immediate prospect of a showdown at the Security Council, where the complaining party, namely, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)and its backers in Western capitals, have the burden of establishing that Iran is in material breach of its obligations toward the non-proliferation regime.

Certainly, the US and its European allies can cite the past history of the Islamic Republic of Iran in concealing some of its nuclear activities and in it resuming nuclear fuel-related activities not in line with the Iran-EU Paris Agreement of November, 2004. But, by the same token, Iran's hand is stoked with the optimism that the more recent past - that is, the past two years of steady cooperation with the IAEA, culminating in the satisfactory resolution of most if not all the outstanding issues of material concern by the atomic agency, such as the foreign sources of contamination by HEU (highly enriched uranium) - can somehow trump the more distant past rife with lack of transparency and full cooperation with the IAEA.

Indeed, as the US and the EU-3 (France, Britain and Germany) meet IAEA officials to chart a map of action in response to Iran's enrichment activities, deemed as perfectly legal from the Iranian prism, the question arises as to the grounds on which the UN could penalize Iran for engaging in a legal activity? This, in fact, forms the nub of the Iranian defense, in light of the IAEA chief's admission, in an interview with Der Spiegel, dated February 21, that "we at the IAEA lack conclusive evidence. We have yet to see a smoking gun that would convict Tehran. I can make assumptions about intentions, but I cannot verify intentions, just facts."

And what exactly are the disputed facts on the table? Mohammad ElBaradei in the same interview stated, "I am certainly proud of what we have accomplished in Iran. Eighteen months ago the country was more of a black hole for us." Rightly so, as the IAEA has conducted numerous comprehensive inspections, some on short notice, since October 2003, the time when Iran pledged to increase its cooperation with the IAEA.

Hence, in light of Iran's fulfillment of its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations and the legality of its uranium conversion program currently pursued under full IAEA monitoring, one wonders why the EU-3 are so adamant about referring Iran to the Security Council and risking their rather lucrative trade relations with Iran? Have they really thought through the various, multiple side effects of their threats? Probably not.

The IAEA's governing board, meeting in emergency session to discuss the Iran issue, has a recent record of (a) acknowledging "good progress" in terms of Iran's "voluntary confidence-building measures" and (b) deferring to the director general reporting "if and when he deems it necessary" to raise concerns about Iran. Yet, currently the EU-3 and the White House have seemingly decided to supplant the IAEA's director general and impose a harsh IAEA agenda vis-a-vis Iran. But for the most part this would not wash, as seen from the vantage point of international treaty obligations of IAEA member states, including Iran.

The new Iranian policy has not emerged in a vacuum; rather it can best be accounted for by a constructivist approach that would interpret the policy changes as an outgrowth of evolution in the country's identity and the need for creative policy adjustments thereto.

Iran is concerned by the unreasonable demand of the EU-3 that it should make a "binding commitment" to forego its "inalienable right" to peaceful nuclear technology, including the centrifuge enrichment program allowed by article IV of the NPT, in exchange for guarantee of a foreign supply of nuclear fuel and certain other economic and security incentives.

Concerning the latter, the latest European proposal is a giant step backward compared to the Paris Agreement, which stipulated that Europe would provide "firm commitments" on economic, nuclear and security issues pending Iran's "objective guarantees" regarding its nuclear program. The new proposal, named "Framework for a Long-Term Agreement", bypasses both issues deemed central in the Paris Agreement, by giving broadly vague and insufficiently firm "incentives" tantamount to pseudo-incentives. A close scrutiny of this proposal is called for, deconstructing its legal basis:
The proposal, items 2(e) and 14, repeatedly pays lip-service to Article IV of the NPT as well as to "rules of international law" and, yet, explicitly requests Iran to exclude fuel-cycle related activity from the purview of its nuclear program. Aside from the fact that all the three European states are themselves fully engaged in nuclear fuel production, and two of them, namely France and Britain, are also procuring nuclear fuel for the international market, the other interesting fact is that the EU-3's demand does not even conform with the IAEA's own demand that Iran suspends its enrichment activities as a temporary "confidence-building" measure.

The same sentiment was reflected in the Paris Agreement, and yet the new proposal openly seeks to make permanent a transitional arrangement, irrespective of Iran's offer of objective guarantees and the IAEA experts' own admission that Iran's low-grade enrichment can be verified.

Also, the EU-3 proposal, item 36(c), calls on Iran to allow, pursuant to the Additional Protocol, the IAEA "inspectors to visit any site or interview any person they deem relevant to their monitoring of nuclear activity in Iran". This goes beyond the scope of the Additional Protocol, which expands the right of access to IAEA inspectors without, however, making this a limitless right as demanded by the EU-3.

Thus the million-dollar question: why shouldn't Iran pursue its fuel fabrication when it has the technology, when it costs less, when it is environmentally more safe, and when it can be tightly monitored by the IAEA, through its inspectors, surveillance cameras, etc? The EU-3 proposal (item 25) deals with nuclear fuel for Iran by outsiders. It reads:

Any fuel provided would be under normal market conditions and commercial contracts and subject to proliferation-proof arrangements being agreed for safety, transport and security of the fuel, including the return of all spent fuel.

Unfortunately, until now the US and the EU-3 have failed to seriously consider the viability of similar proliferation-proof arrangements for Iran's home production of nuclear fuel, whereas what is needed is a rational framework for verification and safeguard that would put to rest the existing worries of a potential diversion to military purposes. Such a framework can be set up and the IAEA officials this author has talked to have invariably been on the side of an objectively verifiable system to monitor the Iranian nuclear program.

A major problem with the Iran-EU nuclear talks since 2003 has been the conflation of nuclear and economic and security issues, whereas what is needed, as aptly put by an Iranian official in a recent interview, is to disentangle the nuclear issue from these other issues, eg terrorism, Iran's accession to the World Trade Organization, drug trafficking, and so on, which are complicating the picture. What is needed is a straightforward discussion of purely nuclear issues, centered on objective guarantees, without any suggestion that somehow Iran can be persuaded to trade it nuclear fuel rights for some (vague) incentives. One such incentive is Europe's pledge of support for Iran's role in regional security, which is totally meaningless without an explicit American endorsement. But Iran-US relations at the moment are too hostile and too distrusting to allow for such a crucial development in the near future. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that the Bush administration's support of the European initiative has remained at the abstract level, without touching the specifics.

In conclusion, tackling this crisis requires much more prudent European diplomacy than reflected in their latest proposal evincing the latent inclination toward the use of coercive, hard power with sanctions and other related punishment under the guise of a framework for cooperation. More appropriately, this is a framework for diplomatic nihilism, sinking the ship of an independent European diplomacy in the sea of American unilateralism.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-authored "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume X11, issue 1, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.)