21st Century Vision

Law, law not war, war

We have occasionally reported dissent in British elite circles. Following high profile rebuffs to the government on anti-terror legislation, no one can doubt the healthy independence of the judiciary, particularly when it comes to protecting the human rights of citizens against a state oscillating between overmightiness and incompetence. The diplomatic corps too has shown signs of deep scepticism not only about Iraq, but on a broad spectrum of concerns (see our blogs for 20th October 2004 and 3rd August 2006). In the forces there have also been rumblings: they don't mind doing the job, but these days there are sharp military minds with sharp tongues: they want answers to questions about the legality of what they are asked to do, and they want the equipment to do it (see our blogs for 13th October 2006 and 30th October 2006).  Good heavens, even the spooks are digging in, with John (now of course Sir John) Scarlett - he of the dodgy dossier - refusing to endorse the government's claim that proceeding against BAE on corruption charges would damage (as opposed to might damage) British security interests.

Even so, it comes as a surprise when so senior a figure as the Director of Public Prosecutions makes it his business to demolish a central plank of the government's rhetoric and practice. For anyone who may have missed it, here are some extracts from the Guardian's report of Sir Ken Macdonald's recent speech to the Criminal Bar Association -

"It is critical that we understand that this new form of terrorism carries another and more subtle ... risk. Because it might encourage a fear-driven and inappropriate response. By that I mean it can tempt us to abandon our values. I think it important to understand that this is one of its primary purposes ...

London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of a war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, 'soldiers'. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'.

The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws, and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement ...

We wouldn't get far in promoting a civilising culture of respect for rights amongst and between citizens if we set about undermining fair trials in the simple pursuit of greater numbers of inevitably less safe convictions. On the contrary, it is obvious that the process of winning convictions ought to be in keeping with a consensual rule of law and not detached from it.

Otherwise we sacrifice fundamental values critical to the maintenance of the rule of law - upon which everything else depends."

Is anyone listening? Have we reached a situation where lawyers, diplomats, top military brass and even spies are disquieted by the road the government is taking, but where there is no real wider debate among a population fed an endless diet of tabloid simplification? In the US the New Right launched a vicious attack on anything that looked like "liberalism". It hasn't happened here, but perhaps only because the same effect is achieved by a pernicious alliance of government and media.

Click here to read the Guardian's report of Sir Ken's speech in full

Enfield swings behind Fair Trade

Enfield council last night recanted its June decision to declare Enfield an Unfairtrade Borough (see the blog of June 29th) and voted by a hefty margin to support the concept of Fairtrade. There is still some way to go before we join the 218 boroughs, towns, villages, cities, counties, islands and zones that have already received accreditation from the Fairtrade Foundation as Fairtrade whatevers, but we're on our way. It seems a good moment to take a look at the Fairtrade concept, which councillors were clearly unfamiliar with in June, but are beginning to get to know.

Many producers of primary commodities in developing countries are under heavy pressure from competition from the multinationals. Huge plantations run by agribusiness with massive investment in fertilisers and machinery can undercut the small local grower, and produce more supermarket-friendly items too: shiny, perfectly round fruit, for instance. In addition, the market price of commodities like coffee, tea and cocoa is controlled by global players and fluctuates wildly with no reference to local conditions. At low points it can be not worth the effort to harvest the crop. Trying to make a living as a poor farmer can be difficult, verging on impossible. Many have had to give up, sell their farms to the very conglomerates that have bankrupted them, and end up working what used to be their own land as day labourers. Those that struggle on may not be able to send their children to school, or buy medecines when they get sick.

Enter the Fairtrade fairy, stage right, magic wand upraised. Fairtrade companies set a minimum price for the commodities they buy, at a level which will permit producers to work their way up to a decent life, send the kids to school, and look after their families' health. When the market price is high, the Fairtrade price will be the same; when it drops, the Fairtrade price drops too, but only so far, to a point where a living can still be made. Where labourers are employed, the Fairtrade rules specify that they must not only be paid a fair wage, but given decent working conditions. There are caveats to that: where the employers are themselves struggling - which will usually be the case, at least when the scheme starts up - providing the kind of working conditions one would like to see may be a crippling burden; in that case the employers are permitted to work up to speed gradually, but must be providing better conditions than the local competition. The whole thing is monitored closely by a Fairtrade Monitoring Organisation - for organisations trading in this country it is the Fairtrade Foundation - which ensures that the promised premium prices are indeed paid, that the local community is genuinely benefitting, and that working conditions are up to scratch. As long as the conditions are met, the end product being sold in our shops is permitted to display the Fairtrade logo: the one at the top of this blog.

Ill-informed critics sometimes wonder aloud whether any of the premium prices we pay for products with the FT logo actually makes its way back to the producers. The foregoing explanation should convince you that that it does. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that all of the extra goes to the producers. In fact, because Fairtrade supply chains are often shorter than non-FT, the price in the shops should often be the same, but the public are prepared to pay more for the feelgood factor, and retailers are quite happy to take extra off them if they can get away with it. So FT products may well be marked up just to get extra profit for the retailer, but that doesn't affect the other end of the chain, where the producers too have their much-needed extra income.

It will be Fairtrade Fortnight soon (26th Feb to 11th March). Look out for promotions in the shops and special events round the borough, or see the Enfield Fairtrade Campaign's website. But don't wait for that - all the supermarkets and some smaller shops sell Fairtrade goods - get out there and buy some.

No news from Palestine

When was the last time you saw a television documentary dealing with the forced clearance of Palestine in 1947-48? Our 15th January blog reported the account of those terrible events unearthed from the Israeli archives by the historian Ilan Pappe in "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (One World 2006). Pappe brings to light not only the bare facts of the hundreds of villages and urban areas "cleansed" of their occupants, and the vast expropriation of Palestinian property that accompanied it, but also draws attention to the extreme and frequently murderous violence with which the Zionist assault was carried out.

Women, children and old people forced from their homes and fields, and told to go to the West Bank (on foot, without food or water), their husbands, sons and fathers in many cases shot out of hand on the word of a hooded informant: surely this provides the mix of pathos and indignation that makes for gripping media coverage. But where is the reconstruction of the massacre at Dawaymeh or the slaughter at Jaffa and the looting of the victims' property, or similar events at many other places? And then there is the unbearable irony of this act of dispossession: as Pappe asks, "three years after the Holocaust, what went through the minds of those Jews who watched these wretched people pass by?"

No doubt the roots of this anything but accidental amnesia lie as much in European history as in Middle Eastern, but its consequences are pernicious. Take Jimmy Carter, in his recent book "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid" (Simon and Schuster 2006): in his slightly folksy way the former US president writes a good deal of sense on the conflict in the Middle East, which he has monitored closely during and since his presidency, and records the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages and the flight of 700,000 people. But he sees this as somehow a response to attacks on the infant Israel by Palestinian and Arab forces, apparently unaware that many of the villages had been destroyed before a single regular Arab soldier set foot in Palestine and well before the end of the British mandate.

Or take Neil Lochery, an academic commentator, in "The View from the Fence" (Continuum 2006), who does mention the expression "ethnic cleansing" only to retreat into blustering apologetics such as "the reality, of course, is much more complex". How can you begin to understand the demand for the right to return (UN Security Council Resolution 194) if you don't recognise that the Palestinians were driven out at the point of a gun?

Even if you go back forty years to say Maxime Rodinson's "Israel and the Arabs" (Penguin 1968), which so close to the events retained some recognition of the real balance of forces in 1948, there is no mention of the systematic expulsions and widespread atrocities that accompanied them: indeed, to read him, you would think the massacre at Deir Yassin was an isolated incident. But then, Rodinson probably knew nothing of "Plan Dalet", the Zionist blueprint for the cleansing of Palestine which Pappe puts before us.

The refusal to acknowledge this history, the destruction of villages, mosques, schools and homes and the remodelling of the very landscape which Pappe describes, all feed the blank incomprehension so common in the West about the background to conflict in the Middle East.

But perhaps not for much longer. A group of young Israeli historians are now documenting what Palestinians themselves have always known and, as Pappe himself writes, "growing numbers of Israelis are aware of the truth of what happened in 1948".

Free West Papua!

A few weeks ago we started an occasional series highlighting the conflicts the world has forgotten about - or never heard of in the first place. In the current instance I suspect it's the latter. Certainly I had never heard of it until a recent demo on behalf of the Free West Papua campaign was brought to my attention. I went along. It was a very small demo, but characterised by much singing. It was all in Papuan, so I had no idea what the words meant, but the songs all sounded cheerful, a celebration of life - despite the fearful atrocities which the handouts described having been visited upon the unfortunate West Papuans by the Indonesian government, outside whose embassy we were demonstrating.

West Papua is, as you might expect, the western half of the island of New Guinea, the east of which is occupied by Papua New Guinea. It used to be a Dutch colony, and remained so when Indonesia won its independence. West Papua was also slated for independence, and in 1961 held a congress which declared independence. The Dutch prepared to leave - but then the Indonesians invaded. A 3-way conflict between the Dutch the Indonesians and the native inhabitants resulted. The US - fearful that a full-scale war between the Dutch and the Indonesians would send the latter into the communist camp - intervened and brokered an agreement giving control to the UN for a year, followed by a handover to Indonesia. The Papuans were not consulted, but were promised the right to self-determination.

There is no justification save force of arms for an Indonesian claim on West Papua, and the inhabitants have resisted the invaders ever since. They got their 'right to self-determination' in 1969, but it was a sham: rather than a plebiscite, the vote was given to 1026 'representative' Papuans - out of a population  of a million - hand-picked by the Indonesians and forced by threats to vote the right way. All 1026 did; you can always tell a vote is rigged when the majority is this big. This was called 'The Act of Free Choice' - or, for the Papuans, 'the Act of No Choice'. Shamefully, the UN accepted this blatant hypocrisy.

If it were just that the West Papuans had had their land stolen from them they would hardly rate a mention even on this blog. The necessary corollary of the theft has been repeated atrocities by the Indonesian authorities in a so far unsuccessful attempt to stamp out resistance to their rule. Systematic murder, rape and torture have been the order of the day. Anyone raising the Morning Star flag or speaking out for independence is imprisoned. Thousands of people were displaced to make way for a goldmine - the largest in the world (and British- and American-owned) - which has totally destroyed a mountain sacred to the locals, and poisoned the rivers. A million of Indonesia's poor have been moved from overcrowded shanty towns to 'transmigration camps' in West Papua in a blatant attempt to swamp the native culture.  Villages have been burned.

Given that history, the demonstrators I joined in early December had every right to be fuelled by hate. They certainly have no love for the Indonesians, but I still recall those songs, celebrating life and their nation rather than spitting with the bitterness of the oppressed. The West Papuans deserve their country back

See the Free West Papua website, or read Hansard's report of a recent debate on West Papua in the House of Lords.

The Nakba in history

In an age of instant global communications we tend to think ourselves well informed about the recent past. Yes, it is open to reinterpretation, but the facts are reasonably clear. That is why Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (One World 2006) is so startling, forcing readers to ask themselves why they knew so little of key events which took place in many cases in their own lifetimes. We reserve for a later blog the question of how and why the story Pappe brings to light has for so long escaped the glare of public attention. Here we concentrate on some of his findings.

A "vision of a purely Jewish nation-state has been at the heart of Zionist ideology from the moment the movement emerged in the late nineteenth century", he writes. The project for the de-Arabisation of Palestine gradually took practical shape, and detailed preparations for ethnic cleansing were made from the 1930s.

The catastrophe to come was clearly foreseen by many Palestinians, who rebelled against the British mandatory authority to prevent it, most notably in 1936. The Palestinians - like other peoples emerging from colonial domination - never accepted the partition of their land with a settler community.

The UN's 1947 partition of Palestine awarded the Zionists (who owned 5.8% of the land and made up perhaps 30% of the population) a highly disproportionate share (56%). Through their premeditated assault the Zionists aimed for 80% and took 78%. The UN did nothing to rectify this. In the 1967 war Israel conquered the rest.

Triggered by the UN partition, the physical destruction of Palestinian villages by the Stern Gang and Irgun, soon joined by the Hagana, began in December 1947. Under the mandate the British authorities were still responsible for the protection of the Palestinian people, but they did nothing. Was the attack provoked? Pappe emphasises that the Zionist leadership was "disturbed" precisely by the lack of Palestinian provocation.

Poorly armed and poorly organised Palestinian irregulars - later supplemented by weak Arab volunteer elements and half-hearted Arab League regular forces - acted in self-defence against the ethnic cleansing, which was carried out by a well-prepared and equipped force of about 50,000 troops with air and naval support. It is a myth that Israel was threatened with extinction by Arab forces, and Pappe's reading of Ben-Gurion's diaries and Israeli archives makes clear the Zionist leadership knew this at the time.

The violent destruction of 531 Palestinian villages and 11 urban neighbourhoods and towns was accompanied by atrocities, germ warfare, bombardment of crowds seeking escape, collective punishments and sometimes rape. No Israeli was ever convicted of participating in these war crimes.

One should appreciate that these unprovoked attacks were launched against Palestinian communities which had accepted Jewish settlers among them and with whom they had good relations, and sometimes business partnerships. Palestinian land, houses and possessions were simply stolen, by individuals or by the Israeli state. Hundreds of ancient villages were physically pulverised and today their memory is suppressed, abolished by a "fabricated" narrative of Israeli history.

UN resolution 194 (1948) demanded the right of return for the ethnically cleansed Palestinians. It has been ignored ever since.

Palestine remains at the core of conflict in the Middle East, with more recent events reinforcing memories of what Palestinians call the Nakba. More than just a contribution to Middle Eastern history, Pappe's book is critical to understanding the present day.

What is ethnic cleansing? Drazen Petrovic defines terms

The bully in the playground

Any school you go in these days has notices up about combatting bullying, urging the bullied to tell their parents or a teacher. But what do you do when the bully is bigger and stronger than any of the adults, and bullies them too?

Earlier this week we had the unedifying sight of the bully of the International School picking on one of the weakest boys in the playground, while the rest stood around watching helplessly, afraid even to object lest it be their turn next. Even the victim felt obliged to say he deserved it.

I am referring to the unprovoked and unpardonable assaults on Somalia by US gunships because US intelligence said that some of the men who they think bombed two US embassies in East Africa in 1998 were there. Let's pick that to pieces:

The men in question have been tried in no court, not even in absentia, so their guilt has not yet been established, they are just suspects. Maybe the Americans have enough evidence so that if they could have got them into a court they would have been found guilty, maybe not. Maybe they think so, but they could be wrong. It's true that Somalia doesn't currently have much in the way of a rule of law, or even much of a government, so applying for extradition wasn't a realistic option, but execution without trial still stinks. In fact to most of the civilised world execution even after a trial and a guilty verdict is something we prefer to do without, though the USA ploughs its own furrow on that too.

Let's forget all that and suppose that the guys in question were all guilty and deserved to die. What about the other people around them? Attacking a village with the fearsome firepower of a gunship can hardly be termed a surgical strike. It was totally inevitable that a lot of people were going to die along with (maybe) the targets. In fact reports say the death toll was 31, including a newly-married couple - it is the inclusion of this couple and a 4-year-old child who is also reported to be among the victims (a young al-Quaida recruit, presumably) that makes it crystal clear that the target(s) attacked included civilians. 'Collateral damage' is an expression nobody with any moral sense will care for much.

There is not a shadow of excuse in international law for these attacks on a sovereign country, even though the Somali President has tried to justify them. The Americans do it because they know they can get away with it, which is all the justification any playground bully ever needs. The US bully doesn't even need to worry about teacher seeing - teacher (the UN) is even more toothless than the kids - and rents a room in the bully's house, to boot.

Most bullies are braggarts too, and the USA is no exception, going on endlessly about its role as "leader of the free world", and how it "brings democracy" to the countries it flattens. Braggadocio is presumably intended to make the braggart look good in the eyes of the listener, but it always has exactly the opposite effect. Somehow the bullies and braggarts never learn this, then wonder why nobody likes them. In the playground of the International School, the al-Quaida gang is growing rapidly, waiting its chance to waylay their common enemy on his way home.

"Tell me how this ends"

As the Bush administration prepares to announce details of its final throw in the Iraq war, attention focuses on the new military commander appointed to implement the anticipated "surge" in troop numbers. The Washington Post points to some contradictions.

Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is President Bush's choice to become the top US military commander in Iraq, posed a riddle during the initial march to Baghdad four years ago that now becomes his own conundrum to solve: "Tell me how this ends." That query, uttered repeatedly to a reporter then embedded in Petraeus's 101st Airborne Division, revealed a flinty skepticism about prospects in Iraq - and the man now asked to forestall a military debacle.

Long recognised as one of the Army's premier intellectuals, with a PhD from Princeton to complement his West Point education, Petraeus, 54, will inherit one of the toughest assignments handed any senior officer since the Vietnam War. He takes command of 132,000 US troops in a country shattered by insurgency and sectarian bloodletting, with a home front that is divided and disheartened after 3,000 American combat deaths ...

Skepticism is rife, inside and outside the Army. "Petraeus is being given a losing hand. I say that reluctantly. The war is unmistakably going in the wrong direction," retired Army Gen. Barry. R. McCaffrey said in an interview yesterday. "The only good news in all this is that Petraeus is so incredibly intelligent and creative ... I'm sure he'll say to himself, 'I'm not going to be the last soldier off the roof of the embassy in the Green Zone'."

Petraeus, if controversial among some peers who deem him arrogant or excessively ambitious, is seen by many others as perhaps the last, best hope of success in Iraq. "If anyone can pick up the baton and run with it, it is David Petraeus," said retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, a former Army chief of staff.

But retired US General Wesley Clark, former NATO supreme commander, does not see additional troops as the answer. "What the surge would do ... is put more American troops in harm's way, further undercut US forces' morale, and risk further alienation of elements of the Iraqi populace", he writes in the Independent on Sunday (7th January). Clark instead urges a diplomatic initiative -

"America should take the lead with direct diplomacy to resolve the interrelated problems of Iran's push for regional hegemony, Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestininan conflict. Isolating adversaries hasn't worked. The region  must gain a new vision, and that must be led diplomatically by the most powerful force in the region, the United States."

Click to read the Washington Post article in full
Click for the full text of Wesley Clark's IoS article

Kissinger joins CND

     Associated Press
Thursday, January 4, 2007

WASHINGTON

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and three other prominent American security experts urged the United States on Thursday to lead in the creation of "a world without nuclear weapons."

Reliance on nuclear weapons as a deterrent "is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective," the bipartisan group said in a commentary.

Besides Kissinger, the other authors were former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn.

To see the full letter:  Download a_world_free_of_nuclear_weapons.doc

Perhaps Tony Blair will wake up to the marvellous opportunity for him to leave office with a gift to the world. Let us seek an amendment to the debate on Trident due in March in which the UK places its Trident Nuclear systems, subs, missiles and all, on the table for negotiation.  A clear statement is made that the UK would prefer not to have these weapons and will seek to create an international agency which will take control of all weapons grade fissile material.

Go for it Tony.  Make up for Iraq and leave the world a present for peace.

The only language they understand?

Tyrants have never been certain of immunity from the consequences of their actions. Often defeat in battle has precipitated them into the hands of enemies no better than themselves; sometimes the poisoner or the assassin's dagger has done for them. Injustice has never slept easily for long, though many of history'™s most bloodthirsty villains have in the end died of natural causes.

But since 1945 things have changed, and in several ways. First, and not only in Europe, there has been a steady shift of sentiment as regards justice and retribution. What in the UK still seemed natural in 1957 -€“ those ghastly news items recording that such and such a prisoner had been hanged at Pentonville or Strangeways prison at 8 o'€™clock that morning -€“ seems unimaginable half a century later. True, there is at least a significant minority who would restore hanging tomorrow. Some newspaper editors still think it good sport to stir up visceral unreason which at the limit would reinstate an order which those same editors would find it extremely difficult to live with. Sometimes they call it democracy.

Separately from the evolution of this new attitude to retribution -€“ and therefore of a new concept of human responsibility which moral philosophers have yet fully to articulate - there has developed a large body of international law and practice which profoundly affects not only international relations on the grand scale, but also the fate of individuals caught up in conflicts between states. At the centre of this system is the United Nations. No longer the paladin of 1945, bringing light and reason, the UN is today a battered and disillusioned forum which is often criticized and sometimes derided, but which remains indispensable. Even neocon America understands that now. Of course there are many other sources of international law, from the Rome statute establishing the International Criminal Court to the European Union and the World Trade Organization, but all assume the paramountcy of the rule of law in international affairs, and promote rational means of dispute resolution and judicial determination of individual rights and responsibilities.

Along with this has grown up a doctrine of the personal responsibility of decision-takers. Since Nuremburg, the crime of waging aggressive war has been recognized, and others like genocide have joined it. "€œWar criminal" used to mean exclusively someone guilty of crimes during the second world war. No longer: as in various ways Pinochet, Milosovic, Charles Taylor and Henry Kissinger have discovered, the courts will now act on a wide range of crimes against humanity.

Not least -€“ and exemplified after the fall of South African apartheid -€“ is the concept that torn societies confront all their demons in a process of reconciliation, not burying the past but absorbing its lessons for collective and personal conduct.

How does the hanging of Saddam Hussein look against this background? A botched trial, a rush to execution and the final impression of a televised lynching fail on all counts, except that of personal responsibility. And even that was not established for the major crimes with which he was charged.

Let those who allowed this regression to vengeance to pass as justice consider what else might re-emerge with it from the past.