from:    HRW Press <hrwpress@hrw.org>
date:     Tue, Mar 2, 2010
subject:    Saudi Arabia: Free Woman Who Sought Court Aid
(Beirut, March 2, 2010) – Saudi Arabia’s authorities should quash the January, 2010, verdict of a court that sentenced a woman to 300 lashes and one and a half years in prison for filing harassment complaints without the required accompaniment by a male guardian, and release her from jail, Human Rights Watch said today.

Sawsan Salim was sentenced on charges of making “spurious complaints” against government officials and for “appearing … without a male guardian” in court. The verdict reflects the discriminatory system of male guardianship in Saudi Arabia, in which women are prohibited from many acts without the presence of a male guardian.

“In Saudi Arabia, being a woman going about her legitimate business without a man’s protection is apparently a crime,” said Nadya Khalife, women’s rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch. “The government needs to free Sawsan Salim and keep its promise to end this discriminatory system.”

In June 2009, during a review of the country’s human rights record, Saudi Arabia accepted a recommendation by the United Nations Human Rights Council to abolish the legal guardianship system. However, the government has taken no steps to carry out its promise.

Under the system, those designated as “male guardians” conduct business on behalf of their female charges regardless of whether the female is an adult or a minor. Women who wish to travel, seek certain types of medical care, work, and conduct everyday business, for example, must still obtain the consent of their male guardians – who could be a husband, father, brother, or even a son who is a minor.

The case stems from 2004 when a court in Rass, in Saudi Arabia’s northern Qasim region, jailed Salim’s husband, Salih al-Thawwab, in January for failing to pay debts arising from a disputed inheritance. International human rights law prohibits the imprisonment of persons solely for their failure to fulfill contractual obligations, such as paying debts. The Rass court later released al-Thawwab after he claimed bankruptcy.

While her husband was in prison in 2004, Salim sought the help of a local judge, Habib Abdullah al-Asqa of the Buraida court, to gain her husband’s release. In a letter Salim addressed to King Abdullah bin Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa’ud, she said that al-Asqa told her: “I’m better than [your husband]. He has nothing,” and offered to divorce her from al-Thawwab. Salim also said that after al-Thawwab’s release, al-Asqa told her “I will give [your husband] three months to pay his debt and if he doesn’t, I will return him to jail because you refused my offer to divorce him.”

Salim’s lawyer, Mikhlif Dahham al-Shammari, said that al-Asqa continued to harass her and to give her a difficult time with her business affairs. She complained in writing to the interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa’ud, about what she saw as the judge’s inappropriate behavior.

Al-Shammari said that Salim was also harassed by other Rass officials. He said that on numerous occasions prior to February 2008, the Rass police manager, Salih Sulaiman al-Khalifa; the Rass passport office manager, Abd al-‘Aziz Abdullah al-Khalifa; and Governor Khalid al-‘Assaf, chided Salim for not being accompanied by a male guardian during her visits to their offices. At the time, she had disagreements with her husband and did not wish for him to act as her guardian.

Al-Shammari said the Rass officials disregarded her explanation that as a naturalized Saudi citizen of Sudanese origin, she had no male family members in the kingdom who could act as her guardian.

On February 14, 2008, Salim again wrote to Prince Nayef about the way public officials had allegedly mistreated her on the grounds that she addressed them without a male guardian. Sulaiman al-Mahwis, a retired judge at the Rass court, helped her prepare and submit her complaint.

In response, on February 25, Salim received a summons to meet with the court investigator, Judge Salman Muhammad al-Nushwan. She went to court, but asked if she could come back the next day because she did not have all of her documents with her. Al-Nushwan refused this request, taking notes. When Salim asked to see what he was writing, al-Nushwan also refused, and when she tried to take the paper, it tore. Al-Nushwan then angrily ordered her to leave the courthouse, Salim said in the letter to King Abdullah.

On April 8, 2008, she wrote a letter to King Abdullah bin Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa’ud, complaining about her encounter with al-Asqa in 2004, her subsequent harassment at the hands of local officials, and her encounter with al-Nushwan.

Judges al-Nushwan and al-Asqa then filed a criminal complaint against Salim, accusing her of making 118 spurious complaints during 2007 (1428 hijri, the Islamic calendar) against government officials and of appearing before government offices without a male guardian. They also filed a complaint against the retired judge who “she went to for help in writing these complaints,” according to the charge sheet.

The complaint went to the president of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, Salih Muhammad al-Luhaidan. The Supreme Council of the Judiciary appointed two Buraida court judges, al-Asqa and Ibrahim Abdullah, to try the case in the Rass court, despite the fact that al-Asqa was one of the plaintiffs.

The trial opened on December 27, 2009. Retired Judge al-Mahwis was listed as a co-defendant. The prosecutor claimed he “incited” against the “shaikhs [judges] of Rass court” because he had been fired as a judge there, although he is listed as a “retired” judge.
During the trial that day, Salim argued with the judges outside the courtroom, prompting the police to take her into custody. She is being held, together with her infant child, at Buraida central prison, 60 kilometers from her home in Rass. On January 25, 2010, she was found guilty of “making spurious complaints against government officials” and “visiting government offices without a male guardian.” The court sentenced her to one year in prison and 300 lashes. The prosecutor had asked the authorities to strip her of her acquired Saudi nationality and to deport her.

Al-Mahwis was found guilty of charges of helping to write “spurious complaints” and sentenced to 120 lashes and ten months in prison, al-Shammari said. Al-Sahmmari has written to King Abdullah to seek a pardon for Salim and al-Mahwis.

“Seeking justice is a risky business in Saudi Arabia,” said Christoph Wilcke, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. “Even retired judges can be sentenced to lashes for helping others access the courts.”

Saudi Arabia has no penal code that sets out a catalogue of actions deemed criminal and that defines them. Judges have wide discretion to treat any act they deem inappropriate as a crime and to sentence the perpetrator to any punishment they see fit.

Human Rights Watch said that the verdict against Salim is based on the discriminatory system of guardianship, the verdict against al-Mahwis is on the basis of his assistance to her, and that both verdicts should be quashed. The sentences of prison time and lashes should be cancelled, and both prisoners should immediately be freed, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch opposes corporal punishment in all circumstances as cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Saudi Arabia, please visit:
 http://www.hrw.org/en/middle-eastn-afric…

For more information, please contact:
In Beirut, Nadya Khalife: +961-71-151-766 (mobile); or  khalifn at hrw.org
In Munich, Christoph Wilcke (English, Arabic): +89-13-626-193; or  wilckec at hrw.org

Dear DHFC Supporter,

He warned us!

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama said he wouldn’t quit trying to thrust his radical transformation of America down your throat. Now he’s arrogantly fighting for a health care plan that you don’t want any part of, despite the loud-and-clear message from the voters in New Jersey, Virginia, and most of all Massachusetts, who have rejected his “transformation.”

But a genuine fight is taking place, and I’m proud to say that the Freedom Center is leading the charge! The Freedom Center has published and distributed more than 200,000 copies of two booklets designed to expose Obama and the radical left and empower Tea Party activists as they take to the streets.

The first booklet, Obama’s Rules for Revolution, reveals the links of radicalism from Saul Alinsky right up to today’s White House. Thanks in part to your steadfast support, Obama’s Rules is in the hands of 200,000 Americans! And the demand is still high! And our second booklet, The Art of Political War for Tea Parties, has become a basic text for men and women across the nation who have had enough and are ready to take to the streets to stop Obama’s radical agenda!

Both booklets are flying off the Center’s bookshelves. We need to produce and distribute more. It is precisely because you know who I am are and what the Freedom Center has done to defend our country and its traditions that I now ask you to make a contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more to the Freedom Center to help us print and distribute another 250,000 copies of these booklets.

The real hope on America’s horizon is not in the rhetoric of the President’s empty promises. It’s in the Tea Parties, the demonstrations in Washington, and the recent elections in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Your countrymen are learning all about Obama and the radical leftist machine, knowledge you’ve had for a long time by virtue of working beside me at the Freedom Center.

I have said it many times, the Freedom Center is not just another think tank; it is a battle tank. But we can only do this with your help. You have been the backbone of the Center, one of our most loyal supporters. Please make a tax deductible contribution to the Freedom Center that will allow us to complete the mission we have undertaken.

America stands at the precipice. Let’s act together to save our country, our liberty and our future by bringing it back from the brink. Thank you so much for helping me in the past, and I hope you are standing with me still.

Sincerely,

David Horowitz
President & Founder

P.S. I don’t have to tell you that the Freedom Center has been in the forefront of the fight against the left for the last 20 years. Now that it is Paul Revere time in America, we will be even more aggressive in telling it like it is, more active in warning our countrymen what they face, more determined in stopping the left’s advance. As we go to war with the leftists in the Obama administration, I ask you to reenlist one more time to serve with us. We will fight the battles, but we need you to pass the ammunition.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center
P.O. Box 55089
Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964
www.frontpagemag.com

The New York Times Co.’s stock was surging today, March 1st, up 6.3%. It reached greater heights earlier in the day, spiking an astounding 11% on rumors that a billionaire shareholder – the Mexican Carlos Slim – would buy the whole company.

A representative for Mr. Slim has told CNBC that Slim won’t be buying The New York Times. For its part, the Times Co. has said it doesn’t comment on rumors.

Trading volume in New York Times shares is about four times as much as average today.

Slim bought a 6.9% stake in the Times in 2008. In January 2010 he invested an additional $250 million.

Over the weekend, New York Magazine reported that Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal was mooting a $15 million initiative to take on The New York Times with a new New York metro section, in hopes of cut into the Times’ advertising base. The Times needs money even though it actually returned last week the salaries of some of its employees that were cut because of the recession.

Does the NYT try to retain some of the staff so that its writing does not suffer further?

Are Murdoch – Salim fighting matches on New York’s horizon?

We think the beneficiary of this will continue to be The Financial Times.

The United Arab Emirates, led by Abu Dhabi, is the first member of OPEC to associate itself with the so called Copenhagen Note by a Valentine’s day Association message to the World Community – we are with you – we take responsibility for action. This from Mari Luomi’s blog for the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

From:  Jones Andrew <Andrew.Jones@upi-fiia.fi>
date:    Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 4:17 AM
subject:  New UPI-FIIA publication – The EU and the global climate regime: Getting back in the game.

We are pleased to announce the release of a new publication by the International Politics of Natural Resources and the Environment Research Programme at The Finnish Institute of International Affairs (UPI-FIIA):

** – The EU and the global climate regime: Getting back in the game
 http://www.upi-fiia.fi/en/publication/10… Published 25.2.2010
by Thomas Spencer, Kristian Tangen, Anna Korppoo of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

The Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
 http://www.upi-fiia.fi/en/blog/269/ by  andrew.jones at upi-fiia.fi
web: http://www.upi-fiia.fi/
Tel: +358 206 111 734            GSM: +358 40 480 1655
Address: Kruunuvuorenkatu 4, 00160 Helsinki, Finland

** – and the Latest blog: The Opec state that clears its own, greener pat.

The Opec state that clears its own, greener path.
by Mari Luomi

ResearcherInternational Politics of Natural Resources and the Environment research programme. Published 26.2.2010

The United Arab Emirates, led by its wealthiest emirate Abu Dhabi, is finally taking the steps necessary to align its domestic and international policies in the field of climate change. Who would have thought just three years ago that the UAE would stand out as the only Opec state to associate itself to a controversial climate change accord, have a Climate Change Envoy, dub nuclear as clean energy, and, most importantly, set international climate change mitigation ahead of oil industry interests.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently became the first Opec member state to associate itself with the disputed Copenhagen Accord. It is also establishing a Directorate of Energy and Climate Change and has flirted with the possibility of announcing emission cuts in comparison to business-as-usual levels. What are the implications of these simultaneous moves for the country and, most interestingly, for the Opec bloc?

————–
The Association Letter:

The UAE’s association letter, sent to the UN Climate Convention (UNFCCC) on Valentine’s day, was designed to be a clear message to the international community that the UAE is concerned about the negative impacts of climate change and is willing to do its fair share in mitigating climate change. This comes despite the fact that the UNFCCC places no commitments on the country to cut its emissions. The UAE is exempt from emission cuts because, despite its GDP per capita rank placing it in the global top-15, it is classified under the Convention as a developing country.

The association letter notes that the UAE has initiated ‘numerous domestic programmes’ that would reduce the UAE’s emissions to below business-as-usual levels. It also promises a more detailed follow-up on the issue. One would hope that this means that the UAE is planning to set a similar goal as, for example, Singapore, a high-income developing country, which has pledged to cut emissions by 16% in relation to BAU emissions by 2020.

Three issues are highlighted in the letter:
- The common but differentiated responsibilities principle;
- The economic impacts of climate change and its mitigation on oil exporting states and
- The importance of promoting carbon capture and storage, as well as nuclear energy technologies, under the international climate negotiating regime.

The importance of countries associating with the Copenhagen Accord is still contingent on the form and direction that the currently disarrayed international negotiations take over the coming months. Also, the content of the UAE letter has only a few surprises, including the potential emission target and the mention of nuclear energy.

What is significant, however, is that no other Opec state has so far associated itself with the Accord. Kuwait has explicitly rejected it. Saudi Arabia, which took part in the group of 25-30 countries that drafted the Copenhagen Accord, informally representing the voice and interests of the OPEC group, has not associated itself so far. Rather, in a submission to the UNFCCC in mid-February, the country states that the Accord ‘has no legal status within the UNFCCC, and thus can’t be used as basis or reference for further negotiations’.

If any Opec country should back the document, it is Saudi Arabia, given that it participated in negotiating the text, especially since the issue of the impacts of the so-called response measures (policies and measures taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions) and the need to assist countries vulnerable to them, which is one of the key demands of Saudi Arabia and the OPEC group, is included in the Accord.

—————

Climate Change Directorate:

Abu Dhabi’s major English newspaper The National reported today on the setting up of a new Directorate of Energy and Climate Change under the UAE’s Foreign Ministry. To understand the significance of this move, one must take a quick dive into the national context.

Abu Dhabi, owner of over 7% of the world’s proven oil reserves and nine tenths of the total oil reserves of the seven-emirate federation it presides over, has for roughly three years now been building itself an image of a ‘future energy giant’. It has declared itself to be the ‘green energy leader of the region’ and, to earn the title, it has built up an impressive list of alternative energy initiatives, most of which converge under the umbrella of the Masdar Initiative, an alternative energy and technology venture by the Mubadala Development Company. What is best, international media and governments have bought the brand: from the President of Maldives to Ban Ki Moon, the world is praising Masdar and Abu Dhabi for their efforts.

These two moves – the association with the Accord and the new Envoy – might mainly have been taken for branding purposes, but what is important is that they will potentially have far-reaching implications for Opec’s negotiating dynamics that have so far been dominated by a very different tone. They are also finally bringing the ambitious national projects of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s international climate policy closer to each other.

from:    Ignacio Montero <im638@nyu.edu>

date :    Mon, Mar 1, 2010 a

Event: Middle East Lecture Series MONDAY, Mar. 8 with Daniel L. Byman

U.S. and Middle East Policy Lecture Series.

Mondays at 12:30pm at NYU Wagner

Monday, March 8 for – spring semester

Middle East and U.S. Strategy lecture series with Daniel L. Byman, Director, Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University; and Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution.

Date: Monday, March 8 / 12:30-1:30pm
Location: NYU Wagner, Puck Building
295 Lafayette Street, Rudin Family Forum, 2nd floor
……………………………………………………….

Israeli Counterterrorism and its Implications for the United States
Daniel L. Byman, Director, Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown
University; and Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy,
Brookings Institution

Dr. Byman has written widely on a range of topics related to terrorism,
international security, and the Middle East. In this talk, Dr. Byman will
examine Israel’s counterterrorism efforts against Fatah, Hamas, Hezballah,
and other groups to draw lessons about counterterrorism for Israel and other
countries.

For the last decade, the Middle East has occupied a place of primacy in
debates over U.S. global aims and strategies. NYU Wagner will sponsor a
year-long lecture series that will bring to campus original thinkers from
academics, research centers and government.

RSVP for this event and others in the series (see below) by clicking on the
following link http://wagner.nyu.edu/events/

—————–

Monday, March 22 / 12:30-1:30pm
A Strategy of Tactics: Countintsurgency and the American Army
…with Colonel Gian Gentile, Professor, Department of History, U.S.
Military Academy

Monday, March 29 / 12:30pm – 1:30pm
The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and the Clash of Arab Civilizations
…with Lee Smith, Visiting Fellow, The Hudson Institute; and Middle East
correspondent, The Weekly Standard

Monday, April 5 / 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Why is Muslim Extremism Attractive? And How Do We Uproot It?
…with Ed Husain, co-director of the Quilliam Foundation, and author of The
Islamist

–
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
New York University
295 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012
e:  yvette.white at nyu.edu
t: 212.992.9884
 http://wagner.nyu.edu

–
From: P F Henshaw <eco@synapse9.com>
Date: Mon, Mar 1, 2010
Subject: The trouble with being good at controlling nature – our healthcare addiction

Philip F. Henshaw sent us the following and we thought it should give us further material for thought and we invite your reaction.

Phil Henshaw writes:

I’ve been looking right at it, studying it deeply, for years.    This week I found another side of the moral quandaries of the healthcare crisis in America that seems to raise it to the scale of the mortal and moral threats we face with the energy crisis, climate change or that loss of bio-diversity.   We’re addicted.    It started with the great early achievements of healthcare, like the universally acclaimed combination of great science and our societal commitment to good works in eradicating Smallpox.

Even the best of solutions, or could I say *especially* the best of solutions, tend to lead people not having foresight into the deepest sort of trouble.   Eradicating Smallpox was greeted as proof we could overcome any great threat of nature, but incidentally also did serve to greatly multiply people and kicked off our great completely unaffordable profit/science healthcare spiral.   That this is what our healthcare crisis is really about sort of just dawned on me.

What makes healthcare an all but incurable growing addiction is the combination of:

1) our being mortal, so the more healthcare we get the more we physically need, and 2) that this has become the last great growth industry for American capitalism.

It combines the economic arts we are most proud of, science, finance, good works and marketing, to create an incurable and unaffordable economic addiction to disease.

That healthcare has become a genuine cancer by multiplying cures and costs toward the exhaustion of the economy, is a true Gordian Knot of moral quandaries rapidly bankrupting everyone.

Has our talent for controlling nature really become incurable?  … destined to overwhelm us with its natural complications?   That very dilemma also seems to be one that nature solves in making literally every perfect thing she makes, though… i.e. that she somehow doesn’t get carried away with limitless problem solving, and is able to make things whole and perfect anyway.

It’s “a long shot”, of course, but this suggests we really need to change.     If we weren’t so busy telling nature how to behave maybe there actually are secrets to find in how she does things worth studying.

Phil Henshaw      ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸

NY NY     www.synapse9.com

Poverty Predicts Quake Damage Better Than Richter Scale

Emily Schmall
 “It’s not as much the earthquake that kills, it’s the poverty that kills,” said Colin Stark, a geomorphologist and researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who is studying the aftermath of a 1999 earthquake in Taiwan to predict the probability of landslides in Haiti.

 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/582471-sa…

Saudi Alwaleed reiterates support to Citi’s Pandit
by Souhail Karam on Saturday, 27 February 2010

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a prominent Saudi investor in Citigroup, reiterated on Saturday his support 0f the bank’s management led by Chief Executive Vikram Pandit.

“Prince Alwaleed emphasised his support of Pandit and Citigroup’s management,” Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding Co said in a statement.

Prince Alwaleed met Pandit in Saudi Arabia. Pandit also met the kingdom’s Finance Minister Ibrahim Al Assaf and the head of its central bank Muhammad al-Jasser, added Kingdom in the statement without giving more details. (Reuters)

—————–

What is there to lose for the US had the Saudis bought even a larger stake of Citi? Citi has a long history of working anyway for Saudi interests – directly or via US big oil companies. Our experience taught us that the $4.8 billion financing of the “Gas-to-Gas” New Zealand boondoggle that took good Natural Gas of Motunui and funded its transformation into unneeded synthetic gasoline via methanol – a loss of energy independence for New Zealand that eventually led further to the full give-away of the New Zealand gas resources to Mobil Oil in lieu of paying technology fees before Mobil joined EXXON. Without the backing from Citi – this mess might not have occurred. We did document this at the time and it was brought into the open via a presentation at a Petroleum Science conference in Houston. Why did Washington have to bail out Citi rather then let its shareholder lose some money? Did this serve US interests? If I do not make myself clear, why do you not read Professor Joseph Stiglitz’s article we posted yesterday?

—————-

Further:

Saudi to build $13bn ‘tourist city’ on east coast
Bikini Beaches: Saudi Arabia has its own rich tradation; I mean why they need to allow bikini’s on their beaches and why people need to travel to Saudi to wear Bikini… Javed Iqbal from Jeddah, 27 February 2010, 14:49:40 ( UAE Time )

Those are very logical remarks we found in the UAE posting – why indeed do people want to go to Saudi Arabia and infuriate people there by imposing mores that are strange to them? This is really not so different then selling parts of Citi to the Prince while reassuring him that if the bank flops Washington will bail it out? The real stink is here – not there!

Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010, Kyodo News of Japan:

Six-party talks up to North: Bosworth.

U.S. special envoy to North Korea Stephen Bosworth said Saturday in Tokyo he hopes to see “fairly soon” the resumption of the stalled six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear programs, but added whether that is realized depends on the North.

“Five of the six parties are prepared to move very quickly. And we would hope that the sixth, that is to say the DPRK, will also decide to move ahead very quickly,” Bosworth told reporters, referring to North Korea by its official name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

But the U.S. point man for North Korea policy also said, “In the end, of course, the decision as to whether they are going to come back and when, it is up to the DPRK.”

While admitting that there is no agreement yet on when to resume the multilateral talks involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, Bosworth said, “I hope that, in the not too distant future, but fairly soon, we will see a resumption of the talks.”

=====================

UN-North Korea talks hint at a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula
Source: Global Times ,  February 21 2010
By Ronda Hauben also of www.taz.de/blogs/netizenblog

This June 25 marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. Only an armistice and a temporary agreement, not a peace treaty, are in place to help prevent a renewed outbreak of hostilities.

A four-person delegation from the office of the UN Secretary-General which included B. Lynn Pascoe and Kim Won-soo recently returned to the UN after their visit to North Korea, between February 9 and 12, 2010.

This was the first delegation to establish official relations between North Korea and the UN Secretariat since Maurice Strong acted as an envoy of Kofi Annan to North Korea in 2004.

At the press conference at the UN, held on the return of the UN delegation, only minimal information was provided about the issues that North Korea raised.

In his brief presentation, Pascoe, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, mentioned some of the issues discussed, including a statement that there had been back-and-forth talks about a peace treaty.

Pascoe said, however, that he was not going to get into details. A little later in the press conference, a question was asked about what issues North Korea had brought up. Pascoe’s response included that North Korea did talk about a peace treaty and why they saw it as an important way to build trust.

Much of the press conference, focused on questions about North Korea returning to the Six-Party Talks.

A purpose of the UN secretariat trip was to convey messages from other parties of the Six-Party Talks to North Korea, and to convey the Secretary- General’s view that talks need to begin without preconditions.

At the end of WWII, Korea was artificially divided into two separate entities: the Republic of Korea in the south, or South Korea, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north, or North Korea. This division was initially regarded as temporary. Instead, it was maintained and reinforced by various actions of the UN. Then during the Korean War, the United Nations flag and name were used.

North Korea sees the need for a peace treaty to help calm the tension that exists because currently there is only the temporary armistice agreement.

North Korea proposes that three parties to the armistice, the US (for the UN command), North Korea, and China (the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army) to negotiate for the peace treaty. It also proposes to include South Korea.

This is proposed as the means to build confidence among these four parties so as to be able to return to the Six- Party Talks with experience to make possible reaching an agreement on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The actual denuclearization will be a task that will involve both North Korea giving up its nuclear weapon capability and South Korea giving up the protection that the US offers it by including it under the US’s nuclear umbrella.

The press conference at the UN, however, didn’t discuss the issue of the peace treaty or the need to consider the denuclearization of both nations on the Korean Peninsula.

Instead, the majority of questions concerned whether North Korea would return to the Six-Party Talks.

North Korea has criticized the talks as not helpful to solving the disputes that continue to breed hostility in the region. Recent talks have focused on removing the nuclear capability of North Korea, rather than similarly considering North Korea’s claim that it needs its nuclear capability as a security measure as long as hostile actions continue by other members of the Six-Party process.

In previous talks between North Korea and the US, one of the negotiators explained the most difficult part of the negotiations was determining how to phrase the issue of the talks so that it recognized the interests of different parties to the controversy. He said that North Korea made the reasonable request that the issue be phrased in a way satisfactory to both North Korea and the US.

One would expect a similar problem will need to be solved to facilitate discussion among the parties to the Six-Party Talks, or to facilitate negotiations toward a peace treaty to end the Korean War.

After the press conference, Kim Won-soo, Deputy Chef de Cabinet of the UN, said the dispute over how to get back to negotiations could be seen as a difference over what sequencing was acceptable.

What order of actions would the parties agree to with regard to discussing a peace treaty, ending the UN sanctions, or returning to the Six-Party Talks process, could be considered an issue to be discussed, rather than phrasing the problem in terms favorable to one side or the other. This is the basis for further discussion and negotiation among North Korea and the other countries.

The UN is technically still at war with North Korea. These current developments raise the question of whether Ban Ki-moon is willing to use the good offices of his position as Secretary-General to offer what help he can to facilitate a peace treaty to end the Korean War.

Even this first step of an official visit by the four-member UN Secretariat delegation and the mere mention that the North Korea referred to the desire for a peace treaty can be seen as a step forward.

The Secretary-General is endeavoring to help solve the stalemate among the parties regarding the continuing tension on the Korean Peninsula.

————–
The author is an award-winning US journalist covering the United Nations.  netizenblog at gmail.com
 http://opinion.globaltimes.cn/commentary…

————–

Global Times appears in English and originates from Beijing.

Contact the Global Times (GT) newspaper:
Add.  7/F Topnew Tower, 15 Guanghua Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, CHINA PC:100026
Tel.+86-10-52937565
Fax.+86-10-52937584
Email:  editor at globaltimes.com.cn

Uri Avnery

27.2.10

White Lie

THIS COMING Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Israel will consider an application by a group of Israeli citizens to compel the Interior Ministry to register them as belonging to the “Israeli nation”.

Odd? Indeed.

The Israeli Interior Ministry recognizes 126 nations, but not the Israeli nation. An Israeli citizen can be registered as belonging to the Assyrian, the Tatar or the Circassian nation. But the Israeli nation? Sorry, no such thing.
According to the official doctrine, the State of Israel cannot recognize an “Israeli” nation because it is the state of the “Jewish” nation. In other words, it belongs to the Jews of Brooklyn, Budapest and Buenos Aires, even though these consider themselves as belonging to the American, Hungarian or Argentine nations.
Messy? Indeed.

THIS MESS started 113 years ago, when the Viennese Journalist Theodor Herzl wrote his book “The State of the Jews”. (That’s the true translation. The generally used name “The Jewish State” is false and means something else.) For this purpose he had to perform an acrobatic exercise. One can say that he used a white lie.

Modern Zionism was born as a direct response to modern anti-Semitism. Not by accident, the term “Zionismus” came into being some 20 years after the term “Antisemitismus” was invented in Germany. They are twins.
In Europe and the Americas another modern term was flourishing: Nationalism. Peoples which had been living together for centuries under dynasties of Emperors and Kings wanted to belong to nation-states of their own. In Argentina, the USA, France and other countries, “national” revolutions took place. The idea infected almost all peoples, big, small and tiny, from Peru to Lithuania, from Colombia to Serbia. They felt a need to belong to the place and the people where they lived and died.

All these national movements were necessarily anti-Semitic, some more, some less, because the very existence of the Jewish Diaspora ran counter to their basic perceptions. A Diaspora without a homeland, dispersed over dozens of countries, could not be reconciled with the idea of a homeland-rooted nation seeking uniformity.
Herzl understood that the new reality was inherently dangerous for the Jews. In the beginning he cherished the idea of complete assimilation: all the Jews would be baptized and disappear in the new nations. As a professional writer for the theater, he even devised the scenario: all Viennese Jews would march together to St. Stephen’s cathedral and be baptized en masse.

When he realized that this scenario was a bit far-fetched, Herzl passed from the idea of individual assimilation to what may be called collective assimilation: if there is no place for the Jews in the new nations, then they should define themselves as a nation like all the others, rooted in a homeland of their own and living in a state of their own. This idea was called Zionism.

BUT THERE was a problem: a Jewish nation did not exist. The Jews were not a nation but a religious-ethnic community.

A nation exists on one level of human society, a religious-ethnic community on another. A “nation” is an entity living together in one country with a common political will. A “community” is a religious entity based on a common faith, which can live in different countries. A German, for example, can be Catholic or Protestant; a Catholic can be German or French.
These two types of entity have two different means of survival, much as different species in nature. When a lion is in danger, it fights, it attacks. For that purpose, nature has equipped it with teeth and claws. When a gazelle is in danger, it runs. Nature has given it quick legs. Every method is good, if it is effective. (If it were not effective, the species would not have survived to this day.)

When a nation is in danger, it stands and fights. When a religious community is in danger, it moves elsewhere. The Jews, more than any others, have perfected the art of escape. Even after the horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish Diaspora has survived and now, two generations later, it is again flourishing.

IN ORDER to invent a Jewish nation, Herzl had to ignore this difference. He pretended that the Jewish ethnic-religious community was also a Jewish nation. In other words: contrary to all other peoples, the Jews were both a nation and a religious community; as far as Jews were concerned, the two were the same. The nation was a religion, the religion was a nation.

This was the “white lie”. There was no other way: without it, Zionism could not have come into being. The new movement took the Star of David from the synagogue, the candlestick from the Temple, the blue-and-white flag from the prayer shawl. The holy land became a homeland. Zionism filled the religious symbols with secular, national content.
The first to detect the falsification were the Orthodox Rabbis. Almost all of them damned Herzl and his Zionism in no uncertain terms. The most extreme was the Rabbi of Lubavitch, who accused Herzl of destroying Judaism. The Jews, he wrote, are united by their adherence to God’s commandments. Doctor Herzl wants to supplant this God-given bond with secular nationalism.

When Herzl originated the Zionist idea, he did not intend to found the “State of the Jews” in Palestine, but in Argentina. Even when writing his book, he devoted to the country only a few lines, under the headline “Palestine or Argentina?” However, the movement he created compelled him to divert his endeavors to the Land of Israel, and so the state came into being here.
When the State of Israel was founded and the Zionist dream realized, there was no further need for the “white lie”. After the building was finished, the scaffolding should have been removed. A real Israeli nation had come into being, there was no further need for an imaginary one.

THESE DAYS Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, is running a TV ad showing selected past issues. The day the State of Israel was founded, the giant headline announced: “Hebrew State!”

“Hebrew”, not “Jewish”. And not by accident: at that time, the term “Jewish state” sounded decidedly strange. In the preceding years, people in this country had got used to making a clear distinction between “Jewish” and “Hebrew”, between matters that belonged to the Diaspora and those belonging to this country: Jewish Diaspora, Jewish language (Yiddish), Jewish Stetl, Jewish religion, Jewish tradition – but Hebrew language, Hebrew agriculture, Hebrew industries, Hebrew underground organizations, Hebrew policemen.

If so, why do the words “Jewish state” appear in our Declaration of Independence? There was a simple reason for that: the UN had adopted a resolution to partition the country between an “Arab state” and a “Jewish state”. That was the legal basis of the new state. The declaration, which was drafted in haste, said therefore that we were establishing “the Jewish state (according to the UN resolution), namely the State of Israel”.

The building was finished, but the scaffolding was not taken down. On the contrary: it became the most important part of the building and dominates its facade.

LIKE MOST of us at the time, David Ben-Gurion believed that Zionism had supplanted religion and that religion had become redundant. He was quite sure that it would shrivel and disappear by itself in the new secular state. He decided that we could afford to dispense with the military service of Yeshiva bochers (Talmud school students), believing that their number would dwindle from a few hundred to almost none. The same thought caused him to allow religious schools to continue in existence. Like Herzl, who promised to “keep our Rabbis in the synagogues and our army officers in the barracks”, Ben-Gurion was certain that the state would be entirely secular.

When Herzl wrote of the “state of the Jews” he did not dream that the Jewish Diaspora would continue to exist. In his view, only the citizens of the new state would henceforth be called “Jews”, all other Jews in the world would assimilate in their various nations and disappear from view.

BUT THE “white lie” of Herzl had results he did not dream of, as did the compromises of Ben-Gurion. Religion did not wither away in Israel, but on the contrary: it is gaining control of the state. The government of Israel does not speak of the nation-state of the Israelis who live here, but of the “nation-state of the Jews” – a state that belongs to the Jews all over the world, most of whom belong to other nations.

The religious schools are eating up the general education system and are going to overpower it, if we don’t become aware of the danger and assert our Israeli essence. Voting rights are about to be accorded to Israelis residing abroad, and this is a step towards giving the vote to all Jews around the world. And, most important: the ugly weeds growing in the national-religious field – the fanatical settlers – are pushing the state in a direction that may lead to its destruction.

TO SAFEGUARD the future of Israel one has to start by removing the scaffolding from the building. In other words: burying the “white lie” of religion-equals-nation. The Israeli nation has to be recognized as the basis of the state.
If this principle is accepted, what will the future shape of Israel – within the Green Line – be like?
There are two possible models, and many variations between them.

Model A: the multi-national one. Almost all the citizens of Israel belong to one of two nations: the majority belongs to the Hebrew nation and a minority to the Palestinian-Arab nation. Each nation will enjoy autonomy in certain areas, such as culture, education and religion. Autonomy will not be territorial, but cultural (as Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky proposed a hundred years ago for Czarist Russia). All will be united by Israeli citizenship and loyalty to the state. The inbuilt discrimination of the Arab minority will become a thing of the past, as well as the “demographic demon”.

Model B: the American one. The American nation is composed of all US citizens, and all US citizens constitute the American nation. An immigrant from Jamaica who acquires US citizenship automatically becomes a member of the American nation, an heir to George Washington and Abe Lincoln. All learn at school the same core program and the same history.

Which of the two models is preferable? In my view, Model B is much better. But it would depend on a dialogue between the Hebrew majority and the Arab minority. In the end, the Arab citizens will have to decide whether they prefer the status of equal partners in a general Israeli nation, or the status of a recognized, autonomous national minority in a state that acknowledges and cherishes their separate culture, side by side with the culture of the majority.

In four days, the Supreme Court will decide whether it is prepared to take the first step in this historic march.

Green Reconstruction: UNIFIL Plants Trees in Southern Lebanon

The 2006 Lebanon War caused massive ecological damages, especially in the country’s Southern region: more than one thousand hectare of forests and olive groves have been destroyed by bomb explosions and bush fires—according to a study published in May 2007 by the Association for Forests, Development and Conservation (AFDC). The economic losses of this destruction hit especially farmers and the rural population in South Lebanon.

In January 2010, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) started an extensive reforestation project in the region around the village Sh’huur. Within about three months, the international troops want to plant 2 300 trees. The project is headed by the “Green Sh’huur” Committee, a local initiative consisting of community residents and their mayor. About 4 000 trees have already been planted by the initiative. At the end of the project the number is supposed to reach a total of 10 452 trees—a symbolic number that represents the total surface area of Lebanon (10 452 km2). UNIFIL also maintains two other reforestation projects in the Southern Lebanese towns of Khiam and Rachaya al-Foukhar.

The projects have several objectives: they prevent further loss of biodiversity in the region, provide natural spaces for recreation and leisure, and foster the economic development in the region by increasing its attractiveness for tourists. Another central objective of the initiative is to strengthen local people’s awareness for environmental issues.

UNIFIL has been based in Lebanon since 1978. It guarantees that there are no illegal weapons between the Litani River and the Blue Line, a zone that separates Lebanese and Israeli armed forces. Engaging Blue Helmets in reforestation projects is nothing unusual: they have already planted more than 30 000 saplings around the world, among others in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, and Timor-Leste. (Kerstin Fritzsche)

For more information, please visit: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?Ne…

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But we have a problem with the above since back in 2006, when I was asking Mr. Ahmad Fawzi  who took over the Spokesperson’s job at the UN in order to give his one-sided view to the UN accredited Press of what was happening in the Israel-Lebanon and its Hezbollah war.

While the damage in Lebanon was caused by warfare, the damage on the Israeli side was caused by indiscriminate shelling with the unsophisticated rockets that had really no targets. In the process old growth forests in the Galilee were seriously damaged. I was asking as a point of information, to hear from him also on these damages, but he had no interest to hear such questions that went against his grain. Could not the UNIFIL officers realize now that impartiality calls for them doing reforestation work on both sides of the border?

George Soros will appear on CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria this Sunday morning, February 28th at 10am ET (rebroadcast at 1pm ET).

In the interview George discusses a variety of topics, from the state of the U.S. economy to relations with China.

With best regards,

Michael Vachon

It is funny how the Chinese cannot take responsibility when they do something right, and the Americans cannot take responsibility when they do something wrong.

Washington bailed out GM rather then making sure first they change products and Beijing stopped companies from buying into the GM misfits but find ways to explain this without harming the feelings of GM. Good riddance to the Hummer monster – specially to the yellow one that used to cruise the New York Mid-town East Side and driven by some chief from the Department of Sanitation.

CHINA INSISTS A FLAWED APPROACH HURT GM DEAL
By Patti Waldmeir in Shanghai 2010-02-26, The Financial Times.

The collapse of General Motors’ plan to sell Hummer to a Chinese buyer reflects flaws in the deal rather than any reluctance by Beijing to sanction cross-border transactions, say Chinese government officials.

GM announced late on Wednesday that it had given up on efforts to sell its troubled Hummer operations to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, after nearly nine months of trying.

The Detroit carmaker said it would now wind down production of the heavy sports utility vehicle.

The collapse marks another difficult sales process for GM since it began to downsize its operations more than a year ago. The carmaker backed out of plans to sell its Opel business last year, while a deal to offload its Saturn brand fell apart.

But it this week succeeded in selling Saab, its Swedish marque, to Spyker, the Dutch boutique sports car maker.

Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, which had never produced a passenger car, said the deal collapsed because it was “unable to obtain clearance [for] the transaction from the Chinese regulators within the proposed deal timeframe”.

The deal’s deadline had already been extended by a month while Tengzhong made a last-ditch effort to obtain Beijing’s blessing.

Analysts said yesterday that Beijing’s refusal to sanction the deal was scarcely surprising, given the central government’s recent strong emphasis on encouraging Chinese consumers to buy smaller, fuel-efficient cars.

To produce the hulking Hummer, with its image of wasteful excess, could hardly be less consistent with Beijing’s pro-green automotive policies, said Mike Dunne of Dunne & Co, an Asia-based automotive consultancy: “For them to approve the Hummer deal would be a big contradiction.”

A ministry of commerce spokesman said Tengzhong failed to provide a sound purchase plan. He reiterated China’s policy of encouraging development of a renewable, green and environmentally friendly economy.

The ministry has previously insisted it never received an application by Sichuan Tengzhong – but the company repeatedly denied it.

Yale Zhang, of CSM Automotive in Shanghai, said the deal violated not only Beijing’s environmental goals but also Chinese insistence on consolidation in the auto industry, which has about 50-100 carmakers.

“This was just the wrong group making the wrong purchase in the wrong way,” said an industry insider, noting Tengzhong did not obtain provisional clearance before announcing the deal.

Beijing is thought willing to sanction the much bigger $1bn acquisition of Volvo by Geely, the big private Chinese automaker. That deal is expected to be finalised by March’s end.

Last year BAIC, the Beijing automaker, acquired some assets of Saab from GM, with central government approval.

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NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

Goodbye, Hummer
Published: February 25, 2010

The world might be saved: It looks as if the Hummer is destined for the junkyard. The plan by General Motors to sell the muscular brand to a Chinese company went up in a puff of exhaust smoke on Wednesday after government officials in China said that they had never received the necessary application for approval and thus couldn’t grant it.

We suspect the deal collapsed because the Chinese Communist Party — which rarely shows much shame — is worried about China’s image as the most polluting nation on the planet. If true, that is good news.

There may be other good news. While some policy analysts have called — sensibly, in our opinion — for steeper gasoline taxes to encourage American drivers to embrace fuel efficiency, some economists have been skeptical. They acknowledge that drivers might decide to drive less and take public transportation more. But they warn that most could not afford to quickly dump their gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient cars.

Yet given time, it seems, people change their ways. Americans drove 3.4 percent fewer miles in 2008 — when gas prices shot up to a peak of $4 a gallon nationally — than in 2007. And many who had bought the Hummer when a gallon of gas cost $2 decided that they couldn’t afford to tool around town in a small tank that would run, on average, around 10 miles on a gallon.

By last year, even as gas prices drifted downward, only about 9,000 Hummers were sold in the United States. That was a steep drop from 71,000 in 2006. In the spring of 2008, G.M. announced that it could not keep the sinking brand. The company is weighing two long-shot bids, but it is more than likely to wind down the brand.

Gasoline is back around $2.50 a gallon, and Americans are falling back on some of their old bad habits. Still, the Hummer’s tale is a vivid example of the power of gas prices to change Americans’ ways. It also suggests that, given the proper incentives and disincentives, all the world’s nations can embrace a greener future.

This posting is about four events on New York snowy day – Thursday February 25, 2010 and one previous event.

Yesterday, Thursday, started for me by walking in between the snow flakes along First Avenue, to a 10-12 am book launch and discussion called for by the UN University in the new -so-called northern temporary UN Headquarters building.

The topic was: “FAULT LINES OF INTERNATIONAL LEGITIMACY” which is also the title of a new book released by Cambridge University Press, New York www.caambridge.org, and edited by Hilary Charlesworth and Jean Coicaud.

Dr. Jean-Marc Coicaud is the Director of the UNU office at the UN Headquarters in New York City. He was also one of the three people of the panel, and was responsible for at least one quarter of the 400 page book. The other two members of the panel were also participants in the book itself – responsible each for a chapter in the book. They were:

Ian Johnstone, Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, who prior to joining Fletcher, served as a legal and political officer at the United Nations at the time of UNSG Kofi Annan, including five years in the Office of the Secretary-General, one in the Department of Peace-keeping Operations, and one in the Office of Legal Affairs. He wrote the chapter – “Legal Deliberation and Argumentation in International Decision Making.” (30 p)

Vasuki Nessiah, Professor in International Relations and Gender Studies at Brown University. Before that she was Senior Associate and Head of Gender Program at the International Center for Transition Justice and with SIPA at Columbia University. She wrote the chapter – “From Berlin to Bonn to Baghdad: A Space for Infinitive Justice.” (30 p)

The introductory remarks by Dr. Coicaud made it clear that the topic is about the relation between power and principles. Since the establishment of the League of Nations and later the UN we started to outline what is International Law and what it should do. Further – the basic question is international security and at the UN this is embodied in the Security Council.

When the mike was passed to Prof. Johnstone it became clear that from a legal thinking point of view – a main stage in order to have justice is the stage of presenting arguments by both sides. This is the way in a deliberative democracy and what most lawyers would say that neither Iraq, nor Kosovo, evolved at the UNSC in such a way that the outside intervention was a legal act. But he also said that the theory of deliberative democracy says that voting alone cannot be the decision maker. The UN has to operate by consensus, but the Security Council takes up voting when there is no consensus – but then not all votes are equal. Also, the participants in a democratic deliberative debate are supposed to have similar backgrounds and share values, history … but at the UN they do not even share a language. We have a four teared structure – the Permanent equal 5 united by their individual veto, then the added temporary 10, then the broader UN membership with their interests, eventually the even larger real broader level of the interested public opinion. The public opinion level creates that “Interpretive Community” that is supposed to be neither objective nor subjective but intersubjective including lawyers and experts. But then experts are just as good as the interests they pursue. Eventually a legal case is decided by precedents.

On Iraq, President Bush went to the UN to launch a very intensive deliberative exercise. The fact that the US shifted interpretation to terrorism shows that the interpretive community mattered.

To the matter of our posting here, I would like to emphasize that wherever we discussed the issues in the Q & A period of the UNU meeting we had to come back to Iraq. The demonstration of most of what the issues meant can be found in this case.

I for one raised the question of the legitimacy of the UN itself according to – if it adheres to its constitution – The UN Charter?

There it says clearly WE THE PEOPLES – NOT WE THE GOVERNMENTS ELECTED OR UNELECTED. Here we have thus a big shadow overhanging this UN community. I also mentioned that to redress this somewhat the UN under UNSG Kofi Annan established THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT but this is not adhered to. The problem that when Iraq invaded Kuwait this was a clear UN transgression against a neighboring government, but when Iraq gassed and killed its own people that was seen as OK it is an internal problem.

Prof. Johnstone said – yes, established in 1945 that was the language but clearly it is now governments and more and more investigations into what they do internally – but in the end the veto-power has it. Chapter 7 of the Charter can be interpreted that what a government does to its own people can disturb international peace. A comment from the floor came back to the issue saying that the Responsibility to Protect is at a very low bar level but the bar is set much higher for action.

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My second event was 12:30 – 1:30 pm at the New York University Wagner School in the old Puck Building (295 Lafayette Street).

Part of the  Conflict Security and Development Series – Issues, Actors, and Approaches – co-hosted by NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, NYU’s Masters in Global Public Health Program, and the Office of International Programs at NYU Wagner.

The topic was: “PEACEBUILDING IN IRAQ – WHAT ROLES CAN UNIVERSITIES PLAY?“

Thomas Hill, Associate Research Scholar, Center for International Conflict Resolution, Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).was the speaker.

The Announcement said: Among the most well-respected and stable institutions in Iraq, universities allow representatives of different communities to interact and peacefully contest the country’s future. The recent establishment of a master’s program in peace and conflict studies at one Iraqi public university, and the development of a center dedicated to peace and security studies at a private university suggest a growing acceptance of responsibility for a role in peacebuilding by Iraq’s academics. Drawing on experiences teaching in Iraq, this discussion focuses on both the possibilities for, and the limitation of, university-led peacebuilding efforts in Iraq and elsewhere.

This was terrific and honestly put everything else I will be covering in this posting to clear shame.

Dr. Hill was with the University of Dahuk on the Turkish border of Kurdistan. He pointed out that when talking peacebuilding in Iraq, today the only the university is the area where all Iraqis can come – irrelevant of the religion they have or do not have.

In other parts the neighborhood is mosque or church dominated – the university is free territory – perhaps even secular for those that wish it this way. He told us that when a new foreign teacher at the university was kidnapped for ransom by Muslims, Muslim students participated in raising the money to free him. That was something new in Iraq – and he was there last time November 2009.

The Iraqi head of that program told him that all what he wants is to educate a small number of leaders for the next generation. They take in just 4 students to the program per year and this is the second year of this particular program – similar programs sprout also at other Universities in Iraq. In some way, having a small number of students from various backgrounds forms an interactive community and this helps further the program – the Iraqi head of the program actually told him that had they accepted more students, groups could have formed and fights could have resulted – now they participate at each others events and learn also to do away with preconceptions on a personal basis.

Peace building he talks about is the social sciences meaning repair, strengthening, creating personal relationships. This leads to comprehensive conflict transformation – from an unpeaceful to a peaceful relationship. Conflict can be transformed into a constructive resolution. In this structure, obviously are according to John Paul Lederach  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_L…) who wrote about this in 2005, a high-level inspiration – Mid-level actors in this case the University Professors and Deans that educate the Grassroots Leaders. There is a CRITICAL MASS NOT OF NUMBERS OF PEOPLE BUT OF THE QUALITY OF THE PLATFORM. This happens with small groups of very dedicated people.

The Dahuk University itself is 16 years old. It is Kurdish in a Kurdish majority area. The Kurds are predominantly Sunni but religion is not a big issue. It was the politicians that manipulated the religion idea.

There is an Iraqi Peace Foundation – academics, civil society, activists and the Foundation head is from Baghdad – a Professor of Urban Planing – Dr. Kamal. He is a returnee who came from Canada. Iraq had Universities already 1300 years ago, Medicine and Engineering are the most seeked subjects. Students submit to an exam and the administrators of that exam would decide what they had to study. People could not control their own life but wanted to study – so they would accept their fate and study what was handed down to them. But the students wanted to take control of their life and their community. They are the society’s depository of knowledge and can be next generation that will carry Iraq to its future. This one University program’s contribution of 4 leaders per year is thus not negligible.

There are 18 governments in Iraq – the Iraq Peace Foundation has established relations with all of them. The central system does not yet support financially this program but they ought – because it is Iraq’s future. Indeed, until very recently, Iraq was a mixed society and, as said, it had a highly educated group of people that lived in harmony and it was not unknown for them to intermarry.

Professor Vera Jelinek, the Divisional Dean and Clinical Associate Professor, Center for Global Affairs, School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS) at NYU, who was in the audience, asked how to transfer these experiences to other peace-building areas like Kosovo, Bosnia …

The answer was that if you get a society that values higher education it could work. YOU MUST HAVE A HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION he said. In Afghanistan there is no intellectual capital like Baghdad. Afghanistan may not be the place for it. Iraq – the paradox is that in its diversity is its strength. You can have in Iraq politi conversations between people that have been in government and those that will be. Dahuk University will contravene the first Peace-Making country-wide conference in Iraq. Baghdad University is very respected – it is the biggest and has convening capacity. Things will pick up in Baghdad.

Here I decided to ask if with all this introspection, if the Iraqi students will not end up forgetting that there are also other problems in the world?

I was amazed at the gusher of comments I got from the speaker who explained that he wished US students had so much global awareness as the Iraqi students. Clearly, they read all sorts of sources and are well rounded of what goes on in the world.

AHA I said, my follow up question is thus – why do they not rally with the understanding that they were manipulated and try to better their future with that knowledge? To this the answer was less satisfying because the reality is that they have been manipulated to the point that it is easier to comply and fight against each other – and it will be only with the change of leadership to people educated according to the lines we just listened to – that such change will indeed occur.

Another question came from an Arab gentleman who identified himself as belonging to the UN and involved with consortia of universities. I tried later to exchange cards with him but he had no card – told me of the great new plans that the UN Department of Public Information (UN DPI) is establishing with Universities and thought he had to explain to me what that department does. I flatly told him that I wish they keep out of this as they are not known for doing the right things. Besides – there is a UN University to handle contacts with academia – as academia is not the kind of place to swallow UN self serving propaganda. He did not seem happy and I wonder if he was really from the UN.

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My third event was 4-6 pm organized by Professor John Rajchman, an Adjunct Professor and Director of Modern Art M.A. Programs in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University.

He invited to his class  Dr. Wang Hui, Professor of Chinese  Language, Literature and History, Tsinghua University, Beijing, who among his many publications is included also the 2010 Verso, Brooklyn, NY,  release titled: “THE END OF THE REVOLUTION: China and The Limits Of Modernity.” Professor Rajchman just thought that his art history students ought to understand the interconnect between old established culture and political upheavals with a view of how far this could be feasable for a culture like China. That is an interesting Professor at a good University!

Wang Hui research focuses on contemporary Chinese literature and thinking. He was the executive editor (with Huang Ping) of the influential magazine Dushu (??, Reading) from May 1996 to July 2007. The US magazine Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008.

Wang Hui has his particular Chinese intellectual of our days view of globalization, neoliberalism, and finds the economic miracle of China these days as a deficient remedy for failures of socialism. I think it fortunate that I came to Columbia right after having hears the presentation, by the way also of someone from Columbia, on the promise of the Iraqi academia. Again – just in passing – let me again tell the UN DPI – the UN disinformation service – hands off please of Academia – this is just not your field of competence.

Wang Hui is worried that the later growth can be seen as legitimization of the early heavy-handed transformation of the Chinese farmer. Even now the basic issue is agriculture he said. In fact, it was the 1911 revolution that allowed for the precondition for the agriculture change. It also introduced new education system and in the economy.

The 80’s democratization ended with a democratic crisis and the traditional capitalization and international economics created a fiscalization of democracy.

In the 1980’s the idea was to separate the party from the State – but in Chinese tradition the Party represents the Will of the people. Will there be a democratization of the Party? People return now to sentimentalism towards Mao. The web is an issue for the population. They see in it a technological control – not just political. People are wary of China Americanization. They prefer an accent on developing nations. Now the involvement in Africa.

I tried to find out what he thinks of a G2 idea with mutual interest in developing a gren economy. His idea is that the population will be worried and are affraid of too close cooperation.

for more about Professor Wang Hui:
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/world/…

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My fourth event for the day – 6-8 pm – was supposed to be at the SIPA Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University – the conversation of Mr. Alvaro de Soto with Sir Brian Urquhart. An actual throw-back to what the UN was meant to become at its creation in 1945.

Sir Brian was a British intelligence officer in WWII who was sent by the UK to assist in creation. He has been involved with every UN Secretary General since and was the organizer of the first UN Peacekeeping force. As UnderSecretary-General he was involved in the Middle East and Cyprus – clear British interests in those years.

Alvaro de Soto, from Peru, In 1982 he joined the United Nations staff as a special adviser to Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1982-1991) – also a Peruvian. Alvaro de Soto continued to hold positions at the UN, mainly in Peasekeeping, till 2007.

I was prepared with questions, but the event got canceled because of the weather – very befitting the UN that is normally a fair weather institution.

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That brings me to the last event that I would like to mention in this article. This was the Wedneday, February 17, 2010 UN University hosting of the Permanent Representative of Iraq to the UN, Ambassador Dr. T. Hamid Al-Bayati.

The topic was “IRAQ AND THE UN: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.”

This was clearly something new – an Ambassador making himself available for questioning to a forum at the UN that is not controlled by the UN Department of Public Information – kudos to the Ambassador.

The Ambassador explained the history of military takeovers 1968, a second coup of 1968 by the Baath Party bringing to power the Saddam regime and then the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the eventual undoing of the regime in 2003.

On the legal side – the first constitution was of 1950 and then the start of the new constitution of 2005. Elections is now the norm and next election will be in April 2010. He stressed the peaceful history in Iraq in past years, and delved even into the place Jews used to have in Iraqi society – and that is as far as we know quite accurate for past years. Will there be a return to more peaceful days after the experiences of more recent times?

He enlarged on security and transparency issues for the elections. He also explained that also Iraqis outside the country will be able to vote. This last item caused me to raise the question on how will they know that indeed Iraqis will vote in the outside-the-country voting? He answered that food ration tickets are base for the lists – but we know from the experience with the Palestinians that people are born but never die and others take over such cards as highly praised commodities. There will clearly be inflated voting that will skew the results. Further, as he said that Iraqis came back from neighboring countries, again, that will be another source of inroads by non-Iraqis. Whatever, it was – this meeting was quite enlightening because of the exchanges – something that even the press enjoyed more here then in the Briefing Room. I wish that event were after what I learned from the other first three events I mentioned above, so I could follow up with questions, but I feel confident that the Ambassador will answer directly a well structured question even now and that get-to=know you event at UNU was just clearly an asset.

Mongolia is an unassuming country, sandwiched in between Russia and China and has sworn to stay nuclear free and made known it is no danger to anyone. This is Mongolia’s highest contribution to its region and it could be an example to North Korea when that State decides to attempt change. Mongolia can smooth the way to the six parties talks.

Mongolia is the 19th largest and the most sparsely populated independent country in the world, with a population of about three million people. It is also the world’s second-largest landlocked country after Kazakhstan. The country contains very little arable land, as much of its area is covered by steppes, with mountains to the north and west, and the Gobi Desert to the south. Approximately 30% of the population are nomadic or semi-nomadic. The predominant religion in Mongolia is Tibetan Buddhism, and the majority of the state’s citizens are of the Mongol ethnicity, though Kazakhs, Tuvans, and other minorities also live in the country, especially in the west. About 20% of the population live on less than US$1.25 per day. Global warming has had a serious impact on Mongolia and its land became even drier with very active further desertification; but Mongolia is rich in minerals and exporting minerals such as Coal, Uranium, Lithium, Copper, Molybdenum, Tin, Tungsten, Gold and oil provide it with cash flow. Companies and Financing from China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Russia, Canada are active in Mongolia.

In Mongolia during the 1920s, approximately one third of the male population were monks. By the beginning of the 20th century about 750 monasteries were functioning in Mongolia. The Stalinist purges in Mongolia beginning in 1937, affected the Republic as it left more than 30,000 people dead. Japanese imperialism became even more alarming after the invasion of neighboring Manchuria in 1931. The Soviet threat of seizing parts of Inner Mongolia induced China to recognize Outer Mongolia’s independence. So – the mutual distrust between China and the Soviets allowed for an independent Mongolia.

The introduction of perestroika and glasnost in the USSR by Mikhail Gorbachev strongly influenced Mongolian politics leading to the peaceful Democratic Revolution, and the introduction of a multi-party system and market economy. A new constitution was introduced in 1992, and the “People’s Republic” was dropped from the country’s name. The transition to market economy was often rocky, the early 1990s saw high inflation and food shortages. The first election wins for non-communist parties came in 1993 (presidential elections) and 1996 (parliamentary elections). So, Mongolia, an ex-communist country moved to a market economy.

The evolution of Mongolia is now of special interest to those that would like to see movement in efforts to solve the Korean peninsula schism. Mongolia could be an example for North Korea if it becomes interested in dropping its attachment to the former Soviet way of managing a country – and that is what brought a high level Mongolian group to The Korea Society in New York City, for breakfast, today, February 23, 2010.

The speaker was H.E. Damdin Tsogtbaatar, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Next to him sat the Mongolian Permanent Representative to the UN H.E. Enkhtsetseg Ochir. Also present was the Deputy Permanent Representative Sodnom Gankhuyag.

The presentation started with the geopolitics and the paradox that both neighbors – China and Russia – are conservative cultures but when changing they are revolutionary. Being enclosed in that sandwich, the Mongolian Foreign Policy has to be an open policy and with both neighbors nuclear  – it had to mean for Mongolia that it can only be free of nuclear weapons. From here he looked at the other two countries that started out in similar conditions like Mongolia – Cuba and North Korea. While Mongolia developed a democracy romanticism – this was not the case with the other two. In effect North Korea looked down at Mongolia and closed its embassy in 1999 and used the excuse that they do so because of economy conditions. Mongolia watched the South Korean Sunshine Policy towards North Korea and as regional Mongolian expats live in South Korea, and Mongolia’s interest to help stabilize the region in its own interest, they started to get more and more interested in what goes on on the Korean Peninsula and in Japan. For one thing – North Korea was interested in Petroleum. North Korea is isolated by its own choice – but someone must get interested in North Korea. In fact in the 1970’s North Korea was ahead of South Korea – more developed – but se now. During the Korean War – only the Russian and Mongolian Ambassadors were left in North Korea. Mongolia also helped by taking in the N. Korean orphans and returned them when hostilities stopped.

Mongolia does not think that the North Koreans are totally irrational, even though he told of some instances that you real wonder – one such was the idea of developing an ostrich farm in N. Korea. Mongolia initiated cultural exchanges that include also Japanese groups. The idea is that Mongolia can try to prepare the ground on which the meetings of the six parties could be restarted.

Mongolia does not believe that sanctions will work – they only punish the people who then clam up and there is no progress. That is when I noted that the two Mongolian men in the room both had purple ties, and I wandered if this is an effort not to look blue or red? Further – Acquiring nuclear technology is not the end – he said – see Kazakhstan and the Ukraine – they had nuclear and gave them up – eventually comes a government and changes of a sudden are possible.

North Korea – the transition of power is supposed to happen in 2012, but considering the health of the leader it could happen earlier. About money reform -That had an impact only on those that had money. It affected people in the cities – not the countryside.

John Delury, an Associate Director at the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations, said that when he spoke to North Koreans when asked why they do not evolve according to the China model, they answered that they are on the China track. See, China first got nuclear, then only formalized relations with the US after they became nuclear. Only then kicked in stage three that was economical.

The answer was – That it is so – Mao Tse-Tung got nuclear first, on account of Stalin. Mongolia does not want to be any-body’s model – “we avoid the word.”

Mongolia was able to put at one table North Korea and Japan but to bring together both Koreas is more difficult. First, with President Lee the Sunshine policy was ended, and a strong anti-North Korean approach was established. The feeling is that the South Koreans, like any democracy, became tired to wait. The situation is now such that both Koreas say – we know what to do – thanks – no – thanks.

Mongolia does no believe in treaties and going to court like lawyers when you deal with nuclear weapons. One can push the button and it is over – but then he said earlier that the belief is there that eventually people are rational – so what is it? Do we must be careful to avoid such situation by stopping a country like Iran from getting nuclear, in order to avoid later dilemmas? Anyway – Iran was not the Issue here but North Korea – so let us say that Mongolia can nevertheless provide an example to North Korea, even if not a model – that changing from threat to agreement could help economically. In effect the day before, the Mongolian envoy had an hour-long meeting with UNSG Ban Ki-moon.

In North Korea, UN Did Not Raise Press Freedom, Hires Staff from Gov’t Lists, UN’s “Comparative Advantage”?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 16 — How badly does the UN under Secretary General Ban Ki-moon want to be relevant in North Korea? His senior advisor Kim Won-soo and his Political Affairs chief Lynn Pascoe traveled to Pyongyang and did not even raise the issue of press freedom.

In response to questions from Inner City Press upon their return, Mr. Kim said that “things are moving forward,” while Mr. Pascoe claimed that the UN Development Program “hires its own employees now rather then take them through the government.” Video here, from Minute 12:52.

But Mr. Kim later clarified that UNDP staff will still be chosen from lists forwarded by the Kim Jong-Il government, only there will be “multiple” candidates. He acknowledged that the UN still has problems with “access and visas” but said there are at the “local level.” In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, it all comes from the top: Kim Jong-Il, with whom the two did not even meet.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists has named North Korea as the most censored country on earth, and had called on Ban Ki-moon to speak out more forcefully on press freedom. Inner City Press asked Pascoe and Kim Won-soo about this. Pascoe said they hadn’t raised press freedom “per se.” Kim Won-soo, who was asked twice about press freedom, did not answer the question.

Most questions were about whether North Korea will rejoin the Six Party talks about its nuclear programs. That is up to the Six Parties, Pascoe and Kim Won-soo repeatedly said. The UN is a go between. For example, Pascoe said that his staffer Aleksandr Ilitchev is “going to Moscow tomorrow,” after along with Ban staff Lee Sang-Hwa being on the trip, presumably to brief on the Six Party talks.

On UNDP, Mr. Kim told Inner City Press, “You are right, UNDP’s program has been suspended for two and a half years. The Resident Coordinator [moved back] three months ago.” According to Mr. Kim, he’s had to focus on renovating the UN office and residence. “The building was empty, so we couldn’t see any safe there,” he said, referring to the safe in which counterfeit dollars were found, which UNDP never reported until a whistleblower raised it.

That whistleblower was something of an elephant in the briefing room on Tuesday, with Mr. Kim Won-soo assuring that all UN programs in North Korea will now be scrutinized. Ironically he mentioned a “geo-spacial” mapping project which was one of those that got the UNDP program into trouble two and a half years ago.

Background: Five months into Ban’s tenure atop the UN, in May 2007, he was angered by the leak to Inner City Press of a internal memo (“Korea Peninsula UN Policy and Strategy Submission to the Policy Committee”) proposing that the UN use its “comparative advantage” to make itself relevant on the North Korea issue.
Now, the competitive advantage is being used.

Back in 2007, Ban had been forced to order an audit of the UN Development Program’s North Korea practices, including funding project which it could neither visit nor oversee. UNDP’s program had been suspended.

The UN memo stated that “Unless [the suspension] is reversed, the UNDP program risks being terminated. Rather than being able to support the six-party talks process and international engagement with North Korea at this critical juncture, the UN will lose its unique comparative advantage in that area altogether.”

Recently, despite the continuing nuclear standoff and renewed firing across the border, as well as lack of movement on human rights, UNDP re-started its North Korea program. And now the Ban administration’s “comparative advantage” is back.

UN’s Ban, Mr. Kim and Lynn Pascoe, press freedom not in the picture.

After the February 16 briefing, Mr. Kim Won-soo stayed and answered further questions. He said there are 39 international staff from six UN agencies currently in North Korea. He said the programs there spend approximately $45 million a year; he pointed out that’s $2 a person. UNDP will come up with a five year plan by “sometime in March,” then seek approval from the UNDP board. Things are, he said, moving in the right direction. And on those who seek to leave the country? And on press freedom? Watch this site.

Footnote: this was Kim Won-soo’s first on the record briefing at the UN, following requests made based on the JoongAng Ilbo’s on the record quote about the trip attributed to Mr. Kim. Later, also on the record, Ban’s Associate Spokesperson Choi Soung-ah told Inner City Press that Mr. Kim “did not give an exclusive to JoongAng Ilbo.” But the UN never sought a retraction. Mr. Kim appeared on Tuesday, and Inner City Press asked him to return for another briefing about the Ban administration’s wider work. We’ll see.

From Eye on the UN
February 22, 2010
Contact:
 list at eyeontheun.org

What the IAEA Knew:  The U.N. agency charged with stopping nuclear proliferation enabled it.

This article, by Anne Bayefsky, originally appeared in Forbes.com.

The most important thing gleaned from the report by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) circulated on Feb. 18, which states that Iran may indeed be bent on developing a nuclear bomb, is not new information about Iran. It is that for years the United Nations apparatus lied about what they knew and actively stood in the way of efforts to prevent the world’s most dangerous regime from acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapon.

The “confidential” report leaked to every news agency on the planet, is quoted as stating that on the basis of “extensive” and “credible” information the IAEA now has “concerns about the possible existence in Iran of … current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile,” and “concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

While Obama administration officials have attempted to spin the first report of IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, who took over last December, as a U.N. achievement, the implications of the evident U.N. deceit cannot be overstated. After all, the organization has a choke hold on global imaginations. In 2005 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the IAEA and its then Director General Mohammed ElBaradei “for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes.” It is now clear that this occurred at the very same time that ElBaradei was engaged in what may well prove to be the most lethal cover-up in human history.

For almost a decade, the IAEA and its director general stalled for time on behalf of Iran, with reports feigning ignorance of Iranian designs while leaving an escape hatch should the IAEA’s disguise as a non-proliferation agency be blown. In February 2006 ElBaradei reported: “Although the Agency has not seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the Agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran. The process of drawing such a conclusion … is a time consuming process.”

In August 2006 ElBaradei reported: “the Agency remains unable to make further progress in its efforts to verify the correctness and completeness of Iran’s declarations with a view to confirming the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme.” In January 2007, in the midst of growing calls for sanctions, ElBaradei suggested a “time-out.” In July 2007 ElBaradei concocted a deliberately nebulous deal between the IAEA and Iran “on the modality for resolving the remaining outstanding issues.” In September 2007, with stiffer sanctions on the horizon, ElBaradei again called for a “time-out.” In January 2008 the IAEA reported: “ElBaradei has repeatedly noted that … the IAEA has not seen any diversion of material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”p>

And on and on the reports and the carefully timed interviews went. The organization charged with stopping nuclear proliferation enabled it. This latest “revelation” should, therefore, be a shot heard round the world. Or at the very least, in the halls of Congress, where every year at least 5 billion American taxpayer dollars are directed to the United Nations in cash or in kind.

Last week’s report did not see the light of day because the U.N. has turned over a significant new leaf. Rather, this is a desperate attempt by Amano to save the organization’s hide. It is an indication that Iran’s breakout as a nuclear power is so close at hand that the “watchdog” agency can no longer keep a lid on it.

The development does cast a new light, however, on ElBaradei’s assessment of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. Over the course of his presidency, Obama has repeatedly taken the heat off Iran: muting criticism over the stolen elections, minimizing response to human rights violations, sidelining the plight of Iran’s American hostages and treading water on sanctions for over a year. One particularly treacherous strategy has been to equate the urgency of nuclear disarmament–including by the United States–with nuclear non-proliferation. This inevitably delays progress on the latter. In the name of some perverse concept of fairness, the peril of a nuclear-armed United States and like-minded democracies is set off against the craving of non-democratic developing states to be equally armed. ElBaradei agreed with this strategy–as did the Nobel Committee.

Fellow honoree ElBaradei was therefore “absolutely delighted” at Obama’s award. Perceiving the Obama-ElBaradei approach to have been applauded once again, he told reporters: “I could not have thought of any other person today that is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama … I think the [Nobel] committee understood fully, as they have done in 2005, that we really need to address the number one security threat we face in the world–which is to get rid of these inhumane weapons. And Obama has … managed to put nuclear disarmament on the top of the international agenda … That is something I think the committee, by giving him the prize today, has applauded and said ‘you are doing the right thing; keep doing what you are doing.’ Exactly the same message that they have sent to the IAEA in 2005 … and myself.”

Two Nobel Peace Prizes later, Iran is much closer to acquiring nuclear weapons and ElBaradei’s days as U.N. proliferator-in-chief may not quite be over. On Friday, Feb. 19, he returned to his native Egypt and declared his interest in replacing President Hosni Mubarak in next year’s elections. If he were to succeed, he will undoubtedly follow an Iranian bomb with a dash to achieve an Egyptian one, with the tried-and-true U.N. formula of non-discrimination and peace.
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ISRAEL
Israel Talks Solar With Egypt, Biofuel With Jordan
 http://planetark.org/wen/56819

JORDAN
Jordan Enlists Army In Climate Fight
 http://planetark.org/wen/56814

The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
mourns the passing of former U.S. Secretary of State

General Alexander M. Haig Jr.

a founding member of the International Advisory Board

of the BESA Center

We salute his unyielding friendship for the State of Israel and his wise counsel to the BESA Center.

www.besacenter.org