Anarchism

Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful, or otherwise undesirable, and favor instead a stateless society or anarchy. Individual anarchists may have additional criteria for what they conceive to be anarchism, and there is often broad disagreement concerning these broader conceptions.

A modern day example of anarchism is Somalia.

Source: Wikipedia

Capitalism

There is no consensus on capitalism, nor how it should be used as an analytical category. However, it is generally accepted that private ownership of the means of production, the creation of goods or services for personal gain in a market (free or fettered), prices (money or barter), and labour (paid or enslaved) are elements of capitalism.

Capitalism is thought to be a system that developed incrementally from the 14th century in Europe, however capitalist organizations existed in the ancient world, and early aspects of merchant capitalism flourished during the Late Middle Ages. Capitalism (as an undefined concept) became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. Capitalism gradually spread throughout Europe, and in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The term capitalist refers to an owner of capital rather than an economic system. Karl Marx's notion of the capitalist mode of production is characterised as a system of primarily private ownership of the means of production in a mainly market economy, with a legal framework on commerce and a physical infrastructure provided by the state.

Source: Wikipedia

Socialism

Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals, with a method of compensation based on the amount of labour expended.

Most socialists share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potentialities and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.

Friedrich Engels, one of the founders of modern socialist theory, and Henri de Saint-Simon, a French Utopian Socialism theorist, advocated the creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of modern technology to rationalise economic activity by eliminating the anarchy of capitalist production.

Source: Wikipedia

Israel arrests nuclear whistle-blower

Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu was arrested Tuesday by Israeli police for allegedly violating the terms of his 2004 prison release agreement. Vanunu was convicted by an Israeli court in 1986 after being kidnapped from Italy by Israeli intelligence agents. He was sentenced to 18 years for passing on information about Israel's clandestine nuclear program. Vanunu, who at the time worked as a technician at Israel's nuclear research facility, passed information along to a British newspaper and led nuclear arms analysts to conclude that Israel possessed a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it has a nuclear weapons program.

Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police, said Vanunu was arrested for an unauthorized meeting with foreigners and was due in court later Tuesday. Vanunu's attorney, Avigdor Feldman, clarified that the arrest had to do with his client's relationship with a Norwegian girlfriend and nothing to do with revealing state secrets. The court ordered that Vanunu be put under house arrest for three days until an indictment is served, a police spokesman told CNN.

Speaking to reporters at a Jerusalem court, Vanunu said Israel and its leaders were "impotent" because they have nuclear weapons which they are not able to admit they have. "This Jewish state has 200 atomic ... hydrogen bombs, atomic weapons, neutron bomb," he said. "They are not able to say they have the bomb, they are not able to destroy anyone. ... Instead they arrest Vanunu Mordechai." At the time of his release in 2004, the Israeli Justice Ministry said in a statement that it believed there was a "high degree of probability that Vanunu wishes to divulge state secrets, secrets that have yet to be divulged."

According to the terms of Vanunu's release, he is prohibited from leaving the country or making contact with foreign residents without advance permission. But ever since then, Vanunu has been arrested on a number of occasions for violations of his release agreement, and in 2007 he was sentenced to six months for not fulfilling his parole requirements. In his remarks to reporters on Tuesday, Vanunu said that since his 2004 release he has met with foreigners "all the time" and that he had been living among foreigners.

Source: CNN

Community

Traditionally a "community" has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or global community.

The word community is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, "with/together" + munus, "gift"), a broad term for fellowship or organized society.

Since the advent of the Internet, the concept of community no longer has geographical limitations, as people can now virtually gather in an online community and share common interests regardless of physical location.

Source: Wikipedia

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all kinds of human race belong to a single community, based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism. Cosmopolitanism may entail some sort of world government or it may simply refer to more inclusive moral, economic, and/or political relationships between nations or individuals of different nations. A person who adheres to the idea of cosmopolitanism in any of its forms is called a cosmopolitan.

The cosmopolitan community might be based on an inclusive morality, a shared economic relationship, or a political structure that encompasses different nations. In its more positive versions, the cosmopolitan community is one in which individuals from different places (e.g. nation-states) form relationships of mutual respect. As an example, Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests the possibility of a cosmopolitan community in which individuals from varying locations (physical, economic, etc.) enter relationships of mutual respect despite their differing beliefs (moral, religious, political, etc.). However, the cosmopolitan community can also be understood as some kind of elite club, one based primarily on economic privilege. In this light, the cosmopolitan individual has advantages over less economically privileged individuals, advantages that might include personal and political liberties and freedoms.

Source: Wikipedia

Patriotism

Patriotism is love of and/or devotion to one's country. The word comes from the Greek patris, meaning fatherland. However, patriotism has had different meanings over time, and its meaning is highly dependent upon context, geography, and philosophy.

Although patriotism is used in certain vernaculars as a synonym for nationalism, nationalism is not necessarily considered an inherent part of patriotism. Among the ancient Greeks, patriotism consisted of notions concerning language, religious traditions, ethics, law, and devotion to the common good, rather than pure identification with a nation-state. Scholar J. Peter Euben writes that for the Greek philosopher Socrates, "patriotism does not require one to agree with everything that his country does and would actually promote analytical questioning in a quest to make the country the best it possibly can be."

In the Hindu epic Ramayana, Lord Rama tells Lakshmana Janani Janma Bhoomischa Swargadapi Gariyasi (Mother and Motherland are greater than heaven), which greatly lays the foundation for consciousness of patriotism for Hindus.

During the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, the notion of patriotism continued to be separate from the notion of nationalism. Instead, patriotism was defined as devotion to humanity and beneficence. For example, providing charity, criticizing slavery, and denouncing excessive penal laws were all considered patriotic. In both ancient and modern visions of patriotism, individual responsibility to fellow citizens is an inherent component of patriotism.

Many contemporary notions of patriotism are influenced by 19th century ideas about nationalism. During the 19th century, "being patriotic" became increasingly conflated with nationalism, and even jingoism. However, some notions of contemporary patriotism reject nationalism in favor of a more classic version of the idea of patriotism which includes social responsibility.

Source: Wikipedia

Israel kills six Palestinians in West Bank, Gaza

Israeli soldiers shot and killed six Palestinians in two separate incidents on Saturday in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in one of the deadliest outbreaks of violence in months. Three of those who were killed belonged to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, and his top aide accused Israel of inflaming tensions and seeking to torpedo US-backed efforts to renew stalled peace talks.

The violence came a day before the anniversary of a three-week Gaza war that killed about 1 400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. Peace talks have been frozen since. An Israeli military spokesperson said soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians suspected of trying to infiltrate from Hamas-ruled coastal Gaza, and three West Bank militants accused of killing a Jewish settler in a roadside shooting on Thursday. A Hamas security source said the three shot in Gaza at daybreak were apparently civilians collecting scrap metal in an industrial zone near the Israeli border.

In the West Bank, Palestinian medics and witnesses said soldiers surrounded the homes of three members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group of Abbas's Fatah group, and then killed all three. The shootings infuriated Palestinian leaders
"This grave Israeli escalation shows Israel is not interested in peace and is trying to explode the situation," Nabil Abu Rdainah, a top aide to Abbas, told Reuters. "Israel is torpedoing international and American efforts to restart peace talks," Rdainah said. An Israeli military spokesperson said troops had launched a "pinpointed raid to capture the perpetrators of the shooting attack and during the operation three who were involved in carrying out that attack were killed".

At least one of the militants was armed during the raid and four rifles and ammunition were found at the scene, the spokesperson said. The settler had been the first Israeli killed in a Palestinian attack in about eight months in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek for a state. Sources in Fatah said those who were killed in the West Bank raid belonged to their group. At least one had been on an Israeli wanted list, the sources said.

Abbas has demanded a halt to Jewish settlement building before peace talks delayed since a Gaza war in January may resume, and has rejected a temporary building freeze announced last month by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as insufficient.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Dennis Brutus Dies at 85; Fought Apartheid With Sports

When Dennis Brutus heard the news, he was breaking stones on Robben Island, the notorious prison colony where Nelson Mandela, the freedom fighter and future South African president, occupied the cell next to his. The news was that the International Olympic Committee had suspended South Africa from the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. That signified a victory for Mr. Brutus, who led the fight to use sports as a weapon against the racist policies of South Africa. Ultimately, South Africa was barred from almost all international athletic competitions, including the Olympics, from 1964 to 1991.

Mr. Brutus paid a high price for his sports activism. Besides imprisonment, he was exiled and shot in the back. A poet, teacher and journalist, he was barred from earning a living except by menial labor. He died in Cape Town on Dec. 26 at the age of 85. His son Anthony told the South African Press Association, a news agency, that he had had prostate cancer. There were many others from many countries who fought apartheid in sports, but Mr. Brutus helped ignite the fight, and his efforts led to big victories.

In 1995, after apartheid — the official system of racial discrimination — had crumbled, it was a sporting moment that symbolized the birth of a new democracy in South Africa. It happened during the rugby World Cup tournament, from which the country had been barred, when it was being held in Johannesburg. Mr. Mandela, then the president, appeared at the stadium wearing the green-and-gold jersey of the country’s team, which until recently had been all white, as a symbol of national unity. (The moment is re-enacted in the film “Invictus,” with Morgan Freeman playing Mr. Mandela.) “Mr. Brutus has a distinction that makes him a hated symbol to the white rulers of South Africa, and a heroic one to the critics of their regime,” Anthony Lewis wrote in The New York Times in 1983. “He has actually succeeded in bringing about some change in one aspect of apartheid.”

Dennis Vincent Brutus was born on Nov. 28, 1924, in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to South African parents who moved back home to Port Elizabeth when he was 4. Of African, French and Italian ancestry, Mr. Brutus was classified under South Africa’s racial code as “colored.” He graduated from the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, taught in nonwhite schools, did social work and joined the underground campaign against apartheid. A mediocre athlete himself as a youth, Mr. Brutus turned to sports politics after seeing black athletes turned down for South Africa’s international teams in favor of inferior whites. He took up the issue not as a tactic to attack the apartheid system, he said, but because of the personal harm the policy was doing to athletes. In 1959, Mr. Brutus helped form the South African Sports Association as founding secretary. It began by lobbying all-white sports organizations to change voluntarily, but made no progress. In 1962, he helped form a new group to challenge South Africa’s official Olympic Committee. The organization, the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, of which he was president, persuaded Olympic committees from other countries to vote to suspend South Africa from the 1964 and 1968 Olympics. In 1970, the group gathered enough votes from national committees, particularly those in Africa and Asia, to expel South Africa from the Olympic movement.

For Mr. Brutus, it would be a painful road to Barcelona, where a South African team, an integrated one, returned to the Olympics in 1992. A paper prepared by apartheid opponents for the United Nations in 1971 said, “Dennis Brutus, one of the most persistent campaigners against racialism in sport, became a special target of the South African regime.” In 1960, he was barred from meeting with more than two people outside his family. When he met with a Swiss journalist and others three years later, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. But he jumped bail and fled to Mozambique, where the Portuguese secret police arrested him and returned him to South Africa. There, while trying to escape, he was shot in the back at point-blank range. After only partly recovering from the wound, Mr. Brutus was sent to Robben Island, where he was imprisoned for 16 months, five in solitary confinement. On his release he was ordered not to leave his home for five years. But after a year, he made a deal to emigrate to Britain on the condition he not return to South Africa.

Four years later, Mr. Brutus moved to the United States, where he taught at Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh. He continued to work on South African sports issues, speaking out against General Motors’ involvement in South Africa in 1970 and returning to Britain in 1971 to protest the Lawn Tennis Association’s decision to allow South African tennis players to compete at Wimbledon. In a highly publicized case, United States immigration authorities tried to deport Mr. Brutus in the early 1980s because he lacked proper residence documents. In an Op-Ed article in The Times in 1982, Henry Louis Gates Jr., then a Yale literature professor, suggested that Mr. Brutus was being persecuted by the Reagan administration for his race and leftist politics. The administration denied a political motive, saying it was simply following standing policies.

Mr. Brutus won political asylum in the United States after a judge ruled he would be in danger if returned to South Africa. Mr. Brutus is survived by his wife, the former May Jaggers; two sisters; eight children; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. The author of 14 books, Mr. Brutus was an outspoken critic of South Africa’s embrace of capitalism and remained deeply skeptical about racial attitudes long after apartheid had dissolved. In 2007, when the South African Sport Hall of Fame sought to induct him, he refused the tribute, saying some of its members were “unapologetic racists.”

Source: New York Times

Have you Heard from Johannesburg: Episode 4

U.S. Says Plane Passenger Tried to Detonate Device

A Nigerian man with possible terrorist ties sneaked an explosive onto a trans-Atlantic Northwest Airlines flight on Friday and tried to ignite it as the plane prepared to land in Detroit, federal officials said. The device, described by officials as a mixture of powder and liquid, failed to fully detonate. Passengers on the plane described a series of pops that sounded like firecrackers.

Federal officials said the man wanted to bring the plane down. ''We believe it was an attempted act of terrorism,'' said a White House official who declined to be identified discussing the investigation of the incident, which is likely to lead to heightened security during the busy holiday season. ''This was the real deal,'' said Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who was briefed on the incident and said something had gone wrong with the explosive device, which he described as somewhat sophisticated. ''This could have been devastating,'' Mr. King said.

It was unclear how the man, identified by federal officials as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, managed to get the explosive on the plane, an Airbus A330 wide-body jet carrying 278 passengers that departed from Amsterdam with passengers who had originated in Nigeria. A senior administration official said that the government did not yet know whether the man had had the capacity to take down the plane. A senior Department of Homeland Security official said that the materials Mr. Abdulmutallab had on him were ''more incendiary than explosive,'' and that he had tried to ignite them to cause a fire as the airliner was approaching Detroit.

Mr. Abdulmutallab told law enforcement authorities, the official said, that he had had explosive powder taped to his leg and that he had mixed it with chemicals held in a syringe. A federal counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified said Mr. Abdulmutallab was apparently in a government law enforcement-intelligence database, but it is not clear what extremist group or individuals he might be linked to. ''It's too early to say what his association is,'' the counterterrorism official said. ''At this point, it seems like he was acting alone, but we don't know for sure.'' Although Mr. Abdulmutallab is said to have told officials that he was directed by Al Qaeda, the counterterrorism official expressed caution about that claim, saying ''it may have been aspirational.''

The incident unfolded just before noon. ''There was a pop that sounded like a firecracker,'' said Syed Jafry, a passenger who said he had been sitting three rows ahead of the suspect. A few seconds later, he said, there was smoke and ''some glow'' from the suspect's seat and on the left side of the plane. ''There was a panic,'' said Mr. Jafry, 57, of Holland, Ohio. ''Next thing you know everybody was on him.'' He said the passengers and the crew subdued the man. The suspect was brought by the crew to the front of the plane -- Northwest Airlines Flight 253, bearing Delta's name -- and the plane made its descent into Detroit Metropolitan Airport, landing at 11:53 a.m. (The two airlines merged last year.) Once on the ground, it was immediately guided to the end of a runway, where it was surrounded by police cars and emergency vehicles and searched by a bomb-disabling robot.

Sandra Berchtold, a spokeswoman with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Detroit office, said F.B.I. agents were at the scene Friday night and were investigating the matter. One federal official who requested anonymity said Mr. Abdulmutallab had suffered severe burns but was expected to survive. A Michigan state official confirmed that he was being treated at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor.

Friday's incident brought to mind Richard C. Reid, the so-called ''shoe bomber,'' who attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight between Paris and Miami in December 2001 by igniting his explosives-laden shoes. Since then, airline passengers have had to remove their shoes before passing through security checkpoints in American airports.

Source: New York Times

More information and images of the explosive device can be found here.

Marxism, socialism and climate change

Against the backdrop of the national conflicts and rivalries dominating the Copenhagen climate change conference, the reports demonstrated that only the socialist re-organisation of economic life on an international scale could harness the immense resources and technology needed to avert the developing ecological and social catastrophe.

A report by Patrick O’Connor entitled "Climate change, emissions trading schemes and the profit system" is particularly relevant; as is a report by Nick Beams, which can be found here.

Source: World Socialist Web

Murder at police station

Mduduzi Floyd Gumede, 30, from Meadowlands in Soweto allegedly died at the hands of police officers who "severely" tortured him and his friend Bongani Mnguni on Friday - the day they were arrested. The two were apprehended on allegations of possession of car-breaking equipment and driving a car with false registration plates.According to Mnguni, Gumede's sin was "knowing too much by asking the police too many questions".

Douglasdale police station commissioner Director Jenny Naidoo confirmed that there had been a "murder" in the station's cells on Friday, but refused to comment, saying the matter had been referred to the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD). Mnguni appeared in the Randburg Magistrate's Court yesterday and was released on bail of R1 500. He and Gumede's family intend to sue the minister of police. Mnguni said his and Gumede's problems started on Friday afternoon when the police stopped them at the Fourways Mall. Mnguni said the police immediately called for back-up after finding that the car had false registration numbers. "I thought they were just going to give us a fine, but they arrested us," he said, adding that they also wanted to know why "we had so many tools in our toolbox". ICD confirmed that the matter had been reported to them "Once at Douglasdale police station, the police officer who (had) called for back-up started assaulting us. Mduduzi (Gumede) asked why they were doing so, but they told him that 'you know too much'," Mnguni recalled. Moments later, he says, the officers uncuffed them and made them sign papers explaining their rights. According to him, the assaults continued. "They kept on assaulting us, even as we were signing the papers," said Mnguni.

The two were cuffed again before being taken into the cells, where the assault continued. At one stage, Mnguni alleges, the cops covered his head and face with a transparent plastic bag. "After a while, Gumede collapsed and fainted." But this, Mnguni said, did not deter the police from continuing assaulting his friend. "As Gumede was lying down, one of them (police officers) urinated on his face and chest. He then started stomping on his chest with his boots. When he coughed, the cop said to me, 'you see, your friend is waking. He will never die'," Mnguni said.

As Gumede was lying unconscious, the police turned to Mnguni, assaulting him. But as soon as they realised that Gumede had recovered, they again started assaulting him, kicking him all over his body until he fell unconscious for a second time. At that point, Mnguni, who also alleged that the police took some cash from him and Gumede, said he was taken away from the cells. "After about 20 minutes I saw paramedics entering the cells. One of them (police officers) came out after a while. I asked him if my friend was still alive. He said he didn't know. I later overheard the police saying no one must go in there. I saw someone bringing a yellow tape with 'no entry' on it," Mnguni said. He was later taken to Randburg police station, where he opened a case of assault against the police.

Yesterday, Gumede's distraught wife and relatives went to identify his body at the Hillbrow morgue. His mother Cybyl Ngubane said the police had informed her that her son had died of a heart attack. "I was kept waiting at the police station for more than three hours on Friday, but they refused me permission to see him. They then told me that one of the men had died. I knew it was my son. The station commissioner (Naidoo) said he had died of a heart attack," she said. Gumede's aunt Hilda Zonele asked: "Why did they have to kill him like a dog? If he had a gun, it would have been something else, but he posed no threat. Why couldn't they just charge him? Who will maintain his kids now?" Somwahla was inconsolable. "I don't believe he is not alive. I thought it was just an arrest and he would come back home. Even now, it's like I am waking from a dream. "He was so loving, caring... and everything to me. He was a community leader who owned a soccer team. All I want is justice to be done," she said, sobbing.

ICD national spokesman Moses Dlamini confirmed that the matter had been reported to them and that they were investigating a case of assault, torture and murder. He added that the post-mortem results were received yesterday and confirmed that Gumede had died of internal bleeding and spinal cord injuries. "Our investigations are continuing and we will make recommendations to the Director of Public Prosecutions for possible prosecution." Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union president Zizamele Cebekhulu condemned the assault on Gumede and Mnguni. "The police must desist from any act of brutality, especially when a person has been put in custody when he is not resisting," he said.

Source: IoL

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri Dies at 87

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, died in his sleep on 19 December 2009. He was 87 years old, and was one of Iran’s most senior clerics and had for many years been a trenchant critic of the Islamic Republic’s hardline leadership.

Montazeri became a critic of successive regimes after having been one of the architects of the revolution which saw the deposition of the Shah in 1979, and might well have become Supreme Leader himself. Formerly a close ally of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he fell out with his former teacher over general policy and human rights and found himself marginalised. Later he was placed under house arrest for criticising Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; and more recently he fell foul of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insisting that the elections that returned the president to power last June were fraudulent; he also issued a fatwa condemning the government.

Born into a farming family in 1922 in the province of Isfahan, Hossein Ali Montazeri studied as a young man under Khomeini at the holy city of Qom before becoming a teacher at the Faiziyeh Theological School. He was an early recruit to Khomeini’s campaign against the Shah, and after Khomeini had been forced into exile in 1964 Montazeri was his designated representative in Iran. He spent four years in jail in the 1970s. Following the Shah’s overthrow in 1979, he helped to draft Iran’s new constitution. Khomeini had once written to him: “All of the people know that you are the harvest of what I have sown during my life. The people must follow you” — and in 1985 Montazeri was chosen as Khomeini’s successor as Supreme Leader. This close relationship would not last, however. Montazeri — who was a member of the Revolutionary Council — believed that the role of the Islamic jurists supervising the administration should be primarily advisory, not executive, and he was becoming increasingly uneasy about the direction being taken by the Republic. He openly criticised the leadership, and in November 1987 called for the legalisation of political parties. He also condemned the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988 and the fatwa issued against the novelist Salman Rushdie.

In 1989 Khomeini announced that Montazeri had “resigned”. State radio ceased to refer to him, his portraits were removed from mosques and offices, and his security guards were withdrawn. Khomeini died in 1989, to be succeeded by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In 1997 Montazeri gave a speech in which he declared that the people had the right to choose their Supreme Leader and that Iran’s rulers should be subject to the law. His reward was to be placed under house arrest at his home in Qom until January 2003. His theological school was closed down by the authorities; the state-run media stopped referring to him by his religious title, describing him instead as a “simple-minded” cleric; and all references to him in schoolbooks were removed, while streets named after him were renamed.

Montazeri remained a strong voice of the opposition until his death, repeatedly accusing his nation’s rulers of imposing dictatorship in the name of Islam. After the demonstrations which greeted last summer’s disputed election result, he led calls for three days of national mourning for the student Neda Agha-Soltan and others shot dead by government security forces. Although Montazeri believed that Iran had a right to develop nuclear energy, he denounced President Ahmadinejad’s provocative stance on the matter. As a critic of the regime, Montazeri retained the respect of many Iranians, who continued to observe his religious rulings or supported his calls for democratic change. In 2004 he remarked: “The people were not happy with the Shah’s regime and nor are they happy now.”

Source: The Telegraph

Obama: A binding deal is still our goal

The most important result in Copenhagen was, according to US President Barack Obama, that large emerging economies began “for the first time” to open up to taking on responsibilities for limiting growth of greenhouse gases. “If you look at a country like India, they still have hundreds of millions of people that don’t even have electricity, hundreds of millions that live in dire poverty. For them to, even voluntarily, say that they will be willing to reduce their carbon intensity by a given percentage is a huge step. We applaud them for that,” Barack Obama told at a press conference for American correspondents before he left the venue of the Copenhagen conference Friday night.

The US President played a key role in producing a so-called Copenhagen Accord late Friday together with leaders from China, Brazil, India and South Africa. According to some reports, Barack Obama simply crashed an ongoing summit between the four other countries. However, according to US Today, quoting a US official on condition of anonymity, Barack Obama was invited to meet with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and “the only surprise we had, in all honesty, was (…) that in that room wasn’t just the Chinese having a meeting (…) but in fact all the four countries that we had been trying to arrange meetings with.”

The Copenhagen Accord will have an annex to which countries are to state their reduction targets. These national actions will be subject to international consultations but the pledges given will not be legally binding. “We need more work, more confidence building between emerging economies, the least developed countries and developed countries before another legally binding treaty can be signed,” Barack Obama said at his press conference, stressing that he finds it “necessary ultimately to get” a legally binding agreement. “However, this is a classic example of, if we wait to have just that, we wouldn’t make any progress. In fact I think there may be so much frustration, so much cynicism, that we end up instead of taking one step forward to take two steps backwards.”

A solution to global warming will not come if only developed countries act, the US president stressed: “We have to assure that whatever carbon we take out is not just dumped in by other parties. Emerging countries will need to have some sort of responsibilities. Not exactly the same and not at the same pace. And if we could also set up a funding mechanism to help the most vulnerable countries, like Bangladesh, we would have a framework that would allow us to be effective in the future.”

Source: 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference

Mumbai accused says he was framed

The man alleged to be the sole surviving gunman in last year's Mumbai attacks, Mohammad Qasab, has retracted a confession that he took part. Giving evidence in his defence, Mr Qasab, a Pakistani national, said he had been forced by police to confess after being repeatedly beaten up. He said he was not the man seen in pictures wielding an assault rifle during the attacks. Mr Qasab faces 86 charges, including waging war on India and murder. The November 2008 attacks left 174 people dead, including nine gunmen, and strained ties between India and Pakistan.

The BBC's Prachi Pinglay said Mr Qasab looked calm in court as he repeatedly denied having anything to do with the attacks, insisting he had been framed by the police. A special court in Mumbai (Bombay) is prosecuting him and a verdict in the case is expected early next year. Giving evidence in court, Mr Qasab said that all previous confessions he had given in relation to the attacks were false and made under duress. He said that an identity parade in which he took part had been "manipulated" by police.He said that he had never been to any of the locations where the attacks took place and prior to his appearance in court had never even seen an AK-47 assault rifle. He said that numerous eyewitness accounts of his role in the attacks were "completely wrong".

Mr Qasab said that Mumbai police had arrested him 20 days before the attacks on a beach in the state of Maharashtra and later went on to frame him. He said he was in custody when the attacks took place. He told the court that the man widely photographed as the sole surviving gunman in the attacks "was not me, but someone who resembles me". In what our correspondent says was an apparent sign of his lack of belief that he will receive a fair trial, Mr Qasab urged the judge in the case to send him to jail as soon as possible.

On Wednesday the prosecution concluded its case in the trial. In all, 610 witnesses have testified since the case began in March. Our correspondent says that Mr Qasab's latest comments mean that the main defence argument is one of identity. Mr Qasab originally denied the charges against him but in July, in a dramatic outburst in court, he admitted his role and asked to be hanged. His plea was not accepted and the trial continued.

Following the attacks, India suspended peace talks with Pakistan. After initial denials, Pakistan acknowledged that Mr Qasab was one of its citizens and that the attacks had been partially planned on its territory. Last month, a court in Pakistan charged seven people in connection with the attacks, including the suspected mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who is the alleged head of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Source: BBC

Communism

Communism is a social structure and political ideology in which property is commonly controlled. Communism is a modern political movement that aims to overthrow capitalism via revolution to create a classless society where all goods are publicly owned. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human society, which would be achieved through a proletarian revolution and only becoming possible after a socialist stage develops the productive forces, leading to a superabundance of goods and services.

As a political ideology, communism is usually considered to be a branch of socialism; a broad group of economic and political philosophies that draw on the various political and intellectual movements with origins in the work of theorists of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution.

Communism attempts to offer an alternative to the problems with the Capitalist market economy and the legacy of imperialism and nationalism.

Source: Wikipedia

Nationalism

Nationalism generally involves the identification of an ethnic identity with a state. It is also used to describe a movement to establish or protect a homeland (usually an autonomous state) for an ethnic group. In some cases the identification of a homogeneous national culture is combined with a negative view of other races of cultures.

Nationalism is sometimes reactionary, calling for a return to an idealized version of the national past and sometimes for the expulsion of foreigners. Other forms of nationalism are revolutionary, calling for the establishment of an independent state as a homeland for an ethnic underclass. Nationalism emphasises collective identity - a 'people' must be autonomous, united, and express a single national culture.

When nationalism is pushed to an extreme, it not only justifies wars against other nations, as in the German invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II, but it is also used to justify attacks against ones fellow citizens, as in the Nazi assertion that Jews are not really citizens. This kind of nationalism often has as its avowed goal racial, ethnic, or religious purity. Since most states are multicultural, nationalism often leads to conflict within a state, as well as between states, and in its extreme form leads to war, secession, or genocide. National flags, national anthems, and other symbols of national identity are often considered sacred, as if they were religious rather than political symbols. Deep emotions are aroused. Some scholars see the word "nationalism" as pejorative, standing in opposition to a more positive term, patriotism.

Fascism is a form of authoritarian ultra-nationalism which promotes national revolution, national collectivism, a totalitarian state, and irredentism or expansionism to unify and allow the growth of a nation. Fascists often promote ethnic nationalism but have at times promoted cultural nationalism including cultural assimilation of people outside a specific ethnic group. Fascism stresses the subservience of the individual to the state, and the need to absolute and unquestioned loyalty to a strong ruler.

Left-wing nationalism (also occasionally known as "socialist nationalism") refers to any political movement that combines left-wing politics with nationalism. Notable examples include Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement that launched the Cuban Revolution ousting the American-backed Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Ireland's Sinn Fein, Labor Zionism in Israel and the African National Congress in South Africa.

In the Western world the most comprehensive current ideological alternative to nationalism is cosmopolitanism. Ethical cosmopolitanism rejects one of the basic ethical principles of nationalism: that humans owe more duties to a fellow member of the nation, than to a non-member. It rejects such important nationalist values as national identity and national loyalty. However, there is also a political cosmopolitanism, which has a geopolitical program to match that of nationalism: it seeks some form of world state, with a world government. Very few people openly and explicitly support the establishment of a global state, but political cosmopolitanism has influenced the development of international criminal law, and the erosion of the status of national sovereignty. In turn, nationalists are deeply suspicious of cosmopolitan attitudes, which they equate with eradication of diverse national cultures.

Source: Wikipedia

Are you a nationalist or a communist?

That’s what ANC members will need to decide before the 2012 national conference, the battle lines of which are being drawn with much public kicking and screaming. Supporting Deputy Police Minister Fikile Mbalula for the post of party secretary general will show you’re a nationalist. A vote for the present incumbent, Gwede Mantashe, will mean you’re a communist. Or will it? In the debates now raging within the alliance, ideologies don’t really feature. This is a game about playing the man — the ball is practically off the pitch.

Nowhere in the world is the line between communists and nationalists fading faster than it is in the latest skirmish between the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Mantashe is the chairperson of the SACP but at the same time the darling of the business world. So to call him simply “red” would be a mistake.

ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, who serves as Mbalula’s proxy, supposedly fights under the nationalist banner, saying President Jacob Zuma must not “surrender” to communists. But Malema introduced the debate on the mines, which he believes should be nationalised. So has Malema become a communist? Enter what Malema likes to call “the yellow communist” — cowardly fakes or the 21st-century version of champagne socialists. These communists say they feel the plight of the people, but they do it while living in mansions in upper-class suburbs with, to paraphrase an old struggle song, “garden boys and kitchen girls” all round.

Malema’s favourite “yellow communist” right now is SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande. True, he’s no stranger to the good life and things only got better with the acquisition of a new R1.2-million BMW. In turn, Nzimande’s favourite “African chauvinist” nationalist is Malema. As for who is the pot and who is the kettle, both share a taste for the finer things in life, including their 4x4s — Nzimande loved his black Jeep Cherokee before he became higher education minister; Malema adores his grape-coloured Range Rover. Both have chauffeurs. Perhaps they would argue that they need their SUVs when visiting the rural masses who elected them in the hopes of a better life.

ANC stalwarts say the “real ANC” operates within a nationalist framework — nationalism implying a common identity and entrenching ideas about “us” (the people) and “them”. In theory the ANC leans towards the left in its belief in nonracialism and popular sovereignty — meaning the party believes it can derive legitimacy only from its popular support. Yet, in effect, the nationalists find the leftwingers a nuisance, believing the communists are using the ANC as their ticket to the spoils of liberation.

Maybe SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin has the answer. He claims Malema displays communist tendencies to feed the greedy black bourgeoisie. Therefore, Malema is using communist principles to gain access to the same spoils for himself and his friends. Which is exactly the same thing the nationalists fear the c­ommunists will do.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Bloody Monday

The September 28 Massacre and Rapes by Security Forces in Guinea

This 108-page report describes in detail the killings, sexual assaults, and other abuses at an opposition rally in a stadium in Conakry, the capital, committed largely by members of Guinea's elite Presidential Guard, and the evidence suggesting that the attacks must have been planned in advance. The report further details how the military government's security forces engaged in an organized cover-up, removing scores of bodies from both the stadium and hospital morgues and burying them in mass graves.

Summary and Recomndations and Photographs.

Source: Human Rights Watch

World climate conference: Conflict outside and inside Copenhagen meeting

Danish police battled several thousand demonstrators in the streets outside the world climate conference in Copenhagen, while inside the delegates of the major imperialist powers, China, India and dozens of less developed countries clashed over conflicting proposals to deal with the worldwide impact of pollution caused by industrialization, deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.

More than 260 protesters were arrested and many were teargassed, hit by pepper spray or beaten with batons as police repeatedly charged into the ranks of the demonstrators. Most of those demonstrating were in Copenhagen to demand emergency action against global warming and the climate-related deterioration in living conditions, particularly for people living in vulnerable coastal areas and island states.

The police were able to prevent any sizeable incursion into the conference, using dogs, shields, water cannon and armored vans to block access routes and push back most of the demonstrators. They also beat back a group of delegates who tried to leave the conference center and make a show of sympathy for the protests.

Inside the conference, a crisis atmosphere prevailed, with bitter exchanges between the representatives of the US, Britain and other industrialized nations, and those from Africa, Asia and Latin America. At one point Monday, delegates representing all 77 of the poorest nations staged a walkout to protest the intransigence of the rich countries, which are demanding that any climate agreement lock in their economic advantages, permitting double the per capita carbon consumption of the Third World.

Voicing a sentiment widespread among the delegates from the poor countries, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela denounced the position of the US-led bloc. He pointed to the trillions of dollars used to bail out the banks in the United States and Western Europe, telling the assembly, “If the climate was a capitalist bank, they would have already saved it.”

In the face of appeals by environmental scientists to reduce rich-country emissions of greenhouse gases by 40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, the EU has offered only a 20 percent cut, the US a mere 3-4 percent cut. Neither figure would be a significant contribution to averting a potential climate catastrophe. No action will be taken that impinges on the profits of the giant capitalist firms that produce and use fossil fuels, and no coordinated worldwide effort is possible given the conflicts between rival national interests.

No amount of pressure or protest around the theme of “climate justice” can persuade the capitalist billionaires and their political representatives in Copenhagen to act against their own class interests. The defense of the environment can be undertaken only by a turn to the international working class, the only social force whose interests are not tied to either capitalist profit or the nation-state system, and the building of a mass movement of working people based on socialist principles.

Source: World Socialist Web

SABC appoints new group CEO

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has appointed former Telkom Media chief content officer Solly Mokoetle as its group chief executive officer, it said in a statement on Tuesday. "The decision to appoint Mr Mokoetle was based on his experience and a proven track record during the time the SABC was profitable, making him the most suitable candidate," the broadcaster's interim board chairperson Irene Charnley said. "The board is confident that his appointment will provide the required leadership to turn around the SABC while maintaining public broadcasting mandate."

Mokoetle, who was the SABC's chief operations officer between 2001 and December 2006, takes up office from January 1 on a five-year contract. His appointment followed a R11-million settlement by the broadcaster to former CEO Dali Mpofu in August. Mpofu had taken the public broadcaster to court after he was suspended for suspending then head of news and current affairs Snuki Zikalala. Mpofu accused Zikalala of leaking confidential documents to other media outlets. The board in turn suspended Mpofu on May 7 last year, saying he had no authority to act against Zikalala. In June, the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg dismissed with costs the SABC's appeal against reinstating Mpofu. The judge ruled that then SABC board chairperson Khanyi Mkhonza was caught up in the bitter rivalry between Mpofu and Zikalala, whose contract as head of news and current affairs ended in April. But in August the two parties reached an agreement that Mpofu would be paid out.

Charnley said the process of replacing Mpofu was started by the previous board, and that it had shortlisted candidates for the position. When the interim board took over, it re-advertised the position "for the sake of transparency". The interim board recommended Mokoetle to Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda following an intensive interviewing process.

Mokoetle left the SABC in December 2006 following a 12-year stint there. He started working at the SABC in 1994 on his return from exile as one of the team of executives assigned to transform the SABC from state broadcaster to a "true national public broadcaster". "He performed various leadership functions within the radio and television services and ended up as COO from 2001 until December 2006," Charnley said.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, South African Who Oversaw Discredited AIDS Policy, Dies at 69

Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who as South Africa’s health minister drew international censure for questioning the causal connection between H.I.V. and AIDS and for promoting dietary measures rather than drugs to treat AIDS, a policy that was held responsible for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, died Wednesday in Johannesburg. She was 69. Her doctor said the cause was complications from a liver transplant in 2007, the South African Press Association reported.

Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang (pronounced cha-buh-LA-lum zih-MANG) lived in exile for nearly three decades as a member of the African National Congress, the anti-apartheid group that became South Africa’s governing party in 1994, before becoming health minister in 1999, with the election of Thabo Mbeki as president. She served in that post until he resigned last year. Echoing Mr. Mbeki’s own widely lambasted views about AIDS, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang advocated marshaling vitamin and nutritional forces against the H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. She maintained that foods like garlic, lemon, African potatoes and beetroot were stauncher defenses than the antiretroviral drugs that had been proved to prolong the lives of H.I.V.-positive patients and to help prevent the passage of the virus from pregnant women to their babies.

Noting that the drugs had side effects, and adopting the claims of so-called AIDS dissidents who deny a connection between H.I.V. and AIDS, she referred to the antiretroviral drugs as poison. “She was one of the disasters of the post-apartheid era,” said Mark Gevisser, the author of “A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream.” She was not up to the job of health minister, he added. Mr. Mbeki kept her in the job amid intense pressure to dismiss her “because she very, very quickly became his agent in the AIDS wars, and she could continue to ask questions he thought had to be asked but that he couldn’t afford, politically, to ask himself,” Mr. Gevisser said. While Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was health minister, the estimated number of H.I.V.-infected people in South Africa climbed to more than five million, more than in any other nation. Critics from around the world denounced a South African policy that at first opposed and then delayed the distribution of antiretroviral drugs.

Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was derisively called Dr. Beetroot, and as time went on the criticism aimed at her and at the Mbeki AIDS policy grew more and more hostile. Speaking at an international AIDS conference in Toronto in 2006, Stephen Lewis, the United Nations envoy on AIDS, called the South African government’s drug policy “obtuse, dilatory and negligent” and said the government “continues to propound theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state.” The damage was quantified when a study by Harvard researchers released a year ago stated that the South African AIDS policy was responsible for 365,000 premature deaths.

Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was born in Durban on Oct. 9, 1940, and educated at the University of Fort Hare, a haven for black intellectuals (Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu both spent time there) before the African National Congress was banned from the country. In exile, she lived in the Soviet Union, where she received a medical degree, and later in Tanzania, where she studied obstetrics and gynecology. Returning to South Africa in 1990, she at first worked in community health organizations. She was elected to Parliament in 1994 and was chairwoman of the National Assembly’s health committee. Before being appointed to the Health Ministry, she was deputy minister of justice.

Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was married twice. Her survivors include her husband, Mendi Msimang, former treasurer of the African National Congress, and two daughters.

Source: New York Times

Source: 'Alarming' secret document details Iran's nuclear goals

A secret document that appears to show that Iran was working on building nuclear weapons as recently as 2007 is "alarming" and "part of a body of evidence backing up deep concerns over Iran's nuclear program," a Western diplomatic source with knowledge of the papers told CNN on Monday. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, has a copy of the secret papers, which were also obtained by the Times of London, the source said. IAEA officials confirm they are investigating the document but said they have not formally asked Iran for more information about it.

A top international nuclear expert said it seemed to point to Iranian efforts to build a bomb. "The only realistic use of this is in a nuclear weapon," said David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "It shows that either Iran is developing the capability [to build nuclear weapons] or it is moving to implement a bomb program -- and either one is bad," said Albright, who reviewed the document for the Times before the newspaper published its report Sunday. But Albright warned that the document is edited and has no date on it. The source who gave it to the Times said it was from 2007, but neither the Times nor the ISIS was able to date it definitively, Albright said.

In Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said the Times' "claim that Iran is working on the final and important component of a nuclear bomb is false and not worth paying any attention to," the semi-official Fars news agency reported. "This type of statement is made in the media to put political and psychological pressure [on Iran] by the officials of various countries," Mehmanparast said, according to the Fars report.

United States intelligence concluded in 2007 that Iran had suspended work on its nuclear weapons program in 2003. In the National Intelligence Estimate released in December 2007, the U.S. intelligence community dramatically reversed course from its 2005 evaluation. It expressed "high confidence" in 2005 that the Islamic Republic was working toward nuclear weapons, then two years later said -- also with "high confidence" -- that Iran had stopped its weapons program in 2003.

Iran denies seeking to build nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear program is to produce civilian energy and medical research. But it is under intense pressure from the international community, with Britain and France saying last week they would push for stronger U.N. sanctions on Tehran.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wouldn't comment on the secret document Monday, but told reporters that concerns about Iran's nuclear program "have been heightened already" in recent months after revelations of a once-secret nuclear enrichment facility near the Iranian city of Qom, and Iran's Cabinet authorizing the construction of at least 10 new nuclear production facilities. She said the Obama administration has taken a "dual-track" approach to Iran, including the offer of engagement and taking part in nuclear talks. "We've been at the table. But I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of positive response from the Iranians," Clinton said, adding that the second approach -- the international pressure -- is key to pushing Iranian officials to change "their actions and decisions concerning the nuclear program."

Mehrdad Khonsari, a former Iranian diplomat, says the revelation about the document "means, essentially ... that the Iranians have been lying to everybody" when they said they were not seeking to build nuclear weapons. Khonsari said it was no accident that this document appeared when it did. "The fact that the document comes out at this time makes it very difficult for Russia and China not to go along with more sanctions," he said. It would also make it easier for "Israel to go ahead with a unilateral strike" on Iran's nuclear facilities, he added. "The agenda will change as a result of the publication of this document unless the document is proven to be false by the Iranian authorities," said Khonsari, who is now a senior research consultant at the Center for Arab and Iranian Studies.

Khonsari -- who left Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 -- has not seen the original document but said the material published by the Times "is what an authentic document would look like." "It places pressure on the Iranian government to try to use what time remains to get out of this situation," he said. According to a report dated Monday on the Web site of Albright's group, a neutron initiator is a critical component of a nuclear weapon. The ISIS report said the device "would most likely be placed at the center of a fission bomb made from weapon-grade uranium" and "works by the high explosives compressing the nuclear core and the initiator" to produce a "spurt of neutrons" as a result of fusion. "The neutrons flood the core of weapon-grade uranium and initiate the chain reaction," the ISIS report said.

Albright said the document described efforts to "research and test a neutron initiator," a nuclear component for which he could not see "any civil use." "They appear to be doing the right things," he said. "But you don't know how it fits into a nuclear weapons program." He also said the public had failed to understand a key part of the debate about Iran's nuclear program. "It's not whether there is something or nothing, but whether there is a capabilities focus or an actual decision to build nuclear weapons," he said. "It's not like an on-off switch, it's like a dimmer control."

Source: CNN

South Africa: Inquiry on Sales of Fraudulent Passports

South Africa has suspended dozens of immigration officials being investigated for giving South African birth certificates to foreigners, mainly from Pakistan, the government said on Thursday. “The fraudulent registration of births of foreigners constitutes a serious threat to the national security of our country,” Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said in a statement. She said the scheme allowed “fraudsters” to apply for South African passports that could be used for “nefarious activities abroad.” The move comes months after Britain started requiring visas from South Africans, charging that would-be terrorists and criminals were exploiting the availability of stolen or forged South African passports to gain access to other countries. South Africa said nearly a year ago that steps had been taken to prevent corrupt officials from issuing bogus passports.

Source: New York Times

Majali in the wars again

Beleaguered businessman Sandi Majali is desperately trying to avoid facing trial for corruption and money laundering.

The charges flow from Majali's entanglement with a web of business and political interests in KwaZulu-Natal, the machinations of which have already resulted in the launch of three criminal investigations.

Case One

This is the case involving Majali, who shot to public prominence over his role in the Oilgate saga that saw him "donate" R11-million of PetroSA money to the ANC.

Now Majali is accused of laundering bribe payments made by businessman Jabulani Mabaso to a senior KwaZulu-Natal official, Pamela Zulu, for her to secure Mabaso a huge contract to supply school stationery. In May 2005 Mabaso's company, Indiza Infrastructure Solutions, and another company won a tender from the KwaZulu-Natal education department. Zulu, then with the provincial treasury, sat on the evaluation committee that recommended Indiza. A two-year tender award was confirmed in December 2005. Over an 18-month period Indiza charged the department, where Zulu was chief financial officer, approximately R449-million. A charge sheet against Zulu and Mabaso claims invoices were inflated to the tune of R197-million.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) alleges a bribe was paid by Mabaso to Zulu via a number of Majali's companies.

According to the NPA:

* On April 21 2006 Mabaso deposited R2,5-million in the trust account of Majali's attorney. About R170 000 was transferred four days later to a Honda dealership.

* On May 12 2006 a further R200 000 was deposited into Zulu's account from another Majali company, Imvume Paymaster Services.

* At about that time Majali allegedly entered into an agreement with Zulu for Imvume Paymaster Services to buy shares she supposedly held in another Majali-related company, New Era Capital. She was to receive R4-million, with an initial down payment of R200 000.

In various court papers Majali maintains this represented bona fide repayment for consulting Zulu had done on proposed New Era projects. He explains the payment from Mabaso as an investment in one of his projects and produces a letter of invitation to Mabaso dated February 20 2006 to back this up. The NPA maintains this was all a sham to disguise the bribe payments. In court papers the prosecutor alleges that the letter to Mabaso was not found during raids on Majali and Mabaso and is a fabrication. The NPA also claims that New Era Capital was dormant and had no value.

For the better part of a year Majali has fought desperately to avoid arrest, launching a slew of high court actions and petitioning both Hawks boss Anwa Dramat and then-acting National Director of Public Prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe to throw out the case. Both declined. Last week he won a reprieve from the South Gauteng High Court. The court suspended the decision to prosecute him pending the outcome of another Majali court challenge involving the same matter. Majali launched an application to review the decision to prosecute him in the North Gauteng High Court. The outcome, expected only next year, is dependent on the court accepting Majali's argument that the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act is unconstitutional.

The Act enables judicial review of government decision-making but specifically excludes decisions to prosecute.

Mabaso and Shabalala

Majali's alliance with Mabaso and Zulu ties him into another scandal involving provincial head of treasury Sipho Shabalala and a Uruguayan businessman, Gaston Savoi, that has prompted two ongoing criminal investigations. In an affidavit provided to Majali Mabaso raises the issue of his relationship with Shabalala. Querying why his relationship with Majali is singled out for investigation, Mabaso notes: "Indiza was involved in a number of other business … transactions during April 2006 … For example, Indiza agreed to advance a loan to Blue Serenity investments in the sum of R12-million." The directors of Blue Serenity were Sipho Shabalala and his wife Beatrice. Shabalala signed the loan agreement with Mabaso and Mabaso also became a 30% shareholder in an initial joint venture.

Majali also notes that during the same tender process in which Indiza was implicated another similar contract was awarded to EduSolutions, a company that has attracted negative media scrutiny in the past. He points out that Zulu is accused of inflating one score for Indiza - awarding the company four points when the maximum possible was two - and that she made the same "error" in regard to EduSolutions without attracting a criminal investigation.

The M&G understands Zulu is a friend of Shabalala, while Mrs Zulu's ex-husband works in the office of the chief executive of African Access, EduSolutions's parent company.

Case Two

But Shabalala has not entirely escaped scrutiny; his relationship with the mysterious Gaston Savoi is under criminal investigation, though he has yet to be charged or interviewed.

The investigation relates to a R1-million donation to the ANC allegedly solicited by Shabalala from Savoi, which is suspected of being a kickback for the award of a R44-million contract by the provincial cabinet for the supply of 20 water treatment plants. Savoi's company, Intaka, supplies water purification and medical equipment, including medical gas generators and portable scanners.

He was introduced to the KwaZulu-Natal government with what appeared to have been high-level political backing. According to a leaked affidavit by the investigating officer it was then-trade and industry minister Alec Erwin who first expressed interest in Intaka's products. The affidavit says it was decided that Rafiq Bagus, a protégé of Erwin's, "would facilitate the process of contacting the relevant persons in the KZN provincial government and Trade and Investment KZN". The investigating officer alleges Shabalala was also involved in negotiations. Meanwhile, as early as April 2004, Savoi formed a company, Skyros Medical Supplies, with Shabalala's wife, Beatrice.

He was clearly covering all bases. In a separate affidavit Savoi states that he was advised that Intaka should become BEE compliant: "To this end a company, Intaka KwaZulu-Natal, was registered. As a result of disagreement between various possible shareholders and Intaka's inability to procure further substantial orders for water purification plants, this company remained dormant." Intaka KZN's initial directors included Bagus and ANC provincial secretary Sipho Gcabashe.

According to the investigating officer's affidavit, Savoi alleges that Shabalala raised the possibility of a party-political donation fairly early on. It is alleged that after the award of the tender Savoi raised the matter again. Shabalala allegedly indicated he would be sent an invoice against which he should make payment of the donation.

An invoice for R1 053 000 was received from law firm Kuboni & Shezi purporting to request payment for legal work done. Savoi paid the amount and the provincial ANC has subsequently confirmed receipt of the donation, which, it claimed, was made in "good spirits" and not linked to any tender. Shabalala has thus far, through his lawyer, declined to respond to media questions about the incident.

Case Three

Savoi was also a witness in the aborted case against former KwaZulu-Natal health minister Peggy Nkonyeni, who allegedly received a gratuity for the purchase of a mobile ultrasound scanner through Savoi's company. Charges were provisionally withdrawn against Nkonyeni and two others in August, when it is understood another key witness suffered a stress-related breakdown and was unable to testify.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Truth and Justice Can’t Wait

Human Rights Developments in Libya Amid Institutional Obstacles

Over the past decade Libya dramatically transformed its international status from a pariah state under UN, EU and US sanctions to a country that, in 2009 alone, held the Presidency of the UN Security Council, the chair of the African Union and the Presidency of the UN General Assembly. But this transformation in Libya’s foreign policy has not galvanized an equivalent transformation of Libya’s human rights record which remains poor, despite some limited progress in recent years.   

This report examines recent human rights developments in Libya, identifies key areas of concern and highlights steps the Libyan government must take to meet its obligations under international human rights law. Libya’s reintegration into the international community means that its human rights record has and will come under increasing scrutiny as the absolute control the Libyan government customarily exercised over the flow of information out of Libya continues to erode. Human Rights Watch believes this is an opportunity for human rights reform that the Libyan authorities should pursue and other governments should promote in their relations with Libya.

This report updates Human Rights Watch’s 2006 report on Libya, Words to Deeds, and focuses on the areas where there has been some limited progress, such as freedom of expression, as well as  those that remain severely restricted, such as freedom of association. The report also addresses how the Internal Security Agency remains responsible for systematic violations of Libyan rights, including the detention of political prisoners, enforced disappearances and deaths in custody. This report does not examine the treatment of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Libya, most recently reviewed in Human Rights Watch’s 2009 report, Pushed Back, Pushed Down: Italy’s Forced Return of Boat Migrants and Asylum Seekers, Libya’s Mistreatment of Migrants and Asylum Seekers.

Overall, the past five years have witnessed an improvement in the human rights situation, though far less than promised or required. There are less frequent reports of arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances compared to the two previous decades. There has been greater tolerance of freedom of expression and some progress in addressing gross violations of the past, though this remains very unpredictable.  Limited steps toward increased tolerance of dissent indicate that at least some elements of the government recognize the need for reform. Two new private newspapers and the internet have created a new limited space for freedom of expression, and some unprecedented public demonstrations have been allowed to take place. The Justice Ministry has announced plans to reform the most repressive provisions of the penal code, though it has not yet made the proposed revisions public. The justice system at times has made independent decisions, ordering the government to pay compensation to people whose rights have been violated and, in some cases, the government has complied.

Yet, despite work to develop a new penal code, an essentially repressive legal framework remains in place, as does the ability of government security forces to act with impunity against dissent. Many trials, especially those before the State Security Court, still fail to meet international due process standards. Overall, unjustified limits on free expression and association remain the norm, including penal code provisions that criminalize "insulting public officials" or "opposing the ideology of the Revolution." Many relatives of prisoners killed in a 1996 incident at Abu Salim prison are still waiting to learn how their relatives died and to see those responsible punished.  The jurisdiction of courts, the duties of government agencies, respect for legal rights of prisoners and adherence to the country’s stated list of human rights often remain murky, erratic and contradictory.

The basis for this report is research conducted by Human Rights Watch during a ten-day visit to Libya in April 2009, the organization’s most recent trip to the country, as well as general research and monitoring of the state of human rights in Libya from outside the country. Human Rights Watch met with the Secretary of Public Security and the Secretary of Justice and visited Abu Salim prison, where it interviewed six prisoners. Human Rights Watch also met with members of the Tripoli Bar Association and the Journalists’ Syndicate, relatives of prisoners and a former political prisoner.

Freedom of expression remains severely restricted by the Libyan penal code. However, the past five years have witnessed a gradual opening of a new, still vulnerable, space for freedom of expression. Cracks in the wall that the government has set up against free expression are thin but evident. Oea and Quryna, two private newspapersestablished in August 2007, allow their journalists to write more critically about the government than was previously tolerated in the press, though this criticism remains in line with the political agenda of Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the son of Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi.

Libyan correspondents for websites based abroad that frequently publish criticism of the government and news of human rights violations are allowed to operate in Libya and have even managed to obtain press cards. This gradual opening of space has brought with it an increase in criticism of government policies in the media.  However, there has also been an increase in the number of prosecutions of journalists, although no journalist has been sentenced to prison so far. 

There is no freedom of association in Libya because the concept of an independent civil society goes directly against Gaddafi’s theory of governance by the masses. Law 71 still criminalizes political parties, and the penal code criminalizes the establishment of organizations that are “against the principles of the Libyan Jamahireya system.” Law 19, "On Associations," requires a political body to approve all nongovernmental organizations, does not allow appeals against negative decisions and provides for continuous governmental interference in the running of the organization. The government has refused to allow independent journalists' and lawyers' organizations. The law itself allows the government to revoke the authorization of an association at any time without needing to provide justification. There are a number of semi-official organizations that do charitable work, providing services and organizing seminars, but none that publicly take critical stances against the government.

Libya has no independent nongovernmental organizations. The only organizations that can do human rights work, the most sensitive area of all in Libya, derive their political standing from their personal affiliation with the regime.  The main organization that can publicly criticize human rights violations is the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation (Gaddafi Foundation), chaired by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi.  A second organization, Waatasemu, is run by Dr. Aisha al-Gaddafi, Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi’s daughter, and has intervened in death penalty cases and women’s rights issues. The International Organization for Peace, Care and Relief (IOPCR), run by Khaled Hamedi, the son of a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, is the only organization able to access migrant detention centers.

Attempting to set up a human rights organization is a risky venture with the potential for harassment by Libyan security and also criminal prosecution. In 2008, for example, a group of lawyers and journalists tried to set up two organizations dealing with human rights and democracy. The authorities initially approved their request, but the Internal Security Agency, the section of the General People’s Committee (ministry) for Public Security in charge of controlling domestic political activity, subsequently blocked the process. The group ultimately abandoned the initiative after the abduction and assault of one of the lawyers (who was a founding member of both organizations) for one day. The government says it is investigating the abduction. 

The Internal Security Agency retains full control over two prisons in Libya, Abu Salim and Ain Zara, which are notorious for the arbitrary detention of political prisoners. According to the Secretary for Justice, there currently are approximately 500 prisoners who have served their sentence or who have been acquitted by Libyan courts, but remain imprisoned under orders of the Internal Security Agency.  The Agency has refused to implement the decisions of the Libyan judiciary to release detainees, despite calls from the Libyan secretary of justice for their release. A number of prisoners remain disappeared, including high-profile Libyan opposition members who were last heard of in Abu Salim prison. The Internal Security Agency also continues to detain individuals who were sentenced by the People’s Court, notorious for trying individuals for political crimes without access to defense lawyers, and since abolished in 2005. The lack of fairness in the trials of such detainees means they should be released or re-tried before an ordinary court.

In late June 1996 an estimated 1200 prisoners were killed in Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison. For years the authorities denied this had taken place. Until late 2008, the vast majority of the families of the prisoners who were killed  had received no information about them. Some families of detainees killed at the prison sued the government in court, seeking to learn what happened to their relatives.
In June 2008, the North Benghazi court ordered the General People’s Committee (the cabinet) , the General People’s Committee (ministry) for Justice and the General People’s Committee (ministry) for Public Security to inform the relatives of those who had died. The Libyan authorities told Human Rights Watch in 2004 that an investigation into the incident was under way; however, in April 2009 the Secretary of Justice confirmed to Human Rights Watch that no such investigation took place. In September 2009, the General People’s Committee for Defense established an investigation panel composed of seven investigative judges and headed by a former military judge to investigate the Abu Salim killings 13 years after they occurred.

Following the decision of the North Benghazi court, starting in December 2008 Libyan authorities began issuing death certificates to the families, without acknowledging that they were related to the Abu Salim killings. These documents do not include the correct date, place or any cause of death. The  authorities have offered compensation of 200,000  Libyan Dinars ($162,300) in exchange for assurances that family members will not pursue further legal claims in Libyan or international courts.

Calling for truth, accountability and appropriate compensation, several hundred of the families formed a committee to demand the facts about what occurred on the day of the prison killings and the prosecution of those responsible. And  most of the families in Benghazi have refused to accept compensation on those terms, insisting that they want to know the truth of what happened and to have those responsible prosecuted. Mohamed Hamil Ferjany, a spokesperson for the families now based in the US, told Human Rights Watch that for him, ”the money is irrelevant.  My family spent years suffering, not knowing where my brothers were, only to be given a piece of paper 15 years later saying they are dead and nothing more. We want justice.”

Over the past months, some of the families insisting on accountability from the government have been demonstrating primarily in Benghazi, but also in Al Bayda and Derna.  The government has, for the most part, allowed the families to demonstrate, and the Libyan press has covered their activities and demands. However, the families also have  faced harassment from security forces and even, at times, arrest. 

The 2005 abolition of the People’s Court was greeted by human rights organizations as a welcome step on the path of reform. However, in August 2007 a new State Security Court was established bearing a worrying resemblance to the People’s Court which often issued heavy sentences after unfair trials. Human Rights Watch has spoken to a number of defendants brought before this court who were not able to meet with their defense counsel ahead of the court session. Moreover, the court’s decisions are not available to the public or even to the families of those sentenced. It is not clear whether there is a court that can review decisions by the State Security Court nor whether the right to appeal is granted to those it does sentence.

Despite statements by senior officials, including Libyan Leader Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi, that the country is working toward the abolition of the death penalty and that it is rarely applied, Libya continues to sentence people to death and to carry out death sentences.  A system based on Islamic law and custom allows for a pardon only when the family of a murder victim is willing to grant one in exchange for financial compensation or so-called “blood money.” 

The steps Libya has taken to address some of its human rights problems do not go far enough in addressing the systemic and legal infrastructure that deprives Libyans of their basic human rights. Libya must ensure that it complies with all of its obligations under international human rights law and should immediately implement a number of reforms in policy, law and practice. The General People’s Congress (the legislative assembly) should repeal all provisions of the penal code and other laws such as Law 71 that violate freedom of expression and association, and that any new draft laws are fully in line with international human rights law. The Internal Security Agency should immediately release all prisoners detained for peacefully exercising their right to free expression or association and compensate them for their detention. In addition, Internal Security agents should immediately release the approximately 200 prisoners they are continuing to detain in Abu Salim prison despite the fact that Libyan courts have acquitted them and ordered their release or that they have completed their sentences. 

Human Rights Watch further urges the People’s Leadership Committees to immediately inform the families of prisoners who died in the 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre of the circumstances of the death of their relatives and give them the remains of their relatives to bury. The authorities must carry out a full and effective investigation and make public the findings. This should be immediately followed by the prosecution of those responsible for the summary execution of those prisoners. Under human rights law, the Libyan government is under an obligation to make reparation and must not pressure the families into accepting compensation instead of pursuing accountability. The families of prisoners who were killed in Abu Salim have the right to demonstrate peacefully and make demands to the Libyan authorities without intimidation and harassment from the security forces. In addition, in the context of Libya’s increasing political and economic integration in the world community, Human Rights Watch urges all organizations and governments engaging with Libya to ensure that the promotion of human rights in Libya forms part of their relationship.

II. Recommendations

III. Methodology

IV. Background

V. Freedom of Expression

VI. Freedom of Assembly and Association

VII. Violations by the Internal Security Agency

VIII. Impunity for Gross Abuses

IX. The State Security Court- A New People’s Court?

X. The Death Penalty

Acknowledgements

Annex : Letters to the Authorities

Source: Human Rights Watch

Presidential Hotline Quarterly Update

The Presidential Hotline provides an appeal mechanism for citizens whose complaints have not been attended to satisfactorily by other spheres of government or departments. The government wanted to establish a culture of taking citizens seriously, and putting them first in its work.

President Jacob Zuma undertook to update the public from time to time with regards to the performance of the Hotline. Since its formation, the Hotline has done much to promote government responsiveness and accountability.

It has received a large volume of calls, indicating both the need for such a service and the eagerness of South Africans to interact with government. Through this service, hundreds of people have managed to have problems attended to and resolved, and it has set a new trend with regard to citizen care.

The President received complaints relating to the following:

* Municipal services - electricity, sanitation, housing, water supply, sanitation.
* Labour: unfair labour practices, dismissals.
* Housing shortages, delays and corruption in the system.
* Land claims delays and failure to resolve them.
* Complaints by victims of crime, persons requesting pardons.
* Poverty relief assistance.
* Financial services: complaints about banks, insurance companies.
* Complaints about parastatals.
* Alleged breach of contracts by government departments, for example departments failing to pay for services rendered or paying late.
* Requests for funding for bursaries, community projects, donations, business projects.
* Complaints from political parties especially the Democratic Alliance.

While the Hotline has been successful in resolving enquiries, the response of some government Departments and Provinces to enquiries has been far from satisfactory. The President’s view that we need to do more to improve the attitude and performance of our public service to citizen care, has been proven correct.

In the first month of the hotline operation, only 12% of the opened calls with provinces were resolved, 26% of calls in October and 31% in November. Overall, only 18% of total calls opened with provinces in the past three months were resolved.

With the National Departments, in September only 19% of calls opened were resolved. However, the average response over the past three months is 33%

The President has directed all Ministers and Premiers to prepare turnaround strategies. Each department and Premier’s Office must indicate what will be done to ensure that all enquiries transferred to them for investigation are responded to urgently and efficiently.

The Presidency has treated this financial year as a pilot phase and will continue to improve the service and deal with whatever bottlenecks still remain. It is an effective service and we are daily encouraged by the excitement of people whose enquiries have been resolved.

The Minister in The Presidency, Collins Chabane is working with Departments to ensure that the situation is resolved without delay and that Departments put more effective mechanisms and resources to respond to enquiries. He is also working to ensure that the service performs better at a technical and human resource level.

Source: ANC Today Vol 9 No 48