If Blair were PM in 1986, would he have invaded SA?

The question of a humanitarian war is an interesting one. Can a war ever be fought on moral grounds? I don’t think so – not unless there’s something with which the world’s great defenders can grease their palms.

Tony Blair ducked, dived and denied all responsibility of any type of wrongdoing for his decision to back the USA of their invasion of Iraq. He justified it morally, saying that even if the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was false, Saddam Hussein was a bad man who did bad things to his own people and neighbouring nations.

He claims he was justified in picking up arms, putting British soldiers at risk and ridding the world of an evil, oppressive regime. His intentions were purely moral in his mind.

As I listened to the former British Prime Minster dance his way through not answering questions at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit held in Sandton, a couple of queries sprang to mind. There is one question in particular I would have asked if I had managed to get a mic in my hands.

If this were so, then how would he have reacted if he were in power in 1986 instead of Maggie Thatcher? What would his approach have been if the ANC had made the request for British to invade South Africa and rid us of the Apartheid menace that was oppressing black South Africans?

The Apartheid government was illegally occupying Namibia, had invaded Angola and was busy destabilising all its neighbours. It also had a banned programme of weapons of mass destruction that included nuclear devices and a chemical weapons programme it was prepared to use on its own population. Arrested journalists, banned newspapers, engaged torture, detention without trial and in political assignations – the list goes on.

It had also unleashed its security forces to crush brutally any form of popular uprising that threatened Apartheid, despite the fact that the system had been declared a crime against humanity.

I wonder if Blair the defender of human rights and democracy would have rallied to the aid of the oppressed in South Africa, or would he have opted for a more diplomatic evolutionary approach? Would he carry the courage of his convictions or duck, dive and divert any request from the ANC to help liberate black South Africans?

A cynic would suggest that it would not be enough to overthrow an oppressive government only because they were bad and horrible; that it would only be “necessary” to invade such a country if the government were bad, horrible… and happened to have extremely valuable resources that the great defender desperately needed (or just plain wanted). The jokes about gold lining South Africa’s pavements would not have been quite enough to stimulate such a high level of intervention. And besides, there would be no reason for any modern British government to invade the Apartheid state to liberate the oppressed in the eighties. Why would they, when they already did so in 1899, when they decided to liberate “uitlanders” from the oppressive regime of the Boer republics? And, of course, get their hands on the country’s tidy portion of mineral resources in the process.

There would be no reason for the British to embark on a “humanitarian” war in Apartheid South Africa, because there would be nothing to gain. Why would Blair help free black people when the Empire already helped liberate the country’s resources over a century ago?

If, on the other hand, South Africa had been ripe for the exploiting, we may have had a very different history. Both pre- and post-liberation. We may have been forced into democracy much earlier; on the other hand, there may have been so many more innocent lives lost. We may have had the much-deserved moral support of a major international power; we also may have lost our independence to that same power.

There is no way to tell whether a major military intervention would have helped or hindered South Africa. And even if such a war were helpful, there would be no way to predict whether it would not bring its own set of problems; its own set of moral dilemmas and its own lack of freedoms.

Because, sadly, there’s no such thing as a humanitarian war. There’s only a war where I help you – and then help myself to what you’ve got.

Source: Daily Maverick

Blair speaks amid protest

Amid the gathering of a "small" group of protesters outside the Sandton Convention Centre, former British prime minister Tony Blair said that the most successful countries in the world are those with open-minded people who accept innovation. "Those countries who are open to people who are different, those who are open to nations who are different, those who are open to ideas and innovation create successful economies and societies," he said at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg.

"This globalised world offers huge opportunities if people are open-minded. I feel that right now that it is very important in terms of leadership... you have to take responsibility for difficult and often profound long-term decisions." Blair joked about Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu's decision to pull out of the summit in protest at his attendance. "It's amazing how nice people are to you when you stop being prime minister -- except archbishops of course," he said. "He [Tutu] is perfectly entitled to do what he wants to do. The essence of democracy is that sometimes you are faced with very difficult positions."

Tutu withdrew from the conference because of Blair's decision to back the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003. Blair said removing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power had been difficult. "We are faced with the same types of decisions now with Syria. Do we intervene or not intervene? With Iran, do we allow them to get nuclear capability? Are we prepared to intervene and stop them?"

Tutu's office said earlier in the week that the summit had leadership as its theme, and this could not be separated from ideas of morality. Tutu believed Blair's support of the US's military invasion was morally indefensible. Blair fielded questions from the audience about his decision to invade Iraq. "I took the decision in good faith... I knew it was a highly controversial and difficult thing, but I believed it was right. "The one thing that I have learnt about leadership is that in the end, that is my responsibility. I have to stand by that [decision]. In the end that is what you will elect leaders to do. I will never regret removing a brutal dictatorship."

Blair, flanked by bodyguards, spoke about the attempts that had been made to place him under citizen's arrest for crimes against humanity. "Why don't they actually go protest against the people doing the killing and the bombing and the suicide attacks?" He said the threat of Islamic fundamentalism was still an important issue the world had to overcome.

"Extremism is still there, but we are not going to [see it end]... until we tackle it for what it is. It is based on a perversion of religion and it has to be stood up to," Blair said. "They [extremists] are funded and financed by people with a very warped view of the world and who will take away a lot of the freedoms that we have."

Protest

A member of the audience heckled Blair during his speech. "Thank you... a little bit of protest to make me feel at home," he said. The heckler was escorted out of the hall. He heckler told Talk Radio 702 he had said: "Tony Blair, you are a war criminal and I'd rather listen to Tutu". Meanwhile, outside the convention centre protesters gathered because of his role in the deployment of soldiers in Iraq in 2003. .

The Society of the Protection of our Constitution is seeking a warrant of arrest for Blair. The society's secretary Muhammed Vawda says they've filed a 'crimes against the state' complaint with the police, who've opened a docket. He says the case will now go to the National Director of Public Prosecutions for a decision. The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal - an alternative to the International Criminal Court with no UN recognition or authority - found Blair and former US President George W. Bush guilty in absentia last year of crimes against humanity and genocide in the 2003 Iraq war.

Muslim political party Al Jama-ah earlier said it plans to affect a citizen’s arrest on Blair outside the convention centre. "We hope that Mr Blair will do the right thing and try and clear his name at the International Court of Justice in the Haque. However, our dossier indicates that there is overwhelming evidence that he is guilty of crimes against humanity," said party leader, Ganief Hendricks."

He said in spite of the heavy security at the conference - which led to the conference being delayed - the party had hoped that "one of the delegates will get to Mr Blair so he realizes the charges against him will never be buried and be top of mind until he has his day in court. When this happens, it is then up to the law enforcement authorities to take the matter forward."

The police had cornered off the area and closely monitoring the situation where protesters could be seen carrying poster that read "Tony u phony" and "Blair is a war criminal". Among them was the national secretary of the Young Communist league (YCL) Buti Manamela who also addressed the protestors. The protest was broken up shortly after Blair's address. VOC/AGENCIES

Source: The Voice of the Cape

Tutu withdraws from leadership summit

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has withdrawn from participating in a leadership summit in Johannesburg to protest the presence of Tony Blair.

Tutu's decision forms a protest against Blair's decision to back the United States war in Iraq.

"The archbishop has spent considerable time over the past few days wrestling with his conscience and taking counsel from trusted advisers with respect to his attendance at the event," the archbishop's office wrote to the event organisers on Tuesday.

"Ultimately, the archbishop is of the view that Mr Blair's decision to support the United States' military invasion of Iraq, on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, was morally indefensible.

"The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit has leadership as its theme. Morality and leadership are indivisible. In this context, it would be inappropriate and untenable for the archbishop to share a platform with Mr Blair.

"The archbishop greatly regrets inconveniencing and disappointing the organisers and participants of the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit."

Following Tutu's decision, Blair released a statement.

"Obviously [Tony Blair] is sorry that the archbishop has decided to pull out now from an event that has been fixed for months and where he and the Archbishop were never actually sharing a platform.

"As far as Iraq is concerned they have always disagreed about removing Saddam by force – such disagreement is part of a healthy democracy.

"As for the morality of that decision we have recently had both the memorial of the Halabja massacre where thousands of people were murdered in one day by Saddam's use of chemical weapons; and that of the Iran-Iraq war where casualties numbered up to a million including many killed by chemical weapons.

"So these decisions are never easy morally or politically".

Anger grows

A group of Durban-based organisations want to arrest Blair on charges of war crimes when he arrives in South Africa.

"Various Muslim organisations are in talks about possible actions that will be carried out should Tony Blair visit South Africa," said Mustafa Darsot, a member of the South African Muslim Network executive committee.

"This includes protest marches outside the summit venue, possible sit-ins and legal action against Mr Blair. We have also asked various legal professionals to look at the feasibility of having a warrant of arrest issued against him."

Blair will join several big names, including chess master Garry Kasparov and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan at the annual event, which will take place in Sandton on August 30.

Darsot said the network and several other organisations had written to Discovery Group founder and chief executive officer Adrian Gore urging him to withdraw the invitation to Blair. They did not believe he was "fit to lecture on leadership" because of his key role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Mr Blair is complicit in the murder of thousands of people in Iraq and should be tried for war crimes," Darsot said. "He violated the trust and responsibility of his office and it was his cosy and illegitimate relationship with the [Rupert] Murdoch press that prevented much of the truth about his role in the invasion of Iraq and murder of its citizens from being revealed in the press."

Offence

But Iona Maclean, head of Discovery Life and Discovery Invest Marketing, said the invitation to Blair would not be withdrawn.

"The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit brings together a range of leaders to debate the challenges that face the world's economy, business, government and society," she said.

"The event is not intended to reflect a political view or cause offence. Discovery Invest selected the speakers based on their experience as leaders from various spheres of society and we will not be withdrawing our invitation to any of the speakers."

Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said there was no question that Blair could be prosecuted for a "crime of aggression".

"The website arrestblair.org spells out Blair's role in recent mass murder from the Middle East to Central Asia," he said.

"Since Pretoria politicians justifiably complain that the International Criminal Court mainly prosecutes African tyrants, leaving European and American war criminals to travel the world gathering huge speaking fees, some action by Foreign Minister Maite Nkoane-Mashabane would reduce the talk left, walk right accusation against South Africa. She might simply follow the recent lead of Malawian President Joyce Banda, who warned Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to stay away from Lilongwe on threat of arrest."

Bond said if Nkoane-Mashabane did not intervene, South Africans who viewed Blair as a war criminal could attempt a citizen's arrest.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Arms deal inquiry should subpoena Tony Blair

Terry Crawford-Browne sets out the questions that need to be put to the former British PM

PRESS STATEMENT

The Seriti Commission of Inquiry into the arms deal has today refused my request to disseminate the submission that I made on 13 June 2012. The reason it offers is that the Commission was established to investigate allegations made in my submission, and, anyway as I had advised, that the contents of my submission are already in the public domain. The response declares:

This begs the question: what is the point of disseminating what is already in the public domain? What purpose will be served thereby?

Since these issues are the subject of eight books already published on the arms deal scandal and thus in the public domain, I record the summary of my submission:

Summary: Three of the six provisions of the Commission's terms of reference refer to offsets. The essence of this submission is that offsets fail the requirements of section 217 (1) of the Constitution that government procurements must accord "with a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective."

Advocate Geoff Budlender SC's legal opinion is submitted to support my contention that the arms deal was unconstitutional and illegal right from inception, and is therefore unfixable. Advocate Budlender further advises that the international remedy for fraud is to cancel the contracts, return the equipment and recover the monies.

The Department of Trade and Industry has conceded that the offsets were a fiasco. Amongst documents I submitted to the Constitutional Court are 160 pages of affidavits that detail why and how BAE paid bribes of £115 million (R1.5 billion) to secure its warplane contracts, to whom the bribes were paid, and into which bank accounts they were credited.

The 1996 Defence White Paper and 1998 Defence Review noted that there was no conceivable foreign military threat to South Africa, and that socio-economic upliftment was the national priority. In terms of the guarantee arrangements for the loan agreements, the financial consequences of cancellation of the contracts would be borne by British and German taxpayers, not South Africans.

To reiterate, my submission confirms that the arms deal was unconstitutional and illegal right from inception, and is therefore unfixable. The crux of the matter is how to take urgent remedial action to recover the monies so that they may be allocated to South Africa's desperately needed social upliftment. Such a decision does not require three years of further investigations but, given the priorities purportedly accorded to the eradication of corruption, simply political will.

In addition and separately, I have last week requested the Commission to subpoena the former British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair. The questions I wish to pose to him include:

1. The pressure he applied on our government to buy BAE Hawk and BAE/Saab Gripen fighter aircraft despite rejection in 1997 of those proposals by the SA Air Force because these aircraft are both unsuited to South African requirements and too expensive,

2. The complicity of his government in BAE's payment of bribes of £115 million, and his placement of British officials to block investigations by the Auditor General and parliamentarians into the fraudulent offset contracts,

3. The default clauses of the 20 year Barclays Bank/ECGD loan agreements for the BAE contracts and (to cite legal counsel for Minister Trevor Manuel) "their potentially catastrophic consequences for South Africa,"

4. The role of the so-called "BAE/Al Yamamah slush fund" administered by the Bank of England, and its purpose to destabilise resource-rich countries in Asia and Africa. This question is particularly germane given the events last week at the British-owned Lonmin mine.

The request that Mr Blair be subpoenaed whilst he is in South Africa is still outstanding.

Statement issued by Terry Crawford-Browne, August 20 2012

Source: Politicsweb

Anger grows over invite to Tony Blair

A group of Durban-based organisations want to arrest Tony Blair on charges of war crimes when he arrives in South Africa later this month. Blair will be in the country to participate in the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit.

"Various Muslim organisations are in talks about possible actions that will be carried out should Tony Blair visit South Africa," said Mustafa Darsot, a member of the South African Muslim Network executive committee. "This includes protest marches outside the summit venue, possible sit-ins and legal action against Mr Blair. We have also asked various legal professionals to look at the feasibility of having a warrant of arrest issued against him."

Blair will join several big names, including Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chess master Garry Kasparov and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan at the annual event, which will take place in Sandton on August 30.

Darsot said the network and several other organisations had written to Discovery Group founder and chief executive officer Adrian Gore urging him to withdraw the invitation to Blair. They did not believe he was "fit to lecture on leadership" because of his key role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Mr Blair is complicit in the murder of thousands of people in Iraq and should be tried for war crimes," Darsot said. "He violated the trust and responsibility of his office and it was his cosy and illegitimate relationship with the [Rupert] Murdoch press that prevented much of the truth about his role in the invasion of Iraq and murder of its citizens from being revealed in the press."

Offence

But Iona Maclean, head of Discovery Life and Discovery Invest Marketing, said the invitation to Blair would not be withdrawn.

"The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit brings together a range of leaders to debate the challenges that face the world's economy, business, government and society," she said. "The event is not intended to reflect a political view or cause offence. Discovery Invest selected the speakers based on their experience as leaders from various spheres of society and we will not be withdrawing our invitation to any of the speakers."

Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said there was no question that Blair could be prosecuted for a "crime of aggression".

"The website arrestblair.org spells out Blair's role in recent mass murder from the Middle East to Central Asia," he said (See "Make a citizen's arrest and be rewarded").

"Since Pretoria politicians justifiably complain that the International Criminal Court mainly prosecutes African tyrants, leaving European and American war criminals to travel the world gathering huge speaking fees, some action by Foreign Minister Maite Nkoane-Mashabane would reduce the talk left, walk right accusation against South Africa. She might simply follow the recent lead of Malawian President Joyce Banda, who warned Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to stay away from Lilongwe on threat of arrest."

Bond said if Nkoane-Masha­bane did not intervene, South Afri­cans who viewed Blair as a war criminal could attempt a citizen's arrest.

Disproportionate obsession

A spokesperson for the department of international relations and co-operation refused to respond to Bond's comments.

Meanwhile, at a press briefing held earlier this week, Deputy Minister of International Relations Ebrahim Ebrahim again discouraged South Africans from visiting Israel.

His comments were condemned by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, which said in a joint statement with the office of the chief rabbi and the South African Zionist Federation that they were "indicative of a highly discriminatory and disproportionate obsession with the Jewish state".

But a group of prominent Jews, including Shereen Usdin, Alan Horwitz and Robert Freeman, distanced themselves from the statement and added that, "in fact, we strongly support the progressive position our government has taken".

"Trips organised by the Israeli lobby present a biased picture of Israel and seek to whitewash Israeli human rights abuses.

"As the South African government has already proposed, visits should only be undertaken if they are to genuinely pursue the peace process," they said in a statement.

Make a citizen's arrest and be rewarded

South Africans who attempt a "­citizen's arrest" of Tony Blair could claim about R300 00 from the website arrestblair.org as a reward for their efforts. According to the site, donations it receives from supporters (the total is nearly £10 000) are used to pay bounties for attempts to arrest the former British prime minister.

Anyone attempting an arrest is entitled to one-quarter of the money collected at the time of his or her application. South Africans would certainly qualify, said the founder of the website, Guardian columnist George Monbiot.

"The same rules apply everywhere on Earth. Anyone who abides by the conditions we lay out on the website is entitled to one-quarter of the money in the kitty at the time of the claim." So what exactly are the conditions?

According to the rules listed on the site, the attempt should be non-violent and cause no injury to Blair and those around him. It should also be reported in at least one mainstream outlet as a way of ensuring that it has political consequences and the claimant, who needs to apply for the award within 28 days of the attempt, must provide proof that he or she is the subject of the report.

Arrest attempt

If several people are involved in a single arrest attempt, or if more than one person makes an attempt at the same event, one-quarter of the total pot is to be shared between them. Performing a citizen's arrest seems simple enough.

The method recommended by the site is "to calmly approach Mr Blair and in a gentle fashion to lay a hand on his shoulder or elbow, in such a way that he cannot have any cause to complain of being hurt or trapped by you, and announce loudly: 'Mr Blair, this is a citizen's arrest for a crime against peace, namely your decision to launch an unprovoked war against Iraq.

I am inviting you to accompany me to a police station to answer the charge.'" To date, three individuals have received awards from the site for trying to arrest Blair. In September 2010, Kate O' Sullivan was sent a cheque for £3129.02.

At a book signing in Ireland, she told Blair she was arresting him. More recently, Tom Grundy, a Briton living in Hong Kong, walked up to Blair during an address at a local university and said: "Mr Blair, under Hong Kong's Power 101 law, the law which allows for citizen's arrest here, I'll be arresting you for crimes against peace." It is not clear yet whether Grundy will receive arrestblair.org's fourth award.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Obama administration’s Guinea mining deal hurts American businesses

A secret business deal between the government of Guinea and a multinational firm with a U.S. partner aided by the Obama administration’s wrongheaded foreign policy could cost American businesses billions.  Congress ought to investigate to protect American investors, expose any political shenanigans and prosecute the guilty.

The London Sunday Times first cracked the story June 3 of the secret $25 million loan between an offshore company, Palladino Capital 2, and the cash-strapped West African country.  The funds, according to the loan agreement, were to finance the start-up of Guinea’s state mining company, Heritage, but the cash allegedly disappeared and the terms of the loan include a default clause which gives the lender a juicy 30 percent stake of Guinea’s mushrooming mining assets.

A thirty percent share is especially significant given Guinea’s new mining code engineered by advisors billionaire trader George Soros and Palladino’s South African owner Walter Hennig.  The 2011 code gives 15 percent of all mining assets to Heritage, including another 20 percent at market rates.  That means foreign mining operators forfeit billions of dollars in assets and profits atop an 8 percent customs tax.

Further, the $25 million loaned by Hennig’s Palladino, according to former Guinean mines minister Mahmoud Thiam who spoke with South Africa’s Mail & Guardian, was a quid pro quo — a bribe — in return for Guinea President Alpha Conde’s campaign support.

Perhaps word the money was for a political payoff prompted Palladino’s May 24 loan recall.  Or the recall could be part of the secret deal to cash in on the loan by claiming a 30 percent share of Heritage, but now the cat is out of the bag.

Mohamed Fofana, the current minister of mines and the official who signed the 2011 loan with Palladino, rejects the allegations.  He claims the money went to Heritage Company, not Guinea’s government coffers and it is in the bank waiting to be invested.  He also rejects the allegation he ever agreed to “a $25 million loan in exchange for a third of our mineral resources.”

Fofana has a problem with the truth, however.  His rejection is refuted by the signed and sealed “Credit Agreement,” a copy of which Human Events acquired.   The April 12, 2011 document is between the Republic of Guinea and Palladino Capital 2 Limited.  Page 3 reads Guinea “solicited the lender” seeking $25 million to finance the creation of Heritage Company and page 9, paragraph 11.1 states the “lender may take” 30 percent of the shares of the “Heritage Company” if Guinea defaults “after a formal notice” and “within sixty (60) working days of the request by the Lender.”

This case warrants U.S. Congressional investigation to identify American interests and to protect our foreign investments.  Congress should ask the following questions.

First, was the $25 million loan a violation of U.S. law?  The answer depends on the true purpose of the loan and whether a U.S. entity was involved in the transaction.

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it an offense to offer money to a foreign official to influence that official in his official capacity.  Clearly, Guinea’s former mines minister Thiam alleges the money is a bribe to the nation’s president in exchange for a 30 percent share of Guinea’s mining concessions.

Thiam further alleges the president’s son Mohamed Conde and Palladino’s Samuel Mebiame, who signed the $25 million loan for the lender, tried to raise campaign funds in return for access to state mineral assets, according to the Mail & Guardian.

There is also a U.S. entity connected to the lender.  Hennig’s Palladino partners with U.S. investment fund managers Och-Ziff Capital Management in African Global Capital.  They formed the joint venture in 2008 “as a platform to invest in both private and public markets across Africa, with a bias towards natural resources and related businesses,” the partners said in a joint statement.

Second, is there a relationship between the $25 million loan and Guinea’s new mining code?  That is important because it would demonstrate Palladino’s motivation for making the loan, to wit insider information about Guinea’s plans to nationalize mining assets.  Mining receipts account for 70 percent of Guinea’s income.

In March 2011 President Conde invited financier George Soros and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to advise him on how to best manage Guinea’s mining assets.  They recommended rewriting the mining code, seizing a portion of foreign company assets and renegotiating unfavorable provisions in existing contracts.

Palladino also consulted with Guinea officials regarding the new mining code.  In fact, Palladino’s consultations regarding its interest in Guinean mineral assets culminated in a signed agreement with Guinea in March 2011 just before the $25 million loan was executed.  The new mining code was published in September, six months after the loan that includes the default 30 percent proviso.

Third, is there a relationship between the Obama administration’s decision to reinstate favorable trade relations with Guinea and the $25 million loan?  That is important because it addresses factors that may influence the administration’s foreign policy decisions that potentially enrich some parties at the expense of other American businesses.

In October 2011 Obama restored privileged U.S. trade partner status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) with Guinea after revoking them following Guinea’s 2008 coup.  The published criteria for that decision include hosting free and fair elections, establishment of the rule of law and combating corruption.

Restoring AGOA status is desirable for Guinea because the U.S. Government restores trade preferences and other benefits such as political risk insurance to American firms through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.  Guinea understandably wants the jobs that come with AGOA status and the protection OPIC offers because it incentivizes American businesses by mitigating risk in Guinea’s volatile markets.

But granting Guinea favorable trade status was a bad decision based on the published criteria.  Even though Guinea’s 2010 election was largely free and fair, the country still suffers from numerous problems.  Human Rights Watch cautioned that Guinea has seen new security force abuses, including killings, a concentration of power in the executive, weak implementation of the rule of law, and rising ethnic tensions.  Further, Guinea is creating regional insecurity, particularly in its role as a hub for transnational narcotics trade.

It is possible political lobbying and donations trumped what should have been an unfavorable trade status decision possibly due to its nexus with the $25 million loan.  Specifically, Och-Ziff Capital Management which is partnered with Palladino, the $25 million lender and possible big winner in the case of loan default, had a financial incentive to encourage restoration of favorable trade status with Guinea.  Further, it had the opportunity to influence the administration’s decision.

Public records indicate Och-Ziff uses the services of Washington lobbyists Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock to promote its interests with the U.S. Government, which included five reported meetings with White House staff in 2011.  Also, Daniel Och and Dirk Ziff and their families, according to public records, are big donors to Democrat Party campaigns and especially Obama, which argue for additional clout.

Congress should determine whether Och-Ziff or other parties unduly influenced the administration’s Guinea trade status decision and whether that decision has any direct or indirect impact on Guinean mining operations.

Congress must ask these tough questions to determine the truth.  Clearly, the secret deal could hurt American mining businesses, exposes the administration’s wrongheaded foreign policy, and may violate our foreign corruption laws.

Source: Human Events

African deal for mines is scrapped as valuation fears mount

Mineral-rich Guinea is scrapping a controversial mining deal after fears it represented bad value for the country's valuable assets, keenly in demand from the likes of Rio Tinto and Brazil's Vale.

The controversy surrounds a $25m (£16m) loan made to the African state in April last year to set up a new national mining company. It was arranged by Walter Hennig, a South African-based businessman who has traded diamonds in Africa.

A fierce debate has raged in recent weeks about whether the terms of the loan entitle Mr Hennig's Palladino vehicle to take a 30 per cent stake in the new company, at what would effectively be a massive discount, in the event of a default. This could potentially be worth billions of pounds because the company has the right to take 15 per cent of every mine in the country free of charge.

Eric Joyce, the Labour MP, is among those who believe the loan could allow Mr Hennig to amass a huge cut-price stake in Guinea's mineral industry. George Soros, the billionaire investor, has called on Guinea to investigate the loan.

"There are legitimate questions concerning this loan that call for examination and accounting." Mr Soros wrote to Mr Joyce yesterday. However, Mr Soros does not agree that Mr Hennig is in line for a 30 per cent stake in the event of a default.

The government last night said it had effectively pulled the deal "because the terms of the loan are no longer favourable from a commercial standpoint."

Palladino has denied a default could result in it scooping up "30 per cent of private or national assets worth billions of dollars."

Palladino has said: "Such repayment cannot legally exceed the value of the debt due under the loan agreement and it can in no way result in the appropriation by our company of 30 per cent of private or national assets worth billions of dollars."

Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative foundation has been monitoring Guinea's overhaul of its mining industry.

Source: The Independent

Alpha Conde accused of having sold Guinean mining interests in favor of South African ... for $ 25 million

The Sunday Times wrote that Alpha Condé has signed an agreement with a certain Walter Hennig, a wealthy white businessman from South Africa is among other things specializes in diamond mining in Angola and Congo.

Mining is the economic powerhouse of Guinea with more than 70 percent of state revenues. In September, Guinea adopted a new mining code. A committee was also established to "review mining contracts" signed by the previous regimes and that the new government elected in 2010 estimates not be in favor of Guinea. Mining companies have criticized the new code and argued that several clauses will discourage mining investment in Guinea.

The Sunday Times wrote that he had access to documents which indicate that already in April last year - or months before the Code was adopted by the National Council of Transition the body that takes the place of the Parliament- Mines Minister Mohamed Lamine Fofana has agreed a loan of $ 25 million with Palladino Capital, a company controlled by Hennig and registered in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven known. Hennig created in 2003 the firm Palladino Holdings as a vehicle for "mining, energy and other assets in Africa."

The loan of $ 25 million was never publicly revealed Guineans, initialed in the margin or in the national budget although the President Alpha Conde has said that "contracts which commit Guinea will be published on the Internet." Sources told the Guinéenews © Minister of Mines executed an order of Alpha Condé, whose son Mohamed Conde would deal with Paladino, Mvellapenda (group Tokyo Sexwale) and Och Ziff, an investment fund. The agreement was initialed by the Guinean side Mohamed Fofana and Kerfalla Yansané, the Minister of Finance and the South African side by a certain Samuel Mebiane, listed as "agent" for Palladino.

One of the clauses is controversial is the provision which states that if the Guinean government can not repay the loan, the company will convert the debt to a 30 percent in the operations of the Guinean national mining company SOGUIPAMI that was created by presidential decree adopted by the NTC in August 2011. However, under the tutelage of the IMF is, because research HIPC expenditures Guinea are controlled by the Bretton Woods institutions and it is very probable that the repayment of $ 25 million to a billionaire may be seen from askance by the mandarins of Washington announce the fight against poverty in Guinea and most want to know how the 25 million was spent.

Potentially - observers note - 25 million loan that will bring billions of dollars to Henning for participation in the project Guinean Simandou iron mine only - owned by Rio Tinto, Chinalco, and Vale Beny Steinmetz - is at least 10 billion. Guinea also options for investments in mining projects with mining giants such as BHP Billiton, Arcelor Mittal and Rusal.

But more importantly, note sources contacted by Guinéenews © This type of agreement is in flagrant violation of the Mining Code, which stipulates in Article 150 that "The State reserves the right to sell all or part of its interest in cash, without pre-emptive rights of the other shareholders of the mining title holder, through a bidding process open and transparent. " In addition it was found that the president's son would have a direct or indirect, that would be another violation of the Guinean Constitution, which stipulates in Article 39 that: "During his tenure, the President may, by itself, for a member of his family and even others, buy or lease a property in the area belongs to the State, without the consent of the Constitutional Court under the conditions set by law. '

The agreement was signed with Palladino less than a month after qu'Hennig has signed a Memorandum of Understanding under which another vehicle, Flores Bell, would become a "partner" with the government in the mining industry.

The British newspaper concludes that this revelation may become an embarrassment to Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister who is supposed to advise Conde for better governance through its NGO "Africa Governance Initiative."]

Source: Guinéenews

also see Commission for Africa 

Tony Blair to attend Iraq inquiry next week

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will make a much-anticipated appearance before an official inquiry into the Iraq War on January 29. Blair was premier when Britain sent 45 000 troops as part of the United States-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein seven years ago, despite mass protests on the streets of London. It was one of his Labour government’s most unpopular decisions, with widespread doubts raised about its legality. Critics also accuse Blair of misleading the public over claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The Chilcot Inquiry announced the date of Blair’s appearance on its website on Monday. Such is the demand to see his performance that the inquiry will hold a ballot to allocate public seats, while a third of the 60 or so available spaces will be reserved for families of soldiers who died following the 2003 invasion. Many Labour supporters remain angry with Blair for leading the country into a war and occupation in which 179 British soldiers were killed. Discontent was heightened when no WMDs were ever found.

Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, who was finance minister at the time of the war, is not due to appear at the inquiry until after parliamentary elections which must be held by June. Brown set up the inquiry last year following the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. Some Labour figures fear that it could damage the party in the election because it brings a divisive issue back into the public arena.

The five-man Chilcot team, which is examining Britain’s role before, during and after the conflict, can decide when to call witnesses, though it is not a trial. Its stated aim is to learn lessons from Britain’s involvement in the war.

Blair, who will spend an entire day answering questions, told a BBC interview last month that he believed it would still have been right to oust Saddam even if he had known Iraq had no WMDs. Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, had cited other reasons, including the threat Saddam posed to the region, 12 years of stalling United Nations weapons inspectors and Saddam’s use of chemical weapons on his own people.

Last week, Blair’s former communications chief, Alastair Campbell, told the inquiry that the prime minister had assured then-US president George Bush in 2002 Britain would back military action if diplomatic efforts to disarm Saddam failed. “I think the prime minister was, all the way through this, trying to get it resolved without a single shot being fired,” Campbell said.

The inquiry, which has faced accusations of being too soft on witnesses and that the outcome would be a whitewash, has also heard from senior civil servants and military figures.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Britain: Blair government defeats calls for Iraq inquiry

The ability of British Prime Minister Tony Blair to defeat calls for an inquiry into the Iraq war testifies to the insulation of the parliamentary process from any genuine democratic control.

It is more than two years since there was a full debate in the House of Commons on the Iraq war. In that time, the already massive opposition to the US-led invasion has become more entrenched—fuelled by the catastrophic situation created by the occupation. The vast bulk of the British electorate believe that Blair dragged the country into war based on lies and that the troops should be withdrawn.

Yet on November 1, the Blair government was able to face down a motion calling for an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the invasion by 298 votes to 273.

The circumstances surrounding the vote are politically instructive. The motion was brought by the two small nationalist parties, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, and merely called for a committee of seven leading members of Parliament (MPs) to review “the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq.”

It was then backed by the much larger Liberal Democrat Party, which has 63 MPs and which had opposed the Iraq war. But the possibility of a defeat for the Blair government was made real by the Conservative Party’s decision to support the motion. Until now, the Conservatives have supported Blair on Iraq—guaranteeing the government a majority even if it faced a substantial rebellion by Labour MPs.

The decision of the Conservative (Tory) Party to endorse the motion was not primarily an effort to exploit popular anti-war sentiment. That party’s attitude towards public opinion is much the same as the government’s. Rather, the volte face was motivated by concerns within the bourgeoisie about the extent of the crisis that Iraq has produced for British capital.

Recent weeks have seen statements by top military personnel, such as head of the army General Sir Richard Dannat, as well as numerous think tanks and analysts proclaiming the Iraq occupation to be a foreign policy disaster worse than the Suez crisis of 1956. In the United States, where anti-war sentiment is a majority position in the electorate, Iraq has dominated the congressional election campaign. Significant sections of the US and British ruling elite are anxious that the worsening quagmire in Iraq is jeopardising their broader geopolitical ambitions for the whole of the Middle East and beyond.

Amongst these layers, an inquiry of the character proposed in Parliament would be a vehicle for making the required “corrections” in neo-colonial strategy. In particular, it would seek to redress what sections of the bourgeoisie consider to have been a fatal compromising of the national interests of British imperialism on the part of the Blair government in pursuit of its “special relationship” with the US.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell argued from such a standpoint in favour of the motion, asking during the parliamentary debate, “Isn’t it now the time for a British strategy based on British priorities and not one which depends on the outcome of the American elections?”

Even given these strategic imperatives, the Tories were hamstrung by their own record on Iraq and their overriding concern that any inquiry not endanger either the ongoing Iraq occupation or the interests of British imperialism. To this end, they called for the inquiry to be held sometime over the next 12 months, consisting of private hearings under former military personnel. It was only when the government refused to concede to any inquiry that the Conservatives backed the motion.

Despite this reluctance, the Tories’ manoeuvring did serve to expose any pretence of significant oppositional sentiment within the Parliamentary Labour Party. Only 12 Labour MPs, as well as Clare Short, who last month quit the party, voted against the government. This is not even half of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, which constitutes the official left wing of the party and whose chair, John McDonnell, has announced he will stand for Labour leader when Blair finally resigns.

The scale of this collapse by the nominal “left” within the Labour Party can be judged by comparison with the oppositional vote over the war in 2003. On March 18 of that year, 139 Labour dissidents voted for an amendment opposing the invasion. But immediately war began, the vast majority of Labour dissidents fell into line. By June 4, 2003, only 11 Labour MPs supported a Liberal Democrat motion calling for an inquiry into whether the government had misled parliament over Iraq’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.

In the three years since then, nothing has changed this political balance of forces within the Labour Party. The same handful of MPs register their formal protest, while the rest justify their support for Blair with claims that they “cannot stomach” voting with the Tories or doing anything that could endanger British troops.

Such arguments are grotesque. The Labour lefts have had no such difficulty in stomaching the government’s lies and attacks on democratic rights, or reconciling themselves to a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, including scores of British troops.

The inability of parliament to even debate Iraq prompted Guardian political columnist Simon Jenkins to observe that “This House of Commons is God’s gift to dictatorship.” Parliament had surrendered its “democratic function,” he continued, with opposition MPs rendered “incapable of performing democracy’s simplest ritual, challenging the executive.”

But how has this situation come about? Jenkins concentrates his fire on the failure of the opposition parties to hold the government to account, at one point declaring that the “Commons has become little more than an electoral college for the prime minister.” He insists that parliament has powers it has not used, explaining, “There is nothing to stop MPs debating what they like. There is nothing to stop a grand committee being appointed to inquire into the war. It can demand ‘persons and papers’ and subpoena anyone it likes. Even if select committees are too scared of the whips to act, Parliament is sovereign. It need not ask Downing Street’s permission to scrutinise.”

This misses the point. Who is supposed to do this?

Jenkins, in effect, berates the Tory opposition—the traditional party of big business—for its failure to bring a nominally Labour government to account. But parliamentary democracy has in reality been stripped of much of its actual substance by the fact that—whatever their tactical disagreements—all the major parties agree in principle on a course of militarism and social reaction, and all of them rest on an increasingly narrow social base of support anchored within the most privileged social layers.

Central to this evisceration of the democratic process is the transformation of the Labour Party into an instrument of a financial oligarchy.

The extension of democratic rights to working people was the product of mass political action conducted through the methods of the class struggle, which culminated at the beginning of the twentieth century in the formation of the Labour Party as the political representative of the trade unions. Labour’s degeneration and that of the unions themselves mean that the political views and social concerns of the working class no longer find even limited expression within the machinery of government. Rather, the business of government is predicated on preventing any popular interference with policies that are decided in the boardrooms of the major corporations and that are fundamentally opposed to the interests of the majority of the population.

Ultimately, the decline of parliamentary democracy is an expression of the acute and irreconcilable class antagonisms wracking society. It is impossible to secure a democratic mandate for war and colonial conquest, paid for through the gutting of social programmes and the impoverishment of working people. Official politics becomes a conspiracy against the social and democratic rights of the masses.

It is precisely because maintaining the political disenfranchisement of the working class is of such overriding importance that the bourgeoisie is unable to frankly examine an issue of such strategic import as Iraq. This accounts for the political paralysis identified by Jenkins—one that is highly destabilising for the ruling elite.

Even if the Iraq debacle should finally prompt a move against the Blair government by a section of the ruling elite—an outcome that can by no means be excluded—nothing progressive would result.

Everything now depends on the independent mobilisation of workers, youth and students against the Labour government and all the representatives of big business. At the centre of this is the building of a new and genuinely socialist party.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

Why is the American press silent on the report of 655,000 Iraqi deaths?

The US media is virtually silent on a new scientific study that estimates the Iraqi death toll from the US war at 655,000. The study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and funded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was posted Wednesday on the web site of the British medical journal, the Lancet.

The study is the only systematic estimate of the number of Iraqi civilians and military personnel to have died as a result of the US invasion and occupation to be brought to the attention of the American and international public.

Unlike previous estimates, which were based on reviews of media reports or tallies made by the US-backed Iraqi government, the Johns Hopkins study was carried out by Iraqi physicians who interviewed—often at great personal risk—nearly 2,000 families spread across the country, utilizing standard and widely used statistical methods to arrive at an objective estimate of the death toll from the war and occupation. The vast majority of the reported deaths were substantiated by death certificates.

The study concluded with a 95 percent degree of certainty that the number of “excess deaths” in Iraq since the invasion—the number of people who have died in excess of the number that would be expected on the basis of pre-invasion mortality rates—is between 393,000 and 943,000. The figure of 655,000 is given as the most likely number. This represents an astonishing 2.5 percent of the entire Iraqi population.

The researchers further estimated that about 600,000 of the deaths were due to violence in some form, including gunshots, air strikes and bombings. They concluded that US and allied military forces directly caused at least 31 percent—or 186,000—of the violent deaths.

Some 336,000 people, or 56 percent of those killed in violent actions since the invasion, died from gunshot wounds. The study also found that the number of violent deaths in Iraq has steadily increased every year since the invasion. In the period from June 2005 to June 2006, the researchers found a nearly four-fold increase in the mortality rate relative to pre-invasion levels.

There can be no legitimate doubts about the credibility of the study. Lancet is one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical publications in the world. The Johns Hopkins public health school is the largest in the world, and regularly ranks as the top public health school in the United States. The journal article was reviewed and approved for publication by four independent scientific experts in the area.

It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the report, even if one assumes its low-end estimate of 393,000 Iraqi deaths to be correct. It demonstrates that the American intervention in Iraq has produced a social and humanitarian catastrophe of historical dimensions, with vast political implications not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world and, above all, in the United States itself.

By any objective standard, the report merits front-page coverage in every major newspaper in the country and extensive discussion and reporting on television news broadcasts. Yet the response of the US press has been to virtually ignore the report and limit its coverage to news accounts on inside pages which report, uncritically, unsubstantiated statements by government and military officials dismissing the report as “not credible.”

In burying the story, the New York Times and Washington Post have played a particularly significant role. The original articles published by these newspapers on Wednesday were relegated to the inside pages: in the Times on page 8, in the Post on page 12.

The Post decided to bury the story in its back pages despite the fact that the article it published vouched for the scientific validity the Johns Hopkins study, noting that it, and an earlier report on Iraqi deaths published by the same team, “are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods.” The “cluster sampling” technique used by the scientists, the newspaper wrote, “is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters.”

Minimal coverage in the press continued on Thursday, despite the fact that the issue was raised by a reporter at a White House press conference on Wednesday. President Bush contemptuously dismissed the report, stating that it was not credible. He was not challenged and the question was not followed up by any of the other reporters at the news conference.

Bush’s remarks were followed by statements from various supporters and architects of the war similarly dismissing the Johns Hopkins study’s casualty figures. General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, admitted that he had not bothered to read the report, but nevertheless concluded that it did not have “much credibility at all.”

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the figure of 655,000 killed is “not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate.” Iraqi government officials likewise declared that the figure was “exaggerated.”

On Thursday, neither the Times nor the Post published an editorial on the Johns Hopkins report, or even a follow-up article on the report and the response of the Bush administration.

There was not one challenge in the establishment media to the official attempts to disparage the report. Instead, the minimal coverage on Thursday was largely devoted to reporting the statements by Bush, Casey, Blair and the Iraqi stooge regime. The Los Angeles Times, for example, published a story on its inside pages, “Iraq Disputes Claim of 600,000 War Dead,” reporting the statements by the Iraqi government. The newspaper added its voice to the chorus by remarking that it had conducted its own survey and reached a figure of 50,000 killed.

The attempts to discredit the report are not backed up by any factual or methodological arguments. The administration and its supporters assume, correctly, that they can simply make unsubstantiated claims and the media will not challenge them.

Lee Roberts, a co-author of the study, noted in an interview with the radio program Democracy Now! on Thursday that the cluster survey approach the researchers used “is the standard way of measuring mortality in very poor countries where the government isn’t very functional or in times of war.” He pointed out that both the United Nations and the US government have used the method in determining mortality, including after the Kosovo and Afghan wars. “Most ironically,” he said, “the US government has been spending millions of dollars per year... to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters.”

With its silence, the media is once again taking its cue from the government. It does not challenge Bush’s ignorant and cold-blooded dismissal of the Johns Hopkins report, just as it did not challenge Bush’s offhand remark at a December, 2005 press conference that 30,000 Iraqis, “more or less,” had been killed since the March, 2003 US invasion—an absurdly low estimate.

The corporate-owned-and-controlled media have buried this story because they do not want the American people to know the truth of what is happening in Iraq.

They want to conceal this truth—as they have done consistently since the war began—because they are complicit in a massive war crime in Iraq, and continue to support the bloodletting by the US military.

The Johns Hopkins report, by revealing the colossal dimensions of the death and destruction wreaked by the United States in Iraq, shatters the edifice of lies that has been erected in an attempt to deceive the people and justify the war—from the phony claims of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, to the current claims of a war for “freedom and democracy” and the overarching deception of the “war on terrorism.”

The report inevitably highlights the culpability of the media itself, which has combined an acceptance of unprecedented censorship by the military with self-censorship and deliberate misinformation in order to whitewash an imperialist war for oil and geo-strategic domination of the Middle East.

The scale of mass killing revealed in the Johns Hopkins study published by the Lancet stands as an indictment of the entire American ruling elite, both of its political parties—Democratic no less than Republican—and all of its official institutions, among which the media has played a particularly sordid role.

What the corporate, political and media establishment fear are the explosive social and political implications of growing popular revulsion over the crimes of US imperialism in Iraq and around the world, combined with mounting anger over relentless attacks on working people’s social conditions and democratic rights. The entire political system is being exposed and discredited before the eyes of the people. Such a process inevitably brings with it revolutionary consequences.

Source: World Socialist Web

Africa's Game of Follow the Leader

For brutal honesty on the causes of Africa's woes, it's hard to beat Chinua Achebe's The Trouble with Nigeria. Written during the country's rowdy 1983 election campaign, the book, just 68 pages long, is an outpouring of frustration at Nigeria's problems. You only have to read the contents page to tap into Achebe's angst. The author — best known for Things Fall Apart, a powerful work of fiction that almost half a century after its release still tops lists of Africa's greatest novels — uses blunt prose to deliver the message in Trouble. Chapter headings telegraph his views: "False Image of Ourselves"; "Social Injustice and the Cult of Mediocrity"; "Indiscipline"; "Corruption." Achebe lays out his case in the book's very first sentence: "The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership."

Many Nigerians agreed, and Africans across the continent reached similar conclusions about their own countries. Which is why, in the mid-1990s, when a new generation of leaders emerged, Africans dared to hope that things could finally be changing. People like Issaias Afewerki in Eritrea, Laurent Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia promised a new style of leadership that focused on building economies and democratic nations instead of shoring up their power by force and ensuring that they and their friends got rich. When President Bill Clinton visited Africa in 1998, he touted this generation as Africa's great hope.

The reality has rarely matched the hype. Within months of Clinton's visit, Rwanda and Uganda had invaded Congo, and Eritrea and Ethiopia had gone to war with each other. While some leaders — notably Museveni and Zenawi — still did enough to remain darlings of Western donors, even they have now begun to slide. In Ethiopia, Zenawi has sent troops onto the streets to stop opposition supporters protesting the results of a general election last May. In Uganda, an increasingly dictatorial Museveni announced two weeks ago that he will run for office again, following Parliament's decision to scrap term limits that would have forced him to retire. That long-expected bulletin came just days after his main opponent was thrown in prison on charges — vehemently denied — of treason and rape. Demonstrations have been temporarily banned.

So, Achebe's lament still holds true, then? No. Fixing Africa was never as simple as changing its leaders. And that's why the fall from grace of Museveni and Zenawi may prove a positive thing, even if they hurt their own countries in the short term. It's a reminder, especially to Western countries that invested so much in Africa's new leaders, that strong institutions are far more important than personalities. Good leaders can turn bad if they stay in office long enough: faults become obvious; people compromise to hold onto power; supporters get frustrated with the inevitable slow pace of change. It's not just Africa. There are plenty of erstwhile supporters of Tony Blair who would be happy to see the back of him. The same goes for one-time fans of Jacques Chirac and George Bush. A key difference is that the institutions in the countries those men lead — parliament, the judiciary, the press — are bigger than any one person and counterbalance the worst excesses. That's still not a given in Africa.

Take Zimbabwe. Even five years ago, the country boasted one of the best judiciaries in Africa. Voters could make their voices heard, as they did in 2000 when they rejected a new constitution backed by President Robert Mugabe. The independent press was amongst the feistiest on the continent. Over the past few years, though, Mugabe and his henchmen have bludgeoned the opposition into near submission, rigged elections, closed down the independent press and forced most of the country's best judges into retirement. Mugabe, once hailed as a great new African leader himself, has proved more powerful than his country's institutions.

There is progress, of course. Kenyans last week rejected a new constitution backed by lackluster President Mwai Kibaki — elected just three years ago in a wave of reformist zeal — because of concerns that the proposals vested too much power in his office. (Kibaki promptly sacked his entire Cabinet.) Voters in Ghana, Senegal and Zambia have all elected opposition parties since the turn of the century. Such peaceful shifts prove that institutions in some countries are becoming strong enough to survive change and are not merely dependent upon, or at the mercy of, whoever sits in the presidential palace. Ethiopia and Uganda are also vastly better off than they were before Zenawi and Museveni took power; the backsliding hasn't wrecked all the good work the men have done. But their tainted legacies are a lesson. "A leader's no-nonsense reputation might induce a favorable climate but in order to effect lasting change, it must be followed up with a radical program of social and economic reorganization," writes Achebe in The Trouble with Nigeria. In other words, good leaders are good, but strong institutions are even better.

Source: Time

Amnesty says US leads in human rights violations following September 11

The Amnesty International (AI) Report 2002 covers the period from January to December 2001, with a particular focus on the world situation following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The foreword to the report, written by Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty, together with most of the introduction, addresses the attitude of governments towards human rights since the launching of the so-called war against terrorism by US President Bush.

Under the heading “Countering the backlash,” Kahn notes that human rights activists now face an uphill battle: “As the ‘war against terrorism’ dominated world news, governments increasingly portrayed human rights as an obstacle to security, and human rights activists as romantic idealists at best, ‘defenders of terrorists’ at worst.”

Leading into this passage she quotes a revealing comment by an unnamed government official: “‘Your role collapsed with the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York.’ This blunt statement to AI delegates by a senior government official captured the challenge faced by the human rights movement following the events of 11 September 2001.” Amnesty was unable to source the above quotation as Kahn is presently away, but promised to do so as soon as possible. There is no reason to doubt its veracity, however, given that one attack after another on democratic rights has been mounted in the name of combating terrorism.
US human rights violations

Kahn explains, “the readiness of governments to trade human rights in the interest of security is nothing new,” but the difference today is that this is not done by “autocratic regimes but established democracies in the name of public security.” Heading the list of culprits is the US itself, with Britain also earning dishonourable mention.

The summary introducing the section on the US paints a picture far removed from that presented by Bush in his recent State of the Union address, when he insisted, “America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity” and that these include “the rule of law” and “equal justice.”

AI writes that more than 1,200 people, mainly foreign nationals were detained during investigations into the September 11 attacks. Though public information on these detentions remains scant, it is clear that some were held incommunicado. The report speaks of “Muslim detainees suffering physical or verbal abuse from guards or other inmates while held in local jails and of cruel conditions of confinement, including prolonged solitary confinement, inadequate exercise and the wearing of shackles during non-contact visits.”

In late November last year, the Attorney General revealed that 104 people had been charged with various criminal offences, “many of them minor and one directly related to 11 September, of whom half remain in custody. Another 548 unidentified individuals were held on immigration charges,” the AI report states.

Alongside anti-terrorist legislation that severely curtails human rights and civil liberties, “AI has called for inquiries into several incidents involving the killing of civilians by US and allied forces during military action in Afghanistan and into the killing of hundreds of prisoners in Qala-i-Jhangi fort following an uprising.”

The report continues, “An as yet unknown number of Afghan civilians were killed or injured or had their homes or property destroyed during the US-led coalition bombing which began on 7 October and continued for the rest of the year. AI raised concerns with the US authorities about specific attacks in which civilians were killed and civilian objects were destroyed, urged that investigations be conducted into possible violation of international humanitarian law and called for a moratorium on the use of cluster-weapons. In November, AI called on the USA, the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (United Front) and the United Kingdom to conduct an inquiry into the deaths of hundreds of Taleban prisoners and others at Qala-i-Jhangi fort, after an uprising by some Taleban captives was put down by bombing by US warplanes and United front artillery.”

Both the US and British governments denied AI’s request for an investigation into what happened at the Qala-i-Jhangi fort.

The stance of the Bush administration finds its reflection throughout the globe. Indeed the AI report makes clear that the launch of the US war on terrorism has had a major destabilising effect on world politics. It is broken down into regional sections including the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and Africa. Whatever the region, the assessment notes increased militarism and the systematic abuse of human rights. Khan says in the foreword, “A number of governments jumped on the ‘anti-terrorist’ bandwagon to stifle political dissent.”

Explaining that governments, “rushed through laws formulating new crimes, banning organisations and freezing their assets, curbing civil liberties and reducing the safeguards against human rights violations,” Kahn adds, “Regrettably, a number of these laws used definitions of ‘terrorism’ which were dangerously broad and vague.”

It is indicative that Britain, America’s main ally in the war on terrorism, is also singled out for particular criticism. The section dealing with Britain includes Northern Ireland and a substantial part of the report is given over to the record of human rights violations there. As with America, however, the September 11 attacks have been seized upon to introduce sweeping new legislation that severely curtails democratic rights and civil liberties.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair sought to strengthen Britain’s ties with the US by providing crucial political support to Bush’s war drive. As with Bush, the climate of hysteria produced after the terrorist attacks provided a useful cloak behind which to make inroads into democratic rights and civil liberties within Britain.

The report explains, “In the United Kingdom (UK), the government passed ‘emergency’ legislation which provided for detention of foreign nationals without charge or trial, thereby creating a shadow criminal justice system without the essential safeguards of the formal system. Legislation was passed in the USA allowing for indefinite detention on national security grounds of non-US nationals facing deportation,” Kahn writes.

“The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 was passed in December after less than a month of parliamentary and public scrutiny. The UK derogated from Article 5(t) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] in order to allow for indefinite administrative detention. Under the Act, the Secretary of State may order such detention, without charge or trial and without recourse to judicial review, of any non-UK national deemed a ‘suspected international terrorist and national security risk’ on the basis of reasonable suspicion. The evidence would not be subject to public scrutiny or effective challenge. Among other measures, the Act also denies asylum-seekers labelled as ‘terrorist’ the right to have the merits of their claim individually assessed. In December, eight people were detained under the new legislation.” the report says.

In a separate press briefing on anti-terrorism legislation internationally, AI says of the European Union, “The European Commission prepared a proposal for a set of ‘terrorism’ offences that all member states should prohibit. In Amnesty International’s view, some of the proposed offences were excessively broad or too vague and could criminalise peaceful activities. The Commission also proposed an EU arrest warrant and surrender procedures between member states. Aspects of this would infringe human rights guarantees, e.g. not to be extradited to a jurisdiction where the person might face an unfair trial. New measures might prevent people from seeking asylum on the basis that they may be involved in ‘acts of terrorism’ without fully considering their claims in fair and satisfactory procedures.”

Kahn goes on to cite many other examples of countries that have imposed repressive and undemocratic legislation, concluding, “the aftermath of 11 September saw a resurgence in the powers of the military. More and more civilians were detained by the military and tried by military courts. Military forces, as well as unaccountable security and intelligence services, were increasingly involved in public security functions and in intelligence operations targeted at the civilian population.”

The “hypocrisy and selectivity of governments,” while not new, “became even clearer in the drive to build an alliance in the ‘war against terrorism’. Governments remained silent on abuses committed by those they counted or sought as allies. The same governments that denounced the human rights abuse of women by the Taleban government of Afghanistan remained silent about the plight of women in Saudi Arabia. Those who condemned human rights violations in Iraq did not protest against human rights violations by Russian troops in Chechnya, or by the authorities in Uzbekistan against Muslims who peacefully practise their faith outside state controls.”

The AI report draws particular attention to the impact of the war on terrorism upon immigrants and asylum seekers. Kahn states that the “tendency... to portray foreigners, particularly refugees and asylum-seekers, as ‘terrorists’” has led to “a refuelling of the fires of racism... People were attacked in the USA, Canada, western Europe, parts of Asia and Africa, not for what they did but for who they were, simply for being a Muslim or Arab or Asian, or even for looking like a Muslim, Arab or Asian.”

Source: World Socialist Web Site