The Anti-Empire Project

Back from Ottawa. A couple more notes.

Continue reading “The Bush Visit to Canada”

I got a curious email yesterday from a friend studying at Cambridge University who’s been involved in Palestine solidarity activism on UK campuses. Yesterday he got yet another job offer in his mailbox through the ‘Career Service’ listserve run by Cambridge (see the end of this blog entry for the full text of the offer). The position caught his eye because it related to Palestine. It seems like Adam Smith International, the spin off consultancy of the conservative Adam Smith Institute in the UK, is looking for a Refugee Policy Advisor to consult the Palestinian Authority on aspects of refugee policy. While the link between neo-liberal economics – with a Thatcherite accent – and Palestinian refugee rights may seem abstract, it makes perfect sense if we consider the actual objectives of the international community’s intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For those who have been following the Palestinian issue closely, this type of intervention and ‘advice’ on a crucial topic like refugee rights will come as no surprise. After all the ‘international community’ has been inching ever closer to an open endorsement of Sharon’s disengagement/annexationist plan since it was announced during the Likud party’s Herzaliya conference in December 2003. This last April, Sharon was invited to the White House and received full approval for ‘disengagement’ from the Bush Administration, including a willingness to overtake responsibility for the security situation in Gaza either directly or through regional proxies. This point was highlighted by Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel, in a Washington Post article that he penned shortly after the Bush-Sharon summit. Indyk is a primary proponent of imposing an international trusteeship over the Palestinian ‘state’ (read Bantustan) that is scheduled to emerge sometime in the middle or near the end of the year 2005.

A key feature of the post-conflict nation building exercise that will be launched by the ‘international community’ in the newly created Bantustan – and whose first phase is the upcoming Palestinian ‘elections’, which are designed to legitimate Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen) as the new Palestinian President – is the implementation of a radical free-market model on the Palestinian people and the restructuring of the security services in a manner that will bring all armed factions under the control of pro-Western operatives. The aim will be to ensure that Palestine develops in ways that are favorable to the penetration of transnational capital in the Middle East while ensuring that the only armed Palestinians in the streets are those whose objective is the internal repression of the insurrectionary logics of the intifada. Essentially, the ‘international community’ is seeking to resume the Bantustan formula of the Oslo years, although this time on the territorial terms defined by the Israeli right-wing as represented by Sharon.

On the economic front the assets of the new ‘state’ will largely be managed by the IMF and World Bank. In the summer, the World Bank already prepared a study on how the assets that Israel will leave behind in the Gaza Strip should be managed. Instead of directly transferring the assets to the Palestinians, the World Bank suggested that they be transferred to an interim body that would be managed by technocrats drawn from its own ranks. Thus the involvement of outfits like the Adam Smith Institute in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should come as no surprise as every post-conflict situation in which the ‘international community’ has intervened forcefully has featured the implementation of free-market logics on the colonized state as a central component of the new ‘peace-building.’ This was true in Bosnia – the first such massive intervention of the ‘international community’ in the post-Cold War era – and has been progressively refined in subsequent interventions in Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq (as well as in less publicized ‘peace agreements’ that the ‘international community’ has brokered or is trying to broker in places like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Solomon Islands, Somalia, etc.).

As I was researching Palestine related initiatives in Cambridge for this blog entry, I also came across ‘The Israel-Palestine Peacekeeping Forum’ which is a low-level initiative aimed at bringing together policy makers as well as security and intelligence officials from Israel, the PA, the US, UK, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the EU, the Arab League, NATO, the World Bank, the UN and a number of non-governmental organizations in order to examine the nature of third party involvement in any eventual settlement. The Forum is sponsored by Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), the International Development Research Centre (Canada), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden. Essentially, the work of the Forum translates into a low-level mechanism for fleshing out the details of how the proposed Palestinian Bantustan will be governed once in emerges in 2005 (for its most recent report click here). Such ‘semi-secretive’ forums were the basis of the failed Oslo accords, and it seems likely they will again be used as the primary vehicle for hashing out an agreement that will fail to address the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people or to meet their most basics rights, including the Right of Return (which is a central feature of any eventual settlement).

The outlines of the future security situation are thus slowly emerging and seeing the light of day. While the ‘international community’ would ideally like to see regional proxies like Egypt and Jordan stepping-in on the heals of an Israeli withdrawal to impose order in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively – the fact of the matter is that the internal weakness of these regimes may necessitate the assistance of other actors. The possibility that a NATO, or some other type of intervention force, will take over ‘security’ in the areas that will be ceded to a pliant pro-Western Palestinian regime is real. In fact, it was recently announced that NATO would include Israeli military forces in upcoming exercises for the first time in its history. This marks a noticeable expansion of NATO into the Middle East and North Africa that began with the establishment of the Alliance’s ‘Mediterranean Dialogue’ in 1994. The upcoming exercises will be a crucial means of testing modalities for eventual multilateral cooperation in areas of the occupied territories that are ceded to the PA. The NATO umbrella will essentially be used to provide a cover for increased Egyptian-Israeli-Jordanian cooperation in the security field and could eventually translate into the means by which the trans-Atlantic rift created by the Iraq war can be healed. Within such a context, in which the Palestinian issue is being subcontracted to the ‘international community,’ it should come as no surprise that outfits like the Adam Smith Institute are seen as credible interlocutors for Palestinian refugees.

APPENDIX

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: “Careers Service”
Subject: CLICK Dev/Research ADAM SMITH INTERNATIONAL Refugee Policy Adviser
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 12:30:43 -0000

CLICK is NOT a vacancy list – don’t miss our full vacancy listings
FutureJobs & JobsNow published weekly in hard copy or via the website at
www.careers.cam.ac.uk.
********************************

ADAM SMITH INTERNATIONAL

Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:23:39 +0000
From: Forced Migration List
Subject: Job announcement: Refugee policy adviser, Ramallah

Adam Smith International wishes to recruit an adviser on Refugees Policy to work at
its aid project in Ramallah, in the West Bank.

The purpose of the project is to provide expert professional advice to Palestinian
ministries and institutions on a range of issues related to the development of a
future Palestinian state.

Candidates must have:
– At least three years experience advising on, or analysing, the Palestinian Refugee
issue
– Excellent academic qualifications in a relevant subject
– Very strong reading, writing and speaking skills in English and fluency in Arabic
– A detailed understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
– Substantial experience of working in teams, liaising with other organisations and
delivering work to tight deadlines.

Compensation will be above average for the development sector.

Please send a covering letter and CV to:
PalestineRecruitment@AdamSmithInternational.com

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Bush extended thanks to the Canadians who waved at him with all five fingers. I can’t blog very much right now, but I can tell you there were tens of thousands waving. There was a spirited march from city hall to parliament hill, and at Bush’s dinner appointment at the Museum of Civilization there was a demonstration of several thousand that reached spitting distance (or at least shouting distance) of the venue. It was a good feeling – it feels like Canadians at least managed to come out in approximately the same numbers as Chileans did. As someone who was close to the Toronto organizing, I have to say that even though there were many people pouring tremendous amounts of energy into organizing these demonstrations, the sheer size and scale of the demonstrations was a pleasant surprise to all, and happened I think because there is massive repudiation of Bush in Canada as opposed to long patient organizing work (there was work done, but there just wasn’t time to build an event like this and there weren’t massive institutions mobilizing for it).

More tomorrow (I think!)

Before heading off to Ottawa, a quick blog. Of course it would be great if I were able to blog from the demonstrations but I can’t make any promises. Meanwhile, a piece of advice for readers coming to Canada – stop reading!

Books, that is.

Mahmoud Namini, a Dutch Citizen and an Iranian Refugee, was coming through Pearson airport in late October when immigration authorities found a ‘suspicious’ book, “The Bird About to Fly”, about a 1982 uprising against the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was written in Farsi and has militants dressed for battle on the cover. For that crime, he has been in detention in Toronto for a couple of months now. His fiance lives in Toronto. He was granted refugee status in Holland 10 years ago.

He needed it, because he was actually imprisoned by the Iranian regime for five years and in danger of further persecution.

Good thing people don’t have to worry about that kind of arbitrary imprisonment in civilized countries (Gandhi’s joke about Western Civilization keeps coming to mind).

Canadians who are unable to go to Ottawa and are looking for an outlet can help get Mr. Namini released, striking a blow for just immigration policy and for literacy at the same time. Details courtesy of Homes Not Bombs below.

Please forward far and wide…

Detained in Canada for “Suspicious” Reading Material

Free Mahmoud Namini and End Thought Crime in Canada 44-year-old Iranian Refugee and Dutch Citizen Jailed in Canada for Reading “Suspicious” Book

1. Introduction 2. Backgrounder 3. What You Can do: Letters and Wednesday, December 1 Vigil at 12 Noon at Judy Sgro’s Constituency office, 2201 Finch West

WHAT’S GOING ON? While Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin was lecturing Russian President Vladimir Putin on the need to respect democratic rights during an October visit, the Canadian Immigration bureaucracy was busy taking a page out of the former Soviet dictatorship with the detention in Toronto of Mahmoud Namini for the crime of reading a book which the Canadian government finds “suspicious”.

While Mr. Namini was coming through Pearson International Airport in Toronto in late October, immigration authorities took an immediate dislike to a book in his possession, Parandeh_ye No Parvaz (The Bird About to Fly), which documents a 1982 uprising against the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The book is written in Farsi and features a cover which shows militants dressed for battle in a jungle setting (hardly shocking given the fairly lurid covers of English-language thrillers, mysteries, and other paperbacks generally available at airports.)

Mr. Namini has been detained ever since while the Canadian government “investigates” possible security concerns related to his reading of this book.

Needless to say, at a time when Canadian literacy rates are dropping at an alarming rate, jailing someone for reading is certainly sending the wrong message to Canada’s students!

We are calling on the Government of Canada and, specifically, the ministers responsible for this outrageous detention for thought crime, to immediately release Mr. Namini. Below is a backgrounder on the case, as well as addresses for writing to ministers Judy Sgro and Anne McLellan.

WHO IS MAHMOUD? Seyed Mahmoud Namini is 44 years old, born in Tehran, Iran, and currently a citizen of Holland, where he was granted refugee status 10 years ago. He was one of thousands of individuals arbitrarily jailed for five years under the brutal regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran during the 1980s (and was in jail during the 1982 uprising covered in the book The Bird About to Fly).

Namini’s fiancé Nahid lives in Toronto, and was looking forward to seeing him when he came to Canada October 27. It was the latest of many trips which Mr. Namini has taken both to Canada and the United States to visit relatives, both before and after the events of 9/11/2001, all without incident or questioning.

Indeed, Mr. Namini spent five months in Canada earlier this year and was returning to Canada to finalize his marriage preparations in October. After an initial interview at the airport October 27, he was released and asked to return the next day for further questioning, whereupon he was immediately detained and subject to a barrage of questions, accusing him of membership in groups as diverse as the Kurdish Workers Party and the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan).

Namini denied membership or association with any of these groups, but was told by CSIS agents, “We don’t believe you.” In classic style, the questioning continued, with CSIS no doubt hoping the intense repetition of such questions would force Namini to either “slip up” and say something “suspicious” or simply want to end the interrogation by “confessing” to anything that would please the agents.

Mr. Namini is not involved in any of these groups. He is a Systems Administrator/ Computer Networker interested in the politics of his birth country who simply wants to get married and get on with his life.

But for now, he remains separated from his fiancé by concrete and thick glass. Both Mahmoud and Nahid awake each day and go to bed each night — if they can sleep — with one question: why this continued detention?

The Government of the Netherlands has produced a document of good conduct showing Mr. Namini has been nothing but the most respectable of individuals during his years in that country.

Inquiries made on behalf of Mr. Namini indicate it is the book he was carrying which continues to raise the alarm bells at the Canadian War Crimes Unit of Immigration, which seems so focused on Namini that it may be neglecting a great catch in George W. Bush next week in Ottawa.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Write to Immigratiom Minister Judy Sgro (who described herself earlier this week as the “Minister of Hopes and Dreams” and Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan) and CC Paul Martin. The reference to comments in Parliament refers to Ms. Sgro, and should not appear in a McLellan letter

Here is a sample letter. In order to avoid the appearance of form letters which can be ignored, please personalize your letter

Dear Ms. Sgro I am concerned about the detention of Mr. Seyed Mahmoud Namini (File 374253834138 (Client ID: 5383-4138), detained since October 28 in Toronto for what appears to be the crime of carrying a book which Canadian authorities find suspicious.

This sounds like the kind of conduct for which the former Soviet Union was repeatedly condemned, not the kind of thing which is the hallmark of a 21st century democracy.

Mr. Namini has travelled in and out of Canada and the U.S. visiting relatives for years, all without difficulty.

You have stated in Parliament in recent weeks that you try and do the right thing when it comes to people seeking to enter Canada. It is clear that you can do the right thing here by ending this arbitrary detention.

Mr. Namini and his Canadian fiancé are both aware that individuals know about his case and are writing to seek his release from detention. Rather than respond to us that you cannot comment on the case due to privacy concerns, we ask that you please take whatever measures are necessary to ensure Mr. Namini’s immediate release.

Thank you.

Name Address

Please cc letters to tasc@web.ca and free_mnl@yahoo.ca

Judy Sgro Constituency Office Tel: 416-744-1882 Fax: 416-952-1696 2201 Finch Ave W, Suite 25 Toronto, ON M9M 2Y9 sgroj1@parl.gc.ca

Parliament Hill Office Tel: 613-992-7774 Fax: 613-947-8319 Rm 207, Confederation Bldg House of Commons Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6 sgroj@parl.gc.ca

Anne McLellan Deputy PM and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Edmonton Office 12304 – 107 Avenue NW Edmonton, Alberta T5M 1Z1, Canada Telephone: (780) 495-3122 Facsimile: (780) 495-2598

Ottawa Hill Office 306 Justice Building House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6, Canada Telephone: (613) 992-4524 Facsimile: (613) 943-0044 Facsimile: (613) 952-2240

4. DEMONSTRATE Join a Noon-Hour Vigil outside the Constituency office of Immigration Minister Judy Sgro, Wednesday, December 1, 12 Noon, 2201 Finch Ave West (one major block west of Hwy. 400, located in a big strip mall along with an Ontario courthouse) If you need a ride call (416) 651-5800 or email free_mnl@yahoo.ca

Sponsored by the Commitee to Free Mahmoud Namini (free_mnl@yahoo.ca) (supported and endorsed by Toronto Action for Social Change and Homes not Bombs, Toronto)

To add your name or group to the list of supporting organizations, email: free_mnl@yahoo.ca

My friend Kole will, like CP Pandya, occasionally be contributing insightful commentary to this blog. Kole is just what we need more of – an activist with lots of ideas and energy, who already knows a lot and is always learning more. Just back from spending 10 months in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where Kole ran the blog Into the Middle East. Kole is also a collaborator on the once and future En Camino site.

Hoping to unwind, I went and watched ‘Alexander’, which turned out to be a mistake. I like historical epics. It is true that they are violent, and full of stereotypes, and not usually progressive in their politics. But I like them anyway, mostly I think because I am interested in history and like to see ancient periods shown on film. I watched ‘Troy’, for example, and liked it. But Alexander was really bad.

Continue reading “Stressful relaxation – ‘Alexander’”

So the US and the Iraqi political parties it is sponsoring want to delay elections. Readers who follow this link will be impressed by the hypocrisy. Every story you read about Iraq now seems to have an obligatory feature about how many bodies the United States is finding as it turns a place like Fallujah or Mosul into rubble. These bodies, it’s important to note, are bodies that the US is claiming were killed by the resistance. As for the corpses generated by the US operations themselves… “we don’t do body counts”, and as Arundhati Roy said a few weeks ago, we don’t do the Geneva Conventions either. Instead, we shut down hospitals so they cannot report on body counts and murder journalists for the same reasons.

Meanwhile, I had to include this Reuters photo courtesy of Akram Saleh in Fallujah, of the troops we support stopping a dangerous terrorist in his tracks.

The Washington Post story I got it from is about how the Fallujah operations have brought the number of Iraqis in US custody to 8300. “The large influx of prisoners is putting stress on U.S. detention operations, providing the biggest test yet of new facilities and procedures adopted in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal this past spring, Miller and other officers said in interviews here.”

I wonder if it’s putting any “stress” on the Iraqis who are being detained? I would think that it would be, especially if those Iraqis are put into “stress positions”.

Anyone believe any of this?

The prison building that was the site of abuses by American guards has been turned over to Iraqi authorities and is used to jail criminals. Detainees in U.S. military custody are kept in recently constructed camps with climate-controlled tents, a visitation center and three hot meals a day. For the most cooperative prisoners, there are movies and a library.

Miller, who has been supervising detention operations since April, said many of the changes, including a computerized record-keeping system, have enabled guards and interrogators to operate more efficiently. Also helpful is the experience soldiers have gained since taking over at the start of the year from the units involved in the scandal.

Miller also noted that there are 180-210 interrogations a week. And even better:

Allegations of abuse against detainees are down about 60 percent from what they were in May and average about 10 a month, Miller said. Only two or three a month tend to be substantiated, the general said. “These are not intentional. These are overly aggressive kinds of things, like combat takedowns,” Miller said.

Allegations of abuse against detainees are down about 60%! What a relief.

There is more reading about Miller himself in Seymour Hersh’s new book.

John Laughland has an interesting article on the Ukraine’s opposition movement, in which he takes an oppositional stance. He confirms much of what Kole said in the comments section in the previous blog post on Ukraine from two days ago.

Continue reading “Ukraine continues”

I have the honour of translating Hector Mondragon’s work. He is a very under-appreciated analyst and activist who lives underground in Colombia because he’s on paramilitary hit lists. His latest piece calls attention to the imperial visits Bush has been making and the lack of success Bush has been having in these whirlwind trips. Canadians can take heart – after planning to address parliament and stay for a couple of days, it now looks like Bush is going to breeze through Ottawa and head to Halifax before heading home. My prediction is he’ll change his schedule again. That’s not just because of fear of protests and public opinion, it’s also because of the bitter experience Bush has been having on his world tour. Odd, isn’t it, how the rest of the world doesn’t seem to accept the ‘mandate’ and the ‘political capital’ that he was given by the American people? (Aside – interesting how Bush said he was going to ‘spend’ his ‘political capital’, no? Aren’t smart capitalists supposed to invest capital?)

Bush’s visit to Colombia lasted 3 hours. Hector discusses the implications of the visit for Colombia’s president Uribe, who is still trying to swim desperately against the tide in Latin America. The battleground is there, between Colombia and Venezuela. That’s the lynchpin. If Bush and Uribe can make their terrorism work in Venezuela, they might be able to reverse that tide. Check out Hector’s explanation — it’s a ZNet Sustainer commentary…

Another election, another battle over the results. The story is all over the mainstream media, though the Ukraine almost never shows up on the radar otherwise.

The election was between an incumbent who apparently is backed by Russia (Viktor Yanukovych) and a “pro-Western reformer” (Viktor Yushchenko), and it was… ahem… very close. According to the Globe and Mail
Continue reading “Exit polls, the Ukraine…”