Latest Developments, August 23

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With rebel forces having overrun Moammar Gadhafi’s main Tripoli compound, the international community – despite the occasional voice that cautions “the game isn’t over yet” and the long-time leader’s vow to fight to the death – is increasingly discussing a post-Gadhafi Libya, Middle East and world. The Christian Science Monitor’s Scott Baldauf wonders if Africa will miss Gadhafi who, for all his well-publicized faults, also was the “the single-largest contributor to the budget of the African Union, a prime aid donor for poor African countries, and a dependable advocate for pan-African cooperation.” UC Irvine historian Mark LeVine presents an “initial Libyan scorecard” on which the big losers – aside from Gadhafi and his close associates – include the UN because of NATO’s flagrant disregard for the rules of engagement set out by Security Council resolutions and the International Criminal Court because it will once again look like a dispenser of victors’ justice. But Open Society’s Alison Cole says it is “crucial for the maintaining of international justice that the ICC arrest warrants are implemented through the transfer of the three suspects to The Hague,” regardless of whether or not Libya is willing and able to conduct the trials itself.

In other prominent legal news, a New York judge has dismissed sexual assault charges against former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn because the prosecution had lost faith in the reliability of the alleged victim as a witness, despite “the finding of Strauss-Kahn’s semen in three places on Diallo’s hotel uniform.” Commenting on an unrelated case, a UN official has called on the US to do more to protect women from domestic violence.

The Guardian’s Jason Burke writes about the 9/11 wars and their cost, estimating the total numbers of dead at 250,000 and of injured at 750,000: “This may be fewer than the losses inflicted on combatants and non-combatants during the murderous major conflicts of the 20th century but still constitutes a very large number of people.” The Council on Foreign Relations’ Stewart Patrick instead focuses on the “bright spots” of international efforts against perceived terror threats over the last decade. He points to “a more robust legal architecture to combat this scourge,” as well as agreements regarding money laundering and nuclear weapons. Patrick also says the US “has renounced torture, as well as extraordinary rendition and ghost prisons,” though the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill’s recent work on Somalia suggests that may not be the case. Meanwhile, Sudan is not happy it is still stuck on the US terror list, even after agreeing to last month’s secession of South Sudan. “We have been promised time after time … that once a peace agreement is passed, Sudan will be lifted from the list of countries harboring terrorism,” according to former Sudanese ambassador to the US, Mahdi Ibrahim. “But each time we realize the bar is raised.”

As for the war on drugs, Organization of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza says countries with large numbers of drug users should “not put all the blame on drugs producing countries, but rather assume the responsibility as the countries to which drugs are destined.”

A subsidiary of Canada’s Barrick Gold is in talks with the Tanzanian government “over allocating mining areas to artisanal miners” around one of its projects, a measure the country’s home affairs minister described as “the only way” to restore peace to the surrounding area. The company says May clashes between villagers and police caused seven deaths at its North Mara mine.

Bloomberg reports Finland’s Nokia Siemens surveillance technology is being used by Bahraini intelligence against democracy activists who say they were tortured as a result of their text messages. But the company has done nothing illegal, according to the report: “Companies are free to sell such equipment almost anywhere. For the most part, the U.S. and European countries lack export controls to deter the use of such systems for repression.”

Acclaimed author Arundhati Roy suggests there is a suspicious level of corporate support for India’s proposed anti-corruption law: “At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.” She continues, writing that “by demonising only the Government they have built themselves a pulpit from which to call for the further withdrawal of the State from the public sphere and for a second round of reforms — more privatisation, more access to public infrastructure and India’s natural resources.”

The Center for Global Development’s Lawrence MacDonald says construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would connect Canada’s “tar sands” to refineries in Texas would amount to dropping “the world’s biggest carbon bomb” on India and other countries threatened by rising sea levels and adverse weather conditions. “Perhaps it’s time that India and other developing countries hard hit by runaway climate change turn the tables and start asking tough questions about U.S. energy policy in general and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline in particular,” according to MacDonald. He says now is the time to speak up as the State Department holds hearings ahead of a decision on whether or not to approve the project by the end of the year.

 

Latest Developments, August 22

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The unexpected appearance of a smiling, victory sign-flashing Saif al-Islam Gadhafi after he had supposedly been arrested by rebel forces suggests there may yet be a few twists in the Libyan conflict that has already lasted six months despite roughly 20,000 NATO aerial missions. Nevertheless, with the apparent crumbling of the Gadhafi regime over the last few days, all those nagging questions about Libya’s rebels and what they would do with power may be about to be answered. Beyond concerns about the ability of such disparate groups to work together without the focus provided by a common enemy, the New America Foundation’s Barak Barfi wonders if they have the competencies required for the work that lies ahead: “Short on skilled experts, a post-Qaddafi Libya risks becoming dependent on foreign assistance, much like the Palestinians, who live largely from international aid rather than from their own economic activity.” But as far as Europe is concerned, the business news coming out of Libya is good for now.

As for assessing the NATO mission, the Financial Times reports: “Few, if any, civilian casualties were incurred on the ground; no alliance aircraft or personnel were lost; and the mission saw no flagrant breaches of the remit it received from the UN, which defined the goal of the operation as the protection of civilians on the ground.” But media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has some questions (as does Amnesty International) about reports of civilian deaths, and US congressman Dennis Kucinich argues “the war against Libya has seen countless violations of United Nations security council resolutions (UNSCRs) by Nato and UN member states.”

The Wall Street Journal reports the US Justice Department is getting creative in trying to go after foreign officials who demand bribes, even though the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is intended for the pursuit of those involved in the supply side of corruption. But lawyers for the ex-governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand and her daughter are challenging the money laundering charges against their clients: “No court has allowed the making of a payment that is an essential element of the predicate unlawful activity—such as a bribe in bribery case—constitute ‘promotion’ of that same activity.”

Ghana’s Adom News reports tension is growing between Canadian miner Xtra Gold and inhabitants of a community who say their drinking water has been polluted and their lands expropriated, and are threatening to “deal ruthlessly” with the company. Local MP Kwasi Amoako Atta said the company needed to learn how to conduct business in the area: “Even if you have the required documents to back your operations you need to seek clearance from the town leaders, the mere fact that you have the license does not give you the permission to jump into people’s land and start mining.”

The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Mark Weisbrot has a grim update on the state of reconstruction and resettlement in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince: “Nineteen months after the earthquake, almost 600,000 Haitian people are still living in camps, mostly under tents and tarps. Despite the billions of dollars of aid pledged by governments and donors since the earthquake, there are probably less than 50,000 that have been resettled. And for the 600,000 homeless, the strategy seems to be moving in the direction of evictions – without regard as to where they might end up.”

The Center for Global Development’s Michael Clemens presents an economic argument for opening the world’s borders to free movement of people. According to his calculations, taking such a step could increase global GDP by 20-60 percent or tens of trillions of dollars. University of Toronto political scientist Joseph Carens has long called for open borders but he does so on moral grounds: “Citizenship in Western liberal democracies is the modern equivalent of feudal privilege—an inherited status that greatly enhances one’s life chances. Like feudal birthright privileges, restrictive citizenship is hard to justify when one thinks about it closely.”

UN Under Secretary General Philippe Douste-Blazy argues revenues from the tax on financial transactions (re)proposed by the leaders of France and Germany last week should not just go to helping Europe’s struggling economies: “If the crisis is destroying jobs at home, it is destroying lives in the South.” He believes such a “micro-tax” could raise $100-$200 billion a year and would help “globalize solidarity.”

While the Overseas Development Institute’s Jonathan Glennie notes the World Bank “has had a bad couple of decades,” he also believes the it remains important in its ability to raise the profile of certain issues and mobilize governments to take action. But he says it “needs to become a bank for the world, ditching its history of favouring the interests of a few powerful shareholders.” To illustrate his point he takes the example of the debt cancellation campaign which started in the 1980s but did not convince the bank to cancel debts until 2005, “and then only with neoliberal strings attached.” The decades of delay, according to Glennie, were “because the bank is set up to look after the interests of the creditor countries, rather than the debtors, however hard decent officials seek to change that.” Until that changes, he believes the World Bank will be unable “to fulfil its idealistic mandate.”

The Guardian’s George Monbiot writes on the delusions and ravages of perpetual growth: “To sustain the illusion, we have inflicted more damage since 1950 to the planet’s living systems than we achieved in the preceding 100,000 years. The damage will last for centuries; the benefits might not see out the year.” He points to Tim Jackson’s 2009 Prosperity Without Growth as “the beginning of a plan.”

 

Latest Developments, August 19

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The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor says he has received reports of crimes against humanity committed by the Syrian regime but for now has no jurisdiction to investigate them because Damascus does not recognize the court. He would require a “referral” from the UN Security Council in order to begin an investigation. But UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has said she does not expect that to happen. Like Syria, three of the five permanent members of the Security Council do not currently accept the court’s jurisdiction: Russia which signed the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court but has not yet ratified it, the US which signed but has subsequently “unsigned” it, and China which has yet to sign. In the nine years since the court came into being, it has undertaken six investigations, all of them in Africa.

Following yesterday’s call for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to step down, the EU has announced additional sanctions and is considering banning Syrian oil imports, a measure opposed by Human Rights Watch. In a letter to the Financial Times, HRW’s Lotte Leicht argues instead for the EU to freeze the assets of state banking, oil and gas companies until the “gross human rights abuses” stop: “We have deliberately avoided calling for wider energy sanctions because of the potential humanitarian impact on ordinary Syrians.”

Rick George, CEO of Canada’s Suncor which has a Syrian natural gas operation where production is “running normally,” said in a radio interview: “We’re actually not connected to the Assad regime in any way. We operate with a partner in Syria, the General Petroleum Corporation,” which is one of the state-owned companies blacklisted by US sanctions earlier this week. According to the CBC, Suncor “has said it is still able to produce natural gas in Syria under the current Canadian sanctions. It is reviewing U.S. sanctions.”

Meanwhile, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin reports Syrian opposition representatives are meeting in Istanbul over the weekend to form the “Syrian National Council” which they will try to sell as “the official representative of the Syrian revolution.” The move “comes soon after the U.S. and European states have called for Assad’s ouster, and are mulling ways to increase pressure on the Syrian regime to make that a reality.” Rogin cites Chicago-based Syrian human rights lawyer M. Yaser Tabbara as saying the US, Turkey, “and other supportive governments, are being kept in the loop but are not directly involved in the project.”

Whatever Syria’s future may hold, it will not include participation in the 2014 FIFA World Cup after the national team was disqualified for fielding an ineligible player.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters Iraq had “finally” agreed to extend the presence of US troops in a “noncombat” role beyond the end of the year: “My view is that they finally did say, ‘Yes.’ ” But the Iraqis see things differently: “We have not yet agreed on the issue of keeping training forces,” an advisor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Agence France Presse. “The negotiations are ongoing, and these negotiations have not been finalised.” A Pentagon spokesman subsequently said what Panetta had actually meant was “the Iraqis have said yes to discussions about the strategic relationship beyond 2011.”

Just Foreign Policy’s Robert Naiman argues that if the US government wants to reduce its debt, it should start by pulling all its troops out of Iraq by the end of the year “like we promised in the signed agreement between the two governments.” As for the evolving role of the US military in Iraq, Naiman says “these ‘trainers’ engage in combat: they kill Iraqis, and they get killed by Iraqis.” Earlier this month, US Representative Barbara Lee introduced the Iraq Troop Withdrawal Accountability Act which would “prohibit funding for any extension of the December 31, 2011 deadline to remove all U.S. troops and military contractors from Iraq.”

Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation is filing charges against US tobacco giant Philip Morris for allegedly evading $2.3 billion in taxes. Earlier this year, public prosecutors had decided not to proceed with charges. The country’s attorney general will now make the final decision. The company said in a statement it was “disappointed” by this latest development and pointed to a recent World Trade Organization ruling to support its position.

To mark the fifth anniversary of Trafigura’s dumping of toxic waste in Abidjan, Amnesty International is calling on Cote d’Ivoire’s government to distribute the compensation coughed up by the oil company: “Trafigura has paid US$260 million in a number of payouts but much of the money remains unaccounted for and thousands of victims have not received anything,” the human rights NGO said in a press release. The incident left 15 people dead and over 100,000 needing medical attention. Given these figures, Trafigura has paid an average of $2,600 per victim, though its payouts also include the cleanup costs.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has submitted to the General Assembly his annual report on the work of the United Nations, in which he claims regarding his first term at the organization’s helm: “We have confronted head-on the key global challenges of our generation: addressing climate change and global health; breaking the deadlock on disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation; and mobilizing action against terrorism.”

Gerald Caplan writes in the Globe and Mail that he thinks he knows the motives of prominent “Muslim-haters” but does not understand how they obtain the media coverage necessary to become prominent in the first place: “But what’s the interest of certain media in enabling these haters to spread their gospel, to fan the flames of intolerance? What audience are they after? What do they expect their audiences to make of all this sympathetic exposure to rabid anti-Muslim feelings? Why are they inciting ordinary people to hate other ordinary people? Why?”

Latest Developments, August 18

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As the violent crackdown on Syrian protestors continues, Western leaders have called for the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to step down and are threatening more sanctions. “We call on him to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside in the best interests of Syria and the unity of its people,” said a joint statement by the leaders of France, Germany and the UK. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside,” US President Barack Obama said. And while there were no threats of international military action, a new UN report says the Syrian regime may have committed crimes against humanity and calls for an investigation by the International Criminal Court.

Peru’s new left-leaning government has suspended its US-funded coca eradication program while it rethinks its drug fighting strategy. Though saying the move is meant only to be a “pause,” the country’s anti-drug czar also suggested 12 years of eradication efforts had done little to reduce cocaine production in the Andean nation that could soon become the world’s top exporter of the drug. And in Mexico, there are growing questions about the human and economic toll of the country’s war on drugs. But in a move designed to crack down on planes smuggling drugs through Central America, the Honduran government is proposing a no-fly zone over an area representing more than a quarter of the country’s total territory.

Apparently not swayed by a recent Economist article suggesting “shale gas should make the world a cleaner, safer place,” South Africa’s government has extended by six months its moratorium on drilling for the controversial energy source. The country’s mining minister imposed the ban earlier this year and commissioned a study on the impacts of fracking but still has some lingering questions. Anglo American and Shell are among the companies eager to extract South Africa’s shale gas but they have encountered opposition from farmers concerned about water contamination risks.

The UK government is vowing to resist any “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions, following noises from France and Germany that they intend to introduce such a measure to generate revenue and discourage market speculation. “Any financial transaction tax would have to apply globally — otherwise the transactions covered would simply relocate to countries not applying the tax,” according to a British Treasury official.

“No clear evidence exists that microfinance programmes have positive impacts,” according to a new study by the UK’s Department for International Development, citing a lack of “rigorous quantitative evidence” on the subject. The study’s lead researcher has urged “a more holistic approach to financial services for the poor, which would put more focus on savings, remittances and financial literacy rather than on the obsessive interest in microcredit of the last few years.” Another, as-yet unpublished DFID study on microfinance in Africa is said to reach similar conclusions but, according to the Guardian, the department has already locked in funding to expand African microfinance programs.

Christian Aid has blasted the anticipated UK tax deal with Switzerland, saying it will undermine efforts to tackle international tax dodging, which the NGO estimates costs poor countries $160 annually, “far more” than the amount of aid they receive. “Poor countries lack the political and economic clout to do such deals with Switzerland – but they too lose billions as a result of money being illegally hidden in tax havens,” according to a Christian Aid press release. “And just like the UK, they need that money to fund vital public services such as schools, hospitals and justice systems.”  The statement calls on G20 countries to put a stop to “the tax haven secrecy exemplified by Switzerland” by forging “a new system of automatic information exchange between Governments – including those of poor countries – to help them to detect when citizens hide wealth offshore.”

Like Christian Aid, the French government does not like Switzerland’s so-called Rubik plan – which Germany has accepted and the UK looks set to do the same – that allows Swiss banks to retain their secrecy while falling into line with European tax rules. “We understand the choices made by Germany and Great Britain who, not so long ago, held similar positions to our own,” a French finance ministry source told Le Monde. “It’s only human to want the money right away.” But the source said transparency remains the French priority. Meanwhile, a number of African governments are reportedly looking to set up their own tax havens in order to “modernise the African financial sector.”

Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs paints a picture of the world economy in which the super-rich have used the “global tax competition” argument to secure tax cuts from their home governments and tax havens have multiplied despite feeble protests from politicians: “In the end the poor are doubly hit, first by global market forces, then by the ability of the rich to park money at low taxes in hideaways around the world.” One of the essential steps he believes governments must take in order to end the current economic crisis is the balancing of budgets “in no small part through tax increases on high personal incomes and international corporate profits that are shielded by loopholes and overseas tax havens.”

Hexayurt Project director Vinay Gupta writes “we must acknowledge that the field of human rights has become a gridlock of rights, entitlements, preferences and theology. Rights directly conflict with each-other, as in the right to property directly conflicting with the right to assured access to water. Without a global jurisdiction, no government can enforce any kind of coherent rights doctrine, particularly in the face of borderless problems like terrorism or environmental crisis.”

University of South Carolina geographer Edward Carr argues development (as well as humanitarian) workers need to think more about their own work’s environmental impact: “While an intervention appropriate to a community’s current needs may result in improvements to human well-being in the short term, the changes brought on by that intervention may be maladaptive in ten or twenty years and end up costing the community much more than it gained initially.”

Latest Developments, August 17

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The Guardian reports on new research regarding the death of former UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961, which suggests his “plane was shot down over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) 50 years ago, and the murder covered up by the British colonial authorities.” Among the new pieces of evidence are telegrams from the days before Hammarskjöld’s death “which illustrate US and British anger at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary-general ordered on behalf of the Congolese government against a rebellion backed by western mining companies and mercenaries in the mineral-rich Katanga region” and interviews with eyewitnesses describing a second plane firing on the ill-fated UN one. “Suddenly we saw another aircraft approach the bigger aircraft at greater speed and release fire which appeared as a bright light,” one man recounted and another said: “There were some who witnessed the crash and they were taken away and imprisoned.”

Some of the biggest British banks – the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC – are investing hundreds of millions in companies that produce cluster bombs, despite the UK’s obligation under an international treaty banning the devices. According to the Convention on Cluster Munitions which came into effect in the UK last year, ratifying countries must not assist or encourage the production of such weapons. But the Independent’s Jerome Taylor writes that a loophole allows for investment in companies such as Alliant Techsystems and Lockheed Martin as long as the financial backing does not go directly towards manufacturing the bombs: “None of these investments is illegal. But they will lead to further concerns about the moral behaviour of the banking industry at a time of public anger over its role in the credit crisis and bankers’ bonuses.” Only Belgium, Ireland, Luxemburg and New Zealand have implemented legislation forbidding direct or indirect financing of cluster munitions.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced plans to nationalize the country’s gold industry in order to retain control over the increasingly valuable resource. “We have close to 12 or 13 billion of dollars in gold reserves,” according to Chavez. “We can’t allow it to continue to be taken away.” In a less radical move, the Tanzanian government is trying to increase its share of mining profits by collecting four-percent royalties on exports, up from the current three.

Chatham House has just released a European Parliament-commissioned report entitled “The Effects of Oil Companies’ Activities on the Environment, Health and Development in sub-Saharan Africa.” The study concentrates on the region’s top two producers, Nigeria and Angola, and rattles off a list of the industry’s negative environment and social impacts.“While oil companies are implementing certain measures to address these impacts, corporate social responsibility activities largely remain piecemeal and short-term, community engagement is inadequate and requirements for accountability and transparency are either insufficient or not enforced.” Moreover, over the last decade in Nigeria, “the way that oil corporations chose to engage with local communities through development projects caused inter-community conflicts in the Delta between communities participating in such projects and those that did not.”

The Canadian government is threatening legal action against Michaela Keyserlingk, the widow of a man who died of asbestos-related cancer, because she is using the ruling Conservative Party of Canada’s logo in an online campaign against her country’s “hypocrisy in exporting chrysotile asbestos to the developing world, while guarding against its use at home.” The offending, logo-appropriating banner ad, designed by her son, reads: “Canada is the only western country that still exports deadly asbestos!’’ Keyserlingk says she will take the ad down if she can meet with a senior member of the government to discuss the asbestos export policy. In June, Canada sided with Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to prevent chrysotile asbestos from being added to the UN’s Rotterdam Convention’s list of hazardous materials, a measure that would have required exporting countries to warn buyers of potential health risks.

The Canada-Colombia bilateral free trade agreement which came into effect this week “is a global precedent and will be closely watched,” according to the Canadian Council for International Co-operation Gauri Sreenivasan. What makes the treaty unique is the provision that both parties must produce annual parliamentary reports on the human rights impacts of the deal in both countries. But Sreenivasan worries the absence to this point of specific details on how the governments will live up to their duties may justify fears the reports, the first of which are due in May 2012, will be “mere public relations exercises.”  Nevertheless, she concludes: “The opportunity is there to ensure the reports can be a tool for greater accountability, highlighting that states have obligations not just to international trade rules, but to international human rights law.”

University of Virginia historian and former US Department of State staffer Philip Zelikow argues “the domestic-foreign dichotomy is anachronistic” and “foreign policies should focus on how to harmonise “domestic” policies.” He says the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks is an example of how “a traditionally conceived foreign policy negotiation founders on the inability to reconcile domestic policies.” Zelikow has little patience for high-profile summits that give pride of place to heads of state and foreign ministry officials, envisioning instead “a model of distributed foreign policymaking, in which many ministries and non-governmental organisations will move into the foreground of diplomacy.”

The Overseas Development  Institute’s Jonathan Glennie argues the “widespread public revulsion” caused by a video in which a bloodied Malaysian student was mugged during the London riots suggests “the British want to see decency and ethics at the core of national policy and community strategy.” This observation leads him to ask: “Why not, then, on the international stage? Should we not be equally ashamed when our government or companies act unethically in foreign countries? Or do our ethics stop at the border?” He has concerns about promoting international cooperation using national self-interest arguments, such as increased trade or greater security, because “appealing to self-interest entrenches the traditional position that national interests should generally predominate over ethical conduct.” Instead, he calls for ethics-based arguments supported by tangible evidence in order to “make the case that a country should never act unethically, any more than a person should.”

As for why people do evil things, the University of Exeter’s Alex Haslam writes in the Guardian that the classic Milgram experiments which took place 50 years ago this month remain important not so much for highlighting the “banality of evil” but for raising the question of “why participants identify with the authority rather than with the victim, and hence are willing to follow him down the destructive path he sketches out.” Haslam believes ordinary people commit organized, terrible acts “not because they were blindly obeying orders but because they were working creatively towards the goals of a leadership with which they identified.” In other words, atrocities “involve not just passive obedience but also dynamic followership.”

In yet another round of the “aid vs. foreign direct investment” debate, Christian Aid’s Dereje Alemayehu writes: “Can we realistically rely on foreign investors to deliver development? The amount they steal through aggressive tax evasion is at least fourfold what comes in as aid. I can’t see how ending aid would make them change their behaviour. I have nothing against Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), but let us make a distinction between scavengers and investors. And in Africa, we have more of the former.”