Category: Media perspectives

Gaza – the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe

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By Richard Falk

This material below was distributed by John Whitbeck, distinguished American lawyer and author, living in Paris, and doing his best to keep a group concerned with world affairs informed about latest developments, especially inthe Middle East. I also add a slightly edited text of a message sent by Robert Stiver from Hawaii, who has exhibited consistent empathy for the suffering of the Palestinian people.

My press release below, although far less emotional than the cri de coeur that Robert Stiver wrote, issues from the same place of urgent concern for the brave and resolute people of Gaza. I hope that Robert is wrong however when he ends with self-tormenting words of despair: “What to do, in the name of common justice? I know not; it seems useless, all useless.” Such feelings of futility are quite understandable, but let us do all within our power to make sure that this unfolding catastrophe ends before its full tragic character is totally realized.

It hardly needs to be observed that the silence of the United Nations and the global media is a continuing disgrace, particularly given the pomp and circumstance of those mighty statesmen who self-righteously proclaim a new doctrine: ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) those whose survival and dignity is at stake due to crimes of state or as a result of natural catastrophe.

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Cutting edge Middle East news analysis edited by Oliver Miles
Web Arab News Digest

Gaza: a disgrace

According to a BBC report military action in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has been limited since the serious fighting a year ago in which about 170 Palestinians and six Israelis died. But tension remains high, as also between Hamas and Egypt where northern Sinai has been the scene of much fighting. Meanwhile living conditions for 1.7 million Gazans remain atrocious.Read More »

Malala and Eartha Kitt: Words that matter

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By Richard Falk

There are two ways of responding to an invitation from an American president. I recall that when Amory Lovins, the guru of market-oriented environmentalism, was asked about what was his main goal when invited to the White House to meet the president he responded self-assuredly: ‘To be invited back.” That is, be sure to say nothing that might so disturb the high and mighty to an extent that might jeopardize future invitations.

A positive reading of such an approach would point out that Lovins was just being realistic. If he hoped to have any influence at all in the future he needed to confine his present advice to an areas situated well within the president’s comfort zone. A less charitable interpretation would assume that what mattered to Lovins was the thrill of access to such an august portal of power.

Never receiving such an invitation, I had a lesser experience, but experienced similar temptations, being invited by a kind of institutional miscalculation to be the banquet speaker at West Point at the end of an international week at this elite military academy in which the cadets and representatives from a couple of hundred colleges had been fed the government line by top officials at the Pentagon and State Department.

The officer tasked with arranging the program decided that it might be more interesting to have for once a speaker who had a more critical outlook on the U.S. role in the world. I was invited, and accepted with mixed feelings of being both co-opted and challenged. It turns out that the seductive part of the occasion was to find myself housed in a suite normally reserved for the president or Secretary of Defense; it was luxurious and so spacious that it took me some time to locate the bedroom, although I did almost immediately find the fridge stocked with beer and food. First things first. Anyway, Read More »

Saudi Arabia withdraws from UN Security Council

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By Jonathan Power

Diplomats at the UN were amazed last week when Saudi Arabia did the unthinkable and turned down the seat it had just won on the Security Council.

The ten rotating seats – that join those of the Permanent Five (the US, UK, France, Russia and China) – are regarded as the most prestigious spots in international diplomacy.

Saudi Arabia had badly wanted that seat. But the moment it got the votes that handed it to it, it stepped back. The BBC reported that this created “shock and confusion”. The Russian Foreign Ministry called it “bewildering”. No state has done this before.

Saudi Arabia accused the UN of “double standards”. It pointed to the Security Council’s failure “to find a solution to the Palestinian cause for 65 years”. It also criticised the UN for its “failure” to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction, including Israel’s nuclear weapons. Strangely, in the light of a joint Russian-US accord on how to get rid of Syria’s chemical weapons that won the endorsement of the Security Council, Saudi Arabia accused the UN of allowing the Syrian government “to kill its own people with chemical weapons….without confronting it or imposing any deterrent sanctions.”

But in the next two years there will be many other issuesRead More »

Israel’s politics of deflection: Theory and practice

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By Richard Falk

General Observations

During my period as the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Palestine on behalf of the Human Rights Council I have been struck by the persistent efforts of Israel and its strong civil society adjuncts to divert attention from the substance of Palestinian grievances or the consideration of the respective rights of Israel and Palestine under international law. I have also observed that many, but by not means all, of those who represent the Palestinians seem strangely reluctant to focus on substance or to take full advantage of opportunities to use UN mechanisms to challenge Israel on the terrain of international law and morality.

This Palestinian reluctance is more baffling than are the Israeli diversionary tactics. It seems clear that international law supports Palestinian claims on the major issues in contention: borders, refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, resources (water, land), statehood, and human rights. Then why not insist on resolving the conflict by reference to international law with such modifications as seem mutually beneficial?

Of course, those representing the Palestinians in international venues are aware of these opportunities, and are acting on the basis of considerations that in their view deserve priority. It is disturbing that this passivity on the Palestinian side persists year after year, decade after decade. Read More »

Any attack on Syria will be counterproductive and illegal – a result of failed conflict management

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TFF PressInfo
September 2, 2013

For the discerning journalists, editors and citizens

Summary
• Any U.S. attack on Syria will be a gross violation of international law, including the UN Charter.
• al-Assad’s admission of UN inspectors obviously was seen by Washington as an obstacle for its war plans.
• An attack will come only as a consequence of deliberately ignored opportunities for professional, impartial mediation and peace-making, the lack of backing of Kofi Annan’s plan of April 2012 in particular.
• An attack can under no circumstances be seen in the light of a responsibility to protect since it will cause even more violence and human suffering throughout Syria.
• Again, we see how the vast majority of people in conflict zones who do not resort to violence are being abandoned.
• Any attack is likely to have grave consequences for the region as a whole.
• For these reasons any attack must be condemned as illegal and counterproductive.
• Governments and citizens everywhere must now use whatever time there is to persuade the U.S. to back down.

1. Immediately after President al-Assad accepted UN inspectors, Washington declared it was ”too little too late”. Read More »

Why Western media frames civilian areas as “Hezbollah strongholds”

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By Sharmine Narwani

Beirut was thrown into turmoil on Thursday evening as a terrorist attack against residents of Dahiyeh – a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital and a predominantly Shia neighborhood – threatened to draw the country into a region wide crisis.

As conflicting news reports began to eke out in the immediate aftermath of the city’s deadliest car bombing in eight years, there was a disconcerting congruity in headlines beaming out from western capitals – and it had nothing to do with facts.

In lock-step, western media was calling the scene of the crime a “Hezbollah stronghold” – Continue reading here.

What if a Russian Snowden?

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By Richard Falk

‘Political crimes’ are non-extraditable and Snowden’s transfer to the United States for prosecution would have been a setback for human rights and international law

What is most troubling about how the Snowden case has played out diplomatically and via the media is the almost total refusal to focus attention on the central legal, moral, and political issues. The United States Government from the outset has acted as if it is entitled to have Snowden transferred to its custody because he is a fugitive from American criminal justice.

Pursuing this line of reasoning, Washington has exerted pressure on Latin American governments not to grant Snowden asylum and expressed disappointment with Hong Kong, China, and Russia for their refusal to comply with the U.S. request. The assumption has been that this is a simple instance of cooperative law enforcement, and it is thus unfriendly and unreasonable for another government to shelter Snowden by a grant of asylum.

Barack Obama has underscored the importance he gives to this issue by canceling a scheduled a high profile summit meeting in September with Vladimir Putin. He even contends that Russian non-cooperation in relation to Snowden exhibits a ‘Cold War mentality’ that backslides from recent instances of Russian-American cooperation such as after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Fairly construed, it would seem that it was Obama, not Putin, who was guilty of Cold War posturing. Read More »

Five theses about Assange-Manning-Snowden

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By Johan Galtung

[1] The leaks are not about “whistle-blowing”, but a nonviolent, civil disobedient, fight against huge social evils.

Whistle-blowing, warning, presupposes that somebody can be warned, in fact wants to be warned, and is in a position to do something. Obviously those who can do something about US foreign policy, who have the power–legislative, the Congress, particularly the Senate; executive, State Department-Pentagon-White House; judiciary the Supreme Court; economically the giant banks; culturally the mainstream media – know perfectly well what is going on: these are all efforts to hang on to imperial economic, military, political and cultural power. But they do not want change. And those who want a change, a major part of the US population, allied populations and most of the rest of the world have been warned, but are to a large extent powerless. So they believe; but see thesis [5].

The whistle-blowing discourse is much too optimistic. Read More »

Global Big Brother and the Snowden Hollywood chase

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By Richard Falk

The post below is a major revision of another piece on the Snowden Affair that was published in AlJazeera English recently. I have dwelled on the pursuit of Snowden because it raises such vital issues of principle, but also because so much of the public discourse has proceeded on a mistaken understanding of the applicable international law. Beyond the legal guidelines on extradition and asylum that are applicable, there are considerations of world order: protecting dissent and pluralism in a global setting in which the principal political actors are sovereign states that increasingly rely on secrecy and security rationales to constrain democratic open spaces.

What Snowden did was to expose this dynamic of constraint in relation to secret surveillance programs administered by private, for profit, contractors. Also exposed was the ‘Global Big Brother’ implications of extending surveillance to foreign societies and their governments. It is these questions that should receive our attention, and the Hollywood circus chase of Edward Snowden should cease for humanitarian and political reasons.

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I find the discourse surrounding the Snowden Affair bewildering. The latest reports suggest that the United States is using maximum political leverage, including coercive diplomacy, to discourage small Latin American countries from granting asylum to Edward Snowden. It is also complaining that Russia is giving Snowden ‘a propaganda platform’ and expressing its ‘disappointment’ with China/Hong Kong for its earlier refusal to expel Snowden back to the United States to face charges once his passport was cancelled.Read More »

Whither Turkey: First thoughts after Gezi Park

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By Richard Falk

Written in Turkey, June 30, 2013

Preliminary Disclaimers

As the dramatic Turkish protests subside, or declare an intermission, this is a time to take stock, but cautiously.

Precisely when political reality explodes in unexpected ways, pundits come along suggesting comparisons, offering hastily constructed explanations, and cite influences and antecedents. Surprise is suppressed by most ‘experts’ who do all that they can to hide these awkward exposures of how little they knew about the explosive forces in society, which erupted without any advance notice. After the explosion these wannabe gurus step forth with undiminished confidence to tell us with learned demeanor why and how it happened, why it was almost inevitable to turn out as it did, and the most arrogant and often most influential even dare tell us what to expect next, and why it is good or bad.

While appreciating this fact of public life, let us take note that even the most wily intelligence agencies, with billions at their disposal, total command over mountains of secret data, running roughshod over the privacy and legal rights of even their own citizens and others to get it right on behalf of their government employers, still invariably miss ‘the jumps’ of change that are the real stuff of history.

Why are the historians of change so bad at anticipating these jumps of history? Partly, for the same reasons that even the most sophisticated vulcanists cannot predict with any accuracy an earthquake or volcano – as in politics, the tipping points in nature and society are rarely anticipated by interpreting scientific trends or through the analysis of incremental changes, but generally disclose themselves with an unforeseeable abruptness.

In reaction, an appropriate level of humility and tentativeness goes a long way, acknowledging these limits of understanding, suggesting hesitantly and explaining as best we can such charismatic events when they occur, taking due account of their distinctiveness and admitting our inability to access deeper meaning that lie beneath the surface of cascades of events.

Another type of difficulty associated with these interpretative ventures is the bias associated with the observer’s gaze. We are habitually trained and experienced to look at politics from above, whether our perspective is that of elites or counter-elites, but revolutionary impulses come, if and when they come, almost invariably from pressures generated from below, that is, from the ‘multitude,’ pressures that materialize by suddenly bursting forth as happenings that startle and reverberate (e.g. Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the velvet revolution, the Jasmine Revolution, Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street).

The Gezi Park Protests

Was Gezi Park in Istanbul such a happening, as many here in Turkey hope? Read More »