The ‘Other’, Older Palestinian Coup D’etat

Global Intelligence News

By Nicola Nasser*

Failing to substantiate for the President of the autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, a credible “legal” basis to extend his term from the Basic Law, which is the constitutional terms of reference that govern the rotation of power and the renewal of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the PA, Abbas in his capacity as the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) convened the rubber stamping Fatah –dominated Central Council (CC) of the PLO in the West Bank city of Ramallah to elect him also President of the State of Palestine on November 23.

The move could have been the last “constitutional” resort to extend his term as PA president before it expires on January 9 next year in order to secure himself as the supreme “legitimate” authority on Palestinian decision –making in the context of the “make – or – break” bloody wrangling with the rival Hamas on the leadership of the Palestinian national movement.
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Popularity: 44% [?]

Q&A: ‘We Have to Develop Our Modern Sharia’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Abderrahim El Ouali interviews MOSTAFA HANNAOUI, founder of the Rights and People project

CASABLANCA, Dec 4 (IPS) – A unique human rights project has been recently set up to empower more than 300 million people in the Arab world to campaign for their individual human rights, according to Mostafa Hannaoui.

Hannaoui, the founder of the Rights and People project, has the vision of providing Arabic-speaking people with the knowledge they need to engage in a region-wide debate on rights issues.

Central to his project will be open access to information about the use of the death penalty in the 24-country region and reporting the day-to-day struggle for the observance of the most fundamental of all rights, the right to life.

IPS: You recently announced the founding of a new abolitionist project called Rights and People. What are you aspiring to achieve?

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Popularity: 19% [?]

Middle East Concerns About India – Pakistan Tensions

Global Intelligence News
Read the Article as Originally Published on Middle East Analyst

By: Meir Javedanfar

30/11/2008

The recent terrorist attacks in India should be viewed with major concern in the Middle East. After the weekend’s events, its a question of when, not if India retaliates against Pakistan.

However such an attack will force Islamabad to pull its forces away from the Afghani border, thus enabling Al Qaeda to expand its operations in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, tensions between India and Pakistan will mean that Barack Obama will have to focus his efforts there, as soon as he enters office, or even before. This could reduce US involvement and focus on the Iranian nuclear program, the situation in Iraq and the Israeli Palestinian peace process. In all cases, conservative, anti-peace parties could make use of the reduced US focus to expand their activities.

There is also the economic angle. There are hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis living abroad, due to troubles at home. These troubles could send them fleeing in larger numbers, thus putting more strain on the economies of Middle Eastern countries, especially those belonging to the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council.

Iran in particular has much to worry when it comes to its economy. It was placing much hope on the peace pipeline running through Pakistan and India. It was hoping that through the sale of gas to these two energy hungry giants, it could increase its income and political leverage in the region. With relations between India and Pakistan worsening, this now seems much less likely.

The current crisis between India and Pakistan is not just a test for Barack Obama. Its a challenge for the entire international community, including the Middle East. Despite the difficulties ahead, Middle Eastern countries, especially those who have leverage over Pakistan, should try to contain the current situation by pressuring Islamabad to curb the activities of terrorists on its soil. Saudi Arabia could lead the region in this case. Having emerged as the recent rescuer to Pakistan’s financial crisis, it could use its leverage over Islamabad. After Washington, Riyadh is the second biggest door opener in corridors of power in Pakistan. This could be put into good use.

The current crisis can also be viewed as the first test for global multilateral diplomacy as a tool to resolve crisis in the post Bush era. The international community should try not to fail.

© Copyright 2008 Meir Javedanfar – Middle East Analyst. All rights reserved.

Popularity: 31% [?]

POLITICS-US: Realists to Reign

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Analysis by Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Nov 27 (IPS) – Less than two months before taking office, President-elect Barack Obama is making clear that realists — some more identified with Republicans and the military than with Democrats — are likely to rule the incoming administration’s foreign policy roost, at least at the outset.

While Obama is expected to formally unveil his Cabinet-level national-security picks Monday, a plethora of leaks to the media over the past week has made it virtually certain that Pentagon chief Robert Gates will remain at his current post for at least a year; Sen. Hillary Clinton will be nominated as secretary of state; and ret. Marine Gen. James L. Jones will become the new president’s national security adviser.

In addition, ret. Adm. Dennis Blair appears to be Obama’s choice as the director of national intelligence (DNI), while Susan Rice, a former top Africa policy aide under President Bill Clinton, will be made ambassador to the United Nations, a post that some modern presidents have accorded Cabinet rank.
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Popularity: 15% [?]

TRADE: Report Sees Bonanza for U.S., Iran if Sanctions Scrapped

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (IPS) – Think of it as a stimulus package without deficit spending: Were the United States to normalise trade relations with Iran and were the Islamic Republic to liberalise its economy, Washington could cut its fuel costs and add tens of billions of dollars to its economy, say U.S. exporters.

Such moves could lower world oil prices by as much as 10 percent, the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) says in a report aimed at the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Obama, who is to take office in January, has signaled willingness to explore new approaches to his country’s long standoff with Iran. During his election campaign, opponents lambasted Obama for favouring appeasement at a time when Washington seeks to tighten the screws on Tehran for its alleged support of terrorism and nuclear ambitions.
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Popularity: 27% [?]

U.S.: Hemispheric Group Calls for Major Changes in Americas Policy

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (IPS) – An elite inter-American commission sponsored by a think tank that is considered close to likely key policy-makers in the administration of President-elect Barack Obama is calling for sharp break in U.S. policy toward Latin America, a substantial opening toward Cuba, greater diplomatic engagement with Venezuela, and a major reassessment of its war on drugs.

In a 32-page report entitled ”Rethinking U.S.-Latin American Relations” released by the Brookings Institution Monday, the 20-member ”Partnership for the Americas Commission” is urging Obama, among other things, to lift all restrictions on travel to Cuba by U.S, citizens and take other steps to ease the nearly 50-year-old U.S. embargo against Havana, and to put far greater emphasis on reducing demand for drugs at home and the export of guns to Mexico.

The Commission, which was co-chaired by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and Washington’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Thomas Pickering, is also calling on the U.S. Congress to phase out tariffs on ethanol imports from Latin America and subsidies on corn-based ethanol here as part of a larger initiative to develop sustainable energy resources, combat climate change, and foster greater regional integration.
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Popularity: 22% [?]

HEALTH-AFRICA: Who Is To Blame for the Crisis?

Global Intel Net / IPS

Kristin Palitza

BAMAKO, Nov 18 (IPS) – Health systems on the continent are riddled with inadequate policies, strategies, lack of institutional capacity, poor scientific review mechanisms and weak funding for research in the public and private sector, said Luis Sambo, regional director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in of Africa.

What makes matters worse is a ”human resource crisis throughout the continent, based on lack of training, capacity shortages and migration of skilled health carers, Sambo further explained. Other challenges are limited access to technologies, such as Information Communication Technology (ICT), and weak physical infrastructure,” he added.

Sambo was speaking at the WHO Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health which opened in Bamako, Mali, on Monday.

Although African health experts generally agree with Sambo that the continent’s health systems face many challenges, many place the blame for the situation not on a ”knowledge gap”, as Sambo put it, but on the control of international institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), on national policy making in developing countries.
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Popularity: 18% [?]

POLITICS-US: The Day Character Finally Eclipsed Colour

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS

Bankole Thompson

DETROIT, Michigan, Nov 10 (IPS) – Last Tuesday’s ascension of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States — the first African American in history to command the White House — sent a shock wave around the world that a political change of such magnitude could happen in a nation often traumatised by racism.

But observers and civil rights deputies see Obama as simply the product of a dream made public on Aug. 28, 1963, before the March on Washington when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pleaded with the United States that he hoped one day his children would not be hindered by the colour of their skin. Instead King said his children should be judged based on the content of their character.

The son of a black man from the East African nation of Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, Obama’s massive defeat of Republican Sen. John McCain — capturing 364 electoral votes to McCain’s 162 — is being viewed in the context of King’s didactic ”I Have a Dream” speech delivered 40 years ago.

”It’s a really important watershed and a climatic moment which shows that change has come,” said former King top aide Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr. in a phone interview with IPS from Bethlehem in the West Bank. ”It was already in the hearts of people that the election of Barack Obama brought out the best in people. It was not unrelated to the difficult campaign and battle we had in the 1960s.”
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Popularity: 12% [?]

POLITICS-US: Religious Right Down but Not Out

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS

Analysis by Bill Berkowitz*

OAKLAND, California, Nov 6 (IPS) – The election of Sen. Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States will not mark the end of the religious right.

Although many in the mainstream media will write and talk about the movement’s imminent demise, that demise is not likely to occur in the near, or distant, future. More relevant questions are how the religious right will behave during an Obama administration, and what steps the movement will take to revivify its disappointed, dispirited and angry ground troops.

While Obama’s victory was a major defeat, several religious right-backed state initiatives passed, including ballot measures banning same sex-marriage in Florida, Arizona, and California — which could nullify the California Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year allowing same-sex marriage.

However, several anti-abortion measures went down in defeat, including South Dakota’s draconian ban, which lost by more than 10 points; the effort to pass a parental notification of abortion for minors initiative in California, which failed for the third time; and Colorado’s controversial ”Personhood Amendment”, which would have defined a person as ”any human being from the moment of fertilisation” and was rejected by an overwhelming margin.
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Popularity: 10% [?]

DEVELOPMENT: Poor Hit by Recession and Tax Havens

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Oct 27 (IPS) – With signs of a recession preoccupying policy-makers in industrialised countries, prospects for the success of an international conference on providing finance to the world’s poor do not appear high.

The United Nations sponsored event, beginning next month in the Qatari capital Doha, comes at a time when many governments, particularly in Europe, are reassessing commitments they have made to improve the lot of the most vulnerable.

Some of the European Union’s largest member states have recently deemed the EU’s plans to combat climate change, a phenomenon that affects poor countries disproportionately, too costly given the changing economic circumstances. Foreign aid budgets, already shrinking, are likely to suffer because of the same rationale.

Although the EU has been credited by many anti-poverty activists with playing a constructive role during a related conference on improving the effectiveness of development aid in Accra, Ghana, in September, the same campaigners feel that the bloc’s preparations for Doha leave much to be desired.
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Popularity: 11% [?]

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