Month: October 2009

Countries across the globe that are flouting international law and violating refugees’ rights.

Countries across the globe are flouting international law and violating refugees’ rights, reveals the recently released World Refugee Survey 2009. Thailand – whose navy dragged disabled boats full of Rohingya refugees from Burma out to sea and abandoned them – is one culprit; along with South Africa, where xenophobic mob attacks have killed dozens of foreigners and driven tens of thousands from their homes; Kenya, which has forced hundreds of Somalis back over the border, often beating and bribing them in the process; Egypt, whose border guards shot and killed 30 African migrants who were trying to cross into Israel; Turkey, which caused the death of four people by forcing them to try to swim across a swift river to Iraq; and Malaysia, where immigration officials have been selling deported refugees into slavery.

On the plus side, Brazil, Costa Rica and Ecuador have all created schemes to enable the swift integration of refugees into their societies. Palestinian Ibrahim Said Abu-Zahra, recently arrived in Brazil, enthuses: ‘I am very happy. I have documentation. now I am Brazilian, and I want to live in this country forever.’

NI

According to schedule, the economic stabilization program for Iceland will be reviewed by the executive board of the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday next week. The updated program was sent to the IMF’s managing director yesterday.

If the board accepts the program, Iceland will be granted access to the second part of the IMF’s loan, USD 168 million (EUR 104 million), and a quarter of the loans from the Nordic countries and Poland, USD 675 million (EUR 419 million), Morgunbladid reports.

According to Fréttabladid, Mark Flanagan, who supervises Iceland’s affairs at the IMF, said in an interview on the IMF website that Iceland’s foreign debt is higher than expected when the fund first started negotiating with Iceland.

However, Iceland’s economy can handle the debt, Flanagan added, explaining that it will decrease rapidly when assets of the failed banks are sold and their debt written off to a large extent.

In explanation of the delay in reviewing Iceland’s economic stabilization program, Flanagan stated it had been caused first by an unstable political environment and the elections in spring, and then the delay of agreements with foreign lenders, which made the funding of loans more complicated.

Left-Green MP Lilja Mósesdóttir interprets the IMF’s postponement of loan disbursements to Iceland as such that the fund has canceled its economic stabilization program with Iceland unilaterally.

She told Morgunbladid that Iceland had fulfilled its part of the program while the IMF did not and therefore a new economic stabilization program is needed.

In an interview with RÚV, Mósesdóttir explained that as the debt load on the national economy is higher than expected in November, when the economic stabilization program was made, the program must be changed.

Interests must be lowered, the loan requirement reevaluated and cutbacks softened, she argued, adding that if the IMF doesn’t accept radical changes to the program, the fund has proven unable to assist Iceland.

In Mósesdóttir’s view, the IMF should assist Icelandic authorities on renegotiating with foreign lenders on lower interests and write-offs to spare the state treasury and the national economy from insolvency, which might happen as soon as next year.

Mósesdóttir said that, among other matters, this applies to Icesave. She has not yet decided whether she will support the government’s new Icesave bill. First she would like to see how the state is supposed to pay interest rates with little or no economic growth.

IR

Fragile X tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) is a recently recognized condition, which is actually one of the most prevalent heritable neurodegenerative diseases. It is assumed that the condition is caused by deficiency for the protein Pur-alpha, which is essential for normal neural function. Structural studies undertaken by a team under the leadership of Dr. Dierk Niessing of the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Gene Center at Ludwigs-Maximilians-University (LMU) have now determined the three-dimensional structure of Pur-alpha, and gained insights into the molecular function of the protein. The findings provide a possible basis for the development of an effective therapy for the disease.(PNAS Early Edition, 21. Oktober 2009)

Most FXTAS patients are males, and symptoms of the condition become manifest around the age of 55. As the disease progresses, patients develop tremor in their hands and also show ataxia, i.e. they have difficulty maintaining their balance when they move, and therefore have a tendency to fall. Quite often these deficits are accompanied by cognitive defects and dementia.

The underlying cause of FXTAS is a mutation in the gene for FMRP (Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein). This mutation is found on the X chromosome in one out of 800 men, and involves abnormal expansions of a DNA sequence composed of repeats of the base triplet CGG. Healthy people have between 5 and 54 copies of this sequence, while those who will develop FXTAS are born with between 55 and 200 repeats. Expansion of the triplet sequence beyond 200 copies leads to Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), which is the second most common cause of hereditary mental retardation after Down’s syndrome. FXTAS itself is apparently triggered by a lack of the protein Pur-alpha. This protein binds to the CGG sequences in FMR messenger RNAs (mRNA). The excessive numbers of CGG triplets found in the mutant FMRP mRNA essentially bind so much Pur-alpha that insufficient amounts are available for its normal cellular function.

BN

By Soner Ça?aptay

According to Forbes Magazine, Turkey, with 13 billionaires, counts among the top 11 countries with the most billionaires, tied with Brazil. Before the financial crisis hit last year, Turkey had 35 billionaires. Turkey is rich in billionaires because it has a billionaire-making machine: Istanbul, the country’s business capital and home to over 40 percent of the Turkish economy.

For more than three decades, Istanbul’s unique geography has nurtured the emergence of a social class of billionaires benefiting from government contracts. As the world’s only city divided between two continents, Istanbul has twice seen the construction of suspension bridges uniting the country across the Bosphorus Strait, which bifurcates the city. Those bridge projects, completed in 1973 and 1988, respectively, facilitated massive economic growth: The unification of Istanbul’s parts has twice produced a city economy larger than the sum of its parts. That, in turn, led to the emergence of two generations of billionaires. Lucrative government contracts for the construction of bridges and beltways and land speculation deals facilitated the billionaire-making process each time the city built a bridge.

Now, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP’s, plans to build a third bridge across the Bosphorus, a move that would further unite Istanbul’s disparate halves and spur economic growth in Turkey’s business capital. The AKP’s move, however, also promises the birth of a third and starkly different generation of Turkish billionaires – one beholden to the AKP’s political, social and foreign policy agenda.

Turkey’s billionaires have traditionally been the standard-bearers of secular, Western, liberal values in Turkey, loyal to the secular governments that produced them. In the 1970s, the building of the First Bosphorus Bridge helped pro-government businesses, which benefited from the emergent synergy of Istanbul’s economy created by the bridge’s beltway, which united the city for the very first time.

Turkey’s first class of billionaires coalesced in the business association the Turkish Association of Businessmen and Industrialists, or TÜSIAD, which became a voice for secular, Western Turkey. TÜSIAD promoted free-market economics, and once that was set in place, pushed for European Union accession in the 1990s and 2000s. It also became a patron of Western values in the country, promoting democratic freedoms, setting up world-class universities, and funding cultural activities ranging from Istanbul’s jazz and film festivals to private museums that brought to the Turks Picasso and Dali exhibits. TÜSIAD became the promoter and safety valve of European Turkey.

HDN

What’s new in Washington’s relationship with the international organisation? Hassan Nafaa* seeks some answers

The opening of the annual session of the UN General Assembly no longer stirs much interest. Were it not for the meetings held on the fringes by controversial leaders, or the behind-the-scenes mediation undertaken by heads of state seeking a solution to some crisis or other, the occasion would probably pass unnoticed by the general public. This year’s inaugural session was an exception. What lent it a unique flavour was the presence of US President Barack Obama. Less than a year ago Obama was voted into power as the US’s 44th president on the basis of a campaign that championed change. The international community is now keen to learn what type of change he will bring to US foreign policy and, in particular, to Washington’s relations with the UN which had reached an all-time low under his predecessor.

The inauguration of the UN’s new session witnessed two events that reflected some of the nature of this change. The first was Obama’s address to the General Assembly, very different in tone and substance from what that international gathering is used to hearing from US presidents. The second was the Security Council session, headed personally by Obama, dedicated to the discussion of a draft resolution on the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, envisioned as a first step towards creating a world free of nuclear weapons. As this was the first time a US president had ever chaired a Security Council session, the event was of undeniable symbolic and material significance. Many felt that the US had truly turned a new page in the history of its relations with the UN. But what does Obama intend to write on this page?

Perhaps the best approach to answering this question is to examine Washington’s changing relationship with the international organisation in a kind of historical flashback:

The first scene opens in the aftermath of World War I, which the US was compelled to enter in spite of the isolationist policy it had adhered to since the outset of the 19th century. The protagonist, here, is president Woodrow Wilson who, at the Versailles peace conference, personally spearheaded the creation of the first international organisation concerned with the preservation of international peace and security. Wilson was not only the most enthusiastic cheerleader for the League of Nations, he was also the most instrumental in shaping the nascent organisation’s charter. Wilson headed the committee responsible for drafting it. However, this scene closes on a sad note. Wilson soon discovered that his vision was beyond the comprehension of the general run of American opinion. Congress refused to ratify the treaty, preventing the US from joining the League of Nations, which was one of the primary causes for that organisation’s frailty and eventual collapse.

* The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.

WA

by Joyce Marcel

If you’re like me, at some point in the past few years you’ve had the conversation about why there are so many dead bodies — fake dead bodies — on television.

We have dead bodies lying on slabs in the morgue on most of the “Law & Order” franchises — and there are three of them, plus endless reruns. We have three “CSI” (Crime Scene Investigation) franchises, one each in Las Vegas, Miami and New York. We have two naval crime shows, although only one has an autopsy component. And only one has Mark Harmon, which is reason enough for watching.

Then we have all the non-uniformed detective shows — the dead bodies battered, spattered, tossed, drowned, ripped apart or what have you just to jump-start the plot. Plus the British shows which pop up on PBS stations. Even “Inspector Lewis,” the upscale British mystery series set in the ancient town of Oxford, England, features an occasional conversation around a slab.

The television conversation usually segues into why there are so many reality shows. There are far too many of those, too, of course, although the torrent appears to be slowing down. Several really bad ones (how can they tell?) have been pulled off the air, although Hugh Hefner has three new girlfriends, so there’s that. There are even shows and Web sites that exist mostly to recap and/or make fun of all these shows. The recent Balloon Boy hoax is a good illustration of the damage these shows are doing.

Why is America endlessly entertained by all this? All this fake and staged reality? Is it because real reality hurts too much?

After all, this is a culture that has banished death from daily life. In the old days, homes had a “cooling room” where a relative’s body, washed and dressed, could rest while people paid their respects. Now people die mainly in hospitals, or, if they die at home, their bodies are whisked away by professionals.

Since death is a part of life — a terrifying part — we humans remain intensely curious about it. Can it be that the more it disappears from our lives, the more we crave to see it, know it, understand it, inure ourselves to it?

And reality shows? Well, if you’re dealing with real reality — which can include raising children, caring for elderly parents and trying to do the jobs of two or more people at work because the others have been “laid off for the good health of the company,” or you’re afraid of being laid off, or you’ve been laid off and your unemployment insurance is running out, or if you or a loved one is sick and facing bankruptcy at the hands of the medical establishment, or if you’re struggling with the death of a loved one who died in harm’s way, or if you’re homeless, or jobless or hungry, or… I can go on, but you know what I mean — then reality once removed may be all you can handle.

Can Americans no longer deal with real reality? Newspapers and television news think so. Afraid to offend, they are endlessly squeamish about showing real blood and guts. Remember the bodies falling from the World Trade Center on 9/11? Those images were the perfect icons of that horrible day. And they were quickly scrubbed from our sight. A few years later, when a sculptor recreated one of those images, there was a huge outcry against his work. The Bush administration tried to hide the photos of coffins returning from Iraq. Just recently, some newspapers ran a picture of a soldier dying in Afghanistan and faced a national outcry.

CD

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, Counterpunch

The double standard under which the Israeli government operates is too much for everyone except the brainwashed Americans. Even the very Israeli Jerusalem Post can see the double standard displayed by “all of Israel now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report”:

“This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We’re entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism.

“That’s the way it’s always been, that’s the way it was in Operation Cast Lead.

“And there are no limits on our right to self-defense. There is no such thing as ‘disproportionate.’

“We can deliberately destroy thousands of Gazan homes, the Gazan parliament, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior, courthouses, the only Gazan flour plant, the main poultry farm, a sewage treatment plant, water wells and God knows what else.

“Deliberately.

“Why? Because we’re better than them. Because we’re a democracy and they’re a bunch of Islamo-fascists. Because ours is a culture of life and theirs is a culture of death. Because they’re out to destroy us and all we are saying is give peace a chance.

“The Goldstones of the world call this hypocrisy, a double standard. How dare they! Around here, we call it moral clarity.”

A person would never read such as this in the New York Times or Washington Post or hear it from any US news source. Unlike Israeli newspapers, the US media is a complete mouthpiece for the Israel Lobby. Never a critical word is heard.

This will be even more the case now that the Israel Lobby, after years of effort, has succeeded in repealing the First Amendment by having the Hate Crime Bill attached to the recently passed military appropriations bill. This is the way the syllogism works: It is anti-semitic to criticize Israel. Anti-semitism is a hate crime. Therefore, to criticize Israel is a hate crime.

As the Jerusalem Post notes, this syllogism has “moral clarity.”

Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, stepped into the hate crime arena when he told Israel Army radio that the Goldstone report on Israel’s military assault on Gaza contains “some very serious details which need to be investigated.”

A year from now when the Anti-Defamation League has its phalanx of US Department of Justice (sic) prosecutors in place, Sawers would be seized and placed on trial. Diplomatic immunity means nothing to the US, which routinely invades other countries, executes their leaders or sends them to the Hague for trial as war criminals.

In the meantime, however, the Israeli government put Sawers and the UK government on notice that British support for the Goldstone Report would result in the destruction of the double standard that protects the West and Israel and create a precedent that would place the British in the dock for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“London,” declared the Israeli government, “could find itself in handcuffs if it supports the document [the Goldstone report].”

Once the DOJ’s hate crime unit us up and running, “self-hating Jews,” such as leaders of the Israeli peace movement and Haaretz and Jerusalem Post journalists, can expect to be indicted for anti-semitic hate crimes in US courts.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

CP

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

COLUMN: JAYATI GHOSH

Y.V. Reddy’s book, a reasoned critique of policies of unnecessary deregulation, is important in the context of the ongoing debate on financial sector reform in India.

THERE is no doubt that the financial sector in India was generally much less affected by the global financial crisis of the past year when compared with the situation in many other developed and developing countries. This is not to say that Indian finance was unaffected: there were wild swings in external capital flows (particularly portfolio flows) as well as in the stock market. And the credit crunch that was so evident in September 2008 may have abated for large corporates, but it continues to plague small producers in all major sectors. If anything, the lack of financial inclusion, which has been a major failing of institutional finance in India, was further intensified during the crisis.

Even so, the overall resilience of Indian banking is now the object of international interest. This outcome is seen to reflect the combination of a relatively cautious and calibrated approach to financial liberalisation (reflecting also the political equations that affect government policy in this regard); the continued presence and strengthening of public sector banks, which account for the majority of banking transactions in the country; and the recognition that in a developing country such as India banking and monetary policies need to serve a variety of social objectives.

Obviously, the central bank is crucial in all of this. Therefore, much attention has also been focussed on how exactly the Reserve Bank of India dealt with issues of monetary and capital account management and financial sector reform in the past five years, which was a relatively unusual period both globally and within the country.

Particularly, the role played by the then RBI Governor Yaga Venugopal Reddy has been widely noted because of his judicious approach to various financial liberalisation measures that were eagerly pushed by some sections of the Indian establishment. During his five-year tenure, the RBI displayed, as it now turns out, extremely effective responses, in terms of strengthening public sector banks by recapitalisation; preventing some of the financial “innovation” that allowed risk to be disguised rather than actually reduced; taming the overexposure of domestic banks to what are now seen as toxic assets globally; restraining the excessive bullishness of financial investors in real estate; regulating the activities of systemically important non-bank financial institutions; and speaking out against hasty and potentially risky attempts to liberalise the capital account of the balance of payments.

The RBI also argued (albeit unsuccessfully) against some practices that continue to be dubious, such as the Participatory Notes route for portfolio capital inflows. All these measures stood India in good stead not only by preventing overenthusiastic responses during the global boom, but also by reducing the negative impact of the global slump.

FL

From The Economist print edition

One reason that too many Arabs are poor is rotten education

A RECENT issue of Science, the weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was devoted to research into “Ardi” or Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4m-year-old hominid species whose discovery deepens the understanding of human evolution. These latest studies suggest, among other things, that rather than descending from a closely related species such as the chimpanzee, the hominid branch parted earlier than previously thought from the common ancestral tree.

In much of the Arab world, coverage of the research took a different spin. “American Scientists Debunk Darwin”, exclaimed the headline in al-Masry al-Youm, Egypt’s leading independent daily. “Ardi Refutes Darwin’s Theory”, chimed the website of al-Jazeera, the region’s most-watched television channel. Scores of comments from readers celebrated this news as a blow to Western materialism and a triumph for Islam. Two or three lonely readers wrote in to complain that the report had inaccurately presented the findings of the research.

The response to Ardi’s unearthing was not surprising. According to surveys, barely a third of Egyptian adults have ever heard of Charles Darwin and just 8% think there is any evidence to back his famous theory. Teachers, who might be expected to know better, seem equally sceptical. In a survey of nine Egyptian state schools, where Darwin’s ideas do form part of the curriculum for 15-year-olds, not one of more than 30 science teachers interviewed believed them to be true. At a private university in the United Arab Emirates, only 15% of the faculty thought there was good evidence to support evolution.

The strength of religious belief among Arabs partly explains their reluctance to accept the facts of evolution. Until recent reforms, state primary schools in Saudi Arabia devoted 31% of classroom time to religion, compared with just 20% for mathematics and science. A quarter of the kingdom’s university students devote the main part of their degree course to Islamic studies, more than in engineering, medicine and science put together. And despite changes to Saudi curriculums, religious study remains obligatory every year from primary school through to university.

Such choices carry a cost that goes beyond ignorance of Darwin. Arab countries now spend as much or more on education, as a share of GDP, than the world average. They have made great strides in eradicating illiteracy, boosting university enrolment and reducing gaps in education between the sexes.

But the gap in the quality of education between Arabs and other people at a similar level of development is still frightening. It is one reason why Arab countries suffer unusually high rates of youth unemployment. According to a recent study by a team of Egyptian economists, the lack of skills in the workforce largely explains why a decade of fast economic growth has failed to lift more people out of poverty.

The most rigorous comparative study of education systems, a survey called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) that comes out every four years, revealed in its latest report, in 2007, that out of 48 countries tested, all 12 participating Arab countries fell below the average. More disturbingly, less than 1% of students aged 12-13 in ten Arab countries reached an advanced benchmark in science, compared with 32% in Singapore and 10% in the United States. Only one Arab country, Jordan, scored above the international average, with 5% of its 13-year-olds reaching the advanced category.

Other comparative measures are equally alarming. A listing of the world’s top 500 universities, compiled annually by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, includes three South African and six Israeli universities, but not a single Arab one. The Swiss-based World Economic Forum ranks Egypt a modest 70th out of 133 countries in competitiveness, but in terms of the quality of its primary education system and its mathematics-and-science teaching, it slumps to 124th. Libya, despite an income of $16,000 a head, ranks an even more dismal 128th in the quality of its higher education, lower than dirt-poor Burkina Faso, with an average income of $577.

EM
(Submitted by reader)

By Farooq Ahmed

From the peak of Mount Arafat, the midday haze softened the Hijaz Mountains and revealed the severe beauty of the land surrounding Islam’s holiest city. For the briefest moment, the thousands of pilgrims around me – who were praying, reading from the Koran and shielding themselves from the unyielding sun – receded. I could convince myself that I stood alone atop this squat, inelegant mountain where the prophet of Islam delivered his final sermon 1,400 years ago. Sweat stung my eyes. Its odour permeated the two white cloths wrapped around me. I blinked, and the moment passed.

Such private flashes were rare on a pilgrimage shared with more than three million people from around the world. Also, in this land where I most certainly was his keeper, I had lost my younger brother. Our father, waiting for us back at the tent, would not be pleased.
. . .
Muslims are required to travel to Mecca in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to perform hajj at least once, if they reasonably can. The pilgrimage, which begins next month, is the single largest gathering on the planet.

On the spectrum of piety, I fall decidedly left of centre. And although I would never win a “World’s Best Muslim” award – for what he did as a law student on behalf of Guantánamo inmates, my brother is a far better candidate – I joined him, our more devout parents and a beloved uncle to undertake what I had been assured would be a life-changing trip.

I grew up not far from the geographic centre of the continental US, and performing the pilgrimage seemed untenable then. Living in New York as an adult, it seemed unwarranted, perhaps unnecessary. Still, the descriptions I read of hajj from sources as varied as Ibn Batuta, the Arabian explorer who journeyed from western Africa to China in the 14th century, and Malcolm X, primed me for the experience. When the opportunity came, I took it.

Our hajj group consisted primarily of middle-aged, upper-middle-class South Asian Americans like ourselves: that is to say, Indian and Pakistani doctors and engineers. Most had spent hefty sums of money securing “super deluxe” reservations guaranteeing well-appointed hotels and tents, comfortable travel and sanitised meals, thus ensuring minimal interaction with the supplicating masses – a Disneyland version of a pilgrimage. It sounded like the kind of spiritual journey that I could handle. Then my brother Abel (not his real name) decided to run off on our second day in the Hijaz mountains.

FT
(Submitted by reader)