Thursday, May 3, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Khaled Abu Toameh: How The Palestinian Authority Fights Corruption, and more


Gatestone Institute
In this mailing:

How The Palestinian Authority Fights Corruption

by Khaled Abu Toameh
May 2, 2012 at 5:00 am
Be the first of your friends to like this.
The Palestinian Authority government has also warned Palestinian journalists against helping Western correspondents cover the crackdown. If Abu Rihan were a Chinese dissident imprisoned in Beijing, his case would have been endorsed by human rights groups around the world and the mainstream media in the West. Had Abu Rihan been arrested by the Israeli authorities for such a crime, his story would most likely have made it to the front page of many respected newspapers. The Palestinian Authority does not want anyone to report about corruption and abuse of power out of fear that this would affect financial aid from the US, EU and other countries.
Jamal Abu Rihan is a Palestinian blogger and activist who is being held in a Palestinian Authority prison in the West Bank.
Security forces belonging to the Palestinian Authority government arrested Abu Rihan after he created a Facebook group called "The People Want to End Corruption."
Demanding reform and democracy has become a crime in the territories under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Direct and indirect criticism of Palestinian Authority leaders has also become a crime that can land journalists, bloggers, cartoonists and political opponents in prison.
Instead of going after top officials suspected of embezzling public funds and abusing their powers, the Palestinian Authority government has chosen to wage an unprecedented clampdown on those who dare to raise their voices in support of transparency and freedom of speech.
Abu Rihan's anti-corruption group on Facebook has won the backing of more than 6000 followers. These people clicked "like" and joined the group within days of its launching. Some of the followers, especially those living under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, now fear being thrown into prison for committing the crime of demanding an end to corruption.
The arrest of Abu Rihan and others is aimed at sending a warning to Palestinians against criticizing their government and leaders.
The Palestinian Authority government has also warned Palestinian journalists against reporting about the crackdown or helping Western correspondents cover the crackdown on journalists and bloggers.
In the past few weeks, Palestinian security forces summoned a number of Palestinian journalists for questioning about their ties with Western journalists and media outlets.
Palestinians say that the campaign of intimidation and harassment against the media is designed to prevent "negative reporting" about the Palestinian Authority government. The Palestinian Authority does not want anyone to report about corruption and abuse of power out of fear that this would affect financial aid from the US, EU and other countries.
The clampdown has thus been successful and most Palestinian and international journalists seem to have understood the warning. That is why the case of Abu Rihan, for example, has received almost no attention in the Palestinian and Western media.
If Abu Rihan were a Chinese dissident imprisoned by the authorities in Beijing, his case would have been endorsed by human rights groups around the world and the mainstream media in the West. Had Abu Rihan been arrested by the Israeli authorities for such a crime, his story would have most likely made it to the front page of many respected newspapers.
But when it comes to violations of freedom of expression in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is given a pass by many Americans and Europeans. By arresting reformists and critics, the Palestinian Authority is once again proving that it is not serious about combating corruption and reforming its institutions.
The crackdown on journalists, bloggers and political activists also serves as a reminder that the Palestinian Authority government is not different than most of the dictatorships in the Arab world.
Related Topics:  Khaled Abu Toameh

What if a Rational Iran Says, "Yes"?

by Shoshana Bryen
May 2, 2012 at 4:30 am
Be the first of your friends to like this.
If the West takes no action, each Iranian target will remain a target: dissident Iranians, Sunnis including the Saudis, European capitals, Americans and American interests, Western-oriented South Americans, Israel and Jews. Russia and China will support Iran with no concern for American disapproval. Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Venezuela and Nicaragua will have their patron intact.
LTG Benny Ganz, Israel's Chief of Staff, turned heads when he told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz that the Iranians are rational and, in his view, have not taken a decision about moving from nuclear capability to nuclear weapons. The second is supposed to prove the first.
If rational means having an appreciation for the consequences of actions and an ability to take steps to reach a desired end, the Iranians are rational. It bears noting that the "end" may not be using, or even having, nuclear weapons. Perhaps the goal is keeping the "international community" (represented by the P5+1) focused on nuclear-activity-short-of-weapon-making while the regime further entrenches itself at home, harasses the West, and pursues its ultimate goal of transnational Shiite expansion.
The rational position for Iran would be to encourage the world to focus on whether or not it might do something now or later, rather than on what it is actually doing now – which, to the shame and the detriment of the West, indeed looks like Iranian policy.
Iran continues to oppress its own people – including 676 executions in 2011, a 10-year-high with many of them performed in public. Iran is engaged in the illegal export of weapons [see here, here, here]. It provides arms, money and advisors to Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah; exports arms to Africa; and has a hand in the Bahrain uprisings. Iran is heavily engaged in South America, particularly in Venezuela, but also across the continent in various political, military and economic endeavors. It supports the Taliban in Afghanistan and steals oil from Iraqi oil fields.
Israel believes Iran is producing long-range missiles that can strike the West, and India reports that Iran is producing short-range anti-ship missiles.
At so many levels, Iran is a problem for and a threat to the West, its interests and its allies. Yet the focus is almost entirely on the terms of uranium enrichment and whether Iran has made a decision to build nuclear weapons. A second, Western, focus consists of arguing with Russia and China over the proper level of concern about Iran's nuclear program. A third Western preoccupation is keeping Israel out of the conversation.
So consider what would happen if Iran actually said it agreed to the P5+1 terms on its nuclear program. Take the strictest version of the possible terms: closing the Fordow plant, halting enrichment at higher levels, moving enriched uranium out of the country, permitting unfettered inspections by the IAEA. Add your own.
Three things you know:
  • Iran will require an exchange of terms
  • Iran will either comply with its commitments or not; and
  • The larger picture will deteriorate.
Nothing is free – Iran will have demands including the end of sanctions and international isolation. Not immediately, of course, or even quickly, but sanctions would be lifted. Iran was circumventing them anyhow, but the ability legally to purchase currently restricted technologies would speed the upgrade of Iran's arms industry. The end of banking sanctions and the oil embargo would allow the treasury to finance Iran's interests at home and abroad. Iran wins.
The likelihood of Iran complying with its commitments is minimal. But there would be hundreds if not thousands of hours, days and weeks of new negotiations over whether and how the agreement is holding up. Once a deal is struck, the Western powers will be loath to cancel it, even when they know Iran is cheating. If the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" is any guide (and it is) the P5+1 will try almost anything (modifying the terms, bribing the recalcitrant party, denouncing anyone who points out evidence of cheating) to avoid admitting that it was snookered. Iran wins.
If the West takes no action on the other Iranian activities, but allows the regime to reclaim its place in the family of respectable nations, each Iranian target will remain a target: dissident Iranians, Sunnis including the Saudis, European capitals, Americans and American interests, Western-oriented South Americans, Israel and Jews. Russia and China will support Iran with no concern for American disapproval. Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria (unless we act quickly), Venezuela and Nicaragua will have their patron intact. Iran wins.
The whole thing is so rational as to make you wonder why Gen. Ganz's words caused such an uproar.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director at The Jewish Policy Center. She was previously Senior Director for Security Policy at JINSA and author of JINSA Reports from 1995-2011.
Related Topics:  Iran  |  Shoshana Bryen

Elections in France, a Country in Sharp Decline

by Guy Millière
May 2, 2012 at 4:00 am
Be the first of your friends to like this.
France is country where the reports of the inevitable failure of the pension systems were presented to successive governments for over 25 years without a decision being proposed or taken. In the main mosques, Imams have been making explicit appeals to vote for François Hollande.
An observer from North America trying to analyze the French presidential elections would probably be bewildered to discover that among the 10 candidates in the first round, three were Trotskyites advocating a Leninist revolution ; a disciple of Lyndon La Rouche ; a former Norwegian judge who appears to think she is an environmental Robespierre (Eva Joly) ; a populist from the extreme right (Marine Le Pen) ; a moderate who would find his place in the left wing of the American Democratic Party (François Bayrou) ; a Gaullist speaking as if it were still 1965 (Nicolas Dupont Aignan) ; a very « socialist » Socialist (François Hollande), and the outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozy, a Bonapartist who, in the UK, would be to the left of the Labour Party.
The observer would then be appalled to hear that no candidate defended free-market principles ; that all of the candidates harshly attacked the financial world, multinational corporations, and globalization; that, of the two finalists, one is the outgoing President who was rejected by a large proportion of the population, and who for five years ruled without any clear direction; and that the other finalist is a Socialist whose program appears to have been written before the development of the Internet. He would be even more appalled by seeing that, faced with this distressful choice, the French population seemed to want to turn to the Socialist candidate, even knowing that he is supported by the Trotskyists and the Norwegian judge.
Moreover, after learning that the populist (Le Pen)'s program was written by people from the most nationalist wing of the Socialist Party, came in third, he would wonder how this country can still be one of the major world economies. He would not be wrong.
France is very sick indeed. It remains relatively prosperous, but it is a country in sharp decline.
France's problems date from long before the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy. France is a deeply sclerotic country where no budget has been balanced since 1974, and where public expenditures have risen continuously in recent decades to represent a crippling 56% of its gross domestic product -- the highest figure in the developed world. It is a country whose public debt is growing far faster than the public debt of its main economic partners in Europe, and will hit 87% of GDP this year (actually 146%, if what France owes to the European Union is included). It is a country where reports on the inevitable failure of pension systems were presented to successive governments for over 25 years without a decision being proposed or taken. It is a country where the unemployment rate has remained around 10% for 40 years as if that situation were normal ; and where the number of people living in poverty is between eight and ten million out of a population of 65 million. It is also a country where, for over 40 years, more than half of those entering university exited without any qualifications, and where two-thirds of all higher education diplomas are worthless on the labor market. Graduates with Master's degree become fast-food servers or cashiers in a supermarket -- if a position is available. It is a country where intellectual work has gradually lost all substance and feeds only the leftist libraries of the rest of the world. The latest of such French exports consists of «postmodern » theories elaborated by Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida, and the writings of « specialists on Islam,» who asserted in 2000, that jihadis had disappeared.
Under Nicolas Sarkozy, the situation has worsened. None of the promises he made when he was elected has been kept, an oversight that could explain the feeling of distrust towards him by so many voters. Sarkozy's slogan in 2007 was "work more to earn more": in five years, discouraged by heavy taxation and regulation, labor productivity in France has only stagnated. Hundreds of companies have left the country; the reality now is that there are fewer jobs, and that purchasing power has deteriorated. The only actions taken by Sarkozy were embarrassingly insignificant : the legal age of retirement was increased from age 60 to age 62 -- cementing the current system in place as late as 2010 with just a two-to-three years' respite -- and the name of the social aid for the poorest was changed but not its operating mode.
Nicolas Sarkozy never tried to explain to the French people the economic and geopolitical changes taking place on the planet. He has confessed several times that he never read a book on economics – although you could have hoped that other people in the government might have -- another oversight that became more and more noticeable. A recently published survey shows that while in countries as diverse as China, the United States, Germany and India, the number of people who understand the virtues of the market economy is significantly higher than 60%, the figure for France falls to 31%.
Besides Sarkozy's incompetence, one factor that aggravates the situation in France is the ever more technocratic functioning of the unelected, undemocratic European Union, and, since 2008, the European single-currency's difficulties – exactly the same problems convulsing other European nations.
The « stability pact» developed a few weeks ago under the auspices of Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is supposed to save the system and avoid its implosion. It is based tax increases combined with decreases in public spending. In countries already on the verge of collapse, such as Greece, Spain and Portugal, the « Pact » has only intensified an already strong recession, and caused riots and strikes. The French population, apparently concerned that its fate could soon be the same as its southern neighbors', expressed its revolt by the ballot. Because no relevant explanation was ever given, the French population adheres massively to speeches which say that « Brussels cannot dictate everything from above, » and that increasing state spending, and making the rich pay for it, will solve all problems.
On May 6th, the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, who constantly used this kind of speech during the campaign, will probably be elected President. Voters' disillusionment will soon follow, with consequences impossible to predict. The main Trotskyist candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who received 12% of the votes, has repeatedly called for Chavez-style insurrection.
If, as it seems likely, Nicolas Sarkozy is defeated, his party will probably implode. This is what Marine Le Pen expects; she apparently wants, on the ruins of the President's party, to build a « nationalist right .» She proposes to leave the European Union and the euro, and erect high protectionist trade barriers.
One theme that has been almost absent from the entire election campaign is Islam and Islamization. Only Marine Le Pen has spoken of it. Even though she was always careful to distinguish Islam and « radical Islam, » she was immediately called a « racist. »
Slightly over a month has passed since the worst series of jihadists' crimes -- and the worst anti-Semitic acts since the Second World War -- were committed in France, but this seems already to have been forgotten. In the main mosques in France, and just before the first round of the election, Imams have been making explicit appeals to vote for François Hollande.
The evolution of the rest of Europe was almost never evoked, or only in a very negative way, or only by Marine Le Pen and the Trotskyite candidates.
The day after the first round of the French presidential election, the Dutch governing coalition fell: its fall came from the refusal by Geert Wilders's Freedom Party to accept the recessionary consequences of the « stability pact .»
In Spain, the conservative Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, recently expressed a barely concealed desire to break free of the « pact . » Spain has experienced negative growth for over three years ; its unemployment rate is above 24%, and 52% among workers under 25 years of age.
In Greece, where the situation is far worse than in Spain, elections will also be held on May 6th; the parties that have every chance of winning in Greece also advocate a refusal of the « Pact .»
François Hollande has said he will not ratify the « Pact » and has vowed to tame financial markets and Germany. If distrust of France subsides, the financial markets will remind the Netherlands that they exist and that they are not so easy to tame. Angela Merkel will also remind the Netherlands that she exists, and that the opinion of the German people matters.
No one can answer if the euro will survive to the end of the year, or what will remain in a few years of the feckless, undemocratic, unelected European Union.
Turbulences are emerging throughout Europe; France will likely play a role in worsening them.
Related Topics:  France  |  Guy Millière

Turks Protest Erdogan's Re-Islamification Program

by Ali Uyanik
May 2, 2012 at 3:00 am
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Erdogan's AKP officials, however, alleging that a 15-year statute of limitations had expired, announced in mid-March, that they would not prosecute the accused perpetrators of the Sivas atrocity. Erdogan appears prepared to employ any form of demagoguery to stigmatize the minority community of the secularist Alevis.
Much of the world appears seduced by the claims to Islamic moderation of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (known as AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But Turkish citizens and immigrants in Western Europe seem to be expressing increasing dissatisfaction with the government's policies on religion, the future of the country's secular institutions, and an apparent disregard for the rights of minorities.
As Erdogan approaches the 10th anniversary of his first assumption of the prime minister's post, in 2003, the heterodox Muslim Alevi community, accounting for as many as a quarter of Turkey's 85 million citizens at home and in its large diaspora, is commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Sivas massacre, in 1993. Alevis are a religious movement combining elements of Shia Islam, spiritual Sufism, and pre-Islamic Turkish and Kurdish traditions, including shamanism. They do not pray in the manner of Sunni Muslims or worship in mosques. Rather, their observances are centered on music, dance, and praise of God. Alevi rituals are led by women and the Alevis are known as supporters of gender equality.
Islamist fanatics set the Madimak Hotel in the city of Sivas on fire while an Alevi cultural festival, featuring the late author, Aziz Nesin (1915-95) who had translated Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses into Turkish, was underway. Thirty-seven people died, including 33 Alevis, two hotel employees, and two among the mob of extremists who had targeted the hotel. Nesin escaped the flames. But in addition to those burned to death, 60 people were injured and 17 more died in demonstrations against the fundamentalist assault.
Erdogan's AKP officials, however, alleging that a 15-year statute of limitations had expired, announced in mid-March that they would not prosecute the accused perpetrators of the Sivas atrocity.
Protests in Turkey – and in Turkish immigrant communities, such as that of Bochum, Germany – against the AKP's attitude toward the Sivas affair, reached a high point in Kadikoy, an Istanbul neighborhood on the Asian side of the Bosporus on March 21st. At the call of Alevi community organizations, tens of thousands assembled, holding banners and chanting that "the Sivas case will not be closed until we say so."
Turkish officials and media were dismayed at the outpouring of citizens disaffected with AKP. News reports played down the rally, at times referring to it as a "traffic obstruction." By March 28, the local public prosecutor's office in the interior province of Malatya, south of Sivas, announced that it would commence a new probe into the slayings. The Malatya authorities affirmed that the statute of limitations would not apply in such an instance and that they would begin a long-overdue investigation into the involvement in the fire of Islamist terror organizations. The anger of the protestors, however, was not assuaged by the news.
The AKP decision to end the national government's prosecution of the Sivas killers is symbolic of other objectionable aspects of Erdogan's rule – especially the continuing re-Islamization of Turkish public life. While some refer to the process in Turkey as a "creeping" religious involvement in state affairs, others see the national judicial administration's choice to end the Sivas legal proceeding as an acceleration on AKP's Islamist path.
It does not seem coincidental that suppression of the Sivas prosecution by the national officials occurred at the same time that AKP called for an educational reform providing expanded entry of children as young as 10 into the "imam-hatip" schools for Islamic clerics and Friday preachers In addition, the long-controversial infiltration of Turkish police and judicial structures by followers of Fethullah Gulen, a "soft" Islamist ideologue living in the U.S., is now visible in the Turkish military. The army was once the guardian of Turkish secularism, after the Ottoman empire, with its Islamic foundations, was dismantled in the 1920s. Gulen's movement, which the journalist Ahmet Sik called "the imam's army," aspires to control Turkey's recognized army. Sik, currently under indictment for writing a book about the Gulen phenomenon, has recently been released from detention.
The Kadikoy demonstration on March 29 predictably attracted other participants alongside the Alevis. The secularist Republican People's Party, or CHP, were natural allies for the Alevis at the rally. The radical left, represented by the Turkish Communist Party (TKP) summoned its members and followers; they appeared on the streets with red flags. The AKP makes no pretense of resolving the status of the Kurdish minority, and Kurds turned out for the mass meeting. Fans of the Fenerbahce football club, with its home stadium in Kadikoy, also showed up.
But the majority of demonstrators were Alevis. They believe that even before the Sivas prosecution was declared closed, the alleged murderers benefited from protection by the state.
The Kadikoy protestors pointed to problems of Turkish society that are ignored by foreign governments and media. Turkey is enjoying a period of economic growth; power has shifted away from the military to civil society, and local authorities have been performing more efficiently on local tasks.
These changes, however, have done nothing to help the Alevis. The Alevis continue to be denied recognition in Turkey as a separate religious community. And they are not exempt from harassment. In February, the Alevis community of Karapinar, south of Malatya, saw some 200 homes with the color red marked on their doors. Karapinar has been known for the good relations between Sunni Muslims and Alevis, as well as between Muslims and Christians. While the Alevis feared that the vandalism was a warning of imminent aggression against them, the AKP interior minister, Idris Naim Sahin, dismissed the defacing of Alevi houses as "the work of a couple of kids."
But Alevi representative Huseyin Guzelgul noted that AKP had similarly downplayed the 2005 bombings in southeastern Turkey of a Kurdish-owned bookshop in which two people were killed and five injured. The commander of the army at the time, Yasar Buyukanit, described one of the criminals in that attack, military non-commissioned officer Ali Kaya, as someone he knew and considered "a good guy." The bookstore bombers, including another soldier, Ozcan Ildeniz, and a former Kurdish terrorist, Veysel Ates, were caught at the scene. All three were found guilty early this year and each sentenced to almost 40 years' imprisonment.
Guzelgul further recalled that Ogun Samast, the 17-year old murderer of journalist Hrant Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian ethnicity, who was shot fatally in 2007, had been called "a good kid." Police officers posed for photographs with Samast and a Turkish flag. Samast was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 22 years and 10 months in prison. Ten other men, including seven security officials, have also been convicted of incitement, complicity, and, in the case of the security men, failure to act on intelligence about plots against Dink. The journalist Nedim Sener, like Ahmet Sik in the Gulen affair, has been kept under arrest for writing a book about the Dink case. Like Sik, Sener has since been released but still may be tried
Alevi leader Guzelgul said, "We want the government to find out who those kids are and who made them mark the homes." For Alevis, the marking of doors in Adiyaman recalled the Kahramanmaras murders of 1978, when at least 111 Kurdish Alevis were slaughtered in their houses. Witnesses to seven days of bloodshed and butchery in the city of Kahramanmaras, accused the local police chief at the time, Abdulkadir Aksu, now an AKP member of the Turkish parliament, of complicity in the atrocities. Alevis say a conspiracy of Islamists, the Turkish secret police, and the fascist Grey Wolves movement was responsible.
Slowly, the darker chapters in recent Turkish history are being exposed and examined -- the demand of the Alevi leaders, adherents, and cultural figures, such as the prominent Alevi traditional musician Sabahat Akkiraz, who had performed at the Kadikoy event. Erdogan and AKP , however, seem to feel that ten years in power will provide them with the added strength needed fully to carry out their ideological program. As they have held on to power, their ambitions have grown and become more openly expressed, in their actions on Sivas, the "imam-hatip" schools, and their continued prosecution of the so-called "deep state" within Turkish society.
In foreign policy, Turkish officials have been expressing concern for the suffering inflicted on the citizens of neighboring Syria by the dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad – formerly an Erdogan ally – and many observers of the Syrian crisis argue that Erdogan and Turkey could play a positive role in ending the conflict there. Erdogan, in contrast, seems to be looking at Syria mainly as an opportunity to enhance the AKP's expansionist ambitions for a "neo-Ottoman" revival of Turkish influence in the Arab countries.
Erdogan has, in an ominous manner, tried to equate the Turkish and Kurdish Alevis with the Arab Alawite sect ruling Syria. He has falsely asserted that Kemal Kilicdaroglu, an Alevi and the leader of the Republican People's Party, belongs to "the same religion" as the Alawite dictator of Syria, Bashar Al-Assad. But Turkish and Kurdish Alevis, and Syrian Alawites, although practicing variants of Shia Islam, are not the same. They originated at different times and places in history, and their religious views and practices are wholly distinct from one another. Still, Erdogan appears prepared to employ any form of demagoguery to stigmatize the minority community of the secularist Alevis.
Related Topics:  Turkey  |  Ali Uyanik

To subscribe to the this mailing list, go to http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/list_subscribe.php
Posted by solsticewitch13 at 7:05 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)