Empty Words, Full of Hate

‘As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map’, the words of Iran’s newly elected President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (above), evoking the rhetoric of the leader of the Iranian Revolution Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran, a pariah state since the 1978-9 revolution, has courted controversy in recent years. Named as part of US President George W. Bush’s axis of evil in 2002, Iran’s theocratic regime has come under diplomatic fire to halt it’s nuclear development program. Iran claims this program is purely civilian but the United States says could be a cover for assembling atomic weapons.

This recent hostile statement regarding Israel has brought the world’s attention back to the issue of the possibility of a nuclear armed Iran. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair rhetorically put it ‘Can you imagine a state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon?’
President Ahmadinejad’s statement was repugnant and archaic. It ranks among the manic rantings of the likes of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Iran’s own pet terrorists Hezbollah - the so called ‘Party of God’.

Israel may be a controversial state. It has committed crimes against the Palestinian people while suffering abhorrent violence itself in the form of suicide bombings. Its existence however, is beyond question at this stage. The country has fought four full-scale wars for its right to exist, the last time, in 1973, being the final time threats such as Mr Ahmadinejad’s could be taken seriously. That is one reason why this situation has been blown out of proportion. Nobody could possibly take his words seriously.

Iran could not and would not realistically attack Israel whether it developes nuclear weapons or not. For a start there is the matter of the United State’s 150,000 troops in Iraq, blocking the path Iran’s conventional forces would need to take in such a implausibly hypothetical war. If the country was to attempt a nuclear strike, the repercussions of such a reckless move would destroy Iran. What could it possibly hope to gain by such an act? Additionaly it is doubtful that Iran would nuke Jerusalem, home to Islam’s third holiest site, the al-Asqa Mosque. It is highly unlikely Iran will ever attack Israel directly unless the country is attacked itself by, say, the US for example (That’s how Saddam Hussein reacted during the Gulf War of 1990-1). The Iranian leadership may be repressive, reprehensible and religiously over-zealous (to say the least) but it is not insane.

If you look at the audience Ahmadinejad was speaking to it becomes clear that his words should not be taken seriously. He was addressing fundamentalist delegates at a conference entitled ’A World Without Zionism’. Such language, however offensive, is expected at an event of this type. He was reflecting the views of his audience, and much of the wider Islamic world.

It is an unfortunate reality that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is often used as a scapegoat to distract from the problems faced by ordinary Muslims living under bad leadership in the Middle East and beyond. This is not helped of course by Israeli policies such as expanding Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the construction of the infamous wall and the sometimes arbitrary destruction of Palestinian homes.

President Ahmadinejad’s speech was unacceptable despite Israel’s many faults. His words will do nothing to forward the goal of peace in the Middle East and everything to feed the growing level of anger and hatred some Muslims feel toward Israel and the West. They were not however anything new from Iran and instead of worrying about empty threats and hyping the issue (which will only increase Ahmadinejad‘s standing among the fundamentalists), world leaders should treat this statement with the contempt it deserves and ignore it.

Pandemic?!? What Pandemic?

Paranoia has taken hold in the West, particularly in Europe for the last few months. A further threat from the East - to take over from communism and to add to terrorism, mass immigration and Asia’s economic challenge - has arisen. Vast flocks of birds have taken flight from the far East, and, even now as we here in the West go about our lives, are speeding towards our shores carrying a potentially lethal virus.

Queue panic buying of the drug Tamiflu - which nobody even knows if it will be affect the avian variety of the flu virus, farmers moving their chickens inside to protect them from their wild, disease-ridden Eastern cousins, a media frenzy, and governments trying to appear to be in control of the threat. We are told that Avian Flu has been found as close as Turkey and Romania and that it is only a matter of time until it reaches our comfortable Western European homes. The virus may mutate, they warn, and come to infect the human population on a scale rivalling the outbreak of Spanish Influenza in 1918 that killed more people than World War One. They say that we could be faced with a global pandemic that could kill millions.

They say absolutely nothing about the world-wide pandemic in which we are currently engulfed. Yes, about 60 people may have died from catching bird flu, but in 2003 alone, 3,000,000 people died from AIDS. Globally an estimated 40,000,000 people are HIV positive, 25,000,000 of them in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Perhaps it is that condition unique to rich countries, ’compassion fatigue’, but we hear next to nothing about the greatest challenge to human health of our time and seem to care even less.

Could this lack of concern about the real pandemic be because HIV strikes hardest in poor Third World countries in Africa and Asia and therefore does not seem to present a threat to the rich West in the way that bird flu potentially could? Surely we’re not so self absorbed that we’re ignoring the deaths of millions while worrying about a phantom threat to our own well-being?

DUBYA!

The Boggers (the Good), the International Oil Companies (the Bad), and the Irish Government (Those Guys are Pretty Ugly)

The story of the so-called 'Rossport Five' gripped Ireland throughout the summer. Five farmers - otherwise known to Irish city-dwellers by the derogatory term 'boggers' (i.e. rural people who literaly live in the boglands - the American equivilant would be 'Hill-Billies' and/or 'Rednecks') -from the small village of Rossport (no doubt the seven-saloons-two-ranches variety of Irish village) in Ireland's Wild West, County Mayo - took on two of the world's major oil companies and got thrown in jail by the sherrif for their troubles.

The controversy arose when the British-Dutch company Shell and the Norweigian Statoil began building a gas pipeline from the gasfields off the coast of Mayo (shown below), inland trhough various small villages and farms. The five men, fearful of the effect of a major gas explosions on their homes - not that unlikely an occurance despite Ireland's lack of sabateurs to compare to ruthless Iraqi insurgents, impeded the construction work. Once arrested, they refused to promise not to attempt such a protest again. They refused to apolosge. They were locked up - allegedly at Shell's behest.

You see in these energy-anxious times, what with ever-rising oil prices and the fact that a fair chunk of the planet's energy reserves happen to be located in its most dangerous and unstable region, the Irish government decided to exploit the country's own reasourses. In their wisdom, instead of conducting the exploration using an Irish companies - or establishing one for the purpose, the government enlisted the help of foreign companies to mount the search. Certainly - as ministers point out - Ireland will reap the benefit of some energy security for the next twenty years (incidently about the time it takes for a gaspipe to corrode enough to be at risk of explosion according to todays Irish Times). However all the revenues generated by gas extracted on Irish territory will go into foreign coffers. This is fair enough as these companies paid for pricey exploration process but a ridiculous deal for the government to make.

Needless to say it's all been a bit of a fiasco. The five boggers were eventualy released from prison at the end of September after 94 inside. The government intervened in the case as the whole episode was becoming something of a PR disaster for an administration that is looking increasingly incompetant.

While not wanting to sound like a tree-shagging, organic veg-eating, wash in your own sweat, eco-freak, surely the best option for Ireland in all of this would have been to stick a few hundred wind turbines offshore. If we're too cheap to build it we could always get some company to build them and have them charge us for the electricity that'd be generated by the bone chilling Atlantic gale. Maybe Halliburton - they just won a contract to build a tunnel in Limerick. We could tack this project onto the end - we know what a great job they do for the US armed forces - cost over-runs and dodgy jobs are unheard of... It'd certainly help towards our Kyoto targets which Ireland will simply not meet unless we take more stringent actions to cut down on our CO2 emmisions. It'd last longer than twenty years - i don't think the wind's ever stopped blowing out West. Finally there'd be no risk of cow incineration from gas explosions and fewer boggers in jail.

'From the people of India, to the people of Pakistan'

It took last Saturday's horrendous earthquake for this message of peace and solidarity - that adorns a vast tonnage of aid - to be sent from India to its bitter enemy, Pakistan. Upwards of 20,000 people are thought to have perished in this tragic and catastrophic natural disaster. The scale of the earthquake, the epicentre of which hit the disputed region of Kashmir has united India and Pakistan in the desperate race to help the victims.

This is in stark contrast to the race that under normal circumstances preoccupies the two countries - the nuclear arms race. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir since the subcontinent became divided between the Muslim north and predominantly Hindu south in 1947, upon independence from the British Empire. The 1990s saw an escalation as both sides developed nuclear weapons. Indeed in 2002 South Asia narrowly escaped a full-scale nuclear war when tensions rose as India retaliated against attacks by Islamic extremists in Kashmir that the Indian government alleged were supported by the Pakistani military.

More recently there has been a thaw in relations between the two countries as transport links have been reopened and Pakistan’s ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, met with India’s former leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2004.

Interestingly, precedent for the influence large-scale natural disasters can have on conflict resolution, can be found in the Asian Tsunami that devastated the area earlier this year. In Indonesia, a long running civil war in the wave battered province of Aceh was resolved, and, on the island Sri Lanka, the Colombo government and the separatist Tamil Tigers cooperated to a degree to bring relief to the victims. The Tsunami exposed the pettiness of the conflicts when compared to such a calamitous event. No doubt there will be difficult times ahead in the peace processes of both countries but they are proof of how hope for the future can be derived from even the most terrible of disasters.

It is estimated that 65,000 people have died in the low-level conflict in Kashmir in the last fifteen years. Perhaps the 20,000 killed on Saturday by an ’act of God’ will finally be enough death to motivate the governments in New Delhi and Islamabad to end, once and for all, their futile and potentially deadly feud.

End of an Alliance - The End of Supporting Tyranny?

The face in the picture may not warrant instant recognition. It is President Islam Karimov, shown here in 2002, casting his ballot in the the feeble franchise offered to the people living under his tyrannical rule in Uzbekistan. On that occasion, the former communist leader, voted in seriously flawed elections to extend his corrupt tenure in power until 2007.

Karimov presides over a state of terror. This terror emanates not from the Islamic fundamentalists that the president maintains threatens Uzbekistan but from his brutal regime. Of this threat Karimov has said 'Such people must be shot in the forehead! If necessary, I'll shoot them myself…!' He has been known to have his enemies boiled alive. According the Human Rights Watch, 'many peaceful Muslims have also been rounded up in the sweeps of "fundamentalists."Until last summer Uzbekistan was a major ally of the United States in the 'War on Terror'.

In his crusade to rid the world of terror and tyranny President Bush paradoxically enlisted the help of one of the world’s most reprehensible dictators. US forces, deployed to an air base in Uzbekistan after 9/11, supported the troops bringing democracy and freedom to Afghanistan, from a country that enjoyed neither. The United States, as it has done countless times in the past and will undoubtedly do again in the future, propped up a despicable government in pursuit of American interests.

On May 13th this year government troops opened fire on protesters in the eastern city of Andijan, murdering up to eight hundred people. Karimov's government, while claiming the number of fatalities was far lower, claimed that the protesters were Islamic militants and used the 'War on Terror' as justification for the massacre. This event, unlike the routine torture and murder that occurs under Karimov's rule was widely, if briefly, reported by the international media. The United States was forced to confront the morality for remaining in Uzbekistan while such barbarity was sanctioned by the host government.

As it happens the decision was made for the Americans. After a belated US criticsm of the Uzbek regime - in light of the years of brutality ignored by the Bush Administration - Karimov decided to expell US forces from his country. A bilateral agreement was signed for the withdrawal all US troops within six months. It is not unreasonable to assume that, given the United State's prior support for tyrannies which shared its objectives, had the United States not been compelled to leave Uzbekistan, the country's armed forces would have remained there indefinitly in the 'fight for democracy' and the hunt for Osama Bin Ladin.

Following the announcment of the withdrawal of troops one State Department official declared that the United States was 'unwilling to sacrifice democracy and human rights' to retain access to Uzbek bases. Presumably this means that troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries with scant democratic credentials and attrocious human rights records will be vacated in the near future. Somehow I doubt it.