U.S. Federal Reserve Balance Sheet Worries Paul Volcker

Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker warned the Fed’s independence and credibility could be harmed by the many different sorts of assets it took on to its balance sheet to stave off a credit crisis.

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Helmut Schmidt zur Tibet-Frage

Überall sind es die Mönche, die die Menschen verdorben haben. Der weise und gelehrte Leibniz hat es eindeutig nachgewiesen. Er hat gezeigt, daß das 10. Jahrhundert, das man das Jahrhundert der Roheit nennt, viel weniger barbarisch war als das 13. und die folgenden Jahrhunderte, in denen diese Massen von Bettlern entstanden, die das Gelübde ablegten, auf Kosten der Laien zu leben und diese zu bedrücken. (Voltaire)

In der heutigen Ausgabe der ZEIT klärt uns der letzte deutsche Politiker mit vollem Durchblick und klarem Verstand, der stets brillante Helmut Schmidt, über die Hintergründe der Tibet-Frage auf, und insbesondere über die wahren Absichten des tibetanischen Sektenführers und Rattenfängers Dalai Lama:

“Ebenso ist das kleine Bergvolk der Tibeter immer schon autokratisch regiert worden, allerdings nicht von einem Fürsten oder vom Adel, sondern von Priestern und Oberpriestern. Der Dalai Lama war als Oberpriester einer lamaistischen Sekte zugleich das weltliche Oberhaupt aller Tibeter; der Pantschen Lama als Oberpriester einer anderen Sekte hatte jedoch einen höheren klerikalen Rang. Noch am Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs war Tibet eine Theokratie – ähnlich wie ehedem der Kirchenstaat oder wie heutzutage Iran. [...] Die Mönche kämpfen nicht für Menschenrechte, sondern vielmehr für die Interessen ihrer Klöster - und für den tibetischen Nationalismus.”

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Filmfestspiele von Cannes 1968 und heute

Die Tageszeitung Die Welt erinnert zum Beginn der Filmfestspiele in Cannes an die revolutionäre Stimmung beim Festival vor vierzig Jahren:

“Louis Malle, der Mitglied der Jury ist, aber in seiner freien Zeit kein Auge vom Fernseher lässt und sich fragt: ‘Was tu’ ich hier? Ich muss nach Paris zurück!’, ist gespannt auf das, was seine Kollegen zu berichten haben: ‘Auf einem Treffen erklärten sie, dass sie das neu gegründete Comité Révolutionnaire du Cinéma oder so ähnlich repräsentieren’, erzählt er später. ‘Sie sagten, dass das Festival sofort beendet werden muss. Ich hielt das für eine ausgezeichnete Idee. Das ganze Land befand sich im Streik; es schien uns absurd, dass die Leute im Frack sich Filme angucken sollten, als wäre sonst nichts los, als befänden wir uns in Liechtenstein oder Monte Carlo.”

Zum Artikel.

Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) lobt den Erfindungsgeist des Festivals von Cannes:

“Natürlich ist Cannes weiterhin eine kommerzielle Veranstaltung, aber eben nicht nur. Wie sonst ließen sich die spröden Wettbewerbsbeiträge etwa der Dardenne-Brüder aus Belgien erklären, die in diesem Jahr schon zum wiederholten Mal an der Croisette zu Gast sind…, oder von Atom Egoyan, der ‘Adoration’ zeigt? Wie käme ein animierter Dokumentarfilm über den Libanesischen Bürgerkrieg (’Waltz with Bashir’ von Ari Folman) ins Wettbewerbsprogramm, der neue Wim-Wenders-Film oder ein Viereinhalbstundenwerk über Che, auch wenn der Regisseur Steven Soderbergh heißt? Und wie ‘La frontière de l’aube’ von Philippe Garrel, einem der Wortführer der Neuen Welle im französischen Kino, die Cannes damals überrollte?”

Zum Artikel.

U.S. Foreign Aid

A chart in the British newspaper The Economist shows the United States of America still gives more foreign aid than any other country, and by a wide margin.

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Colombia extradites 14 paramilitary leaders to U.S.

Colombia’s government extradited fourteen paramilitary leaders to the United States.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal says that by doing so, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has “called the bluff” of U.S. congressional leader Nancy Pelosi, who had seized on the issue as a reason for not proceeding forward with the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

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The Hunt for Mr. Europe

Newsweek International previews talks on installing a new EU president but questions how much clout the official will have once in office.

“In the past, there was just a president of the Commission to choose. But now the EU has greater ambitions. Its new treaty, currently going through its last ratification hurdles after interminable wrangling, calls for the selection of a president of the European Council. The post mixes the mundane, like chairing the meetings of the 27 heads of government, with the task of representing Europe globally. EU leaders have yet to define which is more important-making sure the agenda is ready, the pencils sharpened and the chairs in place for the council meeting, or being a bully-pulpit president of Europe who walks through the door at the White House, the Kremlin and the Forbidden City in Beijing and makes clear that the voice of Europe is important and heard around the world.”

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United States presidential election, 2008: Barack Obama on Zionism and Hamas

In an interview with the Atlantic Monthly published yesterday, Barack Obama said the idea of a Jewish state is “fundamentally just,” and said his position on Hamas is “indistinguishable” from the positions of his opponents.

“I always joke that my intellectual formation was through Jewish scholars and writers, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Whether it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris. So when I became more politically conscious, my starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and sympathy for Israel, mindful of its history, mindful of the hardship and pain and suffering that the Jewish people have undergone, but also mindful of the incredible opportunity that is presented when people finally return to a land and are able to try to excavate their best traditions and their best selves. And obviously it’s something that has great resonance with the African-American experience.

One of the things that is frustrating about the recent conversations on Israel is the loss of what I think is the natural affinity between the African-American community and the Jewish community, one that was deeply understood by Jewish and black leaders in the early civil-rights movement but has been estranged for a whole host of reasons that you and I don’t need to elaborate.”

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United States presidential election, 2008: Wright And Ridiculous

It would be a travesty if Barack Obama’s campaign gets knocked off course because of his former preacher, writes top columnist Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post.

“Of all the strange features of this presidential race, the tarnishing of Barack Obama has got to be the most ridiculous. First Obama was accused of anti-religious elitism. Then he was accused of identifying with the underclass anger of his spiritual mentor. Excuse me, but which is it? Am I supposed to believe that Obama is a supercilious elitist or a menacing ghetto radical? Is he contemptuous of religion or too close to a religious leader? Obama’s critics don’t bother to say. Meanwhile, real character issues go relatively unheeded. [...] The Obama-Wright “revelations” are really a revelation about our political culture: About its failure to distinguish the important from the trivial and about the inevitability that the race card will eventually be played against a black candidate. If the once formidable Obama campaign is knocked off course by these “revelations” in tomorrow’s primaries, it will be a travesty.”

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The agony of Gordon Brown

The Economist looks at the political prospects of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

“Would the Labour Party really consider foisting a second unelected prime minister on Britain? Apparently so. Less than a year after Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair, the idea of installing a third front man has become thinkable for some of his erstwhile supporters. That it has come to this reflects the astonishing speed of Mr Brown’s fall. [...] Mr Brown is in part the victim of one of the basic laws of politics: gravity.”

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Drug cartel murdered Mexican official

Edgar Millan Gomez, the chief coordinator of Mexico’s government crackdown on organized crime was murdered in his home. The Los Angeles Times says the Sinaloa drug cartel seems the likely culprit.

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Europe and US want a stronger dollar

U.S. and European officials have come together in the belief that the U.S. dollar should strengthen against the euro, following more than a year of sharp decline.

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U.S.-Russia Nuclear Cooperation

Moscow and Washington signed a long-awaited nuclear cooperation agreement. The U.S. State Department said the deal will increase international joint venture opportunities in the civilian nuclear sector between Russia and the United States.

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Thunder from Tibet

A month after violent riots erupted in Tibetan regions who belong to China, Tibet expert Robert Barnett deconstructs the violence in the New York Review of Books and examines the Dalai Lama’s ability to control it.

“The extent of the protests means that Tibetans, instead of being talked about as victims of human rights abuses and economic inequities (codewords in international relations for the unimportant or the marginal), have now become important elements of regional strategy and a political priority for Western leaders. On the other hand, the use of violence by Tibetans in some protests, leading, by the Chinese government’s count, to the deaths of eighteen Chinese civilians and at least three policemen, raises a question about the ability of the Dalai Lama to persuade Tibetans to uphold his repeated calls for pacifism.”

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Israel: The Gateway of Hope

by Sir Jonathan Sacks, UK Chief Rabbi

The Jewish connection with Israel goes back 4,000 years to the first recorded syllables of Jewish time.

My great-grandfather Rabbi Arye Leib Frumkin, went to Israel in 1871; his father had settled there twenty years earlier. His first act was to begin writing his History of the Sages in Jerusalem, chronicling the Jewish presence there since Nachmanides arrived in 1265.

In 1881 pogroms broke out in more than a hundred towns in Russia. That was when he realized that aliyah was no longer a pilgrimage of the few but an urgent necessity for the many. He became a pioneer, moving to one of the first agricultural settlements in the new yishuv. The early settlers had caught malaria and left. Rabbi Frumkin led the return and built the first house there. The name they gave the town epitomizes their dreams. Using a phrase from the book of Hosea, they called it Petach Tikva, ‘the Gateway of Hope’. Today it is the sixth largest city in Israel.

The Jewish connection with Israel did not begin with Zionism, a word coined in the 1890s. It goes back 4,000 years to the first recorded syllables of Jewish time, God’s command to Abraham: “Leave your land, your birthplace and your fathers house and go to the land that I will show you” (Ex. 12: 1). Seven times God promised Abraham the land, and repeated that promise to Isaac and Jacob. If any nation on earth has a right to any land — a right based on history, attachment, long association — then the Jewish people has a right to Israel.

Judaism — twice as old as Christianity, thee times as old as Islam — was the call to Abraham’s descendants to create a society of freedom, justice and compassion under the sovereignty of God. A society involves a land, a home, somewhere where the ‘children of Israel’ form the majority, and can thus create a culture, an economy and a political system in accordance with their values. That land was and is Israel.

Jews never left Israel voluntarily. They never relinquished their rights. They returned whenever they could: in the days of Moses, then again after the Babylonian exile, then again in generation after generation. Judah Halevi went there in the 12th century. So did Maimonides and his family, though they found it impossible to stay. Nachmanides went after being exiled from Spain. There was a large community there in the sixteenth century. There are places, especially in Galilee, where they never left at all.

Those with a sense of history long ago recognized the injustice of denying Jews their ancestral home. In 1799, Napoleon at the start of his Middle East campaign called on Jews to return (the campaign failed before there was a chance to act on this proposal). So did many British thinkers in the nineteenth century, among them Lord Palmerston, Lord Shaftsbury, and the writer George Eliot in her novel, Daniel Deronda.

The Balfour Declaration in 1917, ratified in 1922 by the League of Nations, was an attempt to rectify the single most sustained crime against humanity: the denial of Jewry’s right to its land and its subsequent unparalleled history of suffering. Winston Churchill never wavered from this view. There were Arab leaders who understood this too. In 1919, King Faisal wrote to the American-Jewish judge Felix Frankfurter: “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement… The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement [Arab nationalism] is national and not imperialist… Indeed I think that neither can be a real success without the other.”

The idea that Jews came to Israel as outsiders or imperialists is among the most perverse of modern myths. They were the land’s original inhabitants: they have the same relationship to the land as native Americans to America, aborigines to Australia, and Maoris to New Zealand. They were ousted by imperialists. They are the only rulers of the land in the past three thousand years who neither sought nor created an empire.

In fact, no other people, no other power, has ever created an independent state there. When it was not a Jewish state, Israel was merely an administrative unit of empires: the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Umayyads, Fatimids, Abbasids, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans. The existence of Israel, in ancient times and today, is a sustained protest against empires and imperialism: against Mesopotamia of Abraham’s day and the Egyptians of the exodus.

Do we really need a Jewish state? Yes. There must be some place on earth where Jews can defend themselves, where they have a home in the sense given by the poet Robert Frost as “the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Every nation has the right to rule itself and create a society and culture in accordance with its own values. That right, to national self-determination, is among the most basic in politics. Today there are 82 Christian nations and 56 Muslim ones, but only one Jewish one: in a country smaller than the Kruger National Park, one quarter of one per cent of the land mass of the Arab world.

Long ago Jews recognized the right of the Arab population of the land to a place of their own. There were various plans for the partition of the land into two states, one Jewish, one Arab, in the 1920s and 1930s. Jews accepted them; the Arabs rejected them. In 1947, the United Nations voted for partition. Again, Jews accepted, the Arabs refused. David Ben Gurion reiterated the call for peace as a central part of Israel’s Declaration of Independence in May 1948. Israel’s neighbors — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq — responded by attacking it on all fronts.

The offer was renewed in 1967 after the Six Day War. The response of the Arab League, meeting in Khartoum in September 1967, was the famous “Three Nos”: no to peace, no to negotiations, no to the recognition of the State of Israel. The call was repeated many times by Golda Meir, and always decisively rejected.

The boldest offer was made by Ehud Barak at Taba, 2001. It offered the Palestinians a state in the whole of Gaza and 97 per cent of the West Bank, with border compensations for the other 3 per cent, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The story is told in detail in Dennis Ross’s The Missing Peace (Ross was the chief negotiator). Many members of the Palestinian team wanted to accept. The Saudi ambassador at the time, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, said, ‘If Arafat does not accept what is available now, it won’t be a tragedy, it will be a crime.’

Tragically the Palestinians have been betrayed by those who claimed to be their supporters. They were betrayed in 1948 by the Arab states who promised them that if they left now they would return soon, all Jews having been expelled. They were betrayed by the Arab nations to which they fled, who refused to grant them citizenship, in marked contrast to Israel and its treatment of Jewish refugees from Arab (and other) lands.

They were betrayed by countries that encouraged them to pursue violence instead of peace, bringing poverty to an entire population which, under Israeli rule from 1967 to 1987, had achieved unprecedented levels of affluence and economic growth. They are betrayed today by those who encourage impossible expectations — Palestinian rule over the whole of Israel — thus condemning yet another generation to violence, poverty and despair.

The Egyptians, who ruled Gaza between 1949 and 1967, could have created a Palestinian state, but did not. The Jordanians, who ruled the West Bank during the same years, could have created a Palestinian state, but did not. Instead, Egypt persecuted its Islamist intellectuals, sentencing many to death. The Jordanians expelled the Palestinians in 1971, after killing almost ten thousand of them in 1970 in the massacre known as ‘Black September’. The only country that has ever offered the Palestinians a state is Israel.

What has systematically derailed Israel’s efforts for peace is the fact that every concession it has made, every withdrawal it has undertaken, has been interpreted by its enemies as a sign of weakness, and has led to more violence not less. The Oslo process led to suicide bombings. Ehud Barak’s offer led to the so-called El Aqsa Intifada. The withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza led directly to the onslaught of Katyushas and Kassams. How does any nation make peace under these conditions? Hamas and Hizbollah have made it clear that they do not seek peace. They seek Israel’s destruction.

Under constant threat of violence or war, Israel’s achievements have nonetheless been immense. It has taken a desolate landscape and turned it into a place of farms, forests and fields. It has taken immigrants from more than a hundred countries, speaking more than 80 languages and turned them into a nation. It has created a modern economy with almost no resources other than the creative gifts of its people. It has sustained democracy in a part of the world that had never known it before. It has taken Hebrew, the language of the Bible, and made it speak again. It has taken a people devastated by the Holocaust and made it live again. Israel remains a Petach Tikva, a gateway of hope.

Is criticism of Israel anti-Semitism? No. Criticism is a legitimate part of democratic politics and free speech. Many of Israel’s most acute critics are Israelis. No nation is perfect; no nation can be perfect; a good society is one that makes space for, and listens to, constructive criticism. That is something with which we must live. The Hebrew Bible is the most self-critical document in religious or national history.

What we must challenge are the blatant falsehoods: that Israel is the aggressor, that it has not sought peace; above all the idea that it has no right to exist. Equally we much challenge the false paradigm that the Israel-Palestinian relationship is a zero-sum game in which one side loses and the other wins. It is not. From peace, both sides gain. From war, violence and terror, both sides lose.

The call on both sides must be for peace: peace for Israel, peace for the Palestinians. You cannot have one without the other. The choice is not between supporting Israel or supporting the Palestinians, but between peace or violence. Peace is sacred, violence a desecration. Too many lives have been lost, too much blood has been shed. Eventually both sides must recognize the other’s right to be — and if not now, when?

This article first appeared in the Jewish Chronicle. Visit the Chief Rabbi’s website at www.chiefrabbi.com.

Die israelische Identität

Im Gespräch mit der Berliner Zeitung denkt der israelische Historiker Tom Segev über die israelische Identität nach, 60 Jahre nach der Gründung des Staates Israel.

“In Israel leben Menschen, die aus hundert Ländern kommen mit unterschiedlichen Sprachen. Irgendwann gucken sie in den Spiegel und wissen, dass sie zusammengehören. [...] Anders als vor zehn Jahren antworten die jungen Israelis auf die Frage: Glaubst du an Frieden? mit Nein. Die meisten wollen zwar den Frieden. Sie sind bereit, dafür einen gewissen Preis zu zahlen. Aber sie glauben nicht mehr daran. Wenn man sich dann aber mit einem jungen Menschen unterhält, der gerade dabei ist zu heiraten, sich eine Existenz aufzubauen, und ihn fragt: ‘Ja, warum bleibst du dann in Israel?’, kommt meist als Antwort: ‘Weil ich hier zu Hause bin.’ Dabei könnten viele Israelis woanders leben. Sie haben Pässe für die USA oder für Europa. Das ist eine Errungenschaft des israelischen Staates, dass die Menschen sich hier heimisch fühlen, und zwar inzwischen in dritter und vierter Generation.”

Vollständiges Gespräch lesen.

Gespräch mit Monty Python Mitbegründer Michael Palin

Im Gespräch mit der Süddeutschen Zeitung definiert der Monty Python (Englands bester Komiktruppe) Mitbegründer Michael Palin den englischen Humor:

“Dieser Humor basierte immer schon auf Demütigung - darauf, eine Niederlage zu erwarten, sich mental rechtzeitig auf sie vorzubereiten und dann Pointen parat zu haben, um sich totzulachen. [...] Es gibt viel Unheil in Großbritannien, auch politisches, aber ich glaube, der Brite ist eher mal nicht in der Lage, an ein totalitäres System zu glauben. Er glaubt überhaupt nicht an eine Systematik. Er glaubt an ein paar Benimmregeln für den Alltag, die das Leben erleichtern. Und im Übrigen glaubt er ans totale Chaos.”

Vollständiges Gespräch lesen.

Ziegler’s Follies

The latest edition of the intellectual magazine Azure features the following essay by UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

Ziegler’s Follies

by Hillel Neuer

On March 26, 2008, to cheers and acclaim, Jean Ziegler was elected by the newly formed United Nations Human Rights Council to serve as one of its expert advisers. It was hardly an unexpected development.

Switzerland had announced his nomination in December 2007, beginning an unprecedented lobbying campaign by the Swiss government on behalf of its nominee, featuring, among other things, a glossy booklet sent to capitals around the world documenting his “unwavering commitment to,” “excellent knowledge of,” and “unstinting support for” human rights. Not for the first time, Ziegler, a former sociology professor, a member of the Swiss parliament, and currently the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, stood at the center of a perfect storm of adoration and acclaim. It was one more triumph in a remarkable career.

Granted tenure in 1977 by the University of Geneva, Ziegler founded and directed its Social Laboratory of Third World Civilizations. He has taught at numerous European universities, including the Sorbonne, where he served in 1984 as an associate professor of sociology and economics. In March 2004, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Belgium’s University of Mons-Hainaut, where he was hailed as “the modern-day Condorcet”–the great Enlightenment philosopher of human rights. Ziegler is also the author of more than twenty books for popular audiences, most of which are dedicated to asserting that hunger and other human miseries are the inevitable products of Western capitalism and globalization. His works The New Rulers of the World and The Empire of Shame, for example, have become European best-sellers, distributed by leading French publishing houses and discussed by Ziegler in such forums as TV5, the international French-language channel. His literary success was officially recognized by the French Republic in 1994, when the Ministry of Culture named him a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. This prestigious honorific is awarded for contributions to the “radiance” of arts and letters in both France and the world as a whole. Not surprisingly, Ziegler lists the accolade prominently in his curriculum vitae.

Ziegler has found his greatest success, however, in the European media, which considers him a highly credible and well-respected authority on human rights. Leading newspapers such as France’s Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, and La Croix as well as Geneva’s Le Temps quote him regularly. Profiles of Ziegler have also appeared in premier European magazines, such as the German weekly Der Spiegel. In Switzerland, the Foreign Press Association granted him its “Most Popular” award. “You are a little miracle,” declared journalist Daniel Mermet when he interviewed Ziegler in April 2007 for Là-bas si j’y suis, a popular program on the public radio station France Inter. “[You have] an amazing… taste and feeling for denunciation and revolt.” In sum, Jean Ziegler is a darling of Europe’s academic, literary, and media elite.

To be sure, none of this would be problematic if Jean Ziegler were simply an innocuous idealist. But he is not. Besides being one of Europe’s most successful celebrity activists, Ziegler is also one of the continent’s most industrious anti-American and anti-Israel ideologues as well as a prominent apologist for a rogues’ gallery of Third World dictators, including Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. During Ziegler’s tenure as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, the cause of world hunger consistently took a backseat to the promotion of his anti-Western ideology. At a time when the UN is heralding the reform of its human rights apparatus, replacing the discredited Commission on Human Rights with a new council which it has described as the “dawn of a new era,” the case of Jean Ziegler casts grave doubt on the possible success of this reform and reveals the precipitous and accelerating decline of the UN human rights system and the international human rights movement as a whole.

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Freedom of the Press 2008 Survey Release

Freedom House’s 2008 report on press freedom shows a clear decline in both authoritarian countries and established democracies.

PRESS RELEASE

Washington D.C., April 29, 2008 - Global press freedom underwent a clear decline in 2007, with journalists struggling to work in increasingly hostile environments in almost every region in the world, according to a new survey released today by Freedom House. The decline in press freedom - which occurred in authoritarian countries and established democracies alike - continues a six-year negative trend.

Freedom House will formally present findings from Freedom of the Press 2008: A Global Survey of Media Independence today at the Newseum in Washington. Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor will also unveil the Map of Press Freedom 2008, a central exhibit featured in the Newseum’s Time Warner World News Gallery.

While the survey indicated that setbacks in press freedom outnumbered advances two to one globally, there was some improvement in the region with the least amount of press freedom: the Middle East and North Africa. The survey attributes the gains in the Middle East and North Africa to a growing number of journalists who were willing to challenge government restraints, a pushback trend seen in other regions as well.

“For every step forward in press freedom last year, there were two steps back,” said Windsor. “When press freedom is in retreat, it is an ominous sign that restrictions on other freedoms may soon follow. However, journalists in many countries of the world are pushing the boundaries, crossing the red-lines, demonstrating commitment and courage against great odds and we are seeing a greater global flow of information than ever before.”

Out of 195 countries and territories, 72 (37 percent) were rated Free, 59 (30 percent) Partly Free, and 64 (33 percent) were Not Free, a decline from 2006. However, the study found that declines in individual countries and territories were often larger than in years past.   Key regional findings include:   

• Central and Eastern Europe/ Former Soviet Union: This region showed the largest region-wide setback, with Russia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, and several Central European countries, among others, showing declines. Only 18 percent of the region’s citizens live in environments with Free media.
• Middle East and North Africa:  More unrestricted access to new media such as satellite television and the internet boosted press freedom regionally. Egyptian journalists showed an increased willingness to cross press freedom ‘red lines,’ moving the country into the Partly Free category.
• Asia-Pacific: Restrictions on media coverage were imposed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, and Vietnam’s government cracked down on dissident writers.
• Americas: Guyana’s status shifted from Free to Partly Free, while Mexico’s score deteriorated by a further three points because of increased violence against journalists and impunity surrounding attacks on media.
• Sub-Saharan Africa: The region accounted for three of the year’s five status changes: Benin declined from Free to Partly Free, while the Central African Republic and Niger moved into the Not Free category. Political conflict and misuse of libel laws were key factors behind a number of country declines.
• Western Europe: The region continued to have the highest level of press freedom worldwide, despite declines in Portugal, Malta and Turkey, the only country in the region ranked Partly Free.

The survey, released annually in advance of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, assesses the degree of print, broadcast, and internet freedom in every country in the world. The 2008 ratings are based on an assessment of the legal, political and economic environments in which journalists worked in 2007.  

“Improvements in a small number of countries were far overshadowed by a continued, relentless assault on independent news media,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, Freedom House senior researcher and managing editor of the survey.

“We are particularly concerned that while abuses of press freedom continue unabated in restrictive environments such as China, threats are also apparent in countries with an established record of media freedom and in newer democracies in Central Europe and Africa.”

The key trends that led to numerical movements in the study include:  

• Unrest and Upheaval: Media played a key role in covering coups, states of emergency and contested elections in countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Georgia, and as a result, journalists became prime targets during government crackdowns.
• Violence and Impunity: Violence against journalists and, in many cases, corresponding impunity regarding past cases of abuse was a key factor in determining press freedom in countries as diverse as Mexico, Russia and the Philippines.
• Punitive laws: Media freedom remains seriously constrained by the presence and use of numerous laws that are used to punish critical journalists and outlets.The abuse of libel laws increased in a number of countries, most notably in Africa. Satellite television and internet-based news and networking sources are an emerging force for openness in restricted media environments as well as a key target for government control.
• New media: The world’s worst-rated countries continue to include Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, and Turkmenistan. In 2007, Eritrea joined the ranks of these exceedingly bad performers, while a crackdown in Burma worsened that country’s already repressive media environment, leaving its score second only to that of North Korea worldwide.

Detailed information from the survey are available here and by contacting Laura Ingalls at ingalls@freedomhouse.org.

UN Arms-for-Gold Scandal

Rwanda is calling for the United Nations to investigate allegations that the UN peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo was selling arms to rebels in the region in exchange for minerals.

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Italien - die zerrüttete Republik

Den Völkern schadet vielmehr die Habsucht der eigenen Bürger als die Raubgier der Feinde. Dieser läßt sich bisweilen ein Ziel setzen, jener aber nicht. (Niccolò Machiavelli)

In der Frankfurter Rundschau prophezeit der Soziologe und Italien-Experte Peter Wagner eine ziemlich düstere Zukunft für Italien nach der Rückkehr von Silvio Berlusconi an die Macht. Und resümiert, dass jedes Volk die Herrscher hat, die es verdient.

“Francesco Guicciardini wünschte sich, noch erleben zu dürfen, dass sein Land sich zu einem wohl geordneten republikanischen Gemeinwesen entwickelt. Der Florentiner Zeitgenosse Niccolò Machiavellis ahnte aber, dass seine Lebenszeit dafür zu begrenzt sein würde. Er war auch generell allen Illusionen abgeneigt und hielt die Zukunft für wenig vorhersehbar. Insbesondere sah er die Demokratie als eine zu zerbrechliche Regierungsform an, die leicht ein Land in den Ruin treiben könnte. [...] Guicciardini meinte, dass Bürger immer vom Streben nach ihrem ‘Besonderen’ angetrieben würden. Ihre persönlichen Interessen an Besitz oder Ruhm würden sie vor den Erhalt des Gemeinsamen stellen. Aus diesem Grunde sei Fortschritt in der Entwicklung von Republik und Demokratie niemals gewiss. Die italienischen Wahlen haben dies nachdrücklich bestätigt.”

Zum Artikel.

Rising financial protectionism

The Wall Street Journal reports on how rising nationalism has provoked a trade backlash and may hinder global environmental negotiations.

“Some of the world’s biggest new investors are government-run investment funds. In the Middle East and Russia, sovereign wealth funds are powered by oil revenue; in Asia, they’re fed by other export earnings. In all, the funds have a total of $3 trillion in revenue and have used the money to buy stakes in Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and other battered Wall Street firms. While the infusions have been lauded by the U.S. Treasury and capital-short Wall Street firms, they also aroused suspicions here and internationally that the investors could have political agendas.

Now, many national governments are raising barriers against such foreign investment. The U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Hungary and Greece are proposing or enacting restrictions on investment by state-owned firms from other countries, according to a forthcoming study by the Council of Foreign Relations. China and Russia, which have sovereign wealth funds, are staking out ’strategic sectors’ where foreign investment would be restricted, say the study’s authors, investment-law specialist David Marchick and Dartmouth economist Matthew Slaughter.”

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The French Military Revolution

Newsweek International reports on France’s success in using small combat units to partner with different international military alliances.

“A year into his first term, in fact, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is using his warm relations with Washington and his military’s strong record fighting in Africa and the Balkans to help re-establish France publicly and formally as a leading player in NATO, more than four decades after President Charles de Gaulle pulled out of the alliance’s integrated command and kicked its offices out of Paris. At the same time, he’s working to put France at the fore of a separate European Union defense force and extend its influence eastward to the Persian Gulf and South Asia. And if France really wants to project itself on the world stage this way, well, it couldn’t happen at a better time. U.S. forces are stretched thin, and there are only a handful of other armies with the training, the bases, the organization and, most important, the political will to kill and die in far corners of the planet to keep local wars from emerging into global threats. The shortlist includes the Brits-and the French, and that’s about it.”

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U.S. Justice Department says terror threat could excuse abusive interrogation

Letters obtained by the New York Times  indicate the U.S. Justice Department has told Congress that U.S. intelligence agencies trying to stop terrorist attacks may use interrogation practices that go beyond the bounds of international law. The JURIST legal blog explores.

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How to Make Deals with Devils

In an op-ed for The Washington Post, former Pentagon official and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations Leslie H. Gelb writes that dealing with bad guys is part of the “foreign policy business,” and outlines how to make deals with devils. A real issue: not whether to talk to “Bad Guys”, but how?

“Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman knew well about the sins of the Soviet Union, but they cooperated with the monstrous Joseph Stalin against an even bigger monster, Adolf Hitler. (Winston Churchill was similarly unsentimental: ‘If Hitler invaded Hell,’ he reportedly said, ‘I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.’) President Richard M. Nixon was well aware of the tens of millions killed by Mao Zedong but figured that dealing with the Chinese leader would give him leverage against Moscow. Even Reagan married his condemnation of the Soviets with an all-out effort to negotiate far-reaching arms control agreements with them.”

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Israel at 60: Reason to Celebrate!

An op-ed by David A. Harris
Executive Director of The American Jewish Committee
The Jerusalem Post, April 24, 2008

Israel is about to mark its sixtieth anniversary.

Some friends say they’re in no mood to celebrate. The timing isn’t right, they complain. The country’s political circuitry is overloaded. Danger lurks on the Gaza and Lebanon borders. Iran’s nuclear ambitions and annihilationist threats loom large. Disputes over the current peace talks with the Palestinian Authority are daily fare. Israel continues to take a beating in UN forums. The drumbeat of anti-Zionism grows louder. A fractious social climate creates long-term and seemingly insoluble fissures between Arab and Jew, not to mention Jew and Jew. And global market volatility spells trouble for the Israeli economy.

All true, perhaps. But the story mustn’t end there. Milestone anniversaries offer the chance to step back, however briefly, from the news of the moment and take stock of the larger picture. By my reckoning, Israel is quite a success story. Actually, Israel itself is nothing short of a miracle.

Think about it.

Just three years, almost to the day, after the end of the lowest point in Jewish history, the sovereign State of Israel was established. From the most vertiginous fall in the life of the Jewish people to its greatest ascent all in a matter of just over one thousand days.

Few gave the embryonic state much chance of survival. Faced with larger armies determined to eliminate the new nation in its infancy, the 650,000 Jews defended themselves and emerged victorious.

Against all the odds, they built a state. Not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination.

A land with pitifully few natural resources required the industry and talent of its human resources. Surrounded by forces bent on its isolation and destruction, the fledgling nation couldn’t let up its guard even for a moment. And a country defined as a home for Jews everywhere faced the challenge of absorbing millions of immigrants from the four corners of the earth, even as its infrastructure was stretched to the breaking point.

And it wasn’t just any state that was built. It was a pulsating democratic state, reflective of a country where just about everyone believes they have a Ph.D. in survival methods, leadership, and diplomacy. Through thick and thin, Israelis have benefited from free and fair elections, smooth transfers of power, an independent judiciary, a feisty press, and political parties covering the ideological gamut. No other country in Israel’s rough-and-tumble neighborhood can make similar claims.

True, the military plays a critical role in the life of a nation that couldn’t survive a single day without it, but civilians control the armed forces, not the other way around.

Israel has no oil or gas reserves. Isn’t that the reason, according to the joke, why Moses and the Jews wandered in the desert for forty years? To find the only place in the region without any energy resources.

Sixty percent of the land surface, in fact, is desert. Yet Israel has created a dynamic economy that, on a per capita basis, puts it squarely in the middle of the pack of European Union nations and, in the realm of high-tech, places it among the world’s top innovators.

All this in a nation that has never known a single moment of true peace, yet carries this unfathomable psychological burden with extraordinary resiliency and irrepressible optimism.

Imagine what it must be like to live with the Sword of Damocles hanging over a nation’s head from the get-go.

Imagine facing enemies who deny your very existence and teach contempt to children before they’re old enough to read.

Imagine adversaries who have no compunction about using women and youngsters as human shields to protect terrorists; target civilians; celebrate murder; use ambulances to transport armed gunmen and weapons; employ mentally retarded children as suicide bombers; and target their own energy suppliers so they can then accuse Israel of collective punishment.

These are, of course, the same foes who have never had an interest in solving the Palestinian refugee problem, an outgrowth of two wars triggered by the Arab world in 1948 and 1967.

Are Palestinians the first refugee population in history? Hardly. But they are surely the first refugees who, as a group, have categorically resisted resettlement, instead living for decades as wards of the international community.

Indeed, in Gaza today, years after Israel renounced any territorial claims, there continue to be refugee camps. Why? Why other than to serve as incubators for hatred that produce recruits bent on martyrdom and mayhem are there Palestinian refugee camps in Palestinian territory?

Some argue that the foundational problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Israeli occupation. I beg to differ. That’s not to say the occupation, the result of Israel’s 1967 war of self-defense, isn’t a problem. Of course, it is. I don’t for a moment underestimate the difficulties resulting from it for both Palestinians and Israelis alike. But it has a potential solution a two-state solution, tried first in the Oslo Accords of 1993 and then in the Barak-Arafat-Clinton talks of 2000-1. Tragically, both failed.

The common denominator was Yasser Arafat. When the critical moments came, he made it abundantly clear that he was neither a Gandhi nor a Mandela. Jimmy Carter may think it fitting to lay a wreath at his gravesite, but, at the end of the day, Arafat was a failed leader. He could have ushered in a Palestinian state living alongside Israel. Instead, he opted to speak with a forked tongue, intoning the rhetoric of peace in English while speaking the language of armed struggle in Arabic. And when presented one last chance at the end of President Clinton’s second term, Arafat chose to declare that there never was any historical connection between Jerusalem and the Jewish people, once again denying legitimacy to the Jewish presence anywhere in Israel.

That’s been the biggest obstacle to peacemaking the failure to recognize Israel’s inherent right to exist, whatever its final borders, as a non-Arab, non-Muslim sovereign presence in the region.

Peace requires an enduring foundation of mutual respect. That will come only when Palestinian textbooks begin to describe Jews as an integral part of the Middle East, with a three thousand-year historic and spiritual connection to Jerusalem and the land, and not simply as modern-day colonialists, imperialists, or crusaders.

Israel’s journey as a state cannot be complete until peace with all its neighbors is achieved. Peace is a strategic necessity. Peace is central to the Jewish mission on earth.

Today there are peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and, more quietly, it appears, between Israel and Syria. Could there be a better birthday present for Israel than peace accords on both fronts?

Wishing for peace and achieving it, however, are quite different. For Israel, the challenges are many.

For example, world leaders can talk all they want about the need for a democratic and demilitarized Palestinian state living next to Israel, but realizing those twin goals may not be so easy. When a top American strategist was asked how to ensure demilitarization, a position he advocated, he had no answer. And given the strikingly short distances, a new Palestinian state could be in a position to wreak havoc on Israel’s population centers. Those who assert that an international force can serve as a buffer may be right up to a point, but the experience of UNIFIL in Lebanon is a sobering reminder of the limitations of peacekeeping forces. Iran and Syria smuggle weapons to Hezbollah, and UN forces largely look the other way.

But because I believe in Israel, I believe in miracles. Few could have imagined full-fledged peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan thirty-five years ago, yet today both are realities. In point of fact, had Palestinian and Syrian leaders taken a page from the late Anwar Sadat and King Hussein, who convinced Israelis that they were true men of peace, there could have been agreements long ago. Perhaps tomorrow will be different.

Meanwhile, Israel, the miracle, continues to inspire awe for its very being and for being the vibrant country it is.

No, it’s not perfect. Israel has made its share of mistakes and faces more than a few unresolved issues. Statecraft, at the end of the day, is an imprecise science no matter where it’s exercised.

But Israel operates in a context, not a vacuum. It reflects both domestic and global realities. And the vagaries of decision-making don’t bypass Israeli leaders any more than leaders of other democratic countries. Still, Israel, like other democratic societies that benefit from a robust political culture and vibrant civil society, has the self-corrective mechanisms that invite both appraisal and improvement.

At the end of the day, for me, the meaning of Israel is perhaps best encapsulated in three enduring images.

In 1991, I went to Israel at the start of the Gulf War, as Iraq fired Scud missiles at the Jewish state. During a visit to Ben-Gurion Airport, I was struck by the arrival of Soviet Jews during this tough period. They weren’t afraid to come, and Israel didn’t miss a beat in welcoming them. In other words, even as Israel faced the uncertain prospect of full-scale war with Iraq, it never faltered in its commitment to serve as a home and haven for Jews seeking a new start.

In 2000, during the so-called second intifada, I was in the northern part of Tel Aviv. I passed a construction site. On the sidewalk nearby a Palestinian Muslim laid out his rug and began his prayer ritual as he faced in the direction of Mecca. No one interfered with him in any way. Even as Palestinians elsewhere were attacking Israelis, this scene spoke volumes about Israel’s commitment to democracy and pluralism.

And in 2006, after Hezbollah started a war with a cross-border raid, an AJC delegation, the first to arrive from the U.S., visited Rambam Hospital in Haifa. The emergency room was ready to receive casualties, be they military or civilian, Arab or Jew, and it received them in droves. Elsewhere in the hospital, though, even as Hezbollah-fired missiles rained down on northern Israel, medical researchers continued their investigative work regularly interrupted by the need to rush to bomb shelters in the fields of cancer, diabetes, and stem cells.

In other words, as Hezbollah and its Iranian backers were seeking to shorten life for Israelis, Israeli scientists were seeking to extend life for all.

Yes, there is much to celebrate, starting with our good fortune to witness what countless generations before us could only dream about the sovereign State of Israel.

It makes me want to jump for joy.

Oasis Economies

A new article from the journal strategy + business says Middle Eastern oil states, particularly in the Persian Gulf, are investing the proceeds of the recent oil boom more cleverly than they did the last time they reaped such windfalls.

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