Friday, August 17, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
My country 'tis of thee ... and thee and thee: full text
My country 'tis of thee ... and thee and thee
Multiple passports may be the answer to many of fissions and frictions of the new world order, even if bureaucrats and ID card pedlars may hate them.
Ian Williams
August 15, 2007 6:30 PM | Guardian Comment is Free
Alexander Alexandrovich Volkov is an unsung hero of the new world of cosmopolitan citizenship.
In 1991 Volkov launched intrepidly into space as a patriotic Soviet air force colonel and cosmonaut, and spent half a year in the Soviet space station. While he was orbiting, the Soviet Union fell apart and by the time the comrades on the ground started calling each other "mister" and eventually remembered to bring him down, Boris Yeltsin had been vivisecting his citizenship. By birth he had become Ukrainian citizen, on a Russian vessel, landing in Kazakhstan.
Totalitarian countries have no ambiguities about citizenship - they demand total loyalty to one state, which their rulers take to represent the country. EM Forster introduced a humanistic ambiguity declaring, "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
One hopes that he chose his friends wisely. But no real patriot, except one who was living down to Dr Samuel Johnson's definition of patriotism as the "Last refuge of the Scoundrel," ever truly believed "My country right or wrong." As GK Chesterton, who was himself fond of his motherland to excess, said, it "is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"
Surely the model should be Willy Brandt, a true patriot, who donned a Norwegian uniform against his "own" state when it betrayed him, humanity and its own citizens and invaded the country that had given him refuge?
However Brandt has his mind made up for him. The Nazis stripped him of citizenship. For most of us, however, citizenship is uncomplicated. We are born with it, or we acquire it when we move elsewhere. For millions of people in over 70 countries, the state does not care if someone who picks up a new passport retains a previous one. But far too many insist on a monopoly of loyalty.
In fact, the US used to require anyone who took an American passport to renounce their previous one and it still says so in the naturalization oath. Indeed, as I remember, an old friend Bill Ash, a prematurely anti-Nazi Texan, lost his US passport for flying Spitfires during the Battle of Britain.
The law never changed, but the practice did in the sixties, largely with the discovery that there were many Americans in Israel who wanted to have their rugelach and eat it. As a result the State Department now operates on the administrative premise that "U.S. citizens intend to retain United States citizenship when they obtain naturalization in a foreign state, subscribe to routine declarations of allegiance to a foreign state, or accept non-policy level employment with a foreign government."
Although one cannot help thinking that US citizenship is not what is was since the White House stripped Jose Padilla of its protections, many millions of Americans who hold multiple passports would make it very difficult to enforce the law as written. In fact the biggest threat is the xenophobic reaction of some Americans to Mexico allowing dual nationality. People who see no threat at millions of Cubans, Poles, Israelis, Irish, and even British like myself holding dual nationality now wake up sweating at night at the thought that their gardeners and housecleaners may vote.
Whatever the reasons, the US has effectively joined the countries that show an urbane insouciance about multiple passport holders. But while most of these are people who have moved their homes, dual nationality could be a major stabilizing influence in areas not traditionally associated with either urbanity or insouciance. Across the world are millions of people like Alexander Volkov, who did not change their country but had their country changed for them. Unlike the orbiting cosmopolitan Volkov, these stationary tourists have stayed in the same place as their country changed around them.
It would be nice to think that minorities stranded in a country could live there safely. As the old Balkan saying has it: "Why should I be a minority in your country, when you can be a minority in mine?" Sensibly, many of these people vote preemptively with their feet, and "return" to whatever they think their safest homeland may be even if they never lived there. Their movement led to social distress, skill shortages, economic disruption and contributed to nationalist backlashes.
In the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, and even the velvetly divorced former Czechoslovakia, if citizens had been able to keep the option of dual nationality, they would be less fearful about the future: enough so to stay wherever they were confident they had a bolthole if things got tough. In Kosovo, if the Kosovar Serbs were assured that they could also hold Serbian passports, it could help persuade them to risk staying in and independent state.
Restrictions on passports are counterproductive, and to some extent a violation of human rights. And while contributing to global citizenship, as Willy Brandt proved, a new passport does not sever obligations but rather adds to existing ones. Dual nationalities should be encouraged, not prohibited.
Multiple passports may be the answer to many of fissions and frictions of the new world order, even if bureaucrats and ID card pedlars may hate them.
Ian Williams
August 15, 2007 6:30 PM | Guardian Comment is Free
Alexander Alexandrovich Volkov is an unsung hero of the new world of cosmopolitan citizenship.
In 1991 Volkov launched intrepidly into space as a patriotic Soviet air force colonel and cosmonaut, and spent half a year in the Soviet space station. While he was orbiting, the Soviet Union fell apart and by the time the comrades on the ground started calling each other "mister" and eventually remembered to bring him down, Boris Yeltsin had been vivisecting his citizenship. By birth he had become Ukrainian citizen, on a Russian vessel, landing in Kazakhstan.
Totalitarian countries have no ambiguities about citizenship - they demand total loyalty to one state, which their rulers take to represent the country. EM Forster introduced a humanistic ambiguity declaring, "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
One hopes that he chose his friends wisely. But no real patriot, except one who was living down to Dr Samuel Johnson's definition of patriotism as the "Last refuge of the Scoundrel," ever truly believed "My country right or wrong." As GK Chesterton, who was himself fond of his motherland to excess, said, it "is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"
Surely the model should be Willy Brandt, a true patriot, who donned a Norwegian uniform against his "own" state when it betrayed him, humanity and its own citizens and invaded the country that had given him refuge?
However Brandt has his mind made up for him. The Nazis stripped him of citizenship. For most of us, however, citizenship is uncomplicated. We are born with it, or we acquire it when we move elsewhere. For millions of people in over 70 countries, the state does not care if someone who picks up a new passport retains a previous one. But far too many insist on a monopoly of loyalty.
In fact, the US used to require anyone who took an American passport to renounce their previous one and it still says so in the naturalization oath. Indeed, as I remember, an old friend Bill Ash, a prematurely anti-Nazi Texan, lost his US passport for flying Spitfires during the Battle of Britain.
The law never changed, but the practice did in the sixties, largely with the discovery that there were many Americans in Israel who wanted to have their rugelach and eat it. As a result the State Department now operates on the administrative premise that "U.S. citizens intend to retain United States citizenship when they obtain naturalization in a foreign state, subscribe to routine declarations of allegiance to a foreign state, or accept non-policy level employment with a foreign government."
Although one cannot help thinking that US citizenship is not what is was since the White House stripped Jose Padilla of its protections, many millions of Americans who hold multiple passports would make it very difficult to enforce the law as written. In fact the biggest threat is the xenophobic reaction of some Americans to Mexico allowing dual nationality. People who see no threat at millions of Cubans, Poles, Israelis, Irish, and even British like myself holding dual nationality now wake up sweating at night at the thought that their gardeners and housecleaners may vote.
Whatever the reasons, the US has effectively joined the countries that show an urbane insouciance about multiple passport holders. But while most of these are people who have moved their homes, dual nationality could be a major stabilizing influence in areas not traditionally associated with either urbanity or insouciance. Across the world are millions of people like Alexander Volkov, who did not change their country but had their country changed for them. Unlike the orbiting cosmopolitan Volkov, these stationary tourists have stayed in the same place as their country changed around them.
It would be nice to think that minorities stranded in a country could live there safely. As the old Balkan saying has it: "Why should I be a minority in your country, when you can be a minority in mine?" Sensibly, many of these people vote preemptively with their feet, and "return" to whatever they think their safest homeland may be even if they never lived there. Their movement led to social distress, skill shortages, economic disruption and contributed to nationalist backlashes.
In the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, and even the velvetly divorced former Czechoslovakia, if citizens had been able to keep the option of dual nationality, they would be less fearful about the future: enough so to stay wherever they were confident they had a bolthole if things got tough. In Kosovo, if the Kosovar Serbs were assured that they could also hold Serbian passports, it could help persuade them to risk staying in and independent state.
Restrictions on passports are counterproductive, and to some extent a violation of human rights. And while contributing to global citizenship, as Willy Brandt proved, a new passport does not sever obligations but rather adds to existing ones. Dual nationalities should be encouraged, not prohibited.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
My Country tis of Thee, and Thee, and Thee
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/08/my_country_tis_of_thee.html
Monday, August 13, 2007
Bush's Miami Vice - full text
Bush's Miami vice
Cuban emigrants tend to hate Castro less than they once did. Maybe that's why they now seem less welcome in the US.
Ian Williams
Guardian Comment is Free
August 12, 2007 12:00 PM
The only certain thing about the mysterious hold-ups on Cuban visas is that Washington is lying. Are the new Cubans voting the wrong way? Since 1994, the US has issued 20,000 visas a year to Cubans in return for Havana's promises to try to stop Cubans swimming, rafting or boating their way across to Florida. Some recent surveys suggest these new immigrants, who have left with the cooperation of Castro's government and are more racially and socially diverse, are less likely to vote Republican and less likely to support the embargo against the Cuban government. Looking at the knife-edge, by-chad-or-by-crook elections in Florida, this could actually make a difference.
Dagoberto RodrÃiguez, head of the Cuban interests section in Washington, went public on Wednesday with Cuban complaints about the Bush administration's slowdown of immigration visas at the Havana US interests department. It seems the Americans have issued only half of the 20,000 visas they promised to Cuba in 1994.
Another explanation, which does not necessarily preclude the first, is that Cuban exile hardliners in Florida and Washington think closing off the escape valve of emigration to the US will build up pressure for regime change inside Cuba. While cutting visas in Havana, the Bush administration has allowed fast-track immigration procedures for Cuban doctors sent to places such as Venezuela, presumably hoping to undercut Havana's flagship internationalist programme.
Of course, there is more than the usual whiff of hypocrisy about the whole thing. Castro's fatal mistake was to adopt East German, Stasi-style emigration procedures and to denounce those who did succeed in leaving as "gusanos" - worms. In fact, the whole Caribbean has been busily emigrating to the north for some centuries, and if Castro had been more laidback, all those emigrants would have been repatriating money, buying retirement homes and holidaying back in the fatherland.
Actually, not that many Cubans have left. The last US census figures show 870,000 Cuban-born residents in the country, which is less than a 12th of the population remaining in Cuba. In comparison, the far more prosperous Barbados (which has a developed-country economy and a health service!) has 52,000 immigrants in the US, which is almost a fifth of its stay-at-home population; Jamaica has about the same proportion - and these Caribbean island diasporas are patriotic supporters of their homelands.
If anything, it is surprising that so few came to the US, bearing in mind that, because of the strength of the anti-Castro crowd, the US guaranteed a green card to any Cuban. That policy fell apart in the early nineties, when an embarrassed Clinton had to explain why any of the (predominately white) Cubans who landed in Florida stepped on to a red carpet while black Haitians fleeing a CIA-inspired military regime were promptly deported.
That was the genesis of the 20,000 Cuban quota in return for Cuban connivance at holding back would-be emigrants, even if it made the US administration effective accomplices in a practice it had hitherto ferociously condemned. The US was supposed to send back any Cubans landing without papers, but in a typically Clintonian compromise it decided on the wet foot/dry foot policy: the US Coast Guard would turn back any caught at sea but the Immigration and Naturalisation Service would welcome any who actually made it to whatever passes for dry land in Florida.
The State Department's official response to the Cuban charges is so risible that it invites assumptions of nefarious politicking - and not just because this is, after all, an administration with something of a track record on the big fib front. It claims the hold-up is because the Cubans have stopped personnel and supplies getting to the US interests section in Havana. As Wayne Smith, a former State Department official and Cuba-watcher, chuckles: "I've not seen any signs of American staff denied entry, and as for allowing materials, the visa stamps and the forms are all there. The Cubans have the right of it on this."
The State Department quite rightly said Castro's government should allow freedom to travel, but that is more than a little hypocritical if the US does not give them visas. Once again, the US makes Castro look good.
Cuban emigrants tend to hate Castro less than they once did. Maybe that's why they now seem less welcome in the US.
Ian Williams
Guardian Comment is Free
August 12, 2007 12:00 PM
The only certain thing about the mysterious hold-ups on Cuban visas is that Washington is lying. Are the new Cubans voting the wrong way? Since 1994, the US has issued 20,000 visas a year to Cubans in return for Havana's promises to try to stop Cubans swimming, rafting or boating their way across to Florida. Some recent surveys suggest these new immigrants, who have left with the cooperation of Castro's government and are more racially and socially diverse, are less likely to vote Republican and less likely to support the embargo against the Cuban government. Looking at the knife-edge, by-chad-or-by-crook elections in Florida, this could actually make a difference.
Dagoberto RodrÃiguez, head of the Cuban interests section in Washington, went public on Wednesday with Cuban complaints about the Bush administration's slowdown of immigration visas at the Havana US interests department. It seems the Americans have issued only half of the 20,000 visas they promised to Cuba in 1994.
Another explanation, which does not necessarily preclude the first, is that Cuban exile hardliners in Florida and Washington think closing off the escape valve of emigration to the US will build up pressure for regime change inside Cuba. While cutting visas in Havana, the Bush administration has allowed fast-track immigration procedures for Cuban doctors sent to places such as Venezuela, presumably hoping to undercut Havana's flagship internationalist programme.
Of course, there is more than the usual whiff of hypocrisy about the whole thing. Castro's fatal mistake was to adopt East German, Stasi-style emigration procedures and to denounce those who did succeed in leaving as "gusanos" - worms. In fact, the whole Caribbean has been busily emigrating to the north for some centuries, and if Castro had been more laidback, all those emigrants would have been repatriating money, buying retirement homes and holidaying back in the fatherland.
Actually, not that many Cubans have left. The last US census figures show 870,000 Cuban-born residents in the country, which is less than a 12th of the population remaining in Cuba. In comparison, the far more prosperous Barbados (which has a developed-country economy and a health service!) has 52,000 immigrants in the US, which is almost a fifth of its stay-at-home population; Jamaica has about the same proportion - and these Caribbean island diasporas are patriotic supporters of their homelands.
If anything, it is surprising that so few came to the US, bearing in mind that, because of the strength of the anti-Castro crowd, the US guaranteed a green card to any Cuban. That policy fell apart in the early nineties, when an embarrassed Clinton had to explain why any of the (predominately white) Cubans who landed in Florida stepped on to a red carpet while black Haitians fleeing a CIA-inspired military regime were promptly deported.
That was the genesis of the 20,000 Cuban quota in return for Cuban connivance at holding back would-be emigrants, even if it made the US administration effective accomplices in a practice it had hitherto ferociously condemned. The US was supposed to send back any Cubans landing without papers, but in a typically Clintonian compromise it decided on the wet foot/dry foot policy: the US Coast Guard would turn back any caught at sea but the Immigration and Naturalisation Service would welcome any who actually made it to whatever passes for dry land in Florida.
The State Department's official response to the Cuban charges is so risible that it invites assumptions of nefarious politicking - and not just because this is, after all, an administration with something of a track record on the big fib front. It claims the hold-up is because the Cubans have stopped personnel and supplies getting to the US interests section in Havana. As Wayne Smith, a former State Department official and Cuba-watcher, chuckles: "I've not seen any signs of American staff denied entry, and as for allowing materials, the visa stamps and the forms are all there. The Cubans have the right of it on this."
The State Department quite rightly said Castro's government should allow freedom to travel, but that is more than a little hypocritical if the US does not give them visas. Once again, the US makes Castro look good.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Bush's Miami Vice
Bush's Miami Vice In the Guardian on the mysterious, and presumably malicious, State Department policy on Cuban visas.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
China Syndrome - full text
The China syndrome
In reality, UN resolutions seem to mean just what Beijing wants, neither more nor less.
Ian Williams
Guardian - Comment is Free
August 8, 2007 6:00 PM | Printable version
On July 19, the UN ambassadors of Swaziland and the Solomon Islands took a letter from President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan asking for admission to the United Nations - under the name of Taiwan, not the traditional designation that the deceased president, Chiang Kai-shek, had lumbered the island with, the Republic of China. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon refused to accept the letter.
George Orwell would love the excuses. The spokeswoman for the secretary general of the UN said, "It's really up to the Member States of this Organization to decide on the future course of how it deals with new membership". This did not really explain why he would not put the letter before the members of the general assembly.
The UN claims that resolution 2758 which seated the People's Republic of China in 1971, precludes Taiwan's membership. This is highly arguable.
It quite rightly said that the PRC delegates were the "only lawful representatives" of China to the UN, and decided to "expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek".
But how much has changed since 1971! Firstly, the "representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" lost in democratic elections, and the elected government of Taipei has no pretence whatsoever to represent the Chinese mainland. Ironically Chiang's delegation only used their veto in the security council once - against the admission of Mongolia, which they considered as integral a part of the "one China" as the PRC now considers Taiwan!
With equal irony, the first veto from the PRC's delegation was against the membership of Bangladesh. What was then Peking saw no reason why the genocidal behaviour by Pakistan's generals against the citizenry of what was then East Pakistan in any way affected the "one Pakistan policy". Both Taiwan and the PRC have seen the light since. Taiwan no longer claims the mainland, let alone Mongolia, and Beijing and Bangladesh are quite prepared to maintain what have now become "traditional", friendly relations.
The UN bureaucracy's hypocritical response is an assault upon the principles of the UN charter. Resolution 2758 does not say what the Chinese say it does, and even if it did, it is like any other resolution, always open to question, amendment and rescission. It was the laws of the Medes and Persians that could not be rescinded, not UN resolutions. Indeed, to cover Israel's defiance of so many of them, the US now claims that general assembly resolutions are not binding!
None of the security council members such as the US have protested at this arbitrary withdrawal of the prerogative of members to put items on the agenda or to discuss previous resolutions.
As always there is a certain lack of consistency. No one said, for example, that the zionism is racism resolution of 1975 could not be rescinded, certainly not the US, which successfully moved to do just that in possibly the shortest ever resolutions. "The General Assembly decides to revoke the determination contained in its resolution 3379 (XXX) of 10 November 1975".
But then neither has any state complained that the UN's department of public information bans reporters from Taiwan on the totally spurious grounds that only reporters with a UN member state passport can attend, as the CPJ has so eloquently complained. Once again, the UN inappropriately cites that Swiss army knife of a resolution, 2758, which seems have a tool to extricate bureaucrats and diplomats from dragons' claws. So Taiwanese passport-holders and journalists can go to China - but not to the UN! One only hopes that the last few microstates, like Niue or the Cook Islands, can rustle up a correspondent to test the integrity of the UN's rules.
Indeed it will be interesting to see what happens to Kosovan media when the US recognises Kosovo's independence, and the Russians veto its UN membership.
The reflexive deference to China is bad for the US, the UN and the world. Beijing always comes back for more. In contrast, when China has threatened to veto UN operations in Haiti because of the Haitian recognition of Taiwan, the Latin American and Caribbean states have called its bluff and made it plain that that China would lose friends. It backed down.
Beijing is entitled to use its considerable influence on the floor of the general assembly. For the foreseeable future it will probably succeed in keeping 23 million people and one of the world's most advanced economies in a state of multilateral limbo. But for the UN secretariat to connive at stifling the debate is a threat to the principles of the organisation, just as its treatment of Taiwanese journalists makes a mockery of its annual celebration of World Press Freedom day. To be fair, Ban Ki-moon is only following in the footsteps that his predecessors should have shamefully concealed. One wishes he had the courage to blaze a new trail.
In reality, UN resolutions seem to mean just what Beijing wants, neither more nor less.
Ian Williams
Guardian - Comment is Free
August 8, 2007 6:00 PM | Printable version
On July 19, the UN ambassadors of Swaziland and the Solomon Islands took a letter from President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan asking for admission to the United Nations - under the name of Taiwan, not the traditional designation that the deceased president, Chiang Kai-shek, had lumbered the island with, the Republic of China. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon refused to accept the letter.
George Orwell would love the excuses. The spokeswoman for the secretary general of the UN said, "It's really up to the Member States of this Organization to decide on the future course of how it deals with new membership". This did not really explain why he would not put the letter before the members of the general assembly.
The UN claims that resolution 2758 which seated the People's Republic of China in 1971, precludes Taiwan's membership. This is highly arguable.
It quite rightly said that the PRC delegates were the "only lawful representatives" of China to the UN, and decided to "expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek".
But how much has changed since 1971! Firstly, the "representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" lost in democratic elections, and the elected government of Taipei has no pretence whatsoever to represent the Chinese mainland. Ironically Chiang's delegation only used their veto in the security council once - against the admission of Mongolia, which they considered as integral a part of the "one China" as the PRC now considers Taiwan!
With equal irony, the first veto from the PRC's delegation was against the membership of Bangladesh. What was then Peking saw no reason why the genocidal behaviour by Pakistan's generals against the citizenry of what was then East Pakistan in any way affected the "one Pakistan policy". Both Taiwan and the PRC have seen the light since. Taiwan no longer claims the mainland, let alone Mongolia, and Beijing and Bangladesh are quite prepared to maintain what have now become "traditional", friendly relations.
The UN bureaucracy's hypocritical response is an assault upon the principles of the UN charter. Resolution 2758 does not say what the Chinese say it does, and even if it did, it is like any other resolution, always open to question, amendment and rescission. It was the laws of the Medes and Persians that could not be rescinded, not UN resolutions. Indeed, to cover Israel's defiance of so many of them, the US now claims that general assembly resolutions are not binding!
None of the security council members such as the US have protested at this arbitrary withdrawal of the prerogative of members to put items on the agenda or to discuss previous resolutions.
As always there is a certain lack of consistency. No one said, for example, that the zionism is racism resolution of 1975 could not be rescinded, certainly not the US, which successfully moved to do just that in possibly the shortest ever resolutions. "The General Assembly decides to revoke the determination contained in its resolution 3379 (XXX) of 10 November 1975".
But then neither has any state complained that the UN's department of public information bans reporters from Taiwan on the totally spurious grounds that only reporters with a UN member state passport can attend, as the CPJ has so eloquently complained. Once again, the UN inappropriately cites that Swiss army knife of a resolution, 2758, which seems have a tool to extricate bureaucrats and diplomats from dragons' claws. So Taiwanese passport-holders and journalists can go to China - but not to the UN! One only hopes that the last few microstates, like Niue or the Cook Islands, can rustle up a correspondent to test the integrity of the UN's rules.
Indeed it will be interesting to see what happens to Kosovan media when the US recognises Kosovo's independence, and the Russians veto its UN membership.
The reflexive deference to China is bad for the US, the UN and the world. Beijing always comes back for more. In contrast, when China has threatened to veto UN operations in Haiti because of the Haitian recognition of Taiwan, the Latin American and Caribbean states have called its bluff and made it plain that that China would lose friends. It backed down.
Beijing is entitled to use its considerable influence on the floor of the general assembly. For the foreseeable future it will probably succeed in keeping 23 million people and one of the world's most advanced economies in a state of multilateral limbo. But for the UN secretariat to connive at stifling the debate is a threat to the principles of the organisation, just as its treatment of Taiwanese journalists makes a mockery of its annual celebration of World Press Freedom day. To be fair, Ban Ki-moon is only following in the footsteps that his predecessors should have shamefully concealed. One wishes he had the courage to blaze a new trail.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Rum and Pirates at Old Baldy, NC
For those bored with politics, I went to North Carolina at the weekend to speak about the history of rum. The occasion was fund raiser for one of the US's oldest lighthouses, Old Baldy, which used to warn shipping away from the treacherous shoals of Cape Fear.
The organizers had tied the event in with Pirates, and a properly villainous bunch of them milled round the site, firing off black powder muskets. It was a highly appropriate venue all around. Firstly, the coast was indeed the haunt of real pirates, like Blackbeard, and the island was site of British fortresses and Revolutionary attacks during the War of 1776, during which readers of Rum: A Social and Sociable History will remember, rum was one of the causes and one of the major weapons of war.
It was also the site of a Confederate fortress, and USN blockade ships shipwrecks. The Union Navy had gone prohibitionist and abolitionist at that point, stopping the grog rations for the ratings.
North Carolina is still hungover from Prohibition. In a country where George W. Bush and Rudolf Giuliani can sneer about socialized medicine, North Carolina has socialized state owned liquor distribution. It has a limited list, and any North Carolinian of more refined tastes can indeed special order of the better stuff – but only by the case, which seems a little counterintuitive if the purpose of this exercise is to cut back drinking.
The dinner and rum tasting event in the evening at the Bald Head Island Club was highly successful and if they were at all like me, all the participants felt a lot a better than they deserved the follow morning.
The organizers and the Alcohol Board of Control of North Carolina pulled together these brands, which were consumed in statistically significant samples, with the remnants from the cases being auctioned off to enthusiastic bidders after enthusiastic toasters raised their tots to "The Global Spirit with its warm beating heart in the Caribbean," and "Every tot downed helps Third World Development."
Appleton Estate 21 yr, Jamaica
Rhum Barbancourt 15 yr Estate Reserve, Haiti
Flor De Cana Centenario 12 yr, Nicaragua
Pyrat XO Reserve, Anguilla
1 Barrel Rum, Belize
Angostura 1919, Trinidad & Tobago
Pusser's British Navy Rum, Tortola (and Trinidad).
The organizers had tied the event in with Pirates, and a properly villainous bunch of them milled round the site, firing off black powder muskets. It was a highly appropriate venue all around. Firstly, the coast was indeed the haunt of real pirates, like Blackbeard, and the island was site of British fortresses and Revolutionary attacks during the War of 1776, during which readers of Rum: A Social and Sociable History will remember, rum was one of the causes and one of the major weapons of war.
It was also the site of a Confederate fortress, and USN blockade ships shipwrecks. The Union Navy had gone prohibitionist and abolitionist at that point, stopping the grog rations for the ratings.
North Carolina is still hungover from Prohibition. In a country where George W. Bush and Rudolf Giuliani can sneer about socialized medicine, North Carolina has socialized state owned liquor distribution. It has a limited list, and any North Carolinian of more refined tastes can indeed special order of the better stuff – but only by the case, which seems a little counterintuitive if the purpose of this exercise is to cut back drinking.
The dinner and rum tasting event in the evening at the Bald Head Island Club was highly successful and if they were at all like me, all the participants felt a lot a better than they deserved the follow morning.
The organizers and the Alcohol Board of Control of North Carolina pulled together these brands, which were consumed in statistically significant samples, with the remnants from the cases being auctioned off to enthusiastic bidders after enthusiastic toasters raised their tots to "The Global Spirit with its warm beating heart in the Caribbean," and "Every tot downed helps Third World Development."
Appleton Estate 21 yr, Jamaica
Rhum Barbancourt 15 yr Estate Reserve, Haiti
Flor De Cana Centenario 12 yr, Nicaragua
Pyrat XO Reserve, Anguilla
1 Barrel Rum, Belize
Angostura 1919, Trinidad & Tobago
Pusser's British Navy Rum, Tortola (and Trinidad).
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Whose dime is Blair travelling on?
Whose dime is Blair travelling on?
The former PM's new role raises questions of mandate and accountability, not to mention who's footing the bill for his Middle East adventure.
Ian Williams
August 2,
When Tony Blair was appointed as the Quartet representative, it was at the behest of the Bush administration. And for once, the White House seems to be putting its money where its mouth was.
British and UN sources confrimed to Al-Jazeera International last week that the US state department is picking up Tony Blair's tab while they work with their reluctant partners in the Quartet to set up a trust fund. Russian sources, who were not that keen on his appointment anyway, have said that they would be prepared to see Blair get international civil servant (tax free status) but would be reluctant to go further in the way of contributing.
The subject has upset even senior British Foreign Office officials, concerned not only at Blair's lack of a substantial enough role for an ex-prime minister, but also with the contradictions inherent in his in effect being on the American payroll immediately after his retirement, which was after all accelerated by public displeasure at his being so close to the Bush administration while in office.
The question of who pays for him and his office, and on what basis he is employed, had been getting the runaround. There is the soapy smell of money laundering here, with frantic attempts to disguise the source.
By Friday, the state department was declaring that "neither the US government nor the Quartet pays a salary to Quartet representative Tony Blair. We are working out the details of funding and support with our Quartet partners for Blair's staff as well as the costs associated with their mission. We expect staff will be seconded by other governments of the Quartet, including the US".
The UN spokeswoman said "there are discussions still taking place", and in remarkable harmony, his own office said on Thursday that "these issues are still being discussed. Our focus has been on Tony Blair's trips and getting the office up and running September". So is Blair paying for his office, his staff and his travel costs to the region on his own credit card while waiting for cash? One doubts it.
His spokesman's email address is @tonyblair.org, which is not as surprising as it may seem. The Quartet is an ad hoc partnership between Europe, the UN, Russia and the US, which has no institutional existence, no office, no rules of procedure and no organisation. There is a lot of mystery about what the Quartet does, and even more about what Tony Blair's part in it is.
Condoleezza Rice and the Americans have been very explicit about what his part is not. He cannot engage in any serious attempts at peacemaking between the Israelis and the Palestinians. His job is to help build Palestinian Institutions, but he is not to talk to Hamas, which actually won the elections and controls the Gaza Strip. That may be just as well since between Iraq and his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon last year, there is no guarantee that Hamas would talk to him.
Indeed, the presence of Blair as an official Quartet representative, refusing to talk to Hamas, reinforces the recent conclusion, leaked to the Guardian from Alavaro de Soto, the UN's previous special representative, that the Quartet is simply a means of binding the other parties to an American, and hence Israeli, agenda.
It is not Russian policy and certainly has not been voted upon by any UN decision-making body, to boycott the victors of the last Palestinian Authority elections. But here we have a former British prime minister, on the American payroll, doing just that in the name of the Quartet. It is not surprising that there is a degree of caginess on the part of the various parties. It is surprising that Tony Blair could not wait to start until some more acceptable and transparent payment had been worked out - and perhaps even more so that he would take the job without a more substantial role allotted to him.
And to highlight his peripheral status, Gordon Brown has approached former Robin Cook aide Michael Williams, freshly appointed to be Middle East rep at the UN to represent Britain in the peace process. Which reinforces the question. Who does Blair represent?
The former PM's new role raises questions of mandate and accountability, not to mention who's footing the bill for his Middle East adventure.
Ian Williams
August 2,
When Tony Blair was appointed as the Quartet representative, it was at the behest of the Bush administration. And for once, the White House seems to be putting its money where its mouth was.
British and UN sources confrimed to Al-Jazeera International last week that the US state department is picking up Tony Blair's tab while they work with their reluctant partners in the Quartet to set up a trust fund. Russian sources, who were not that keen on his appointment anyway, have said that they would be prepared to see Blair get international civil servant (tax free status) but would be reluctant to go further in the way of contributing.
The subject has upset even senior British Foreign Office officials, concerned not only at Blair's lack of a substantial enough role for an ex-prime minister, but also with the contradictions inherent in his in effect being on the American payroll immediately after his retirement, which was after all accelerated by public displeasure at his being so close to the Bush administration while in office.
The question of who pays for him and his office, and on what basis he is employed, had been getting the runaround. There is the soapy smell of money laundering here, with frantic attempts to disguise the source.
By Friday, the state department was declaring that "neither the US government nor the Quartet pays a salary to Quartet representative Tony Blair. We are working out the details of funding and support with our Quartet partners for Blair's staff as well as the costs associated with their mission. We expect staff will be seconded by other governments of the Quartet, including the US".
The UN spokeswoman said "there are discussions still taking place", and in remarkable harmony, his own office said on Thursday that "these issues are still being discussed. Our focus has been on Tony Blair's trips and getting the office up and running September". So is Blair paying for his office, his staff and his travel costs to the region on his own credit card while waiting for cash? One doubts it.
His spokesman's email address is @tonyblair.org, which is not as surprising as it may seem. The Quartet is an ad hoc partnership between Europe, the UN, Russia and the US, which has no institutional existence, no office, no rules of procedure and no organisation. There is a lot of mystery about what the Quartet does, and even more about what Tony Blair's part in it is.
Condoleezza Rice and the Americans have been very explicit about what his part is not. He cannot engage in any serious attempts at peacemaking between the Israelis and the Palestinians. His job is to help build Palestinian Institutions, but he is not to talk to Hamas, which actually won the elections and controls the Gaza Strip. That may be just as well since between Iraq and his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon last year, there is no guarantee that Hamas would talk to him.
Indeed, the presence of Blair as an official Quartet representative, refusing to talk to Hamas, reinforces the recent conclusion, leaked to the Guardian from Alavaro de Soto, the UN's previous special representative, that the Quartet is simply a means of binding the other parties to an American, and hence Israeli, agenda.
It is not Russian policy and certainly has not been voted upon by any UN decision-making body, to boycott the victors of the last Palestinian Authority elections. But here we have a former British prime minister, on the American payroll, doing just that in the name of the Quartet. It is not surprising that there is a degree of caginess on the part of the various parties. It is surprising that Tony Blair could not wait to start until some more acceptable and transparent payment had been worked out - and perhaps even more so that he would take the job without a more substantial role allotted to him.
And to highlight his peripheral status, Gordon Brown has approached former Robin Cook aide Michael Williams, freshly appointed to be Middle East rep at the UN to represent Britain in the peace process. Which reinforces the question. Who does Blair represent?
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Blairing the issues: full text
Guardian Comment is Free full text It's not Blair
Gordon Brown's first trip to the US since becoming prime minister highlights how different he is from Tony Blair.
Ian Williams
July 30, 2007 8:00 PM | n
One of the consequences of the federal system is that American politicians have difficulties getting name recognition on a national scale. That is one of the reasons why they have to spend so many millions to get their names imprinted in voters' minds, and why dynastic names do so well in the electoral market place, with Kennedy, Bush and Clinton being good examples.
If so many Americans have difficulty recognising, for example, Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson - despite his distinguished career as congressman, UN ambassador, energy secretary, negotiator with North Korea, and currently governor of New Mexico - it is understandable that Gordon Brown, currently on his first visit to the US since becoming prime minister, has not been on everyone's mind.
But he will be, whether through acts of omission or commission. Despite former House Speaker Tip O'Neill's dictum that "all politics is local", at the moment all politics is Iraq, and Brown's silence on the subject has been masterful. "Don't mention the war!" may not have worked for Basil Fawlty or Kurt Waldheim, but Brown seems to be getting away with it.
When he praises Bush for his efforts in the war on terror, the subtext is that nobody in Britain, least of all the prime minister, is under any illusion that the Iraq invasion was anything to do with 9-11, al-Qaida, or the war on terror. What is more, Brits often do nuance. "My country right or wrong", is not an acceptable posture, and "someone else's country right or wrong", is even less palatable, at least outside the pseudo-patriotic world of the media owned by Rupert Murdoch.
In fact, I was on the Neil Cavuto show on Fox two weeks ago trying to explain that Brown's refusal to use the phrase "War On Terror" did not mean he was soft on terror, but simply somewhat more precise about it than Fox, or the 70% of Americans who at the time of the invasion of Iraq had been nudged into believing that Saddam was behind the World Trade Centre attacks.
Brown is, of course, in no way anti-American, as the newspapers in his Cape Cod holiday spot can testify when they rubbed their hands in anticipation of "Downing Street West" there. But unlike his predecessor, the current prime minister is more nuanced and selective in his enthusiasm for aspects of American society. It is a strain sometimes for his zealous spinners. Comments by Douglas Alexander and Mark Malloch Brown about putting some distance from the US administration went down well in Britain and did not need as many apologists as they ended up with.
Fifteen years ago, a group of expat Labour supporters met Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Manhattan on one of their visits. It was while John Smith was the leader of the Labour Party so they were still chums. Both, but Blair particularly, were overwhelmed with Bill Clinton. "He wins elections," Blair said as Brown nodded. Tony was not put down by the suggestion that Clinton would put his grandmother on the streets to win votes and campaign financing, and went back home to denounce me as "a wild man from Liverpool badmouthing Bill Clinton," to a meeting of Labour candidates.
Despite a superficial similarity, there was cleary a difference between Blair and Brown, even back then. Blair saw the Labour party as a vehicle for him to get to power just as Clinton saw the Democratic Party. He certainly did not have the feel for its traditions that Brown, a long-time activist and biographer of Jimmy Maxton, the staunchly-left leader of the Independent Labour party, clearly showed. Brown has grown Britain's economy and under his care as chancellor of the exchequer, the pound is beginning to make the declining dollar look like an Albanian Lek.
Blair enthusiasts predicted electoral disaster when their leader's disingenuous smile disappeared off the airwaves. The opposite happened, at least in part because the British electorate was thoroughly disillusioned with a completely subservient policy. This time, there will be no humiliating greetings of "Yo Brown", and the prime minister cannily cut back on the photo ops. He will be going to the United Nations, which he and his party take seriously, to discuss Darfur, global warming and other multilateral issues.
Perhaps he will swap notes there with Ban Ki-moon, the self-professed "slippery eel", on their respective balancing acts: how to put distance from the paraplegic duck president while not totally alienating the administration of the world's only superpower.
Gordon Brown's first trip to the US since becoming prime minister highlights how different he is from Tony Blair.
Ian Williams
July 30, 2007 8:00 PM | n
One of the consequences of the federal system is that American politicians have difficulties getting name recognition on a national scale. That is one of the reasons why they have to spend so many millions to get their names imprinted in voters' minds, and why dynastic names do so well in the electoral market place, with Kennedy, Bush and Clinton being good examples.
If so many Americans have difficulty recognising, for example, Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson - despite his distinguished career as congressman, UN ambassador, energy secretary, negotiator with North Korea, and currently governor of New Mexico - it is understandable that Gordon Brown, currently on his first visit to the US since becoming prime minister, has not been on everyone's mind.
But he will be, whether through acts of omission or commission. Despite former House Speaker Tip O'Neill's dictum that "all politics is local", at the moment all politics is Iraq, and Brown's silence on the subject has been masterful. "Don't mention the war!" may not have worked for Basil Fawlty or Kurt Waldheim, but Brown seems to be getting away with it.
When he praises Bush for his efforts in the war on terror, the subtext is that nobody in Britain, least of all the prime minister, is under any illusion that the Iraq invasion was anything to do with 9-11, al-Qaida, or the war on terror. What is more, Brits often do nuance. "My country right or wrong", is not an acceptable posture, and "someone else's country right or wrong", is even less palatable, at least outside the pseudo-patriotic world of the media owned by Rupert Murdoch.
In fact, I was on the Neil Cavuto show on Fox two weeks ago trying to explain that Brown's refusal to use the phrase "War On Terror" did not mean he was soft on terror, but simply somewhat more precise about it than Fox, or the 70% of Americans who at the time of the invasion of Iraq had been nudged into believing that Saddam was behind the World Trade Centre attacks.
Brown is, of course, in no way anti-American, as the newspapers in his Cape Cod holiday spot can testify when they rubbed their hands in anticipation of "Downing Street West" there. But unlike his predecessor, the current prime minister is more nuanced and selective in his enthusiasm for aspects of American society. It is a strain sometimes for his zealous spinners. Comments by Douglas Alexander and Mark Malloch Brown about putting some distance from the US administration went down well in Britain and did not need as many apologists as they ended up with.
Fifteen years ago, a group of expat Labour supporters met Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Manhattan on one of their visits. It was while John Smith was the leader of the Labour Party so they were still chums. Both, but Blair particularly, were overwhelmed with Bill Clinton. "He wins elections," Blair said as Brown nodded. Tony was not put down by the suggestion that Clinton would put his grandmother on the streets to win votes and campaign financing, and went back home to denounce me as "a wild man from Liverpool badmouthing Bill Clinton," to a meeting of Labour candidates.
Despite a superficial similarity, there was cleary a difference between Blair and Brown, even back then. Blair saw the Labour party as a vehicle for him to get to power just as Clinton saw the Democratic Party. He certainly did not have the feel for its traditions that Brown, a long-time activist and biographer of Jimmy Maxton, the staunchly-left leader of the Independent Labour party, clearly showed. Brown has grown Britain's economy and under his care as chancellor of the exchequer, the pound is beginning to make the declining dollar look like an Albanian Lek.
Blair enthusiasts predicted electoral disaster when their leader's disingenuous smile disappeared off the airwaves. The opposite happened, at least in part because the British electorate was thoroughly disillusioned with a completely subservient policy. This time, there will be no humiliating greetings of "Yo Brown", and the prime minister cannily cut back on the photo ops. He will be going to the United Nations, which he and his party take seriously, to discuss Darfur, global warming and other multilateral issues.
Perhaps he will swap notes there with Ban Ki-moon, the self-professed "slippery eel", on their respective balancing acts: how to put distance from the paraplegic duck president while not totally alienating the administration of the world's only superpower.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Blairing the issues
My commemorative piece on Brown's visit to the White House and the UN. in the Guardian Comment is Free.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Western Sahara and Palestine
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2007, pages 26-27
United Nations Report
Morocco’s Designs on Western Sahara Pose Danger to Palestinians
By Ian Williams
APRIL 30 WAS just another day at the U.N. Security Council stakeout. As the veteran Polisario representative to the U.N., Ahmed Boukhari, was answering questions about the resolution that had just been passed, someone called the UNTV control room and told them to fade the cameras to black. No one has confessed, but some current or former Moroccan member of the U.N. staff doubtless will be rewarded by his grateful Kingdom. Morocco plays tough on this issue, as one would expect from a country that stands international law on its head.
As an old Brazilian saying has it, “For our enemies, the law, for our friend—that’s different.” It is a message Washington clearly has learned well. Sadly, however, the Americans are not alone in their expedient view of international law.
We know that Arabs will protest loudly when an occupier seizes land, dispossesses people and replaces them with settlers, while building a massive ugly barrier to keep out terrorists, in defiance of U.N. decisions and International Court of Justice (ICJ) judgments.
So why is there complete silence from most of the Arab world when Morocco has done just that in Western Sahara?
Arab friends have told me that there are not that many Saharwis, so why bother? But then non-Arabs also ask why we spend so much time on a relatively minor problem like the Palestinians.
The point about law, domestic and international, is that—theoretically, at least—it applies equally to rich and poor, strong and weak. Former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain rightly lives in ignominy for handing Czechoslovakia over to Hitler because it was a “quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”
It is clear that lawbreaking sets a precedent. For over 15 years the U.N. Security Council has addressed the issue of the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara every six months, agreeing to pour yet even more money into the sand for MINURSO, the peacekeeping force.
Everyone wishes the issue would just go away, since it poses such a clear challenge to the U.N. and to international law. Before Morocco occupied the territory, the ICJ ruled that there should be a referendum. The Security Council said Morocco should end its occupation, and in 1991 endorsed a cease-fire that was to end in a referendum which would allow the Saharwis to decide whether they wanted independence, or incorporation into Morocco.
As part of that cease-fire, even the late King Hassan II of Morocco had said there should be a referendum—although he stopped saying that as soon as it became apparent he could not win it, since the U.N. and MINURSO would not let him pad the electoral rolls with Moroccans.
But no one had enough of a dog in the fight to force Morocco to abide by Security Council resolutions. On the other hand, smaller members, who naturally want to uphold international law as their only protection against larger powers, have been concerned enough to thwart the perennial plans of France and others to legalize handing over the territory to Rabat.
In his last week in office, just before Christmas, for example, former Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar tried to smuggle through a solution favorable to Morocco.
On April 30 of this year the French were joined by the Americans, but once again could not railroad a decision past the atavistic attachment of the smaller members to legality and the principle of self-determination. Even so, the resolution that Bukhari was discussing shamelessly thanks the Moroccans for their latest initiative, while only “noting” Polisario’s willingness to go along with the full letter of U.N. resolutions.
The compromise resolution did not endorse the Moroccan plan, but called for talks between Morocco and Polisario “with a view to achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.” The Moroccan plan directly precluded self-determination and offered less autonomy than Puerto Rico enjoys.
Significantly, over the same period of time the PLO also renounced armed struggle and put its faith in international law and diplomacy. The PLO has spent over a decade refining and reiterating the corpus of U.N. and ICJ decisions that support its case, while invoking multilateral bodies like the signatories of the Geneva Convention. They have done this with the full and served support of the Arab and Islamic bloc. But all their work could be for naught if the Moroccans were to succeed in getting U.N. endorsement of their autonomy proposal—which does in fact bear an uncanny resemblance to the Bantustan that Israel would like to see the Palestinians accept.
If Morocco can overturn international law, and legalize its movement of settlers into and annexation of occupied territory, then why can’t the U.N. Security Council simply hand over Jerusalem and the settlements to Israel regardless of its previous decisions? Arab countries that stand aside and let Morocco get away with this are forging the legal weapons to dispossess the Palestinians—not to mention condemning their Arab brothers of the Sahara to a justly condemned regime that consistently violates their human and national rights.
They also should look at the friends Morocco has bought in the USA. Rabat has been spending some $30 million in lobbying and, through its surrogate, the “Moroccan American Policy Center” (MAPC), has been tickling the soft underbelly of Congress. It has identified its friends in Washington, who amassed over 160 congressional signatures for a resolution supporting the Moroccan proposal. For most of the signatories Western Sahara is indeed a faraway country which may as well be Freedonia for all they know about it.
But the people heading the lobbying effort do know what they are doing: they are the architects of Washington’s disastrous polices on the Cuban embargo, on Central America and Iran-Contra, on the spurious War on Terror, on Iraq and on Israel. With friends like these Morocco should be ashamed.
The congressional signatories are almost a roll-call of anti-Castro, pro-Israel members of the House of Representatives, and their numbers doubtless were boosted when the MAPC recently hired the legal-and-lobbying firm of Alberto Cardenas, a veteran anti-Castro Cuban American who served two terms as head of Florida’s Republican Party and co-chaired Bush’s 2004 effort in the Sunshine State.
For Morocco’s supporters, an enemy's friend is a hated foe. Polisario has the dubious benefit of Castro’s support and that (plus a $15,000 monthly retainer to Cardenas) is enough to rally the Florida delegation, which has noticed that Castro has a soft spot for the Palestinians as well, with similar results on their voting patterns.
The Anti-Castro Connection
Prominent among the resolution’s signers was Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is at least consistent. In addition to hating Castro she has been waging war on UNRWA and Palestinian refugees, so it seems fitting that she shows no concern for Saharwi refugees.
Toby Moffett, a former Democratic representative from Connecticut who had been elected on a Naderite clean-up-Congress ticket, engagingly described a week in the life of a lobbyist in the Los Angeles Times recently:
“I leave and rush to the House side of the Capitol to meet another client, the ambassador from Morocco. We have a meeting with a key member of the Appropriations Committee. Morocco has a good story to tell. It is a reliable friend of the U.S. It believes that the long-standing dispute with Algeria and the rebel Polisario group over the Western Sahara must be resolved.
“We tell the congresswoman and her staff that the region is becoming a possible al-Qaeda training area....My idea is to sell this as a chance for Democrats to resolve a dispute in a critical region, in contrast to the president’s utter failure to fix anything.”
On the Republican side, Elliot Abrams, the “deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy,” a hawkish pro-Israeli supporter and one of the neocon devisers of the Iraq war, also has been pushing the Moroccan plan, betraying the same insouciance toward legal technicalities that he did when convicted for lying to Congress about the Iran/Contra scandal. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Abrams sees the parallels between Israel and the Palestinians and the Moroccans and the Saharwis, and appreciates the precedent it would set.
In Washington, the Moroccan Embassy hired the Edelman PR firm for $35,000 a month as its lobbyist. This, of course, had nothing to do with the timely letter from an increasingly conservative and belligerent American Jewish Committee weighing in with a letter of support for King Mohamed VI, who combines being chair of the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s Committee for Jerusalem with being one of Israel’s best friends in the Arab world.
Most of these organizations and signatories piously profess support for democracy but happily overlook the mere detail that Freedom House and similar bodies give Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara the same human rights score as Zimbabwe—just beating, by a wrenched-out finger-nail, Tibet, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan.
If in doubt, of course, invoke terrorism. Most of the letters from the king’s men and women invoke the Polisario-held areas as potential heartlands of al-Qaeda-style terrorism. In the real world, oddly enough, the Polisario’s biggest supporter is Algeria, which is battling Islamic extremists with some considerable vigor—indeed a little too much for some tender-minded observers. Until recently, moreover, Polisario itself was proclaimed a communist plot by American politicians, which is why they have tacitly supported the Moroccan occupation all these years. In Morocco itself, the king’s repressive policies have made the Islamic party the most popular, as free elections would show.
Thus, should Morocco get away with denying self-determination, it would be bad for the rule of law, bad for the Saharwis—and bad for the Palestinians.
Ian Williams i
United Nations Report
Morocco’s Designs on Western Sahara Pose Danger to Palestinians
By Ian Williams
APRIL 30 WAS just another day at the U.N. Security Council stakeout. As the veteran Polisario representative to the U.N., Ahmed Boukhari, was answering questions about the resolution that had just been passed, someone called the UNTV control room and told them to fade the cameras to black. No one has confessed, but some current or former Moroccan member of the U.N. staff doubtless will be rewarded by his grateful Kingdom. Morocco plays tough on this issue, as one would expect from a country that stands international law on its head.
As an old Brazilian saying has it, “For our enemies, the law, for our friend—that’s different.” It is a message Washington clearly has learned well. Sadly, however, the Americans are not alone in their expedient view of international law.
We know that Arabs will protest loudly when an occupier seizes land, dispossesses people and replaces them with settlers, while building a massive ugly barrier to keep out terrorists, in defiance of U.N. decisions and International Court of Justice (ICJ) judgments.
So why is there complete silence from most of the Arab world when Morocco has done just that in Western Sahara?
Arab friends have told me that there are not that many Saharwis, so why bother? But then non-Arabs also ask why we spend so much time on a relatively minor problem like the Palestinians.
The point about law, domestic and international, is that—theoretically, at least—it applies equally to rich and poor, strong and weak. Former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain rightly lives in ignominy for handing Czechoslovakia over to Hitler because it was a “quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”
It is clear that lawbreaking sets a precedent. For over 15 years the U.N. Security Council has addressed the issue of the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara every six months, agreeing to pour yet even more money into the sand for MINURSO, the peacekeeping force.
Everyone wishes the issue would just go away, since it poses such a clear challenge to the U.N. and to international law. Before Morocco occupied the territory, the ICJ ruled that there should be a referendum. The Security Council said Morocco should end its occupation, and in 1991 endorsed a cease-fire that was to end in a referendum which would allow the Saharwis to decide whether they wanted independence, or incorporation into Morocco.
As part of that cease-fire, even the late King Hassan II of Morocco had said there should be a referendum—although he stopped saying that as soon as it became apparent he could not win it, since the U.N. and MINURSO would not let him pad the electoral rolls with Moroccans.
But no one had enough of a dog in the fight to force Morocco to abide by Security Council resolutions. On the other hand, smaller members, who naturally want to uphold international law as their only protection against larger powers, have been concerned enough to thwart the perennial plans of France and others to legalize handing over the territory to Rabat.
In his last week in office, just before Christmas, for example, former Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar tried to smuggle through a solution favorable to Morocco.
On April 30 of this year the French were joined by the Americans, but once again could not railroad a decision past the atavistic attachment of the smaller members to legality and the principle of self-determination. Even so, the resolution that Bukhari was discussing shamelessly thanks the Moroccans for their latest initiative, while only “noting” Polisario’s willingness to go along with the full letter of U.N. resolutions.
The compromise resolution did not endorse the Moroccan plan, but called for talks between Morocco and Polisario “with a view to achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.” The Moroccan plan directly precluded self-determination and offered less autonomy than Puerto Rico enjoys.
Significantly, over the same period of time the PLO also renounced armed struggle and put its faith in international law and diplomacy. The PLO has spent over a decade refining and reiterating the corpus of U.N. and ICJ decisions that support its case, while invoking multilateral bodies like the signatories of the Geneva Convention. They have done this with the full and served support of the Arab and Islamic bloc. But all their work could be for naught if the Moroccans were to succeed in getting U.N. endorsement of their autonomy proposal—which does in fact bear an uncanny resemblance to the Bantustan that Israel would like to see the Palestinians accept.
If Morocco can overturn international law, and legalize its movement of settlers into and annexation of occupied territory, then why can’t the U.N. Security Council simply hand over Jerusalem and the settlements to Israel regardless of its previous decisions? Arab countries that stand aside and let Morocco get away with this are forging the legal weapons to dispossess the Palestinians—not to mention condemning their Arab brothers of the Sahara to a justly condemned regime that consistently violates their human and national rights.
They also should look at the friends Morocco has bought in the USA. Rabat has been spending some $30 million in lobbying and, through its surrogate, the “Moroccan American Policy Center” (MAPC), has been tickling the soft underbelly of Congress. It has identified its friends in Washington, who amassed over 160 congressional signatures for a resolution supporting the Moroccan proposal. For most of the signatories Western Sahara is indeed a faraway country which may as well be Freedonia for all they know about it.
But the people heading the lobbying effort do know what they are doing: they are the architects of Washington’s disastrous polices on the Cuban embargo, on Central America and Iran-Contra, on the spurious War on Terror, on Iraq and on Israel. With friends like these Morocco should be ashamed.
The congressional signatories are almost a roll-call of anti-Castro, pro-Israel members of the House of Representatives, and their numbers doubtless were boosted when the MAPC recently hired the legal-and-lobbying firm of Alberto Cardenas, a veteran anti-Castro Cuban American who served two terms as head of Florida’s Republican Party and co-chaired Bush’s 2004 effort in the Sunshine State.
For Morocco’s supporters, an enemy's friend is a hated foe. Polisario has the dubious benefit of Castro’s support and that (plus a $15,000 monthly retainer to Cardenas) is enough to rally the Florida delegation, which has noticed that Castro has a soft spot for the Palestinians as well, with similar results on their voting patterns.
The Anti-Castro Connection
Prominent among the resolution’s signers was Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is at least consistent. In addition to hating Castro she has been waging war on UNRWA and Palestinian refugees, so it seems fitting that she shows no concern for Saharwi refugees.
Toby Moffett, a former Democratic representative from Connecticut who had been elected on a Naderite clean-up-Congress ticket, engagingly described a week in the life of a lobbyist in the Los Angeles Times recently:
“I leave and rush to the House side of the Capitol to meet another client, the ambassador from Morocco. We have a meeting with a key member of the Appropriations Committee. Morocco has a good story to tell. It is a reliable friend of the U.S. It believes that the long-standing dispute with Algeria and the rebel Polisario group over the Western Sahara must be resolved.
“We tell the congresswoman and her staff that the region is becoming a possible al-Qaeda training area....My idea is to sell this as a chance for Democrats to resolve a dispute in a critical region, in contrast to the president’s utter failure to fix anything.”
On the Republican side, Elliot Abrams, the “deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy,” a hawkish pro-Israeli supporter and one of the neocon devisers of the Iraq war, also has been pushing the Moroccan plan, betraying the same insouciance toward legal technicalities that he did when convicted for lying to Congress about the Iran/Contra scandal. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Abrams sees the parallels between Israel and the Palestinians and the Moroccans and the Saharwis, and appreciates the precedent it would set.
In Washington, the Moroccan Embassy hired the Edelman PR firm for $35,000 a month as its lobbyist. This, of course, had nothing to do with the timely letter from an increasingly conservative and belligerent American Jewish Committee weighing in with a letter of support for King Mohamed VI, who combines being chair of the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s Committee for Jerusalem with being one of Israel’s best friends in the Arab world.
Most of these organizations and signatories piously profess support for democracy but happily overlook the mere detail that Freedom House and similar bodies give Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara the same human rights score as Zimbabwe—just beating, by a wrenched-out finger-nail, Tibet, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan.
If in doubt, of course, invoke terrorism. Most of the letters from the king’s men and women invoke the Polisario-held areas as potential heartlands of al-Qaeda-style terrorism. In the real world, oddly enough, the Polisario’s biggest supporter is Algeria, which is battling Islamic extremists with some considerable vigor—indeed a little too much for some tender-minded observers. Until recently, moreover, Polisario itself was proclaimed a communist plot by American politicians, which is why they have tacitly supported the Moroccan occupation all these years. In Morocco itself, the king’s repressive policies have made the Islamic party the most popular, as free elections would show.
Thus, should Morocco get away with denying self-determination, it would be bad for the rule of law, bad for the Saharwis—and bad for the Palestinians.
Ian Williams i
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Brown Needs a Bit of Gray
Brown Needs a Bit of Gray
My Tribune column, 27 July 2007
Every mature adult knows that being friends doesn't necessarily imply consent to non-censual screwing, which is why no one with any sense takes as declarations of war the muted declarations of independence from George Bush's policies that some of Gordon Brown's new ministers have expressed.
There is something obsessively dysfunctional about this preoccupation with a relationship, which, rhetoric apart, is not so special at all. The recent total fixation with it has cost Britain considerable clout with the rest of the world, in the Middle East, and with the Commonwealth, while failing to deliver influence in the European Union commensurate with its size and power. After all who wants to listen to the dummy when you can contact the ventriloquist directly in Washington.
Even so, there are indeed very good reasons, economic, political, military and historic, for close British relations between the USA, even though there are equally good reasons why the disparity in power between the two nations necessarily implies some degree of inequality in that relationship. In the early days of Labour government, and indeed before, Britain hovered round a Goldilocks position, not too close to, nor too distant from Washington. As a result it had influence.
A particular case of both the success and the limitations of that more measured alliance was Tony Blair's prevailing on a reluctant Clinton that they should act in the Balkans – and his failure to persuade the President that bombing attacks were symbolic but counterproductive. It took months before the mere threat of a ground attack that Clinton had publicly renounced, had Milosevic running up the white flag over Kosovo. Apart from the deranged Leftists who think that thousands of dead Kosovars a mere peccadillo, most of the world agreed that this was in the end one of Blair's (and Robin Cook's) most positive achievements.
But faced with an American administration that has lost the confidence of its own electorate, at least in part because they can see just how unpopular Bush has made their nation across the world, it makes no sense at all for Gordon Brown to tie himself to the mast of the sinking USS George W. Bush in the same way that Tony Blair did. Real allies tell you when you are about to hit the rocks, they do not stand beside you calling "full sail ahead."
For a start, there is more to close relations with the USA than kowtowing to the President. Only the most naïve foreign potentate would think that a visit to the Queen would necessarily deliver British support for his regime. Of course George W. Bush does indeed have more power than Mrs Windsor - but in many aspects vital to British interests, the President could not deliver even when he was more popular than he was now. Economic relations, trade, open skies agreements, even military production and sales, are in the hands of a Congress that is currently not exactly a Presidential fan club.
However, while Bush may be intellectually challenged and detached from reality in his perceptions, his reactions are all too real, so it makes no sense for the Prime Minister to go much beyond "Up to a point, Mr President," in tactfully disagreeing, while firmly stating his points where they disagree and emphasizing the points of agreement. But while dancing daintily with dogma in the White House, he also needs to cultivate relations with the broader spectrum of American politics.
Of course, there is no way that Britain can rally a domestic lobby with the power of the Israel lobby, (which is, of course, the real "Special Relationship,") nor should it want to. British expatriates in America, although significant in numbers, are British enough not to subscribe to the "my country, right or wrong," scoundrel school of patriotism. But at the very least, Gordon Brown, either directly or through his ministers, needs to charm the majority of the American public and the politicians who represent them while putting some discreet distance between himself and Bush, whose poll rating makes Richard Nixon look positively saintly.
Even so, there are times when the kissing has to stop because it is not getting you anywhere. In the US, as the former speaker of the House Tip O'Neill said, "All politics is local." Any domestic lobby (and in case you think this contradicts what I said earlier, AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee is a domestic lobby!) will trump foreign representations.
Experience shows that playing hard to get can win appreciation, while playing tough produces results on Capitol Hill. The EU has demonstrated that with its threat of tariffs to secure the delivery of WTO commitments from a perennially protectionist Congress. So the choice facing the Labour government is not "either Europe or the US." A significant British role in Europe strengthens Britain's hand in the USA.
Indeed, an independent British role in the rest of the world strengthens the hand of a British Prime Minister. There is a lot of ground to be retaken, however. The White House is reportedly understanding that Brown has to put some distance for domestic reasons. While appreciating their forbearance, the new cabinet should also realize that distancing is essential to rebuild British standing in the rest of the world.
My Tribune column, 27 July 2007
Every mature adult knows that being friends doesn't necessarily imply consent to non-censual screwing, which is why no one with any sense takes as declarations of war the muted declarations of independence from George Bush's policies that some of Gordon Brown's new ministers have expressed.
There is something obsessively dysfunctional about this preoccupation with a relationship, which, rhetoric apart, is not so special at all. The recent total fixation with it has cost Britain considerable clout with the rest of the world, in the Middle East, and with the Commonwealth, while failing to deliver influence in the European Union commensurate with its size and power. After all who wants to listen to the dummy when you can contact the ventriloquist directly in Washington.
Even so, there are indeed very good reasons, economic, political, military and historic, for close British relations between the USA, even though there are equally good reasons why the disparity in power between the two nations necessarily implies some degree of inequality in that relationship. In the early days of Labour government, and indeed before, Britain hovered round a Goldilocks position, not too close to, nor too distant from Washington. As a result it had influence.
A particular case of both the success and the limitations of that more measured alliance was Tony Blair's prevailing on a reluctant Clinton that they should act in the Balkans – and his failure to persuade the President that bombing attacks were symbolic but counterproductive. It took months before the mere threat of a ground attack that Clinton had publicly renounced, had Milosevic running up the white flag over Kosovo. Apart from the deranged Leftists who think that thousands of dead Kosovars a mere peccadillo, most of the world agreed that this was in the end one of Blair's (and Robin Cook's) most positive achievements.
But faced with an American administration that has lost the confidence of its own electorate, at least in part because they can see just how unpopular Bush has made their nation across the world, it makes no sense at all for Gordon Brown to tie himself to the mast of the sinking USS George W. Bush in the same way that Tony Blair did. Real allies tell you when you are about to hit the rocks, they do not stand beside you calling "full sail ahead."
For a start, there is more to close relations with the USA than kowtowing to the President. Only the most naïve foreign potentate would think that a visit to the Queen would necessarily deliver British support for his regime. Of course George W. Bush does indeed have more power than Mrs Windsor - but in many aspects vital to British interests, the President could not deliver even when he was more popular than he was now. Economic relations, trade, open skies agreements, even military production and sales, are in the hands of a Congress that is currently not exactly a Presidential fan club.
However, while Bush may be intellectually challenged and detached from reality in his perceptions, his reactions are all too real, so it makes no sense for the Prime Minister to go much beyond "Up to a point, Mr President," in tactfully disagreeing, while firmly stating his points where they disagree and emphasizing the points of agreement. But while dancing daintily with dogma in the White House, he also needs to cultivate relations with the broader spectrum of American politics.
Of course, there is no way that Britain can rally a domestic lobby with the power of the Israel lobby, (which is, of course, the real "Special Relationship,") nor should it want to. British expatriates in America, although significant in numbers, are British enough not to subscribe to the "my country, right or wrong," scoundrel school of patriotism. But at the very least, Gordon Brown, either directly or through his ministers, needs to charm the majority of the American public and the politicians who represent them while putting some discreet distance between himself and Bush, whose poll rating makes Richard Nixon look positively saintly.
Even so, there are times when the kissing has to stop because it is not getting you anywhere. In the US, as the former speaker of the House Tip O'Neill said, "All politics is local." Any domestic lobby (and in case you think this contradicts what I said earlier, AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee is a domestic lobby!) will trump foreign representations.
Experience shows that playing hard to get can win appreciation, while playing tough produces results on Capitol Hill. The EU has demonstrated that with its threat of tariffs to secure the delivery of WTO commitments from a perennially protectionist Congress. So the choice facing the Labour government is not "either Europe or the US." A significant British role in Europe strengthens Britain's hand in the USA.
Indeed, an independent British role in the rest of the world strengthens the hand of a British Prime Minister. There is a lot of ground to be retaken, however. The White House is reportedly understanding that Brown has to put some distance for domestic reasons. While appreciating their forbearance, the new cabinet should also realize that distancing is essential to rebuild British standing in the rest of the world.
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