Cameron and Obama want to ‘destroy’ Isis

...but what will they do about the growing number of refugees fleeing Iraq and Syria?

Kate Allen                        Independent/UK                     22 September 2014

With momentum building over military action against Isis in Iraq and Syria, almost nothing has been said about what this might mean in humanitarian terms, such as population flows and new refugees.

In just a few short weeks Isis managed to uproot 600,000 people in and around the Mosul region. Inhabitants of villages like Kocho and Qiniyeh were either massacred or managed to flee to the inhospitable terrain of Mount Sinjar. In a terrible twist of fate, many of these traumatised people have exchanged certain death in Iraq for the deep uncertainties and mortal dangers of Syria.

A new wave of attacks on Isis’s roving bands of killers will surely displace thousands more local residents. It’s hard to see how aerial assaults on militants can have any other effect. What plans has John R Allen, the retired US general charged with overseeing the anti-Isis drive, made for those caught in this new pincer movement?

I raise these matters having recently returned from Lebanon where I witnessed the plight of some of the 1.4 million Syrian refugees now living in the country. Consider that number for a moment. Lebanon had a pre-Syrian conflict population of around 5m people. It’s seen a gargantuan influx of more than a quarter of its entire resident population, equivalent to something like 16m refugees pitching up in the UK in the space of three years. And it isn’t stopping; Lebanon is still receiving 9,000 refugees a week from Syria.

The numbers are off the scale, and Lebanon is beginning to feel the strain. Despite the incredible hospitality and kindness of thousands of Lebanese people — some hosting distant relatives from across the Syrian border, many simply helping struggling strangers in their midst — the country is under unbelievable pressure.

Ninette Kelly, head of the UN refugee agency in Lebanon, told me that hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon are living in informal settlements, and even in garages and shops. I visited a refugee settlement in the Bekaa Valley. Here hundreds of people are huddled under plastic sheeting strung across wooden struts (these are not even tents), many living on the bare earth. They are all but exposed to the elements, contending with freezing winters and searingly hot summers. There are no kitchens, and the few toilets available are incredibly basic.

Healthcare is virtually non-existent. I met a mother who fears her five-month-old boy may be deaf and suffering from a serious eye condition, but she is unable to afford the treatment he needs. Another woman was caring for her mother, who has suffered three strokes, as well as her young, epileptic son. Again, the treatment they need is unavailable, but she also fears for the fate of two of her brothers who are languishing in Bashar al-Assad’s prisons. They will almost certainly have suffered and she’s in anguish at the thought that they’ll be killed.

Existence itself is hard but so is co-existence. In Bekaa there have been disputes between refugees and the local Lebanese community over access to water. Is this surprising? Lebanon is small, not especially wealthy and is already hosting the largest population of Syrian refugees of any country in the world. No-one knows when the conflict in Syria is going to end, and in some quarters patience is running out.

Well over a year ago voices in the Lebanese government were saying the country had already “exceeded its ability to absorb” refugees, however desperate or deserving. Recently the atmosphere has become even more fraught after the beheading of two captured Lebanese soldiers, almost certainly by Isis. People say they’ve “woken up in a different world” after the beheadings, with anti-Syrian sentiments hardening and posters saying “No Syrian refugees here” appearing on the streets.

Syria is facing the world's biggest humanitarian crisis, and its neighbouring countries can’t manage on their own. Around the world, despite the politicians’ promises, the response has been woeful. EU countries have taken less than 1% of Syria’s refugees, the UK has resettled a grand total of 51 people.

As I left Lebanon a government adviser said to me “Don’t tell us to keep our borders open, while you close yours”. It’s a remark that ought to be reverberating around Downing Street as the generals explain to David Cameron how they’re going to “destroy” Syria’s Isis fighters. [Abbrev.]

We fought apartheid. Now climate change is our global enemy

On the eve of the UN Climate Summit, Desmond Tutu argues that tactics used against firms who did business with South Africa must now be applied to fossil fuels to prevent human suffering

 Desmond Tutu                                   Observer/UK                          21 September 2014

Never before in history have human beings been called on to act collectively in defence of the Earth. As a species, we have endured world wars, epidemics, famine, slavery, apartheid and many other hideous consequences of religious, class, race, gender and ideological intolerance. People are extraordinarily resilient. The Earth has proven pretty resilient, too. It's managed to absorb most of what's been thrown at it since the industrial revolution and the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Until now, that is. Because the science is clear: the sponge that cushions and sustains us, our environment, is already saturated with carbon. If we don't limit global warming to two degrees or less we are doomed to a period of unprecedented instability, insecurity and loss of species. Fossil fuels have powered human endeavour since our ancestors developed the skills to make and manage fire. Coal, gas and oil warm our homes, fuel our industries and enable our movements. We have allowed ourselves to become totally dependent, and are guilty of ignoring the warning signs of pending disaster. It is time to act.

As responsible citizens of the world – sisters and brothers of one family, the human family, God's family – we have a duty to persuade our leaders to lead us in a new direction: to help us abandon our collective addiction to fossil fuels, starting this week in New York at the United Nations Climate Summit. Reducing our carbon footprint is not just a technical scientific necessity; it has also emerged as the human rights challenge of our time. While global emissions have risen unchecked, real-world impacts have taken hold in earnest. The most devastating effects of climate change – deadly storms, heat waves, droughts, rising food prices and the advent of climate refugees – are being visited on the world's poor. Those who have no involvement in creating the problem are the most affected, while those with the capacity to arrest the slide dither. Africans, who emit far less carbon than the people of any other continent, will pay the steepest price. It is a deep injustice.

The United Nations deserves kudos for its leadership on human rights issues. But on climate change, it has run up against governments and leaders of industry who have until now put short-term economic and political goals ahead of our collective long-term survival. We can no longer tinker about the edges. We can no longer continue feeding our addiction to fossil fuels as if there were no tomorrow. For there will be no tomorrow. As a matter of urgency we must begin a global transition to a new safe energy economy. This requires fundamentally rethinking our economic systems, to put them on a sustainable and more equitable footing.

I am not without hope. When we, humans, walk together in pursuit of a righteous cause, we become an irresistible force. There are many ways that all of us can fight climate change: by not wasting energy, for instance. But these individual measures will not, the scientists assure us, make a big enough difference. And they may not be appropriate for the world's poor.

We can boycott events, sports teams and media programming sponsored by fossil fuel companies; demand that their advertisements carry health warnings; organise car-free days and other platforms to build broader societal awareness; and ask our religious communities to speak out on the issue from their various pulpits. We can encourage energy companies to spend more of their resources on the development of sustainable energy products, and we can reward those companies that demonstrably do so by using their products to the exclusion of others.

Just as we argued in the 1980s that those who conducted business with apartheid South Africa were aiding and abetting an immoral system, we can say that nobody should profit from the rising temperatures, seas and human suffering caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

We can encourage more of our universities and municipalities, foundations, corporations, individuals and cultural institutions to cut their ties to the fossil fuel industry. To divest, and invest, instead, in renewable energy. To move their money out of the problem and into the solutions. We can urge our governments to invest in sustainable practices and stop subsidising fossil fuels; and to freeze further exploration for new fossil energy sources. The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions. We can support our leaders to make the correct moral choices and to avoid undue industry influence that blocks the political will to act on climate change. Through the power of our collective action we can hold those who rake in the profits accountable for cleaning up their mess. The good news is that we don't have to start from scratch. Young people across the world have identified climate change as the biggest challenge of our time, and already begun to do something about it.

Over the last three or four years, we have seen the rise of a new civil society divestment movement to stand alongside the scientists, environmentalists and social activists who have been challenging the moral standing of the fossil fuel industry.

Once again, it is a global movement led by students and faith groups, along with hospitals, cities, foundations, corporations and individuals. It is a moral movement to persuade fossil fuel companies away from a business model that threatens our very survival. My prayer is that humankind takes its first tangible steps in New York this week – as a collective – to move beyond the fossil fuel era.

There is a word we use in South Africa that describes human relationships: Ubuntu. It says: I am because you are. My successes and my failures are bound up in yours. We are made for each other, for interdependence. Together, we can change the world for the better.

Who can stop climate change? We can. You and you and you, and me. And it is not just that we can stop it, we have a responsibility to do so that began in the genesis of humanity, when God commanded the earliest human inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, "to till it and keep it". To "keep" it; not to abuse it, not to make as much money as possible from it, not to destroy it.

The last thing Iraq needs is more misguided military action by the west

 Past interventions helped create Isis and al-Qaida. Have Britain and the US not learned?

 Sami Ramadani                                   Guardian/UK                                  11 September 2014

 In announcing his new strategy to tackle the terrorist insurgency in Iraq, President Obama has put the US on a dangerous collision course with Syria, the Lebanese resistance led by Hezbollah, and the biggest obstacle to US and Israeli regional hegemony: Iran.

The so-called war on Isis (Islamic State) is, in reality, the same war that the US and Britain abandoned last year due to public opposition, the anti-war vote in Britain’s parliament, and the determination of Iran and Russia to back Syria. But the savagery of Isis and the beheading of two American hostages have dampened public opposition to further military intervention in the region, and has boosted hawks in Washington and London.

A few days before Obama’s war-on-Isis speech, the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger revealed the US roadmap in much clearer terms than Obama could, stating that despite Isis occupying large parts of Iraq and Syria, the biggest danger to US interests is still Iran; Isis is vile but containable, but Iran is the really dangerous power, he stressed. This also chimes with Israel’s policies, as described by its recently departed ambassador to Washington that Iran-backed forces are more dangerous than al-Qaida. “The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut,” he said.

 Broader still, Obama’s war will inevitably heighten tensions with Russia, China and their allies. If we include the confrontation lines being drawn by Nato along Russia’s borders, and US escalation of its military presence in the South China Sea, the evolving new cold war could rapidly degenerate into the greatest threat to world peace since 1939.

 Following David Cameron’s agreement with Obama last week over a campaign against Isis, attention is now focusing on whether Britain should join in the airstrikes. But beyond hitching a ride on the US military juggernaut, has Cameron seriously considered the consequences of new war in Iraq and Syria? The policies of US, Britain and Nato helped to create Isis and al-Qaida in the first place. Doing more of the same could have similar consequences and cost thousands more lives.

 And when the US, Britain and France decided in 2011 to back the armed groups in Syria, their goal was to bring about regime change – but the result was to strengthen the more brutal terrorist groups such as Isis and the al-Nusra Front, the “official” al-Qaida affiliate in Syria. For three years US allies Qatar and Saudi Arabia supplied billions of dollars to fund armed groups in Syria, while Nato member Turkey opened its borders for US and Nato supplies, as well as terrorists from across the world, to pour into Syria.
Have Obama and Cameron acknowledged any of that? On the contrary. The US and Britain have now decided to give even more arms and backing to Syrian “moderate” armed groups, who were the allies of Isis until recently and are still the allies of al-Nusra.

 In Iraq the US and Britain created state institutions to entrench sectarian divisions with the aim of implementing the so-called Joe Biden plan to divide Iraq into three ethnic regions with, importantly, a very weak central government.

The US is now consolidating its military presence in Iraqi Kurdistan with the aim of creating yet another client force in the region. The president of the Kurdistan regional government, Masoud Barzani, is in fact harbouring former Saddam Hussein officers and allies of Isis who played a leading role in the fall of Mosul and the disintegration of three divisions of the US-founded Iraqi army, in the face of the Isis advance.

 The real enemies of Isis and terror groups in the region are Syria, Iran, the Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, and Shia, Sunni, Kurdish and Turkmen people. If the US and Britain really want to fight Isis and terrorism – rather than using the Isis savagery to further their strategic aims of dominating the region and its resources – then they should reverse the policies they have been pursuing for decades. They should stop backing the armed groups in Syria and Iraq, and instruct their obedient allies in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to do the same.

 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/11/iraq-misguided-military-action-created-isis-al-qaida

Prophetic visions can rouse politicians from complacency to save the planet

Rowan Williams                             Guardian/UK 9                          September 2014

The past year has seen the obstacles blocking action on climate change beginning to crumble. Opposition on scientific grounds looks pretty unpersuasive in the light of what has come from the experts on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their seven-year study states that they are now 95% certain that human activity is a significant and avoidable element in driving climate change around the world. Predicted changes in the climate are now being observed in the most vulnerable countries, confirming the predictive models that have been used.

The suggestion that action on this would have too great an economic cost is likewise looking shaky. This month the New Climate Economy report will be published by a global commission, including Felipe Calderón, the former president of Mexico; Paul Polman, the chief executive of Unilever; the economist Nicholas Stern; and Chad Holloway, the chairman of the Bank of America – as well as a substantial number of finance ministers from around the world. This report will show that action on climate change is entirely compatible with economic growth in almost all countries and that the economic benefits, both short and long term, will outweigh the costs.

It will reinforce the findings of a report published last October by a group of financial heavyweights outlining the threat to US businesses of doing nothing. Risky Business – by former US treasury secretaries Hank Paulson, Robert Rubin and George Schultz; Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York; and the billionaire investor Thomas Steyer – argued, purely on economic grounds, that ignoring the challenge is folly.

 Another stumbling block that is also beginning to disappear is political inertia. Politicians have constantly been tempted to kick this particular can down the road. But President Obama, having spoken powerfully about the need for action, is now backing up his rhetoric with legislation limiting carbon emissions from US power plants. There are similarly encouraging signs in China, where lethal levels of atmospheric pollution, especially in cities, have at last goaded the government to start to move in the right direction.

 With actors who have traditionally dragged their feet taking the lead, and with the urgency for action in developing nations beyond any serious doubt, it is now those who have traditionally been more proactive – European nations in particular – who need to step up to the mark.

The hope is that the New York summit of world leaders on 23 September, at which climate change will take centre stage, will be the next major prompt to agreed action. Hosted by the UN secretary general, this meeting will show the real leaders in responding to climate change, and should kick-start negotiations ahead of the crucial UN climate summit in Paris in December next year which must decide on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. David Cameron became prime minister on the promise of “Vote blue, go green”. He promised to lead the “greenest government ever”. His presence and actions at this month’s summit will be a significant test of these commitments and aspirations.

 The moral case for action is clear. It is those suffering the most who carry the least historic responsibility for our situation. The wealthier industrialised nations have the power to act and secure a safe world for today’s poorest and tomorrow’s children. Christian Aid is soon to publish a report by Susan Durber examining the links between theology and climate change, in which it will be made very plain that the call for climate justice is something that echoes clearly the challenges found in the biblical prophets to a complacent and short-sighted society. 

What is needed from our politicians is leadership that takes the long view and breaks free of the tight cycle of calculated electoral advantage – a calculation that often misses the issues that most directly affect everyone’s wellbeing. We’re starting to see this with the publication of a paper from the Department of Energy and Climate Change which outlines the need for, and the benefit of, an ambitious climate deal at the Paris meeting. But as Christiana Figueres, the leading UN spokesperson on climate change, said in a speech in St Paul’s Cathedral last May, we need to see action already in place this year if the deal in 2015 is to be strong enough: we need the groundwork laid, and we need clear signs that the political will is there. [Abridged]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/09/prophetic-visions-can-help-save-planet

Samson and Israel

Ian Harris                           Otago Daily Times                     September 12, 2014
 
Remember Samson? Champion of Israel at a time when the Jewish tribes were at loggerheads with the people of Gaza? Nothing new there. In his day, however, the Philistines of Gaza were dominant, not the Jews, and in tit-for-tat raids Samson, who was extraordinarily strong, won fame for his prowess in slaughtering Philistines.

Then, whoops, he fell in love with Delilah, a Philistine. Her people prevailed on her to wheedle from him the secret of his strength: his hair, which had never been cut. So as Samson slept she called someone in to shave it off. The Philistines gleefully took him prisoner and gouged out his eyes. Came the day when they mockingly called on this “ravager of our country” to entertain them at a great religious festival. They had somehow failed, however, to notice that Samson’s hair was growing back. Summoning all his returning strength, he strained against the temple’s two central pillars, and brought the building tumbling down. Thousands of Philistines died in the rubble, and so did Samson.

Sometimes it seems that echoes of Samson’s story are reverberating in Gaza today. There is the domination of one people by another (this time with Israel on top), recurrent attacks by one party triggering retaliatory vengeance by the other, and disproportionate death and destruction wrought on the people of Gaza.

The Philistines disappeared from history. Their successors in Palestine will survive, but the prospect grows that the searing injustices at the root of their enmity will undermine and perhaps destroy the Israeli dream of a uniquely Jewish state. For that, the state of Israel must take prime responsibility. When it was established in 1948, the horrors of the Nazi holocaust ensured that the world’s sympathies were overwhelmingly with Jews seeking the security of their own homeland.

But in the 47 years since Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza to ensure that security, opinion has shifted steadily in favour of the Palestinians. Israel has thwarted every attempt to give the people of the occupied territories a dignified future. It has encouraged squatter settlements. And the very power, hostility and intransigence of the modern successors of Samson risk bringing the whole Zionist edifice crashing down on their own people, with Palestinians doomed to share in the mayhem.

In present circumstances a two-state solution would allow Palestinians their statehood and preserve Israel’s Jewish majority. A single state would achieve Israelis’ vision of unity for the entire Holy Land, but Palestinians are close to outnumbering them. Rejecting both those options would guarantee unending hatred, violence, and suppression of one by the other.

Broadly similar choices – separate homelands, a democracy embracing all citizens equally, or violence – confronted South Africans for most of last century. Now leading South Africans are warning Israelis not to go down an apartheid path.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fuelled such fears in May when he proposed tweaking the country’s basic law to make its Jewish identity paramount. The country’s independence declaration defined Israel as “a Jewish state”. Netanyahu wants to stiffen that to make clear it is “the nation state of one people only – the Jewish people – and of no other people”. That would divide residents into two classes of citizen, based on race.

South Africa’s last apartheid president, F W de Klerk, promptly warned that Israel risked its very being if it refused to reconcile with its Palestinian neighbours. The long occupation of the West Bank has produced a situation in the territory where some 2.3 million Palestinians and 460,000 Jewish squatters live under two legal and political systems, geared to the interests of the minority.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu cautioned: “The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful lives they crave – and are entitled to – as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict. Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognise the human being in themselves and each other, to understand their interdependence.”

Tutu acknowledges that South Africa had the advantage of a cadre of extraordinary leaders. “But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa economically, academically, culturally and psychologically.” That is developing as the next phase for Israel.

 There was a time when the Hebrew prophet Isaiah envisioned Israel as “a light to other nations”. Its leaders would “faithfully bring forth justice”. Nobody talks that way now. What might follow if they did?