Just Commentary February 2009

Vol 9, No 2 February 2009

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STATEMENTS

THE BBC EYELESS IN GAZA

By Hasan Abu Nimah ................................. page 5

By Radhika Sainath .................................... page 7

ARTICLES

RETURN GUANTANAMO TO THE PEOPLE

OF CUBA ..............President Barack Obama should

take immediate steps to return the US naval base at

Guantanamo to the people of Cuba without pre-

conditions............................................................P.4THE INDIAN EXAMPLE

SUE ISRAEL FOR GENOCIDE .....................

.......The International Movement for a Just World

(JUST) would like to propose to the Malaysian

Parliament when it meets on Monday 12 January 2009

that it adopts a motion urging the Malaysian government

to commence discussions with other like-minded

governments on the possibility of instituting joint legal

proceedings against Israel before the International Court

of Justice (ICJ) ..................P.4

NAM ON GAZA

THE SHORTCUT TO PEACE

By Non Aligned Movement (NAM) ...............page5

A CAPPED VOLCANO OF SUFFERING

By Dahr Jamail............................................. page 8

By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

On 29 February last year the

BBc’s website reported

deputy defense minister

MatanVilnai threatening a “holocaust”

on Gaza. Headlined “Israel warns of

Gaza ‘holocaust’” the story would

undergo nine revisions in the next

twelve hours. Before the day was

over the headline would read “Gaza

militants ‘risking disaster.’” (The story

has since been revised again with an

exculpatory note added soft-pedaling

Vilnai’s comments). An Israeli official

threatening “holocaust” may be

unpalatable to those who routinely

invoke its specter to deflect criticism

from the state’s criminal behavior.

With the “holocaust” reference

redacted, the new headline shifted

culpability neatly into the hands of

“Gaza militants” instead.

One could argue that the BBC’s

radical alteration of the story reflects

its susceptibility to the kind of

inordinate pressure the Israel lobby’s

well-oiled flak machine is notorious

for. However, as will be demonstrated

in subsequent examples, this story is

exceptional only insofar as it reported

accurately in the first place something

that could bear negatively on Israel’s

image. The norm is reflexive self-

censorship.

To establish evidence of the BBC’s

journalistic malpractice one often has

to do no more than pick a random

sample of news related to the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict currently on its

website. In a time of conflict BBC’s

coverage invariably tends to the Israeli

perspective, and nowhere is this

reflected more than in the semantics

and framing of its reportage. More so

than the quantitative bias — which

was meticulously established by the

Glasgow University Media Group in

their study “Bad News from Israel”

— it is the qualitative tilt that obscures

the reality of the situation. This is often

achieved by engendering a false parity

by stretching the notion of journalistic

balance to encompass power,

culpability, and legitimacy as well. The

present conflict is no exception.

“Hamas leader killed in air strike,”

reads last Thursday’s headline on the

BBC website. Notwithstanding the

propriety of extrajudicial murder, there

are 14 paragraphs and the obligatory

mention of the four dead Israelis

before it is revealed that “at least nine

other people,” including the

assassinated leader’s family, were

killed in the bombing of his home in

the Jabaliya refugee camp. The actual

number is 16 dead, 11 of them

children; 12 more wounded, including

five children; 10 houses destroyed,

another 12 damaged — a veritable

slaughter. Had a Hamas bombing

killed or wounded 28 Israeli citizens

GLOBAL FINANCIAL UNCERTAINTIES

AND THE FUTURE OF MALAYSIA (PART 1)

By Mahathir Mohamad ............................. page 10

ROHINGYA REFUGEE ISSUE: A

HOLISTIC APPROACH

By Kavi Chongkittavorn ............................ page 9

L E A D A R T I C L E SI N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

2

continued from page 1

including 16 children you’d be sure to

see endless coverage — of the kind

the BBC lavished on the disconsolate

illegal settlers in 2005 as they were

made to relinquish stolen land in Gaza.

The BBC’s Mike Sergeant, sitting in

Jerusalem, would not concern himself

with such sentimentality. There is no

further mention of Palestinian civilian

deaths. Their tragedy was no more

than a sanguine message which

Sergeant tells us will “be seen as an

indication that the Israeli military can

target key members of the Hamas

leadership.”

“Israel braced for Hamas response,”

blared the ominous headline on next

day’s front page. With all references

to Hamas in its coverage prefixed with

“militant” and invariably accompanied

by images of blood and debris, the

average viewer is very likely to

assume the worst. It transpires what

the world’s fourth most powerful

military is bracing itself for is merely

a citizen’s protest called by Hamas in

the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Further on we learn that Israel has

been bombing such “targets” as a

mosque and a sleeping family. The

BBC’s next headline on the same day

— “Gaza facing ‘critical emergency’”

— is an improvement. It quotes

Maxwell Gaylard, the UN’s chief aid

coordinator for the territory,

highlighting the magnitude of the

humanitarian crisis. Following this is

a warning from Oxfam that the

situation is getting worse by the day:

clean water, fuel and food in short

supply, hospitals overwhelmed with

casualties, raw sewage pouring into

the streets.

And then we get “balance.”

Israel, we learn, has claimed Gaza has

“sufficient food and medicines.” It of

course ought to be easy to verify which

of the competing claims is valid, but

that presumably would violate the

“usual BBC standards of impartiality.”

There is also a more mundane reason

why the BBC won’t present its own

findings, but it is tucked away in the

very last paragraph of the article.

Israel, we learn, “is refusing to let

international journalists into Gaza”

including no doubt those of the BBC.

Ethics of reporting would require that

the BBC preface each of its reports

with the disclaimer that it has no way

of knowing what is going on in Gaza

other than through the propaganda

handouts of the Israeli military.

The final act of chicanery comes in

the shape of a sidebar which lists the

number of rockets fired by

Palestinians for each day of the

conflict. This is particularly odd in an

article ostensibly about the

consequences of the Israeli blockade

and bombing, especially since no

similar figures are produced for the

number of bombs, missiles and artillery

shells rained on Gaza. The source the

BBC uses is the Intelligence and

Terrorism Information Center based

in Israel. What it does not mention

however is that the “private” think

tank is a conveyor belt for Israeli

military propaganda which, according

to The Washington Post, “has close

ties with the country’s military

leadership and maintains an office at

the Defense Ministry.” Any

Palestinian claim on the other hand

would not appear unless enclosed in

quotation marks, even if independently

verifiable.

The quotation marks are a useful

distancing device deployed to show

that the characterization may not be

one shared by the BBC. This would

be understandable if their application

were consistent. It isn’t. To take one

telling example, after the Lebanon

war when both Israel and Hizballah

were accused by Amnesty

International of war crimes only in the

case of Israel did the BBC enclose

the accusation in quotation marks.

It is through these subtle — and not

so subtle — manipulations of language

that the BBC has shielded its audience

from the ugly realities of occupied

Palestine. In the BBC’s reportage

lexicon, Palestinians “die” but Israelis

are “killed” (the latter implies agency,

the former could have happened of

natural causes); Palestinians

“provoke,” and Israelis “retaliate;”

Palestinians make “claims,” and

Israelis “declare.” Moreover, schools,

mosques, universities and police

stations are part of the “Hamas

infrastructure;” militants “clash” with

F-16s and Apache helicopters.

“Terrorism” is inextricably linked to

Palestinians but Israelis merely

“defend” themselves — invariably

outside their borders. All debates,

irrespective of fact or circumstance,

are framed around Israel’s “security”

— Palestinian security is irrelevant.

If Israel’s wall annexing land in the

West Bank is mentioned, it is in terms

of its “effectiveness.” In the odd event

that an articulate Palestinian voice

represented, the debate is rigged with

a set-up video that is meant to put them

on the defensive. When all else fails,

there is the reliable “both sides”

argument — if reality won’t

accommodate the image of an even

conflict, the BBC figures, language

will.

Then there’s the framing: Israel’s

violence is always analyzed in terms

of its “objectives;” and Palestinian

violence is of necessity “senseless.”

This is no doubt how it must appear

to the average reader since the word

“occupation” rarely appears in the

BBC’s coverage. It hasn’t appeared

once in the last 20 stories on Gaza on

its website. And if occupation is

mentioned rarely, then the UN

resolutions almost never. The picture

continued next page

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D S T A T E M E N T S

3

continued from page 2is even worse on television, where the

Israeli point of view predominates.

While Matan Vilnai’s threat of a

holocaust is consigned to the memory

hole, the statement invented and

attributed to the Iranian president

about wiping Israel off the map is still

in play. It is this double standard which

also allowed the BBC to cover the

story of a British Jew joining the Israeli

military as a human interest story —

which may not be entirely surprising

considering the BBC’s man in

Jerusalem, Tim Franks, is himself a

graduate of Habonim Dror, a Zionist

youth movement. It is this inhuman

devaluation of Palestinian life that

allowed the BBC at the peak of the

criminal blockade in July 2007 to have

two stories up on its website related

to the occupied territories, both about

animals — “Israeli paratroopers

swoop on pet shop to rescue rare

eagles” and “Kidnapped lioness is

reunited with her brother in Gaza Zoo.”

While the BBC’s refusal to by-line its

online reports makes it hard to trace

stories back to individual journalists, a

revealing glimpse of the editorial

context in which they work was

offered by an article in The Observer

by the BBC’s Middle East editor

Jeremy Bowen — a man whose

modest analytical skills are matched

only by his historical illiteracy. With

the BBC workhorse — “both sides”

— weaved into the very headline,

Bowen piles inanity upon cliche.

Throughout there is no mention of an

occupation. Bowen has been

conveniently transported to Sderot —

an Israeli public relations ploy to

“embed” journalists within range of

Hamas rockets in order to make them

report with empathy — and he is

happy to oblige. On the other hand

there is no mention of those at the

receiving end of Israel’s lethal

ordinance. He mentions civilian

casualties only in the context of the

“lot of bad publicity” they get for

Israel. On the basis of this evidence,

he then concludes “it is probably fair

to say that [Israel] does not hit every

target it wants, otherwise many more

would have died.” We then end with

speculation on Israel’s possible

objectives. Despite “both sides,” there

is no similar scrutiny of Hamas’s

objectives.

At a conference in London in 2004, a

BBC journalist based in the Occupied

Palestinian Territories told me that

when it comes to Israel the editorial

parameters are so narrow that

journalists soon learn to adapt their

stories in order not to upset the editors.

Similarly, editors likewise know not to

upset their government-appointed

managers. Since the days of Lord

Reith, the BBC-founder who assured

the establishment to “trust [the BBC]

not to be really impartial,” on foreign

policy the corporation has acted as

little more than the propaganda arm

of the state (whatever independence

it had once enjoyed evaporated with

the purge carried out by Tony Blair in

the wake of the Hutton Inquiry).

Contrary to the prevailing view in the

US, where progressives don’t tire of

comparing it favorably against US

media, the BBC’s record of coverage

in the Middle East is dismal. As media

scholar David Miller revealed, during

the Iraq war the representation of

antiwar voices on the BBC was even

lower than on its US counterparts. A

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung study

found the corporation to have the

lowest tolerance for dissent of the

media in the five countries it analyzed.

Just as its correspondents in Iraq

celebrated the fall of Baghdad as a

“vindication” of Blair, its man in

Washington Matt Frei threw all

caution to the wind to exult: “There is

no doubt that the desire to bring good,

to bring American values to the rest

of the world, and especially now in

the Middle East, is especially tied up

with American military power.”

The BBC’s partiality in the case of

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a

mere reflection of the close affinity

of successive British governments

with Israel. Both Blair and his

successor Gordon Brown have been

members of the Israel Lobby group

Labour Friends of Israel. The Foreign

Minister David Miliband has kin who

are settlers in the West Bank. All three

major influence-peddling scandals in

the past five years that engulfed the

leadership of the ruling New Labour

party involved money from wealthy

Zionist Jews (all linked to the Labour

Friends of Israel). If the BBC is not

impartial, then the UK government

most certainly is not. The BBC, as is

its wont, merely reflects the latter’s

tilt. This is blatant enough that despite

pressure from the Israel lobby, the

BBC’s own Independent Panel

concluded that its coverage of the

Palestinian struggle was not “full and

fair” and that it presented an

“incomplete and in that sense

misleading picture.”

But the gap between the alternate

reality that the BBC inhabits and the

reality on the ground witnessed and

relayed by independent media is so

great today that it has compelled John

Pilger to write: “For every BBC voice

that strains to equate occupier with

occupied, thief with victim, for every

swarm of emails from the fanatics of

Zion to those who invert the lies and

describe the Israeli state’s

commitment to the destruction of

Palestine, the truth is more powerful

now than ever.”

6 January 2009

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a member

of Spinwatch.org. He blogs at

Fanonite.org.

Source: The Electonic Intifada

“For every BBC voice that

strains to equate occupier

with occupied, thief with

victim, for every swarm of

emails from the fanatics of

Zion to those who invert

the lies and describe the

Israeli state’s

commitment to the

destruction of Palestine,

the truth is more powerful

now than ever.”

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

4

S T A T E M E N T S

STATEMENTS

President Barack Obama should take

immediate steps to return the US naval

base at Guantanamo to the people of Cuba

without pre-conditions.

Cubans have on numerous occasions

demanded that the US dismantle its

military base on their homeland which has

been there for 106 years. It was established

following the Spanish-American War of

1898 and is a direct consequence of

colonialism. The terms of the treaty

governing the base and its usage are so

lopsided that the Cuban people have no

choice but to put up with the base ad

infinitum — unless the US government

decides to relinquish its control over

Guantanamo.

If Obama is sincere about dealing with

other states on the basis of mutual

respect, he should begin by changing US

attitude towards its little neighbor which

since the Cuban Revolution of 1959 has

been characterized by insufferable

arrogance and insolence that has no

parallel in the modern world.

Apart from perpetuating an edifice of

colonial occupation in Guantanamo,

successive US Presidents in the last 50

years have subjected Cuba to every

conceivable injustice. A suffocating trade

embargo against the island has been in

place for 46 years. Cuba has been invaded

with the active collaboration of the US;

terrorist attacks have been conducted on

Cuban soil by groups and individuals

affiliated to the CIA; a Cuban civilian

aircraft carrying children among other

passengers was destroyed with the

connivance of the US; Cubans languish

in US jails on trumped up charges; and

numerous attempts have been made by

RETURN GUANTANAMO TO THE PEOPLE OF CUBA

The International Movement for a Just

World (JUST) would like to propose to

the Malaysian Parliament when it meets

on Monday 12 January 2009 that it adopts

a motion urging the Malaysian

government to commence discussions

with other like-minded governments on

the possibility of instituting joint legal

proceedings against Israel before the

International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the

Hague for violating the 1948 Convention

on the Prevention and Punishment of the

Crime of Genocide.

The vast majority of the governments and

peoples of the world would agree that

Israel has committed the crime of genocide

against the Palestinian people. The Gaza

carnage is but the latest episode in this

ongoing annihilation of an entire

community that began in 1948.

There are various steps that have to be

taken in commencing proceedings against

Israel in the ICJ. A number of local and

international lawyers would be more than

willing to advise and assist the Malaysian

government in this. The most outstanding

of them is the internationally renowned

academic-cum-lawyer, Professor Francis

Boyle of the United States, who has been

an unwavering advocate of a suit against

Israel for genocide against the Palestinians

for a few years now.

It was Boyle who filed the first lawsuit

ever on genocide with the ICJ on behalf

of Bosnia against the rump Yugoslavia in

1993. He won two court orders that

demanded that Yugoslavia cease and

agents linked to US buttressed networks

to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of

the Cuban Revolution.

In a nutshell, US Administrations in the

past have not shown an iota of respect

for the independence and sovereignty of

the 11.4 million Cuban people. It is the

Cuban people’s desire to be independent

and their refusal to submit to US

hegemony that has provoked the wrath

of US Administrations. Obama should

demonstrate through deeds that he

respects those who seek to protect their

independence and integrity. That is the

change that we would like to see in US

foreign policy under his presidency.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,

President,

International Movement for a Just

World (JUST).

2 February 2009.

desist from committing genocide against

the Bosnians. In a note to me recently,

Boyle, who is a member of JUST’s

International Advisory Panel (IAP) had

opined that Malaysia should consider

suing Israel “to save the Palestinians”.

However, the first step would be for the

Malaysian government and the

opposition, speaking as one voice

through the Malaysian parliament to

endorse a motion to institute legal

proceedings against Israel. It would be

more effective if other nations from

different religious and cultural

backgrounds also joined hands with

Malaysia.

Chandra Muzaffar.

10 January 2009.

SUE ISRAEL FOR GENOCIDE

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5

A R T I C L E S

The Coordinating Bureau of the Non-

Aligned Movement (NAM) strongly

condemns the escalation of the military

aggression being carried out by Israel, the

occupying Power, in the Gaza Strip.

NAM is gravely concerned by and

condemns in particular the launching of

the Israeli ground invasion in Gaza in

flagrant defiance of the calls by the

international community for a cessation

of military activities and of the regional

and international diplomatic efforts

underway to resolve the current crisis.

NAM expresses its deep regret at the loss

of innocent life as a result of the ongoing

Israeli military attacks against the Strip,

including the killing of more than 460

Palestinian civilians, among them several

children, and the injuring of nearly more

than 2,500 other civilians, as well as the

massive destruction of property and

infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

NAM reiterates that this unacceptable

Israeli military aggression against the

Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza

Strip constitutes a grave breach of

international law, including humanitarian

and human rights law, fuels the cycle of

violence and threatens international

peace and security as well as the fragile

peace process between the two sides.

NAM calls for an immediate cessation of

all military activities and violence and for

the implementation of an immediate

general ceasefire. Israel should

immediately cease all its military attacks

and scrupulously abide by all of its

obligations, as the occupying Power,

under international law and relevant

United Nations resolutions. In this

regard, the Movement urges Israel to

unconditionally comply with its

obligations under international law,

including the provisions of the Fourth

Geneva Convention relative to the

Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of

War of 12 August 1949.

In view of the indiscriminate bombings

affecting the civilian population,

including women and children, as well as

the severe humanitarian crisis prevailing

in Gaza, NAM also calls for the immediate

provision of protection for the Palestinian

civilian population in the Gaza Strip in

accordance with the relevant provisions

of international humanitarian law.

The Movement expresses grave concern

about the deepening humanitarian crisis

being faced by the Palestinian civilian

population in Gaza as a result of the current

military actions, the continued closure of

all border crossings and the obstruction

of access of humanitarian aid, including

food and medicines, and the reduction of

fuel and electricity supplies to the Gaza

Strip by Israel.

In this context, NAM calls upon Israel to

end the collective punishment of the

Palestinian people and to allow for the

immediate and sustained opening of the

Gaza Strip’s border crossings to ensure

the free access of humanitarian aid and

other essential supplies and goods as well

as to facilitate the passage of persons to

and from the Gaza Strip.

In light of the gravity of this crisis, NAM

expresses its deep disappointment at the

inability of the Security Council to uphold

its responsibilities in maintaining

international peace and security. Despite

more than a week of sustained military

attacks that have gravely affected the

civilian population and heightened

instability and tensions in the region, the

Council has regrettably been unable to

take any concrete measure to end the

aggression. Once again, the Movement

requests the Security Council to act

urgently to address this grave situation.

NAM stresses the need for intensified

and coordinated efforts by the

international community to bring an end

to this crisis and to exert all necessary

efforts to support and promote the peace

process as well as to ensure respect for

international law, including international

humanitarian and human rights law, the

key to a peaceful settlement of the

Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Arab-

Israeli conflict as a whole, as the sole

means to guarantee a lasting peace in the

region.

The Movement is convinced that there is

no military solution to the conflict. In this

context, NAM reaffirms its commitment

to a peaceful solution of the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict and to the right of the

Palestinian people to exercise self-

determination and sovereignty in their

independent State of Palestine, on the

basis of the 1967 borders, with East

Jerusalem as its capital.

5 January 2009

New York

NAM ON GAZA

Because it is generally accepted by the

so-called “international community” that

Hamas is a major threat to Israel, and

therefore to world peace and security,

France has dispatched a frigate to

participate in a new blockade of the Gaza

Strip. The Sunday Times reported that

United States naval ships hunting pirates

in the Gulf of Aden have been instructed

to track down Iranian arms shipments (25

January). Many other European states

offered their navies to assist. Indeed,

United Nations Security Council

resolution 1860 emphasized the need to

prevent illicit trafficking in arms and

ammunition.

Unfortunately not one European country

offered to send its navy to render

humanitarian assistance to the thousands

of injured, hungry, cold and homeless

people in Gaza rendered so as a result of

Israel’s attack. Perhaps helping children

dying from white phosphorus burns, or

just lack of clean water, would be seen as

supporting “terrorism.”

The perverse assumption behind all the

offers of help to Israel seems to be that

THE SHORTCUT TO PEACE

By Hasan Abu Nimah

continued next page

A R T I C L E SI N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

6

continued next page

Hamas and other resistance groups in

Gaza fired rockets at Israel merely because

rockets were available. Therefore, the

logic goes, peace would prevail if the

supply of rockets were curtailed.

Another strange assumption is that

Hamas was freely importing rockets from

Iran or elsewhere because Gaza’s borders

were open and free of any control.

This ignores the fact that since Israel

“disengaged” from Gaza in the summer of

2005, the coastal territory was never

allowed any free access to the outside

world. Gaza has been under varied forms

of siege and blockade by land, sea and

air. Fishermen were not even free to fish

without constant attacks by the Israeli

navy.

The Rafah crossing linking Gaza to Egypt

was kept closed on Israeli insistence until

a regime for strict Israeli proxy

surveillance, with European monitors

acting on Israel’s behalf, was established

for it.

If Hamas, despite the blockade and total

financial and diplomatic boycott managed

to import so many rockets or the materials

to make them, what level of further siege

would guarantee an end to arms

importation now?

But the glaring moral and legal question

is why the “international community” is

mobilizing its navies and political efforts

to protect the aggressor, preserve the

occupation, and deny the victims any

means to defend themselves? If they do

not want Palestinians to resist, why do

they not themselves confront the

aggressor and force an end to the

occupation, the siege and dispossession?

In the better past when war broke out in a

region the immediate response was often

to impose an arms embargo on all sides.

But when the defenseless population in

Gaza were under attack from the region’s

strongest army all calls were to prevent

the victims from defending themselves.

Meanwhile, endless supplies of

sophisticated weaponry were sent to the

occupier despite its already massive

dominance and indiscriminate and

criminal attacks on civilians.

Without objective and daring diagnosis

of the conflict’s root causes there is no

chance of any effective treatment. Sadly

this lesson has never been learned,

although it has been written repeatedly

with much innocent blood.

When Palestinians started their first

unarmed uprising in 1987, 40 years after

their expulsion from their homes and 20

years after the brutal occupation of the

West Bank and Gaza Strip began, they

had no rockets; they had only stones to

confront heavily armed occupation

forces. Israel used its guns and deliberate,

sadistic bone-breaking against unarmed

demonstrators killing almost 1,500 and

injuring tens of thousands in its failed

efforts to crush that uprising. Only with

the 1993 Oslo accords was it possible to

put an end to the uprising.

Hamas, as a resistance movement, was

born in 1988. Israel, desperate to break

the political monopoly of the Palestine

Liberation Organization as the sole

legitimate representative of the Palestinian

people, tacitly allowed Hamas to flourish.

Before any Palestinian fired a single shot

at the start of the second uprising, in

September 2000, Israel had already

gunned down dozens of unarmed

demonstrators. Palestinians learned these

lessons well: Israel will meet any peaceful

challenge with lethal force so one had

better be prepared to fight back.

We need to recall these facts to

understand the pure folly and detachment

from reality of international politics today.

The tendency has been to choose as the

“cause” of the conflict to be addressed

only what is politically expedient and easy,

whether it is wrong or right, just or unjust,

legal or illegal. The starting point of

history is chosen not from the origins of

the problem, but from whatever point

suits the narrative of the strong.

It is utterly misleading and dishonest to

pretend — as so many now do — that

the sum total of the Palestinian-Israeli

conflict is a confrontation over what

expired Palestinian Authority President

and Israeli puppet Mahmoud Abbas

himself referred to as “silly rockets.” To

pretend that stopping the supply of

rockets will make any difference to the

course of a conflict that results from the

historic dispossession — the Nakba —

of an entire nation, and its replacement

with a racist rogue state that has exiled,

occupied and massacred the survivors

for 61 years is the height of delusion.

It is convenient for the occupier and

aggressor to forget all these things and

talk only of rockets. And it is convenient

for the cowards who dress themselves in

diplomats’ suits and don’t dare utter the

truth.

Should we not acknowledge — if there is

any real desire to resolve this conflict —

that the resistance did not fire rockets just

because they had them, and Israel did not

carry out its barbarous massacres in Gaza

just because it wanted to stop them?

Should we not acknowledge the

indisputable truth that Hamas did not

break the truce, but Israel did when it

attacked across the border on 4 November

killing six Palestinians? Hamas did not

refuse to renew the truce — as Abbas and

Egyptian officials confirmed. All they

asked was that the halt to killing be

extended to the West Bank (which Israel

refused) and that the starvation siege that

was quietly killing Palestinians in Gaza be

lifted. Have we not been all along taught

that blockade is an act of aggression and

that occupation legitimizes resistance?

The gunboats that Europe is sending to

police the inmates of the Gaza Ghetto are

not manifestations of strength, neither are

they — or the recent shocking statements

of European Union Humanitarian chief

Louis Michel in Gaza blaming Hamas for

Israel’s crimes on 26 January — acts of

responsible diplomacy in pursuit of peace

and stability; they are a new prescription,

if not a clear endorsement, for further

bloodshed and war crimes. They are signs

of a moral weakness and corruption

unparalleled since Europeans stood by

silently at stations and watched as their

compatriots were loaded onto Nazi trains.


A R T I C L E SI N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D

7

In Gaza, Palestinians have once again

been blamed for their own deaths. The

British made a similar argument 151 years

ago when they killed thousands of Indian

civilians — 1,200 in a single village — in

response to the largest anti-colonial

uprising of the 19th century. If Israel truly

desires peace with the Palestinians and

safety for its citizens, it should look back

to one of the greatest, and

misunderstood, independence

movements in history.

Most people believe India won its

independence from the British

exclusively through Gandhi’s famous

strategy of nonviolence. They’re wrong;

armed resistance has deep roots in India.

During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also

known as the First War of Independence,

Hindus and Muslims serving in the

infantry for the British East Indian

Company revolted against the British

Empire, killing British officers and

civilians alike. While the majority of these

cavalrymen were Hindu, Muslims also

partook in the rebellion. These Muslim

fighters called themselves “jihadis” and

even “suicide ghazis.”

The British quashed the revolt, but for

the next 90 years Indian violence, even

terrorism, in response continued. In the

early 20th century, Indian militants,

frustrated with the Congress party —

the party of Gandhi and Nehru —

regularly resorted to acts of violence to

overthrow the British. Official

government reports note 210

“revolutionary outrages” and at least

1,000 “terrorists” involved in more than

101 attempted attacks between 1906 and

1917 in the state of Bengal alone (see Peter

Heehs, “Terrorism in India During the

Freedom Struggle,” The Historian, 22

March 1993). One young revolutionary,

Bhagat Singh, later referred to as

“Shaheed” Bhagat Singh, bombed the

Legislative Assembly in 1929.

On the other hand, Palestinians are

usually portrayed in Israel and the West

as exclusively militants or terrorists. Yet

Palestinians have a vibrant, albeit

unsuccessful, history of nonviolent

resistance. In 1936, the Palestinians

maintained a six-month general strike, the

beginning of what became known as the

Great Arab Revolt. The British retaliated

by declaring martial law, jailing and killing

large numbers of Palestinians, and

destroying numerous Palestinian homes.

The revolt lasted for three years and was

the largest and longest anti-colonial

uprising in the British Empire.

Fifty years later, the first Palestinian

intifada was largely nonviolent and

included acts of mass civil disobedience

like flying the Palestinian flag, organizing

strikes and boycotting Israeli products.

In 1985, Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian-

American psychologist from Jerusalem

established a center for nonviolent

resistance on the teachings of Gandhi

and Martin Luther King, Jr. He was

deported by Israel in 1988 (see Mubarak

Awad, “Non-Violent Resistance: A

Strategy for the Occupied Territories.”

Journal of Palestine Studies. Summer

1984). A year later, Beit Sahour, a town

near Bethlehem, engaged in a tax revolt

against Israel, under the famous

American slogan “No taxation without

representation.” The Israeli army

responded by arresting over 80

Palestinians, cutting telephone lines,

blocking food shipments into the town

and confiscating millions of dollars in

Palestinian goods.

What about the current conflict? All the

public hears about are the small,

makeshift rockets Palestinians fire into

southern Israel. But farmers, fisherman

and children had been nonviolently

resisting the Israeli occupation for years.

Up until the Israeli invasion, Gaza

fishermen had been disobeying Israeli

orders by fishing in their waters — not

unlike Gandhi when he urged Indians to

march to the sea to collect their own salt

against British orders. In response, the

British beat and imprisoned Gandhi’s

marchers. Likewise, the Israeli navy

repeatedly forced Palestinian fisherman

to strip to their underwear and swim to

Israeli navy ships, where they are

detained and their boats confiscated.

Since 2002, Palestinian men, women and

children have been sitting in front of

Israeli bulldozers flattening their olive

groves to construct a wall deep into the

West Bank. The Israeli army has

responded to these peaceful protestors

with tear gas, beatings, arrests and even

death.

The pattern occurred time and again:

nonviolent Palestinian resistance would

be crushed by Israeli force and ignored

by the West. With nothing to show for

their efforts, is it any surprise that the

Palestinian peaceful protest movement

founders? Violence has always been a

historical response to colonialism and

repression, in conflicts from India to

Algeria to South Africa. That doesn’t

make attacks on civilians right — or

strategically effective, for that matter. In

fact, as we all know, the Indian revolt

against the British Empire only finally

succeeded when Gandhi convinced his

countrymen to resist peacefully. Extremist

factions, like those during the Indian

independence movement, only gain

strength and popularity when Israel

flattens even the most harmless dissent.

26 January 2009

Radhika Sainath is a civil rights attorney

and an editor of Peace Under Fire: Israel/

Palestine and the International Solidarity

Movement. She lived in the West Bank from

October 2002-December 2003.

Source: Electronic Intifada

THE INDIAN EXAMPLE

By Radhika Sainath

continued from page 6Who could have thought that in the 21st

century such things would need to be said

— and to those we thought had overcome

their terrible history? But silence is not,

and should not be an option any more.

For years we have been told we should

learn from the darkest episode in Europe’s

history, but never make comparisons to it

lest we diminish its enormity. But the

horrifying atrocities in Gaza which an

Israeli official proudly predicted last

March would be a “bigger holocaust”

compel us to cast our reservations aside.

There is a shortcut to calm, the elimination

of violence and eventually peace. It is a

lesson that should have been learned

many years, and countless thousands of

lives ago: justice.

28 January 2009

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent

representative of Jordan at the United Nations.

This essay first appeared in The Jordan Times

Source: Electonic Intifada

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8

A R T I C L E S

continued next page

Baghdad today, on the eve of provincial

elections, feels like it has emerged from

several years of horrendous violence, but

do not be misled. Every Iraqi I’ve spoken

with feels it is tenuous, the still-fragile lull

too young to trust.

The United Nations High Commissioner

for Refugees provides recent statistics

showing that more Iraqis continue to flee

their country than are returning. Two

studies show the number of dead Iraqis

to be between 1.2-1.4 million, and the

number of those displaced to be nearly

five million, or one in six Iraqis. During

2006 and 2008, scores of bodies were

found on the streets of Baghdad and

fished from the Tigris River as death

squads and sectarian militias raged. All

but one of my Iraqi friends and translators

have either fled the country, or been killed.

It is nearly impossible to meet a family

that has not had a family member killed or

wounded.

Only within the last half-year has violence

lessened, and street life returned to

something akin to “normal,” which means

that as opposed to 50-250 Iraqi being

slaughtered each day, now it is an average

of one, sometimes two dozen per day.

The relative lull has allowed me to travel

around Baghdad with relative ease, eat at

restaurants, and even conduct interviews

on the street; all of which was unheard of

during my last visits to Iraq. I’ve been

taking stock of what has changed, and

what hasn’t.

One of the first things I noted that has

not changed did not occur in Iraq. Rather,

when arriving in Amman, Jordan and

exiting the airplane, I strode into customs

to find a Jordanian man holding up a

Blackwater USA sign, to be met by four

rough looking middle-aged men. The next

day, whilst flying into Baghdad, the

commercial jet did a “soft-spiral” descent

into Baghdad airport, unlike the hard

corkscrew descent that they all did when

I was last in Iraq, so as not to be shot at

by resistance fighters just outside of the

airport perimeter.

The infrastructure remains in shambles.

The generator at my hotel is running more

than it is shut off. Throughout Baghdad,

there an average of four hours of

electricity per 24 hours, and people left

with no choice but to drink tap water, when

it runs - water heavily contaminated by

waterborne diseases, fuel, sewage and

sediment. Jobs are scarce, and people are

suffering greatly. The anger about this

seethes just beneath the surface

everywhere I turn.

Previously, while these conditions were

similar, there was still some hope that

things might improve. That hope has

shifted into a resignation of what is. A

surrender into a daily life of trying to find

enough money to buy food.

“In 2004 it cost me $1 to fill my car,” my

interpreter Ali told me yesterday as we

drove to Fallujah. “Today it now costs

$35. It used to be in Iraq a family could

easily live off $500 for two months. Today

we are lucky if that lasts a week, because

the prices of everything have gone so

high.”

Beggars are present at most intersections.

Where they are not, Iraqi children walk

between the rows of cars carrying

cigarettes, fruit, or sweets to sell to drivers

stuck in the ever-present traffic.

Salah Salman, a day laborer in Sadr City I

spoke with the other day, raged against

the upcoming elections which are set for

January 31. He spoke with me while we

stood near a street strewn with garbage

near a busy traffic circle.

“I’ll not be voting for anyone. We cannot

trust any of the candidates, just like

during the elections of 2005. What have

they done for us? What services have

they provided our country? They have

achieved nothing for us!”

Like the 2005 elections (and most

elections across the globe, for that

matter), there are thousands of politicians

running on various platforms, from

unifying Iraq, to bringing electricity, to

improving security, to promoting

reconciliation. Most Iraqis I have spoken

with about the elections are not holding

out much hope.

“New thieves will replace the current

thieves,” an Iraqi refugee in Amman told

me before I flew into Baghdad.

Obvious differences are present. The

most evident reason for the decline in US

military casualties in Iraq over the last year

is that there are clearly far fewer patrols

being carried out by US forces, whereas

before patrols roamed the streets

incessantly. The patrols I do see are

carried out in the new Mine Resistant

Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles,

which are mine-resistant beasts that

slowly crawl through the congested

streets of Baghdad.

Instead, Iraqi security forces abound.

Speeding through the streets with blaring

sirens are Iraqi Police in huge, brand new

Ford and Chevrolet trucks, which have

clearly found their new market since the

US has tired of the gas-guzzling

behemoths. Further, Iraqi military abound,

roaming around in brand new Humvees

of the ilk traded in by the US military’s

upgrade to MRAPs. So much security is

deployed on the streets of Baghdad it is

impossible to travel more than 15 minutes

without finding another checkpoint. To

live in Baghdad, like it is to live in many

other Iraqi cities, is to live in a police state.

Contractors are visible flying overhead,

often in their two-person Kiowa

helicopters. They are running the security

at the airport and in the Green Zone, which

has been called the International Zone for

some time now. The mercenary company

Triple Canopy employs former Central

American death squad members and

various nationals from Uganda, a now

mostly de-colonized country, to check ID

badges at the countless checkpoints I

walked through to obtain my mandatory

press card inside the heavily fortified

A CAPPED VOLCANO OF SUFFERINGBy Dahr Jamail


9

A R T I C L E S

continued next page


compound. Thus, the changing of the

face is complete - Iraqi security forces and

private contractor mercenaries are now the

face of the US occupation of Iraq.

The political divides across the country

run deep, and this thin, fresh, external skin

of the lull in overall violence camouflages

the plight of the average Iraqi. Prices of

everything from bottled water to tomatoes

have skyrocketed, while jobs have

become increasingly scarce. While the

major US news outlets have downgraded

their staff in Iraq, or pulled out entirely

because they feel Iraq is no longer an

important story, for most Iraqis who

remain here, there is no other option. Flee

with no money and become a refugee, or

remain and try to survive.

Will the elections bring a lasting stability?

Or will groups who feel entitled to power

that don’t obtain it democratically resort

Thailand’s call for a conference in

Bangkok of a focus-group on the

Rohingya issue is a good initiative. All

the stakeholders could meet and work out

practicable and durable solutions on a

transnational issue that increasingly

needs a comprehensive and multilateral

approach.

In responding to the outcry of the

international community on the Rohinya

saga in the past weeks, Foreign Minister

Kasit Piromya acted quickly by consulting

all concerned countries, including Burma,

Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and

India to find solutions.

Last week the Foreign Ministry met and

discussed with the ambassadors from

these five countries and stressed that this

is a regional issue that would need joint

common efforts.

The plight of the rohingya refugees has

suddenly become a hot topic after nearly

650 of them were rescued in the territorial

waters of India and Indonesia. The Royal

Thai Navy was alleged by international

human rights organisations of pushing

back these refugees out to the Andaman

Sea where they had come from. Several

hundreds of people, it has been

contended, might have died at sea.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva demanded

a thorough investigation and pledged to

punish whoever was behind such

inhuman actions.

The rohingya refugees and asylum

seekers are a minority in Burma’s northern

Arakan state. During 1991-92, around

270,000 refugees fled to Bangladesh to

escape persecution by the Burmese

military junta. Over the years, the UN

High Commissioner for Refugees has

successfully repatriated at least 230,000

Rohingyas back to Burma. The rest are

staying in the two main camps -

Nayapara and Kutupalong in Cox’s Bazar

- without any real prospects of going

home. Due to the short distance between

these camps and Thailand’s western

coastal areas, they began to come by

boats in the mid-1990s, before it became

headline news. Gradually the numbers

became bigger and the influx more

frequent, especially during this time of

the year when the sea is usually calmer.

They would arrive in Ranong and other

coastal provinces through vast

transnational human smuggling rings,

either on transit to Malaysia or

Indonesia, or in search for a better life in

Thailand. Most of them being Muslims

would like to find jobs or be settled in

the same religious environment. But

quite often, at the first transit point, they

usually ended up being exploited in

Thailand.

During the Surayud Chulanont

government, Thai authorities were

instructed not to push them back out into

the sea as it could endanger their lives.

Instead, the visitors would be detained

and given food and transported to the

Thai-Burma border either in

Kanchanaburi or Tha Songyang. They

were sent across the border safely.

However, the soft Thai response has

encouraged human smuggling rings to

increase their operations as no risks were

involved for them. If they failed, these

asylum seekers would eventually end up

in the refugee camps along the Burma-

Bangladesh border. Out of desperation,

some of these refugees attempted to

come to Thailand again.

According to the US Committee for

Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), more

than 14 million people around the world

fled their homes either due to war or

persecution in 2007.

Thailand is one of top destinations with

over 400,000 refugees and asylum seekers.

USCRI pointed out that within Asia,

Thailand along with Malaysia, China,

Bangladesh and India are among the worst

violators of the international principles as

outlined by the UN Convention on

Refugees 1951.

At the moment, according to unofficial

statistics, Thailand is home to more than 5

million refugees, asylum seekers and illegal

migrant workers and visa over-stayers in

one form or another from over a dozen

countries, including all bordering countries

except Malaysia, and countries as far as

Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Russia,

North Korea, China, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka,

Bangladesh and Pakistan as well as a few

thousands of illegal immigrants from

Western countries. Despite several

improved measures to increase

ROHINGYA REFUGEE ISSUE: A HOLISTIC APPROACH

By Kavi Chongkittavorn

again to violence that will shred what is

left of this shattered country?

We shall soon find out.

29 January 2009

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist,

is the author of “Beyond the Green Zone:

Dispatches From an Unembedded

Journalist in Occupied Iraq”, (Haymarket

Books, 2007).

Source: Truthout/Perspective

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

10


coordination among intra-agencies in the

past, on the whole the Thai treatment of

these unfortunate people still comes under

fire due to the lack of consistency,

compassion and cooperation with

international organisations, including

UNHCR and numerous humanitarian

organisations. One hindrance is

Thailand’s continuous refusal to sign the

1951 Refugee Convention. Fear and a lack

of understanding of the convention has

prevented the country from joining 147

other nations that have done so.

Strange as it may seem, when it comes to

accession or ratification of international

treaties and protocols, the concerned Thai

officials are overly cautious in

interpreting Thailand’s commitments.

They tend to overdo it. Thailand took a

Kavi Chongkittavornohingya is a leading

Thai journalist.

Source: The Nation

26 January, 2009

long time to sign on to the UN against

Torture Treaty in 2007. The efforts to ratify

the International Criminal Court of Justice,

which Thailand proudly signed in 2000,

have fallen flat in the past eight years as

some conservative lawyers thought that

doing so would subject the Thai royal

family to the ICC court of justice. Like a

lot else in this country, whenever events

and issues are related to the monarchy,

the responsible authorities tend to play

safe and exaggerate the impacts - real or

imagined - without scrutinising the ever

changing domestic and international

environments. A more level-headed

rationalisation is urgently needed.

Upon closer scrutiny, it is a real blessing

in disguise that the Rohinya problem blew

up in the face of the Abhisit-led

government. First of all, given his

professed high moral ground, Abhisit will

definitely act on issues related to human

rights and freedom of expression sooner

than later. Secondly, the rohingya

refugees also exposed the Thai

government’s limit, or for that matter what

the countries at the receiving end can do

on a human tragedy of this scale that they

have not created. Thirdly, their plight will

enable the public and global communities

to understand the problem’s root cause

and solve it at the source. Finally, it’s

hoped this travesty would prompt all

stakeholders to cooperate and provide

more assistance, especially the UNHCR

and other humanitarian organisations.

For some time now the world has been

facing a financial crisis of unprecedented

proportions. The crisis has become truly

global and is clearly leading to a

worldwide recession far worse than that

experienced in the late 1920’s or before

that. Huge banks and financial institutions

have collapsed and are dragging down

with them other major businesses. Even

the small businesses have not been

spared.

The enormity of the situation can be

gauged by the total sum of money which

the Federal Reserve Bank and the

American Government have allocated to

rescue banks, insurance companies,

mortgage companies and hedge funds.

The sum is US 8.5 trillion dollars i.e. Eight

Thousand Five Hundred billion. We

cannot really imagine the existence of this

amount of money; certainly not all of it in

one place.

How come such an enormous amount of

money could be lost by the banks and

other financial institutions without us

knowing anything about it until it is clearly

upon us.

The answer is really very simple. There

have been massive cover-ups by the

institutions and the United State

Government of the losses until they

became too big to hide under anything.

The cover-ups have been going on for a

very long time - maybe more than 30 years.

It began in the banks and institutions

themselves. The CEOs of these

institutions kept on telling their clients

and the public that everything was all

right, that they had the money to make

good the losses, that it was all a

misunderstanding, that it was temporary,

that everything was secured.

All the while the losses were

accumulating. But the books were not

showing them. There was a lot of creative

accounting and losses could often appear

as gains. And these fictitious gains were

credited to the genius of the CEOs and

CFOs. They should be rewarded. And they

were rewarded with millions and millions

of dollars in bonuses and stock options.

These geniuses were often literally

bought by other banks and institutions

so they may benefit from their expertise

in cooking the books. And why not? The

investors were getting good;

extraordinarily good returns on their

investments.

When you get a return of 10, 20 or 30

percent why should you scrutinize the

running of the company? Just collect the

dividends and invest more.

And when you can get such returns from

investing in these financial instruments

why should you invest in the production

of goods and services where the

dividends would be 5% or less.

Very soon the business of producing

goods and services and the trade in these

represents only a fraction of the business

in financial instruments. It is said that the

trade in currencies for example is twenty

times bigger than total world trade. And

the profits are equally big.

Millionaires appear by the hundreds

every year, and billionaires by the dozens.

Yachts and private jets became very

common. And everyone thought this was

going to go on forever.

But we know now that it is not forever.

We know now that the bubble has burst

with a bang that reverberates throughout

the world. The great banks are collapsing

like a house of cards and rich countries

are going bankrupt. And we all ask why.

Why? It began with the delinking of

money from gold. It began with fiat money.

Basically these are paper tokens, with no

intrinsic value at all. We never question

how these pieces of paper can have a

value. We never ask who has been

printing these notes. We do not ask how

the printers determine how much notes

GLOBAL FINANCIAL UNCERTAINTIES AND THE FUTURE OF MALAYSIA

continued next page

By Mahathir Mohamad

(Part 1)

I N T E R N A T I O N A L M O V E M E N T F O R A J U S T W O R L D A R T I C L E S

11

they should print. We all merely accept

them as money.

In most countries Central Banks owned

by the Government would print the

money. We assume Government would

control how much is printed so as to avoid

devaluation and inflation.

But in United States of America, the

richest country in the world the money is

printed by a private bank. The Federal

Reserve Bank is owned by twelve other

private banks. The Fed prints the money

and actually lends the money to the

Government. Yet the world accepts this

basically private bank notes as the reserve

currency for all countries, as the currency

used for international trade.

At one time banks like the HSBC and

Chartered Banks actually issued their own

banknotes. But today it is not really

necessary because effectively cheques

represent money. So can credit cards.

How many cheque books or credit cards

are issued the public does not know. But

these are money also. In some very

advanced countries no one carries cash

anymore. They pay for everything with

credit cards. So credit cards are a form of

money.

Money in the form of currency notes or

cheques can be deposited with a bank

and cheques can be made out to be drawn

on the bank when payments are to be

made. When cheques are paid in, the

money appears in the accounts of the

payer. He need not withdraw money to

pay for anything. He merely makes out a

cheque to the amount.

We all believe the banks business is based

on the capital invested and the deposits

taken. We think that the money lent by

the bank comes from its capital and the

money deposited with it. But actually what

the bank lends is far more than the sum

total of the capital and the deposits.

In a well regulated situation the amount

that a bank can lend is limited by the

Central Bank. But actually a bank can lend

as much as 10 times the money deposited

with it. Since, except with fix deposit, the

deposited money cost the bank nothing,

in fact may actually earn for the bank a

service charge, the earnings of the bank

on the deposits comes at no cost. If it can

lend 10 times the deposited amount, than

its interest earning must be on 10 times

the deposited amount.

The bank is therefore a money making

institution even when supervised.

But then came the idea of free markets

and deregulation. The market would

regulate itself and Government should not

interfere. Once this was accepted the

crooks moved in. Since the earnings of

the bank are directly related to the size of

the loans, then banks should try to lend

as much as possible, whatever the capital

or deposits they have.

What if the loans turn sour. The geniuses

devised a way of securing the loans. The

good loans and the bad loans are bundled

together and insured. The investors in the

banks, principally the hedge funds, need

no longer worry about non-performing

loans. If they fail to perform the insurance

companies will make up the loss. Besides

in the case of housing loans the houses

would serve as collaterals. If the loan go

bad the collaterals can be sold off and the

loans recovered, if not wholly at least

partially.

There would not have been any problem

except that the amounts of loans were

enormous. The borrowers run into

millions and the total sum of

nonperforming loans add up to billions.

When these sub-prime loans failed, the

insurance companies could not pay the

huge amounts due to be collected by the

banks. And when the housing market

failed, the collateralized properties could

find no buyers.

Unable to recover the loans given out the

banks went bankrupt. The share prices of

the banks plummeted. The hedge funds

which had invested a lot of borrowed

money in the banks, find themselves

unable to repay the huge loans (20 times

the size of the investments they had

taken) which they had taken. The banks

which had lent money to the hedge funds,

lost all their money.

Added together the losses by the banks,

the insurance companies, the mortgage

companies, the hedge funds, the lenders

to the hedge funds come up to trillions of

dollars.

When one bank experiences a run, other

banks may come to its rescue. But when

all the biggest banks fail simultaneously,

no other banks can rescue them. The

Central Banks of the Government, the

printers of money may be able to bail out

the bankrupt banks and institutions. The

problem with printing currency notes to

bailout on such a scale is inflation. And

inflation must lead to recession.

Recession for one country is bad enough.

But when the whole world go into

recession, the problem is nearly

impossible to resolve. Certainly no one

country can resolve it. A world recession

must be resolved by the world acting in

concert.

What is the future for Malaysia in the face

of a worldwide recession? It is very

difficult to predict with any degree of

accuracy, but certainly what happens to

Malaysia must be determined by the

degree of its involvement with the world’s

economy. The greater the linkage the more

serious will be the problem and the more

gloomy the future of the country.

We know that Singapore has felt the

adverse effect of the present international

financial uncertainty more than Malaysia.

This is because Singapore is a financial

center and is much involved with

investments in hedge funds and other

financial instruments. It has too much

money with too few opportunities within

the country to invest. The developing

countries provide too few investment

opportunities. So much of Singapore’s

money is invested in the rich countries.

And we now know that the rich countries

have been really badly managed,

especially financially. So Singapore has

to pay a price for its confidence in the

free market and in money making more

money. ------- End of part one.

11 December 2008


Dr Mahathir Mohamad is a former Prime Minister of Malaysia.The above speech was delivered at the

‘Bridges — Dialogue Towards a Culture of Peace’, held at Putrajaya, Malaysia on 11 December 2008

Part two of the speech will be published in the March 2009 issue of the JUST Commentary

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The International Movement for a Just World isa nonprofit international citizens’ organisationwhich seeks to create public awareness aboutinjustices within the existing global system.It a lso attempts to develop a deeperunderstanding of the struggle for social justiceand human dignity at the global level, guided byuniversal spiritual and moral values.

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Just Commentary February 2009

Documents

Transcript of Just Commentary February 2009