Rich nations fail to honour climate pledge

A group of rich countries including Britain has broken a promise to pay more than a billion dollars to help the developing world cope with the effects of climate change. The group agreed in 2001 to pay $1.2bn (£600m) to help poor and vulnerable countries predict and plan for the effects of global warming, as well as fund flood defences, conservation and thousands of other projects. But new figures show less than £90m of the promised money has been delivered. Britain has so far paid just £10m.

To read the full article from The Guardian, click on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/24/climatechange.greenpolitics

Naim Ateek: A History of Nonviolence

Naim Ateek had just turned 11 when forces of the Haganah, the pre-Israel Zionist paramilitary organization, occupied his village of Beisan in Palestine. Days later, the villagers were informed that they were to be “evacuated,” forcibly moved off land that Palestine’s Jewish minority now claimed for its own state. Ordered to gather in the village center, the Ateeks took what they could carry, and joined the other frightened families, all clutching heirlooms, photographs, jewelry, and awaiting an uncertain future, away from the homes in and lands on which their families had lived for generations.

It is perhaps surprising then, that even after this experience of forcible dispossession, and even after the shock of the 1967 war, in which thousands more Palestinians were displaced and the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem came under military occupation, even after years of witnessing and enduring brutality at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers, Ateek has been a constant advocate of nonviolence as the only course for Palestinian independence. A parish minister to Palestine’s small Christian community since 1966, Ateek founded the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in 1989 for the purpose of developing a theology to help Palestinians cope with and overcome the daily oppression and injustice they continue to endure as a subject population under military occupation.

Though he advocates nonviolence as “the only option, and the only strategy,” Ateek does not shrink from making extremely trenchant criticisms of Israel’s policies. Which is why a late October conference at Boston’s Old South Church, featuring Ateek, was provocatively titled, “The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel.” Underscoring the apartheid parallel, the keynote speaker for the conference was Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town and one of the guiding spirits of the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

While Tutu was lauded universally for his moral and prophetic voice against the South African government’s policies, he has been denigrated for suggesting a similarity between South African apartheid and the Israeli occupation and colonization of the West Bank. Similarly, despite Ateek’s commitment to nonviolence and reconciliation, he has been denounced as an anti-Semite and a terrorist-sympathizer for insisting that Palestinians have a right to reject and resist a system that severely proscribes all aspects of Palestinian life, while at the same time privileging the rights of Israeli settlers and facilitating their takeover of Palestinian lands, a system which Ateek and the organizers of the North American Friends of Sabeel conference hold is very much like apartheid.Many scholars, including many Israeli scholars, have for years been using the apartheid framework to understand Israel’s policies toward Palestinians in the occupied territories. As UCLA professor Saree Makdisi points out, there are, in fact, “two separate legal and administrative systems, maintained by the regular use of military force, for two populations — settlers and natives — unequally inhabiting the same piece of land.” Furthermore, when people like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu insist that the apartheid comparison is appropriate, one listens.

To read the full article from The American Prospect, click on:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_history_of_nonviolence

Demands for full access for UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

Press Release
(Translation from Indonesian)

The Human Rights Defence Coalition in Papua urges the Government to give full access to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture during his visit to Papua

During the past nine months,Indonesia has been visited by three UN human rights experts, Hina Jilani, the special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Human Rights Defenders in June, Louise Arbour, head of the UN Human Rights Council, and Professor Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Professor Manfred Nowak is visiting Indonesia from 10 - 25 November.

According to his mandate, he is visiting Indonesia in order to help eliminate all forms of torture that still occur in Indonesia. The visit is part of Indonesia's commitment as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, in particular regarding its willingness to comply with various procedures laid down by the Human Rights Council. The types of torture to be investigation by Professor Nowak have been defined under the UN Convention Against Torture adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948 [this is when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted] which was ratified by Indonesia in 1998.

Professor Nowak will visit a number of detention centres and prisons where torture has occurred. He will also meet law enforcement officers, victims and humanitarian activists.
There are serious concerns among anti-torture groups at home and abroad about his visit to Papua because of the controversy surrounding Indonesia's commitment to upholding human rights. In conformity with its position as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, the government should give the fullest possible access to the UN envoy. This would ensure that the initiative in inviting the UN envoy is not mere lip-service but is a genuine commitment by Indonesia to respect humanitarianism and restore its credibility on the world stage.
We therefore call upon the Indonesian Government and institutions concerned with law enforcement and the defence of human rights:

1. to give the fullest access to the UN Special Rapporteur Manfred Nowak to visit places of conflict and detention centres and prisons

2. to be fully cooperative during the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur to Indonesia

For further information, please contact Brother Septer Manufandu at the Secretariat of the NGO Joint Forum in Papua, phone:0967 573511.
Jayapura, 14 November 2007

J. Septer Manufandu Br. Yohanes Budi Hermawan O.F.M
Executive Secretary FOKER LSM Director SKP
Jayapura

Alosius Renwarin, SH Pdt. Dora Balubun, STh
Director Elsham Papua Coordinator, KPKC
Sinode GKI

Matius Murib Leonard Imbiri
Kontras Papua General Secretary DAP

Peneas Lokbere Paskalis Letsoin, SH
Chair of the Victims' Community Director LBH
Papua

Elias Weah
Secretary-General FNMPP

Secretariat of NGO Foker Papua :


Translation by TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath, Croydon CR7 8HW, UK.
tel +44 (0)20 8771 2904 fax +44 (0)20 8653 0322 tapol@gn.apc.org http://tapol.gn.apc.org


Sent by Matthew Jamieson
Institute for Papuan Advocacy & Human Rights PO box 1805, Byron bay NSW 2481 Australia matthew@hr.minihub.org tel +61(0) 418291998

Sri Lanka: Sinhala Nationalism and the Elusive Southern Consensus

The latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the nationalism of Sri Lanka's largest ethnic community and its relationship to the almost 25-year conflict. Recent history shows the Sinhalese are not unalterably opposed to a fair deal for the minority Tamils but competition between their major parties, the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), together with the violence and intransigence of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), have led President Rajapaksa to adopt a hardline nationalist approach. Until the sources of Sinhalese nationalism are taken more seriously, it will continue to challenge attempts to produce a political settlement.

To read the full report from International Crisis Group, click on:
Sri Lanka: Sinhala Nationalism and the Elusive Southern Consensus

The Iraq war has become a disaster that we have chosen to forget

Madeleine Bunting
Monday November 5, 2007

Government ministers now talk of Iraq as a tragedy, as if it was a natural disaster and they had no hand in its making. There's a public revulsion at the violent sectarian struggles best summed up as "a plague on all their houses", as even the horror gives way to exhaustion.

The irony is that in this great age of communications and saturation media, this is perhaps the most important war to become nigh on impossible to report. Unless the reporter is embedded with the occupation forces, it takes either terrifying courage or extraordinary ingenuity to bring images to our screens of those caught up in the awful maelstrom of this imploded country.
Without the human stories that bring people and their suffering so vividly to life, there is little chance of public opinion re-engaging with the biggest political calamity of our time.

The Iraq war represents the end of the media as a major actor in war. In Bosnia journalists stirred western Europe's conscience with their vivid accounts; these were people we came to understand, recognise and empathise with, and public opinion forced recalcitrant governments to take note and act. It was a lesson not lost on the Kosovans: they ensured the media saw every atrocity, and the coverage was used to secure a comparable outcome to Bosnia - western governments were forced to act. But in Iraq the number of journalists killed (now at least 138) means that this war is near private - the images and people who might make the horror of this war real don't reach our screens. It's no longer a war that is accessible to public scrutiny or to democratic engagement.

It may have been Iraqi suspicion of western media that ensured this outcome, but it's one that serves US interests nicely. The indifference, the exhaustion and the difficulty of reporting leaves the US forces with arguably a freer hand than they have had in any field of operations for decades. While the Americans and the British keep trying to persuade their public that the war is over - a habit initiated by George Bush himself when he announced his pyrrhic victory on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf in May 2003 - they can carry on fighting it. And there are plenty of people only too eager to hope their political leaders are right and that the whole problem of a country they never knew much about just goes away.

To read the full article from The Guardian, click on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2205216,00.html

Arms makers winning war on terrorism

Frank Walker
November 4, 2007

ARMS manufacturers are making record profits from the war on terrorism and unprecedented spending on weapons programs.

The massive earnings have drawn condemnation from Australian defence experts, who say expensive weapons such as jet fighters, warships and satellites are not the way to combat terrorism.

The world's biggest arms maker, Lockheed Martin in the US, maker of fighter jets including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which Australia is buying, announced last week it had increased third-quarter profits by 22 per cent to $US11.1 billion ($12.1 billion).

Northrop Grumman, maker of aircraft carriers, submarines and bombers, increased profits 62 per cent to $US489 million.

At General Dynamics, maker of the Abrams tank, which Australia has just bought, profits climbed 24 per cent to $US544 million.

Britain's BAE said its profits were up 27 per cent to £657 million ($1.23 billion).

In Australia profits for the Government-owned naval ship and submarine builder ASC rose 60 per cent last year to $30 million. The company was set up to build the Collins class submarines and is involved in the $8 billion air warfare destroyer project.

Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, said the big-ticket weapons were designed to contain China, not combat terrorism.

"They don't admit to it. They sell it to the people as a response to terrorism, but that is not what they are doing," Professor White said.

To read the full article in the Sydney Morning Herald, click on:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/arms-makers-winning-war-on-terrorism/2007/11/03/1193619200266.html