Paris III hostage?

QUESTIONER: We can talk about Lebanon. I don't know if you've any update on Lebanon. I know there were some discussions. Well, the political situation, I gather, has changed everything. So I was just wondering if you have any update on whether Lebanon is going to continue under the Fund or whether that's just been put on hold. I believe that the Lebanese program finished the end of last year, and they were in discussions with the Fund on continuing that. Since the political situation has changed over the last few weeks, I'm just trying to figure if there was an update in any way. I mean if you don't, that's fine.

MR. HAWLEY: Look, the Fund supported the medium-term debt reduction strategy —that was Paris III. Implementation of the strategy is held hostage, if that's the right word, by the ongoing political stalemate. The authorities successfully implemented their 2007 program, supported by the EPCA, achieving a much better than expected primary surplus. A follow-up arrangement for 2008 is under preparation. That's all I have at the moment.

Food prices

Jacques Diouf, head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, spoke recently of a 'very serious crisis' brought about by the rise in food prices and the rise in the oil price. Various global economic bodies are forecasting rises of between 10 per cent and 50 per cent over the next decade.

There have already been riots about food prices in Mexico, West Bengal, Morocco, Senegal and Yemen, although not in Edinburgh. But the factors behind the price rises in Leith are exactly the same as those in Mexico, or in China - where, last Wednesday, the government introduced price controls on dairy products, meat, vegetables and cereals. And while food price inflation hit 18 per cent last year in China, there's no good reason why they should not do that here. In fact, there are a lot of reasons why they should.

There have been four chief drivers of food price inflation in the last two years. The first is the huge rise in oil prices: $100 a barrel means food that is four-times as expensive to plant, irrigate, harvest and transport as it was six years ago. Some commodities brokers are now betting on oil going to $200 a barrel within a decade.

The second factor is the climate: drought, hurricanes and floods around the world last year made for terrible harvests - from Australia to the Caribbean and the United Kingdom. The third is the massive rise in the price of the staple-food commodities: wheat, maize and soya. This has been partly driven by speculation in the markets, partly by the demand for crops to turn into fuel.

Ethanol, a diesel-type fuel made from plants, must bear a lot of the blame. Since George Bush announced a rush to corn-based ethanol it's done well for American corn farmers - 20 per cent of whose harvest, subsidised by the government, went into fuel tanks rather than flour mills this year. Bush's taste for corn-based ethanol is based partly on trying to break the US's reliance on Middle East oil suppliers, and partly on a (largely misplaced) faith in its ecological credentials. (Its increasingly voluble critics claim that growing grain and then transforming it into ethanol requires more energy from fossil fuels than ethanol generates.). . .

But the last, and perhaps the most disturbing factor in the food price rise, is the financial boom in India and China. Around the world, and through history, people have eaten more meat as they have become richer. This is called the nutrition transition and it's now happening, very quickly, in the two most populous nations on the planet.

Hundreds of millions more people are now rich enough to eat meat compared with 10 years ago, with meat consumption in China more than doubling over the past 20 years. Meat also consumes food resources in a shockingly inefficient way: it takes 8kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, and 4kg for pork. But each kilo of grain may need a tonne of water. And fuel oil is needed throughout the process, to fertilise the grain, pump water and to transport it.

Water and oil will both be in short supply this century. None of this is a surprise to Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London's City University, and an adviser to the government through the Sustainable Development Commission. 'I've been expecting this for two years', he says. 'The food system is entering a period of very significant restructuring, the first since the years after the Second World War. We may look back at the second half of the last century as an era of cheap food. It'll be like the Hundred Years' War, as we were taught it in school: a seminal moment in human history that's gone and will not return.'. . .

But could there be positive aspects to the food price rises? Some environmentalists believe so, including Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project, near St Austell in Cornwall. 'Food is ridiculously cheap and we need to pay more - for our environment to be healthy, to cut down on carbon emissions and give more income to our farmers,' he said. 'It's said that 30 per cent of all food produced in Britain is thrown away. We may be getting back to seeing what the real price of food is, and that is healthy for producers and for society.'

So is there a morally preferable price level for food, at which people will value it more, and waste less? Raj Patel, a political economist at Cornell University in California, and author of Stuffed and Starved - on the politics of global food supply - says that allowing the market to set prices to make people behave better is not the answer. 'There are greens who are crowing that the price of food going up is going to benefit the environment and help the small producer,' he says. 'But the benefit of the rises is going to the contractors and the commodity brokers - not to the farmers or to developing world economies. Nor are supermarkets innocent victims of price rises. Sainsbury's and Tesco have recorded double-digit growth in profits last year.' . . .

But as the situation stands today, at least a third of the world - including the populations of China, Russia and India - have government-imposed price limits on their foods.

'That's how it's going, says Lang. 'You can't wriggle out of the facts. There are water shortages, climate change, energy price rises, population demographics, waste. We can't go on eating meat the way we do: the economics of it just won't add up.'

Muslim Bishop

ومن ذاكرتي الجميلة التي كانت الحرب اللبنانية مدخلاً مرسوماً الى قطعها، اني دعيت في آذار في عام 1975 الى مهرجان في كلية الحقوق في الجامعة اللبنانية تحت عنوان: الجنوب وكبوجي - وكان معتقلاً في الارض المحتلة - وقد تعرض الجنوب في بداية العام الى عدوان يومي شرس (كفرشوبا تحديداً، حيث هدم مسجدها ومدرستها بقذائف المدفعية الاسرائيلية) وشارك في المهرجان من المتكلمين المطران غريغوار حداد والاب حليم ريشا والاخت نجاة نعيمة وشفيق الحوت وأنا، وقدم الخطباء الاستاذ بشير عميرة... ألقيت كلمتي وجلست. وبعد قليل تكلم بشير عميرة وقال: بناء على طلب الجمهور فإن كلمة "الاسقف" هاني فحص سوف تطبع وتوزع عليكم. واشتعلت القاعة بالتصفيق امام ذهول بشير عميرة الذي لم يكن يدري ماذا فعل من خطأ أجمل من الصواب. وكان في القاعة عشرات من الرهبان والراهبات. والتقطها الاستاذ شفيق الحوت وكتب حول معنى هذا الخطأ الصحيح في جريدة "المحرر" وفي زاويته اليومية تحت عنوان: إبن البلد.

Minimum wage legislation?

I have been pondering on whether the issue of campaigning for a higher minimum wage should be a priority for progressives in Lebanon. I could not find a full account on the issue in historical references, only some passages:
Marx:

. . . some trivialities which Guesde found it necessary to throw to the French workers notwithstanding my protest, such as fixing the minimum wage by law, etc. (I told him: “If the French proletariat is still so childish as to require such bait, it is not worth while drawing up any program whatever”). . .

Lenin:

It is true that this law, like all bourgeois reforms, is a miserable half-measure and in part a mere deception of the workers, because while fixing the lowest rate of pay, the employers keep their wage-slaves down all the same. Nevertheless, those who are familiar with the British labour movement say that since the miners’ strike the British proletariat is no longer the same. The workers have learned to fight. They have come to see the path that will lead them to victory. They have become aware of their strength. They have ceased to be the meek lambs they seemed to be for so long a time to the joy of all the defenders and extollers of wage-slavery.

Luxemburg:

But it is obvious that the class character of any particular demand is not established by merely incorporating it mechanically into the program of a socialist party. What this or any other party considers a "class interest" of the proletariat can only be an imputed interest, concocted by subjective reasoning. It is very easy, for instance, to state that the workers' class interest demands the establishment of a minimum-wage law. Such a law would protect the workers against the pressures of competition, which might come from a less developed locality. It would assure them of a certain minimum standard of living, etc. Such demands have been presented repeatedly by socialist circles; however, the principle has not yet been accepted by the socialist parties in general, for the valid reason that the universal regulation of wages by means of legislation is but a utopian dream under today's anarchistic conditions of private economy. This is because workers' wages, like the prices of any kind of commodity, are set up in the capitalistic system under the operation of "free competition" and the spontaneous movement of capital. Therefore, the legal regulation of wages can be achieved only in exceptional, clearly defined areas, e.g., in small communities. And since the general establishment of a minimum-wage law clashes with the current conditions of capitalism, we must admit that it is not a true proletarian interest, but rather a fabricated or imputed one, in spite of the fact that it can be supported by a completely logical argument.

What to make of that? Campaigning for a higher minimum wage (or legislation, if non-existent) can contribute to workers' struggle when the labor movement is weak, as is currently the case in Lebanon. But there are issues to be aware of, such as reversibility, the question of declining real value of the set minimum wage with rising prices, its effective enforcement when capitalists control the state, capitalist competition leading to exploiting workers not covered by the legislation (whether at home or abroad, an important issue given the great mobility of capital at this stage), and changes in job availability in different sectors.

Ultimately however, minimum wages should be set through collective bargaining, not legislation. The process would resist the problems mentioned above, with an internationalist perspective ensuring that all workers benefit. So it seems that increasing the minimum wage should be set as a priority now to mobilize workers. The wage level to be demanded must be set only according to that criterion (which level would have the largest support from the working class). So its value is mostly instrumental. As the labor movement is strengthened, the goal must then be to bargain collectively on minimum wages.

The Greenspan Oil Doctrine

Straight from the Monthly Review's latest issue.

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s new book The Age of Turbulence (Penguin 2007)set off a firestorm in mid-September with its dramatic statement on the Iraq War: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: that the Iraq war is largely about oil” (p. 463). The fact that someone of Greenspan’s stature in the establishment—one of the figures at the very apex of monopoly-finance capital—should issue such a twenty word statement, going against the official truths on the war, and openly voicing what “everyone knows,” was remarkable enough. Yet, his actual argument was far more significant, and since this has been almost completely ignored it deserves extended treatment here.

Greenspan’s statement came in a chapter entitled “The Long-Term Energy Squeeze.” Here he argues that “as long as the United States is beholden to potentially unfriendly sources of oil and gas, we are vulnerable to economic crises over which we have little control.” This is the product, he claims, of an overriding fact of today’s global economy: “[W]orld growth over the next quarter century at rates commensurate with the past quarter century will require between one-fourth and two-fifths more oil than we use today” (p. 462). Moreover, Greenspan insists that:

the intense attention of the developed world to Middle Eastern political affairs has always been critically tied to oil security. The reaction to, and reversal of, Mossadeq’s nationalization of Anglo-Iranian Oil in 1951 and the aborted effort of Britain and France to reverse Nasser’s takeover of the key Suez Canal link for oil flows to Europe in 1956 are two prominent examples. And whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy....[P]rojections of world oil supply and demand that do not note the highly precarious environment of the Middle East are avoiding the eight-hundred-pound gorilla that could bring world economic growth to a halt. (p. 463)

Greenspan thus historically connected the U.S. invasion of Iraq to the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq and his government in 1953 and the placing of the Shah in power and to Britain and France’s invasion (along with Israel) of Egypt in 1956—after which the United States took over the role of the leading imperialist power in the region. Greenspan’s explanation for the war, which sees it as part of the Western search for “oil security”—not on behalf of the “world economy” as a whole, as his statement might suggest, but on behalf of the dominant interests in a hierarchical world economy—is thus not far removed from the account that first appeared in these pages in December 2002 before the Iraq War began. There we said “Military, political, and economic aspects are intertwined in all stages of imperialism, as well as capitalism in general. However, oil is the single most important strategic factor governing U.S. ambitions in the Middle East....The U.S. Department of Energy projects that global oil demand could grow from the current 77 million barrels a day to as much as 120 million barrels a day in the next twenty years....For this reason the security and availability of oil supplies has become a growing issue for U.S. corporations and U.S. strategic interests” (pp. 9–11; see also John Bellamy Foster, Naked Imperialism, pp. 92–93).

After the release of his book Greenspan was pressed by the Bush administration to say that it had not gone to war over oil. Greenspan cagily responded with a Hegelian ruse of history (wherein the real logic operates behind the backs of the actors): “I’m not saying that they believed it was about oil. I’m saying it is about oil and that I believe it was necessary to get Saddam out of there.” For Greenspan it was all about oil and the capitalist world economy, and the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was therefore justified, in his eyes, in order for the United States to gain control of the world oil supply on behalf of the “developed world”—in line with a long history of economic empire. There could hardly be a better statement on economic imperialism by a person better positioned to know. As Robert Ebel, senior adviser in the Energy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has worked with the CIA and the State Department’s “Future of Iraq Project,” explained: “When we went into Iraq, I said it’s about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Once we got rid of Saddam Hussein, then the day after it would be about oil” (UPI, “Analysis: Iraq, Oil, and Greenspan’s Gospel,” September 19, 2007, http://www.upi.com). This whole dynamic might be given a name “The Greenspan Oil Doctrine.”

Syrians Against Censored Syria

Reposted from Golaniya's Decentering Damascus.
Facebook is blocked in Syria, would I sound naïve if I said I didn’t see it coming? Why should I? How are the Syrians facebooking? Launching opposition campaigns? What's Facebook in Syria anyway? Active civil society? Syrian groups calling to overthrow the Syria regime? What's so dangerous about Syrian facebookers that they shouldn't be using it anymore? Or perhaps because the site is American so it should be blocked? Or maybe the Syrian officials have no idea what's Facebook except that it's an American and it's getting popular in Syria? All the above?

My theory? I think the Syrian officials don’t have a thorough idea how Syrians are facebooking, I think they did not block Facebook–the-site, but the unfamiliar reaction to this site, the unknown consequences of this reaction that might be very much, uncontrolled!

Even though I am not a big fan of this website but I along with some users learned how to use it to promote my projects. More than once I tried permanently to deactivate my account, but I always come back and always for a new different reason.

Ok so Ammar Abd El Hamid used to blog on Blogger, but he's not anymore god damn it! Youtube has opposition videos downloaded, opposition sites are opposition "no good" sites, Israel is the "enemy", but what's really the deal with Facebook? And how come Myspace, Hi5, Hi-Syria, and I don’t know what, aren’t blocked in Syria? Why just Facebook?

United Nations estimated the population in Syria year 2003 at 17,800,000. How many of those do we have on Facebook? It says that there are only 28,079 facebookers that affiliated to the "Syria" regional network. Of course there are many Syrian Facebookers who don’t affiliate with the Syrian regional network simply because they don’t live in Syria. So generally speaking those who affiliate to the Syrian network live in Syria at the moment. So out of millions we have only 28,079 Syrian Facebookers.

Compared to Syria, Lebanon which was estimated in 2003 by the United Nations at 3,653,000 has 150,966 facebooker users affiliated to its regional network.

Looks like Facebook isn’t popular in Syria as Hi5 or Hi-Syria , yet it is the first and only social website that was blocked in Syria. Again, why?

Let's take a look at the popular groups in Syria at its second day of the blockage:

أغلظ 100 شخصية في سوريا

الإعلان السوري .....إلى متى هذا الإنحطاط ؟؟؟

لمسة عشق على ارض دمشق

بحبك يا شام

أصابيع رجلين البنات عشقها الشباب _ Fingers feet

Anti-Shawi ~...Die Shawi Die!!!...~

Syrian Single Girls

لا لسجن سلطان الطرب

The Great Facebook Race – Syria

احلى النكت الحمصية

Very…dangerous I'd say! None of these groups are political or even close to demanding political or social change in Syria. So it must be not the majority's interests that concerns the Syrian officials but rather the minority's interests and activism in the site:

FREE ANWAR BUNNI

Freedom for Michel Kilo

Syrian Gays Rights

لا .. لحجب مواقع الانترنت في سوريا

For Civil Marriage in Syria


Facebook's events and groups are not just what's processing the Syrian people's awareness, but also its causes. For the past 40 years the Syrian officials are the only ones who can speak of Golan Heights, I once wanted to write my seminar and I asked for a map of Golan Heights but they told me I cannot for "security reasons". Ayman Haykal, a Syrian citizen and the father of the Syrian bloggers made an attempt to transfer the strictly formal representation of Golan Heights to people when he created the cause Free Golan. It's the people who make causes happen, not officials, and certainly not elected ones. Yaser Arafat died, but he wasn’t the cause, Palestine, Palestinians are, the Palestinian cause will always live as long as there are living Palestinians.

Another cause on Facebook is Saving Old Damascus, that is from Syrian Regime itself.

It is worth to note that a couple days ago Syrian Facebookers have launched a campaign to save a girl from a potential "honour" crime. Dania Sharif wrote the petition and addressed it to Syrian authorities to act and stop honour crimes in Syria. Not sure if this was the reason or not, but it could be.

These groups are not popular, not because their cases are not supported but their unpopularity stems from fear. Nevertheless, these political and unorthodox groups are not the reason of the blockage of the site, I think.

Who lives in Syria knows that it's the country of "nothing's going on" except to hang out in old Damascus' cafes, but recently there has been a cultural awakening; people are starting to organize their interests in concerts, galleries, conferences, plays, screenings…etc. and Facebook is facilitating the process which is very hard to do in an inactive militarily controlled society. There are no cultural institutions in Syria, no private independent NGOs, no civic institutions, who represent the populations except the government? Syrian Facebookers are trying now to represent themselves. Those who cannot be activists in a "real" Syria can be one in a virtual Syria. Facebook is becoming a tool to bring together these very individuals to promote their socially, religiously and politically prohibited thoughts. We are not talking about blocking of a social networking tool, we are talking about blocking an awareness networking tool, a chance to express, to finally speak and do something about it.

It's high time to demand our right to seek ALL and ANY information regardless of its source, we have the mind to decide for ourselves what we should/should not read or believe.

We have the right to organize ourselves and activate our numb citizenship. We want to be socially and politically active. We want to campaign for human rights, we want to be civilians instead of abstract "Syrians," instead of mere Muslims and Christians.

We want to engage in building our nation.

We don’t want to be permitted to act; we want to be voluntarily and spontaneously acting.

We want to be doers and actors.

We want Syria uncensored!

Schizophrenic president

What is at stake is not the actual person of the president, but the political agenda to follow. The result?

"You are trying to choose a president who will be acceptable to two camps who really have opposed political programmes," [Paul Salem] said. "So almost by definition, any president they agree on will be at best a schizophrenic president."

Not that such candidates are not around...

برهان غليون عن الدين والسياسة

يكتب برهان غليون هنا عن الدين والسياسة. وبينما أرحب بتحليله، أرى تناقضًا في نظرته إلى الفكر الماركسي والدين. فهو من ناحية يرى أن

يصدم هذا الدور المتجدد للدين. . . بشكل أقوى أولئك الذين اعتقدوا، على خطى ماركس والفلسفات المادية، بأن الدين أفيون الشعوب، وأنه سينحسر لا محالة مع انهيار نظم السيطرة والاستعباد الطبقية، وزوال استغلال الانسان للانسان، والحاجة إلى عزاء من طبيعة سحرية.

سؤالي هو: هل انهارت نظم السيطرة والاستعباد الطبقية، وزال استغلال الانسان للانسان؟
الجواب في النص نفسه.

وتستند معظم حركات المعارضة العربية والاسلامية وأكبرها اليوم على الذاكرة والتعبئة الدينية في نشاطها الرامي إلى تغيير الأوضاع او مواجهة النظم القمعية والفردية.

ويضيف:

فالدين يستعاد هنا كمورد أو مصدر لتعزيز موقف فئات اجتماعية معينة في صراعها ضد البؤس أو الفقر أو البطالة أو التهميش أو العدوان الخارجي. ويشكل الدين هنا مصدرا لتاكيد هوية جمعية أو عقيدة كفاحية تشجع على التضحية، أو تفعيلا لقيم التضامن الاجتماعي والانساني. ومن هنا يمكن القول إن الدين لم يعد بعد أن انحسر وإنما أعيد تاهيله وتجديد أفكاره وقيمه ليقوم بأدوار جديدة. فالمادة التي يستخدمها الدين المجدد قديمة، تتعامل بالأفكار والمفاهيم والمصطلحات والطقوس ذاتها، لكنها وضعت في صورة جديدة أوحت بها حاجات المجتمعات وتحديات الحداثة.

للتذكير كتب ماركس :

الإنسان يصنع الدين، وليس الدين الذي يصنع الإنسان. . .

البؤس الديني هو في آن تعبير عن البؤس الحقيقي واعتراض على البؤس الحقيقي. الدين هو تنهيدة المخلوق المضطهد، عقل عالم بلا قلب، كما هو روح زمن بلا روح. هو أفيون الناس.

إلغاء الدين بصفته سعادة الناس الوهمية هو مطالبة بسعادتهم الحقيقية. وما دعوتهم إلى التخلّي عن الأوهام المحيطة بواقعهم إلاّ دعوة إلى التخلّي عن واقع يحتاج إلى أوهام. . .
لذا فمهمة التاريخ، بعد زوال حقيقة العالم الآخر، تأسيس حقيقة العالم الحاضر. والمهمة الأولى للفلسفة، التي هي في خدمة التاريخ، تكمن في إسقاط القناع عن تغريب الذات في أشكاله المدنسة بعد إسقاط القناع عن تغريب الذات في شكله المقدس. هكذا يتحول نقد السماء إلى نقد الأرض، ونقد الدين إلى نقد القانون، ونقد اللاهوت إلى نقد السياسة.

من هنا أرى أن غليون من ناحية يتبنى نظرة ماركس للدين، ومن ناحية أخرى ينقض النظرة السائدة عنها، والتي يبدو أنه يخلط بينها وبين ما قدّمه ماركس فعلاً. وهو محق في نقض النظرة السائدة لكن مخطئ في اعتبار نقضه موجّهًا نحو الفركة الأصلية لماركس. هكذا أفهم قوله، على رغم تبنيه مفهوم ماركس للدين كما أوردت:

من هنا لم يعد هناك معنى لوصف هذه الأديان، كما فعل ماركس، بأنها أفيون الشعوب أو أداة تخديرها، ولا لعزو انتشار الفكر الديني إلى جهل العامة أو غياب المعرفة العقلية.

ومن هذه المغالطة يطرح غليون الحلّ للمسألة في الدين، بدلاً من أن يطرحه في السياسة، كما طرح ماركس وكما هو مجدٍ فعلاً في رأيي:

في نظري، لا يكمن الجواب على هذه المفارقة التاريخية في الدعوة إلى استبعاد الدين من السياسة، وإنما في السعي إلى تعميق مفهوم الدين بمعنى الإخلاص، بوصفه نكرانا للذات في سبيل المباديء الإنسانية، التي هي مقاصد إلهية أيضا، على حساب استغلاله لتأكيد نفوذ الطائفة أو القببلة أو الامة، مما يشكل مصدر الخطر الرئيسي على أي تجرية سياسية دينية معاصرة. عندئذ يمكن للدين المساوي للإخلاص والقائم على مباديء الحق والعدالة والمساواة، أن يكون عاملا رئيسيا في بناء دولة القانون والديمقراطية العربية او الاسلامية المنشودة.

أليس ذلك طريقًا مقطوعًا نحو "انهيار نظم السيطرة والاستعباد الطبقية، وزوال استغلال الانسان للانسان؟"