Durban 2 Read the talkbacks

Durban II, another opportunity missed

The racism conference had a chance to make a better world, but Israel became the target once more and it collapsed into debacle

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Benjamin Pogrund guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 April 2009 15.30 BST

Durban II ends today. The five-day conference in Geneva adopted a declaration running to 143 paragraphs. If weighty words count, then the world has taken a giant step forward in the fight against "racism, discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance".

Unfortunately, of course, life is more complex than that, especially when the countries that endorsed the sonorous phrases include some of the worst violators of human rights, with murder of opponents, suppression of women and homosexuals, slavery and savage punishments.

But while recognising that it's an imperfect world, shouldn't everyone – including especially those who boycotted or walked out of the conference – now rally round and endorse the declaration? The conference did little to achieve its real purpose – to review the extent to which countries have put anti-racism National Action Plans in place (only about 10 have done so). But doesn't its declaration deserve respect as an international statement of hope and aspiration for how we should behave towards each other?

Again unfortunately, the flaws are too great, both in the process and the document. The problem starts with the organisers, the United Nations, and its offshoot, the Human Rights Council. How did they manage to allow Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the star speaker? Everyone knew he would be spitting venom; the only unknown was how much and how virulent. Yet he landed up as the keynote speaker on the opening day – leading to the extraordinary walking out of representatives of 23 states and organisations.

He seemed oblivious to the insult. But the Norwegian delegate got to the nub of it: freedom of speech, yes, but Ahmadinejad's speech "ran counter to the spirit and dignity of the conference … it promoted a spirit of intolerance".

If Ahmadinejad was the only head of state who wanted to attend, couldn't he have been (diplomatically) uninvited? Instead, UN officialdom provided him with a platform to be a one-man wrecking crew.

The Human Rights Council is itself a curious body, with strong representation by human rights abusers. They have a fixation about Israel and devote a high proportion of their meetings to the country. That could be justifiable if Israel was the only or the worst human rights offender, but it pales alongside places like Darfur, Zimbabwe, China, Sri Lanka and Iraq, which do not get anything like the same attention.

Perhaps part of the UN problem is in the lack of understanding of the issues at stake shown by Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and secretary general of the conference. This is what she said in pleading against boycott moves: "I am fully aware that the reputation of the 2001 World Conference was tainted by the antisemitic behaviour of some NGOs on the sidelines."

That's a remarkable playing down of the 2001 conference held in Durban, South Africa. It is widely recalled as a "hatefest" that severely set back the anti-racism cause. NGOs frenziedly condemned Israel and the west to such an extreme extent that the government conference that followed refused to endorse their resolutions, the first and only time this has happened in UN history. Aziz Pahad, then deputy foreign minister of South Africa, Pillay's home country, later publicly apologised for the "disgraceful events" and said that his government regretted that antisemitic elements had "hijacked" the conference.

Should countries that boycotted this week's meeting – such as the US, Canada, Germany and Israel – have attended? Should the countries that walked out on Monday – such as France, Australia and Poland – have stayed to listen to Ahmadinejad and engaged him in debate?

Would it have been possible to sit down to a polite conversation with Adolf Hitler and persuade him that he was wrong to believe that Jews, Gypsies and Russians were sub-humans deserving only of mass death? Would there have been any point in trying to engage Ahmadinejad in debate, and in a large conference setting at that, to tell him his views are lunatic and evil?

Going beyond this, however, what has emerged from this week is depressing and worrying: during the Ahmadinejad diatribe, many in the conference hall, from Africa, Asia and Latin America, applauded and cheered his attack on Israel as a "racist state" and on the west.

Who wants to be involved with people who behave like this? Who wants to be associated with their nice-sounding words against racism and intolerance?

On Comment is free this week, while many denounced Ahmadinejad, some commenters supported him, showing no embarrassment at lining up with a man whose government denies elementary rights. Amnesty International reports large-scale arrests, incommunicado detention and torture of dissidents and minorities and persecution of religious minorities. Iran executes children under the age of 18. Adultery can be punished by death.

They also parrot Ahmadinejad's "Israel is racist, Zionism is racism" cry. Israel is certainly subject to attack for its oppression of Palestinians and its occupation. But the "racist" charge is as inaccurate and unthinking as the "apartheid" label. Israel has a Jewish majority and they have decided that they want a state for Jews. That is their right and it is nothing exceptional. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and a host of other countries declare themselves, even in their constitutions, to be Muslim or Arab states. Does anyone accuse them of racism? When Ahmadinejad pours out his Holocaust denial and his call to wipe out the Zionist, Jewish, state, read read more

Beached Whales

Is the Beached Whale the economic, social and political system itself? I think what is missing in most of the reporting going on in the mainstream media is that we are experiencing a general crisis of the whole economic system. The best analysis I have seen so far puts forth the position that our present capitalist economic, social and political system is a victim of its own success. With the robotic and electronic revolution well under way we are replacing manual labor as we know it. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. If we can get machines to do the back breaking work in the factories, mines etc. then that should be a plus for humanity. But unfortunately they haven't figured out how to get the robots to buy back what they produce. And with a system still based on the premise that you have to have a job to earn a wage to buy the necessaries of life and there are no jobs....you have an irreconcilable contradiction. The profits and market system can no longer function to meet the needs of the majority of society. With Globalization there is an evening up process with the spread of the technology.... and rather then bringing the rest of the worlds workers up to the living standard we have enjoyed...our standard of living is being driven down to theirs. I used to think it was a big conspiracy by the elite but now I believe that every economic system has its own objective motion and laws. The people in power have no control over what is happening either. It is always better to be able to rule with the consent of the ruled. They think that if they just throw more of our taxpayer money at the problem it will go away. Every day you see another fascist type attack on our constitution. The system is based on competition to increase their profits. So they can't not compete. What we must move towards is some sort of cooperative, non-ideological economic system that can meet the needs of the population of the entire globe. And with the new technology we can meet those needs. In the proper hands we could eliminate world hunger, homelessness, disease etc. in a very short time. Let this Beached Whale die! read more

Iran Dangers

The Christian Science Monitor Online from the April 24, 2009 edition -

The danger of an Israeli strike on Iran

The US needs to make it clear it will not tolerate a first strike.

By Walt Rodgers

The new Israeli prime minister recently appeared to give President Obama a blunt ultimatum: Stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – or we will.

Benjamin Netanyahu's challenge (intimated in an interview he gave to The Atlantic magazine) smacks of unrealistic bravado and, worse, it appears to be a crude attempt to bully an American president into bombing Iran's nuclear installations.

The world should hope it's a hollow threat.

The consequences of a unilateral Israeli strike would be enormous if not disastrous. Mr. Obama cannot allow himself to be intimidated by Mr. Netanyahu, nor can he wink if the Israeli air force bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.

Israel has acted unilaterally to squash a perceived nuclear threat before. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent fighter jets to knock out Iraq's "Osirak" nuclear reactor. Israel claimed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and that it had no choice but to bomb it out of existence. In 2007, Israel bombed a facility in Syria it claimed was a nuclear reactor.

Any strike on Iranian reactors would be a different matter entirely. Osirak was a lone, poorly guarded, and inoperative nuclear plant that had a year earlier been damaged by an Iranian airstrike. The Iranians have taken considerable precautions to build their facilities on something more solid than desert sand. At present there is but one facility, Bushehr I, but Tehran is gearing up to build an entire network of nuclear plants. Israel would be bombing until the Shah comes home to merely delay what is an unstoppable Iranian nuclear program.

The fallout from Israel's strike on Osirak was serious but limited. But a preemptive strike on Iranian soil would border on catastrophic. Consider:

•Iran has signaled that if attacked, it would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows. This would plunge the world into economic calamity.

•Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, is believed to have more than 42,000 missiles, according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak – enough to make Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv burn like London did during the Nazis' Blitz. Hezbollah is believed to have terror cells in Europe and North America. It has struck in South America, and many terrorism experts believe it is potentially even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Iran, using this proxy force, would probably unleash it on the world if Netanyahu were to bomb the Bushehr I reactor.

•It would trigger a tsunami of anti-Semitism that would inevitably translate into violence against Jews worldwide.

•Such a strike would be perceived as further evidence of a US-Israeli global war on Islam. Islamist fighters from Marrakesh, Marseille, London, Cairo, Karachi, and Tehran would enlist overnight by the thousands and march to Iraq and Afghanistan to wage jihad against the American troops there.

Netanyahu is no fool. He is keenly aware of these global implications. He knows that a unilateral Israeli strike would not only accelerate Iran's nuclear ambitions but also legitimize them. He also knows that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map is bombast. It is the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who commands the armed forces and national security apparatus, not the populist president.

Domestic Israeli politics may have been a factor motivating Netanyahu's warnings. Talking tough soothes anxieties at home. Equally likely, Netanyahu was prodding the new Obama government. And in that sense he may feel the recent US-led invitation to Tehran to meet with Washington and five other major powers to discuss the disputed nuclear program was a result of his threat. Iran has agreed to "constructive dialogue," although it may be delusional for the Israeli prime minister – or any other Western leader – to believe that political or economic pressure can sway Iran's ruling clerics.

What's worrying is that Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of "Bibi" in October 1997 under the headline "Israel's Serial Bungler." It described his governance of the Jewish state as a "calamity" for the peace process.

Iran has no need to nuke Israel. Its ruling clerics, whom Netanyahu described as a "messianic apocalyptic cult," believe time, history, and Allah are on their side. They believe the Jewish state, starting across the border in Lebanon, can be nibbled to death over the next century just as the Arabs did to the Crusader kingdoms 600 years ago.

It should surprise no one that Iran's mullahs want nuclear weapons. They live in a nuclear neighborhood: Pakistan, India, Russia, China, and Israel, which is estimated to have 200 nuclear bombs ready to use if it were attacked. The ayatollahs also remember Mr. Hussein's 1991 folly of going to war with the US without nuclear weapons.

Obama needs to do Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: "No first strike." Keep the F-15s and F-16s at home. A messianic vision such as Mr. Ahmadinejad's is rife in much of the Islamic world. Bellicose rhetoric most often serves as an excuse for inaction. It does not denote suicidal inclinations on the part of Iran's more pragmatic leaders. read more