International Archives - Page 25 of 42

Posted in:

Democracy and war

by Peter Emerson 2 March, 2016

DEMOCRACY AT HOME General Election 2016 has thrown up an utterly unpredictable result with Fianna Fáil in the ascendant. At the time of writing the consequences of the vote including who will survive as leaders, who will be in government and who will lead the government could not be less predictable and, without resorting to metaphysics, will reflect only opaquely the will of the people. Yet we carry on as if this did not reflect in any way on the integrity of our democracy. DEMOCRACY ABROAD The Brexit referendum should have been framed on whether the UK will be in the EU, in EFTA, or independent. But, as always in these islands, the third option, the middle one, has been omitted. The outcome, therefore, is bound to be inaccurate. And given the divisive nature of the in-or-out, stay-or-leave question, it is highly likely that the ‘leave’ option will win. In a three-option poll, the ‘leave’ option will probably lose. On 20th Dec last year, Spain went to the polls… and two months later, Spanish politicians are still arguing about who should be in government. But this is par for the course. As happens in so many democracies, open and transparent elections are followed by closed and opaque discussions, as various parties wheel and deal behind closed doors, trying to concoct a majority coalition. In 2013, Germany’s four parties took 67 days to sort something out. In 2010/11, Belgium’s dozen took 451 days! Will Ireland have the same sort of uncertainty? Democracy is for everybody, not just a majority. Conflict zones like Syria and Ukraine need inclusive governance, governments of national unity. Inter alia, this should mean that elections are preferential and proportional; that power is shared in both joint presidencies and all-party coalition cabinets; while the third ingredient is preferential voting and collective responsibility in parliament. Sadly, while we preach at least some of these ideals abroad, we practice the very opposite at home: majority rule in the Dáil and the Commons, and divisive majority voting both in parliaments and national referendums. Before the Scottish referendum of 2014, it was widely assumed that ‘devo-max’, the middle option for maximum devolution, would get about 60 per cent. The ballot, however, included only the two other options, status quo and independence. The result, therefore, was a highly inaccurate nonsense. There are times, as with the election victory of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, or our own recent referendum on same sex marriage, when democracy is wonderful. On other occasions, as in the Balkans, it was downright dangerous: the 1990 elections there were little more than sectarian headcounts and “all the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum”. (Oslo- bodjenje, Sarajevo’s main newspaper, 7.2.1999.) It must also be remembered that Napoleon became the Emperor by a popular vote, one in which he, literally, dictated the question. Hitler, too, came to power ‘democratically’. In the 1924 elections, the National Socialists won just 14 seats but, in the wake of the great depression, this rose to 107 (17.6%). The subsequent history consisted of weighted majority votes in parliament (like the Enabling Act of 1933), simple majority votes in referendums in which, again, the dictator di tated the question, and war. DEMOCRACY AND WAR The focus of this article is Westminster’s democracy and the decision to go to war in Syria. Would the outcome of the debate on bombing in Syria have been different if the chosen methodology of decision-making in parliament were not majority voting? In other words, would the House have made a different decision if the procedures had allowed for a more pluralist decision-making methodology? First of all, a little background. In 2002, in the UN Security Council debate on Iraq, Resolution 1441, both France and Germany objected to the phrase “serious consequences” in Clause 13. Yet both voted in favour of that resolution. The outcome, described as “unanimous”, was (not the but) a cause of war, of the invasion of Iraq on 20.3.2003, and of the sorry story since, not least in Syria. But that outcome – 15-nil – was not unanimous! France and Germany did indeed object to the above clause, and perhaps would have objected to other paragraphs if but the procedures had catered for such criticisms. Maybe other Council members, one or other of the ten temporary non-veto powers, which at the time included Ireland, might have had policy proposals worthy of consideration. Unfortunately, binary voting means questions are dichotomous. So countries vote in favour, perhaps because the resolution is better than nothing, perhaps because of the need for international solidarity, we don’t know. There is the main resolution; there may be amendments to this clause or that, or even perhaps a wrecking amendment; but everything is yes-or-no; it is this methodology which is at fault. Majority voting was, yes, a cause of war. A MORE INCLUSIVE PROCEDURE A more accurate methodology would allow the UK and USA to propose one draft Resolution 1441; option A. If France and Germany objected to Clause 13 or whatever, they could propose an alternative wording, even if only for this one clause, whence their preference would be a slightly revised but nevertheless complete package, option B. Syria, then a temporary member of Council, might have preferred another complete package, option C. Ireland could have preferred a more obviously neutral option D, and so on. Naturally enough, countries might seek to come together in groups to favour this or that option but the first principle would remain: everything should be on the table, (computer screen and dedicated web-page). The subsequent debate would allow for questions, clarifications, composites and even new proposals (although of course, at any one time, any one country could sponsor only one motion). At various stages, participating countries could express their preferences, so to indicate where the eventual consensus might lie. Then, at the end of the debate, all concerned would cast their preferences on a final (short) list of about five options. The winning outcome,

Posted in:

Put in perspective

by Frank Armstrong 2 March, 2016

As we know well in Ireland cash is one of man’s greatest temptations. It’s a recurring theme in Russia. In the venal world, for example, of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘The Idiot’ (1869) most of the characters succumb to greed. General Ivolgin desires money to support his addiction to alcohol and to allow him to spend time with his mistress. Lebedev is willing to put his hands into a replace to retrieve a package that Nastassya Filippovna has discarded, with 100,000 roubles inside. In the society of The Idiot, money not only creates one’s fortune it also obtains one a bride. ‘Bids’ for Nastassya Filippovna range from 75,000 roubles to 100,000 to over a million. Money, then, is a clear symbol of the perversion of human values in the novel. Russia fell into a similar stupor at the end of the Cold War when excessive wealth corrupted Russian politics as Boris Yeltsin amply filled the role of the Idiot, his powers declining in a haze of vodka as the plot unfolds. It was out of this pit of iniquity that Vladimir Putin rose to power, the short but muscly former KGB of cer emerging from obscurity to become prime minister and then being elected President in 2000 when Yeltsin finally lost his reason. The US embassy cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010, revealed that American diplomats considered Putin’s Russia had by then become “a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a virtual ma a state”. A 2007 CIA report estimated Putin’s wealth at $40bn. Indeed the one-time biggest foreign investor in Russia, Bill Browder, told Business Insider that Putin was worth $200bn, making him the richest man in the world. He claimed “the first eight or 10 years of Putin’s reign over Russia was about stealing as much money as he could”. A BBC Panorama investigation earlier this year showed he has a $1bn palace on the Black Sea Coast. Funds for it were diverted from the super-rich who thought it would be spent on healthcare. But of course for most Russians, after a decade of buoyancy, all is not good on the cash front because of Ukraine-fallout sanctions, and the collapsing currency and oil prices. The Russian economy shrank 3.7 percent in 2015, and 4.1 in 2014 in rouble values, but in dollar terms it is 40% below peak. Oil prices rebounded in early February to above $35 per barrel but they had peaked in 2012 at close to $110 (when oil and gas constituted 52% of government revenue) and government forecasts are based on €50. Real wages fell 10 per cent year-on-year in December, the 14th consecutive month of contraction. Russia is running an unsustainable budget deficit of almost 5%. Soon a key thresold will be reached where over 50% of an average income is spent on food. Putin’s dastardliness and vulnerablity to exposé is even more drastic on the security front. For example, it has been alleged that, presumably under the direction of Putin, the Russian secret services, the FSB, bombed apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999 killing almost 300 people and pinning the blame on Chechnyan separatists. Of course, Putin was able to use the war in Chechnya to good propagandistic effect but he may have created hostages to fortune, even in furtive Russia. Such tactical ethical nihilism might have appeared in another of Dostoevsky’s extraordinary novels, Devils (1872). Towards the end one of the conspirators Lyamshin is put on trial and asked, “Why so many murders, scandals and outrages committed?”. He responds that it was to promote: “the systematic destruction of society and all its principles; to demoralise everyone and make hodge-podge of everything, and then, when society was on the point of collapse – sick, depressed, cynical and sceptical, but still with a perpetual desire for some kind of guiding principle and for self-preservation – suddenly to gain control of it”. Destruction and demoralising animates much of Putin’s policy from Crimea to Ukraine, Syria to Chechnya. Russia consistently operates standards that are more indiscriminate than Western military powers. Last September Putin shocked the world by weighing into the Syrian conflict with air strikes against rebel-held targets. Controversially the primary targets did not seem to be ISIL. An article in Time magazine by Timothy Snyder argued that the motivation for Russia’s intervention in Syria was to turn Europe into a ‘refugee factory’, compelled to accommodate many more beleaguered victims than have already arrived. This is based on the credible assessment that the Putin views the stability of the European Union as a threat to Russia. He will also have appreciated the opportunity to create a client authoritarian regime in the Middle East and to play to a growing anti-Islamic gallery in Europe, particularly in the former Soviet Union. Ironically, Putin started as a centrist in Russian terms. However, he was threatened by nationalist support for electoral protests against his regime in 2011-12, and now by economic instability and public poverty. If Putin fails to deliver in Ukraine, there is a probability of a challenge to his authority from a more radical nationalist agenda. Confronting Putin may be the greatest geopolitical challenge that Europe has faced since the end of the Cold War. Machismo, personal and political, is a big part of his schtick. Whether it’s bare-back horse-riding, descending in a deepwater submersible, posing with a massive pike he’s just caught or a tiger he’s tranquilised, or drinking 24-year-old vintage wine with Berlusconi he’s not notably alive to his feminine site. It’s Haughey for the twentieth century, gone global. He divorced in 2014 and is now living with a fecund gymnast. Man-on-Man buddy of Trump. Antagonist of Elton John. Scathingly self-righteous denier of any connection with the characteristic polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London, despite the finding of a former English judge that he had “probably authorised it” and the dead man’s allegation that “the howl of protest from around the world

Posted in:

Britain was responsible for The Rising and WWI

by Anthony Coughlan 2 March, 2016

As July 1, the centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme – a asco in which one million soldiers were killed or wounded to make a six-mile advance for the Franco-British forces, comes nearer we will no doubt be asked to counterpose once again the heroism of the Easter Rising participants with the heroism of the combatants in the Great War. Heroism is surely an ambiguous category. Can heroism in a discreditable cause be admired? Is not indignation the most appropriate retrospective response to the politicians and generals who sent millions to their deaths in that mass slaughter? And compassion, rather than admiration, for those who followed their lead? The 1500 or so Irish volunteers of 1916 were taking on the British Empire at the height of its power. History has by now justified their cause by passing a negative judgement on that and other territorial imperialisms. The Easter Rising inaugurated the first successful war of independence of the 20th century, an example which many other colonial peoples have since followed. It set in train the events that led to the establishment of an Irish State. As the world moves from some 60 States in 1945 to 200 today and to a probable 300 States or more over the coming century, it is unlikely that either history or historians will look negatively on that Irish pioneering achievement. The 1914-18 war was by contrast a war between Empires which unleashed a catastrophe on mankind whose effects still haunt us. Quite apart from its 17 million deaths, 20 million wounded and economic devastation, its disastrous winding-up in the Treaty of Versailles gave us Hitler and World War II. The Great War was a conflict between empire-hungry politicians and powerful economic interests in the main belligerent countries. The recent academic consensus on how it started tends to spread responsibility between on the one hand the governments of the Entente Powers – France, Britain and Russia and on the other the Central Powers – Germany, Austria- Hungary and Turkey. The title of Cambridge historian Christopher Clarke’s best-selling book ‘Sleepwalkers’ implies that both sides drifted into a disaster none of them foresaw or intended. They were all equally foolish or criminal, and so equally responsible. Traditional left-wing characterisation of 1914- 18 as an “inter-imperialist war” implies a similar conclusion: that as all the imperialisms were bad, they were all equally guilty for the war. It is true there was a war party in each big power on either side. But neither logically nor historically does that mean that they all contributed equally to starting it Unsurprisingly, Christopher Clarke’s conclusion has gone down well in Germany. Germany was forced to accept sole responsibility for starting World War I in the ‘war guilt clause’ of the Treaty of Versailles. For decades English language historians echoed that verdict complacently until the Australian Clarke came along with his revisionism. Further revisionism may be called for. Some historians now contend that the prime responsibility for causing War War I rests with Britain. Their thesis seems convincing. Their argument goes like this: The economic and political rise of imperial Germany from the 1890s onwards threatened British global pre-dominance. German economic competition was making inroads into the British Empire. Britain was a naval power, with a small army. The only powers with land armies strong enough to crush Gemany were France and Russia. They could attack Germany from East and West while the British navy could blockade its ports. The central aim of British foreign policy in the decade before 1914 was to encourage a Franco-Russian alliance against Germany which Britain could join when a favourable moment came. For centuries Britain’s main continental enemy was France, with which it fought many wars. In 1904 Britain concluded the Entente Cordiale with France, ostensibly to sort out their colonial interests in Africa. This was not a formal military alliance, but secret joint military talks directed against Germany started at once and continued up to 1914. As for Russia, that was the land of serfdom, the knout and anti-Jewish pogroms in the eyes of British public opinion during the 19th century. Russia threatened Britain’s empire in India. It was the cause of “the great game” between their respective intelligence services, which Kipling fictionalised in his novel ‘Kim’. Britain and France fought Russia in the Crimean War of the 1850s to prevent it moving in on the weak Turkish Empire to take Constantinople and the Dardanelles, which was a longstanding Russian dream. In 1907 Britain upended this policy and came to an agreement with Russia on their respective spheres of in uence. From that date British policy-makers worked together with France and Russia towards bringing about a war with Germany in which Turkey would be pushed into joining Germany’s side. If victorious, France would get back Alsace-Lorraine, which it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Russia would get Constantinople and the Dardanelles. And Britain, France and Russia between them would divide up the rest of the Turkish Empire, including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. The war aims of the Entente Powers were set out in the secret treaties which the Bolsheviks released in 1917 following the Russian Revolution. These tell us what ‘the war for small nations’ was really about – that of cial propagandist phrase which many people in this country who do not know their history are still liable to trot out to explain Britain’s involvement in the Great War. Who were the British politicians who orchestrated this scheme to crush Germany for a decade prior to Sarajevo? They were the ‘Liberal Imperialists’ who were in office from 1906 – Asquith as Prime Minister, Grey as Foreign Secretary, Haldane as War Minister and Churchill as Naval Minister, interacting intimately with the Tories’ Arthur Balfour, Alfred Milner and Bonar Law, for the key people on both front benches were at one in their anti-Germanism. And what of poor little neutral Catholic Belgium – leaving aside its bloody

Posted in:

1916 values diverted

by admin 24 February, 2016

One value of the 1916 Rising commemorations is to highlight the contrast between the aspirations of those who set out to establish an independent Irish State for the whole island of Ireland and the reality of what exists today – a partitioned country whose native language, Irish, is on the point of death as a cradle-spoken tongue, and in which the State that did come from the independence movement has been reduced to provincial or regional status in a supranational EU quasi-Federation that now makes most of our laws. The Easter Proclamation read: “We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be sovereign and indefeasible”. “Indefeasible” means cannot be lost. That right may notionally exist still, but the reality of a sovereign Irish State in which its own Parliament and Government are the sole source of the laws prevailing in its territory has clearly been lost, as with the 27 other EU countries, through membership of the EU. Growing public awareness of this fact, in Ireland and other EU countries, is at the root of the current EU discontents. Article 29.4 of the Constitution, which was inserted by referendum in 1972 to enable Ireland to join the then European Economic Community (EEC), gives European law primacy over any countervailing Irish law. It reads: “No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union, or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the said European Union from having the force of law in the State”. Realisation of the implications of supranational EU law being given primacy in this way over the provisions of the 1937 Irish Constitution that he had personally drafted led then President Eamon De Valera to say, somewhat poignantly, to his family on New Year’s Eve 1972, the day before this change took place: “I am the first and last President of an independent Irish Republic”. So Eamon O Cuív TD, De Valera’s grandson, who was present on that occasion, told me*. The loss of independence has gone much further since. In 1999 Ireland abolished its national currency and joined the Eurozone, thereby abandoning control of either its rate of interest or its exchange rate – the former essential for controlling credit, the latter for influencing economic competitiveness. EU Commission President Romano Prodi underlined the political significance of this when he said at the time, “The two pillars of the Nation State are the sword and the currency, and we have changed that”. The 1987 Single European Act, the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the 1998 Amsterdam Treaty and the 2001 Nice Treaty saw further growth of EU powers and simultaneous diminution of national State powers. This culminated in the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, which gave the EU the constitutional form of a supranational Federal State. Lisbon incorporated 99% of the provisions of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe that had been rejected by French and Dutch voters in referendums in 2005. Whereas the rejected constitutional treaty gave the EU a Federal Constitution directly, the Treaty of Lisbon did so indirectly, in the form of amendments to the existing EU treaties. Although the legal content of the two treaties was virtually the same, the French and Dutch were not allowed referendums on Lisbon. Ireland was the only EU country to be allowed that, because of the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1987 Crotty case that, as the Irish people were the repositories of State sovereignty, only they could agree to surrender it to the EU through a referendum. When Irish voters rejected ratifying Lisbon in 2008, they were made vote on exactly the same treaty the following year to deliver a different result. In the Lisbon Two referendum the constitutional amendment permitting Lisbon’s ratification differed from that in Lisbon One in that it included the sentence: “Ireland affirms its commitment to the European Union…”. Here was a supposedly independent Irish State affirming a constitutional “commitment” to a superior entity made up of other States – surely a remarkable development? Yet the Explanatory Handbook which the statutory Referendum Commission sent to all voter households, supposedly to inform them what the referendum was about, made no reference to this change. Neither, so far as I know, did anyone in the Irish media. The Lisbon Treaty replaced the existing European Community with a European Union that had full legal personality and its own constitution for the first time. It made citizens of the different Member States into real citizens of this new federal-type Union for the first time also. One can only be a citizen of a State. Before Lisbon, citizenship of the then embryonic EU was stated to “complement” national citizenship. It was an essentially notional or honorary concept. The Lisbon Treaty provided that EU citizenship should be “in addition to” one’s national citizenship, just as citizens of provincial states like California, Massachusetts, Bavaria or Brandenburg have two citizenships, for they are citizens also of their respective Federal States, the USA and Germany. Lisbon also gave explicit primacy to EU law over national law for the first time in an EU treaty. In most years nowadays arguably the majority of laws that are put through the national Parliaments of the EU Member States come from Brussels, although most people do not realise this. Eur-Lex estimates that there are currently some 134,000 EU rules, international agreements and legal acts binding on or affecting citizens across the EU. These include 1842 EU Directives, 11,547 Regulations, 18,545 Decisions, 15,023 EU Court verdicts and 62,397 international standards which the EU has signed up to and which are therefore binding on all its 28 members. If a Member States does not obey any one of these, the EU Court of Justice can impose heavy daily fines to enforce compliance. The EU Treaties prevent voters at national level, their parliaments and governments from amending or abolishing

Posted in:

International

Refugees, bombs and compulsory EU quotas

by Anthony Coughlan 22 February, 2016

One way of dealing with Middle East and North African asylum-seekers coming to the EU would be to allocate them in proportion to the arms exports by the different EU countries to those areas. That would mean that Britain, France and Germany, in that order, would take most refugees. Would it not be fair that the EU countries which, after the US, have been most responsible for the civil wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, should carry the consequences of their meddling in those countries, of which the current migration crisis is the latest? Irish Times Berlin correspondent Derek Scally wrote recently about Germany’s unemployment blackspots: “German politicians rarely visit those areas, nor do they have answers to German involvement in the causes of the refugee crisis. Such as how, in the first half of 2015 alone, Germany green-lighted arms exports worth €6.35 billion – almost as much as in the entire calendar year 2014. Arms exports to Arab States – from where millions of people are fleeing –more than doubled to €587 million”. Western powers are breaking all international law in attacking Assad, for his regime is the legitimate government of that country, recognised by the UN The Western Powers ousted Colonel.Gadaffi’s regime in Libya, as they had earlier ousted the secular dictators in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whatever their faults, these had kept Sunni-Shia antagonisms under control in those countries – and in Iraq’s case protected its 2000-year-old Christian community. Gadaffi’s overthrow in turn opened the way to mass African migration through the now failed Libyan State, and the horrific drowning of thousands in the Mediterranean. It is the Western powers that armed Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, that have been channelling arms to the rebels against Syria’s Assad, the last remaining secular dictator in the region. They are breaking all the norms of international law in so doing, for the Assad regime is the legitimate government of that country, recognised as such by the United Nations, and there has been no Security Council resolution mandating his overthrow. If the Western Powers expect others to respect international law, should they not do so themselves? Britain’s David Cameron failed to get House of Commons approval for bombing Assad in 2013. He is now seeking Commons approval for joining the French and Americans in bombing the IS jihadists in Syria. Presumably from the point of view of those making the bombs and cruise missiles it matters little on whom they fall as long as Government arms orders keep rolling in. The more Middle East mayhem there is, the more the military-industrial complex likes it. Two principles should govern international migration policy. One is that there is no right in either international or natural law for people to move to other peoples’ countries unless they are genuine refugees, who do have such a right. EMBOLDEN Countries are perfectly entitled to control immigration, either to preserve their social cohesion or to prevent wage-cutting and defend labour standards. The other is that once people have moved to a new country they should be treated the same as everyone else in it. It is the continual confusion of these two principles that makes rational discussion of migration policy often difficult. While treating educated Syrians as refugees, Germany now plans to deport non-Syrian economic migrants it does not want, back to to Turkey and Balkan States Syria’s refugees escaped from the bombs and bullets that directly threatened them by moving to neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. However miserable their lot in the refugee camps in those countries, they no longer face there the physical dangers they fled from. It seems to be the reduction earlier this year of food supplies and rations to these camps by the UN and straitened international aid agencies that precipitated the recent mass exodus to Europe. Once people move from the refugee camps, if they decide to do that, they are essentially economic migrants and under EU rules should be differentiated from those claiming to be refugees. Chancellor Merkel’s call for Syrians to come to Germany was quite irresponsible, despite the media-generated emotionalism that first greeted it. With the arrogance typical of German governments, which was amply demonstrated in German bullying of Greece during the summer euro crisis, Merkel unilaterally tore up the EU rules to encourage as many educated middle-class Syrians to come to Germany as possible. The German Government gives these Syrians favourable treatment – a policy which is officially justified by Germany’s supposed need for inward migration in view of its low birth rate and ageing population. Yet it is economic nonsense to suggest that populations must grow in order to have economic growth. What about the rising productivity of labour that has characterised industrial societies for the past three centuries? National output can rise with a static or even falling population if output per head increases. Machines, robots, computers and more efficient organisation of work make this possible. Fewer producers can carry more dependants and fewer young people can maintain more older ones because they have got more individually productive. While treating educated Syrians as refugees, Germany now plans to deport non-Syrian economic migrants it does not want, back to so-called “safe countries”, which include Turkey and all the Balkan States. Hundreds have already been deported to Kosovo. Large camps are being opened in Germany to process returnees. “Refugees Welcome” notices are getting rarer. Hence Merkel’s desire to “Europeanise” the problem by imposing compulsory EU quotas to allocate refugees to other EU countries. Likewise France’s calls, even before the Paris atrocities, to beef-up the EU’s Frontex border service to create a “Fortress Europe”. And the EU’s moves to bribe Turkey’s Erdogan, the hammerer of the Kurds, to keep Syria’s refugees in Turkey. This is the explanation of the unexpected decision of Germany and France to push through a qualified majority vote at the EU Council of Justice Ministers in September to allocate 120,000 refugees among the EU Member States by means of mandatory

Posted in:

Civilisation under threat

by Frank Armstrong 22 February, 2016

The slaughter of 129 innocents in Paris by the so-called Islamic State (IS) instils, by its casualness, fear into most of Europe. It is a new venture and one which is likely to be repeated perhaps until it affects all of our daily lives adversely. But IS operates on many fronts. Another comprehensivist IS policy covers culture. IS deplored Paris as the centre of licentiousness and adultery. But it also deplores any culture incompatible with stringent Sunni extremism. History has no value for IS. Idolatry must be obliterated. In August 82-year old antiquities scholar Khaled al-Asaad was beheaded by IS and his head suspended from a pole in Palmyra in Syria, after he apparently refused to reveal under torture the whereabouts of artefacts IS wished to plunder. The act subverted heroism, culture, civilisation itself. History has no value for IS. Idolatry must be obliterated Since IS overran Palmyra in May, it has gradually been destroying the site using barrels of dynamite. The 2000-year-old Arch of Triumph, the Temple of Baalshamin and a large temple, dedicated to Bel, have been blown up. Palmyra was one of humanity’s great treasures. It may seem obtuse to draw attention to the destruction of architectural heritage considering the casualty and refugee tolls of the war but Palmyra reveals the proto-state and terror-supporting Islamic State (IS) as a totalitarian regime that eradicates reminders of competing narratives in Orwellian fashion. Sadly, it is difficult to convey the serene and fragile grandeur of Palmyra in Syria. I visited it in 2004. Such was my solitude – even at that time there were few visitors to this remote outpost in Assad’s Syria – it felt like I had been given permission to wander around a vast outdoor museum after closing time. What remained were a series of structures conforming to neo-Platonic ideals of orderly beauty, integrating stone that blended with the shades of the desert for an effect that revealed the highest expression of human achievement. It was an oasis of affecting scale and flickering artistry that civilised a harsh environment whose form has withstood a steady stream of Romans, Arabs, Ottomans and Europeans conquerors. Deriving wealth from a strategic location along the spice route that for millennia channelled Asian riches into Europe, it is a wrenching reminder of how civilisations decline but, conversely, endure to inspire future ages. This ancient city challenged Rome itself under the rule of queen Zenobia. Khaled al-Assad in all his pride named one of his daughters after that formidable matriarch. Palmyra is a reminder of how civilisations decline but, conversely, endure to inspire future ages Palmyra conjures a plurality of narratives. For example early Islamic scholars greatly esteemed Greek philosophy. Indeed much of our Classical heritage was brought to Christian attention through contact with the Islamic world in the early Middle Ages. Such nuance is ignorantly rejected by IS as well as by those commentators in the West who promote the false idea of a timeless clash of civilisations. Considering the expunction of other sites in Syria there is a strong chance that what remains of Palmyra will be destroyed like other sacred monuments in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia in the name of obscure branches of Islam. IS ideology can be seen as offshoot of Wahhabism – a violent interpretation of Islam articulated by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) whose ideas were adopted by the Al-Saud clan in the eighteenth century, helping them become the dominant force in Arabia until they were finally defeated by the Ottoman Empire. The resurgence of the Al-Sauds in the early twentieth century was under the banner of Islam, infused with Wahhabism. A crack force, known as the Ikhwan (brotherhood) helped the Al-Sauds, led by Abdulaziz ibn Saud, to re-conquer Arabia. On seizing Mecca and Medina, the Holy Cities of Islam, from the ruling Hashemite family, who would subsequently supply monarchs for Iraq and Jordan, tight controls were imposed on forms of worship such as playing instruments and dancing in religious processions. Medieval executions, oppression of women and persecution of other religions followed. These barbarisms have subsisted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia since its foundation in 1932. Shared opposition to Arab Nationalism and Communism, combined with oil and associated wealth, brought support from the United States. Where the Saudi authorities have been unable to control their own extremists, as first with the Ikhwan in the 1930s, they have been brutally supressed and use of torture has been commonplace despite its prohibition under Islamic law. Once the genie of militant Islam is released into the political sphere it is not easy to put back. The Taliban, as well as the specialists in global terror, Al-Qaida, and now IS have gone beyond the tenets of Wahhabism. In the face of a global order characterised by economic inequality, and the failure of Communism and Arab Nationalism to adequately address these problems, in many countries Islam became the political answer, notably in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which though Shi’a served as an inspiration to other parts of the Middle East. Political Islam’s appeal derives from rejection of alien cultural norms. Though the Ottoman Caliph imposed homogeneous orthodoxies, its modern articulations are characterised by radical diversity. Since the end of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1923 Islam has become increasingly malleable, and even post-modern, with a variety of online rulings now available to adherents. In a stable relatively prosperous country such as Turkey it has bred a political movement under Tayyip Erdogan akin to an authoritarian Christian Democracy. But more reactionary interpretations have found fertile ground in the turmoil of the Levant since the defenestration of the Ba’athist regime in Iraq and its weakening in Syria. An influential article by Graeme Wood in the March edition of Atlantic Magazine makes the nightmarish case that the apocalyptic tendency derives from a not implausible interpretation of the Koran, and indeed that acute terror is mandated in the period between the restoration of the Caliphate, which IS of course claims

Posted in:

Band Aid

by Lorna Gold 20 February, 2016

62 people now own the same wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people. 1% owns more than 99%. The gaps are widening. Talk of overseas aid may seem like trying to use a sticking plaster to plug a haemorrhage. In a world of trickle up economies with ever growing needs driven by conflict and climate, aid remains critical. Despite the critiques of aid in the past decade, without it, many of the Least Developed Countries, would collapse. This Government is not without achievements in Official Development Assistance (ODA). Following the financial crash in 2009, the aid budget was an easy target and was slashed by 30% in the 2010 budget. Those affected by cuts in the aid budget are not visible and certainly won’t arrive at Leinster House on their tractors. Several Irish NGOs were also downsized and their aid programmes closed as a result. Following that significant cut, however, the aid budget was stabilised at around €600m. This was made possible by cross-party support and opinion polls which showed the tacit support of the public. Over 80% of people in Ireland regularly state they are in favour of aid. They may not raise it on the doorsteps, but they see it as the right thing to do. On the other hand, all OECD countries are committed to giving 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) in ODA and we have failed to reach this target. The commitment is a long-standing gold standard in international development and one which many countries had been close to achieving before the financial crash. In 2009, Ireland was giving 0.59% of GNI in ODA. The target, as a percentage, is set up to be cyclical. Countries will give according to their means as their economy expands and contracts. The commitment to reach the 0.7% target was in the Programme for Government of the current Government, with a target date of 2015. However, there has been no real commitment. The economy is now growing yet the aid budget has remained at. We increasingly and significantly lag behind the OECD target. Our aid provision now stands at 0.38% of GNI, the same as in the early 2000s. A new commitment to reaching the target within the life time of the next government is essential. Significant improvements have been made in the quality of Ireland’s aid programme over the lifespan of the current Government. International trends reflect shifts towards concessional lending and private-sector engagement. However, Ireland’s aid programme has become more poverty-focused. This is both in country focus, with one of the highest rates of funds going to Least Developed Countries, and in the types of programmes it funds. The aid programme has bucked the international trend of skewing aid to serve the needs of the donor country and has remained highly poverty-focused. ‘One World, One Future’, the Irish Aid policy, was launched in 2013 following a public consultation. It sets out Ireland’s priorities in overseas development. The commitment to addressing hunger is clear. The current Government spearheaded the drive to address hunger globally and led on international initiatives such as ‘Zero Hunger’ at the UN. It has become a leader in this area and ensured that this initiative was central to the new Sustainable Development Goals signed in New York last September. Questions have been asked, however, about the involvement of Irish Aid in the corporate- backed Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture, which has received much criticism from global civil society, and attempts to link this to the hunger agenda. The biggest gap, however, is the failure to embed the priorities for development in all government departments. While both the Irish Aid Policy, and the ‘Global Island’ policy, the core foreign policy statement, boast commitments to development and human rights as a “whole of government effort”, little has been done to implement it. This incoherence is stark. As Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General said during his visit to Ireland last May: “One cannot be a leader on hunger, without also being a leader on climate change”. Coherence demands that our commitment on global hunger is matched by a commitment to funding programmes for climate adaptation and resilience matched with equal effort to reduce our own emissions. Aid remains essential. However, if aid is to be effective it requires commitment as well as joined-up thinking across all policy areas. This challenge must be addressed by the next Government. Lorna Gold Lorna Gold is Head of Policy and Advocacy with Trócaire