STWR - Share The World's Resources

A US leader in his second term should have the power to rein in Israel. But George Bush is no ordinary president, writes George Monbiot.

Two nations stand out above all others as notorious serial abusers of UN resolutions - the US and Israel.  Over the last half century, the US has used its Security Council veto many dozens of times to prevent any resolutions from passing condemning Israel for its abusive or hostile actions or that were inimical to Israeli interests.  It's also voted against dozens of others overwhelmingly supported by the rest of the world in the UN General Assembly. 

By its actions and with 6% of the world's population, the US has thus arrogantly ignored the will of nearly all the other 94% to support its client state even when Israel had committed war crimes or crimes against humanity the rest of the world demanded it be held to account for.  In the words of one UK observer using a baseball analogy: "Only the USA could have a World Series and not invite the rest of the world."

On July 26, Aljazeerah reported a story headlined - "Israeli invasion of Lebanon planned by neocons in June  (2006)."  It was done at a June 17 and 18 meeting at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado at which former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with US Vice President Dick Cheney. 

The purpose was to discuss the planned and impending Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invasions of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.  Cheney was thoroughly briefed and approved the coming assaults - before Hamas' capture of an IDF soldier on June 25 or Hezbollah's capturing of two others in an exchange first reported as occurring in Israel and now believed to have happened inside Lebanon after IDF forces illegally entered the country.

Following the Colorado meeting, Netanyahu returned to Israel for a special "Ex-Prime Ministers" meeting in which he conveyed the message of US support to carry out the "Clean Break" policy officially ending all past peace accords including Oslo.  At the meeting in Israel in addition to Binyamin Netanyahu were current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres.

Televised contemporary events marginalize the role of history. TV broadcasts death from Lebanon, Gaza and Israel, but paid scant attention to the 53rd anniversary of Cuba’s revolutionary beginning.

On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro led 150-plus men to capture the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. This act of nationalist voluntarism failed. The revolutionaries had hoped the heroic act would catalyze an island-wide uprising. In January 1959, however, Fidel’s guerrilleros took control of the island.

As Cubans celebrated the 53rd anniversary of the Moncada attack, they again confronted Fidel Castro’s famous words. “History will absolve me,” he concluded his defense. His accomplishments more than absolve him. But the age of revolutionary innocence that fostered the Cuban revolution has ended, as 9/11 dramatized.

The announcement from Geneva that the "Doha Round" negotiations for another global trade agreement is in "collapse" lacked high drama since impending failure was already clear to all but the most fervent cheerleaders for the World Trade Organization.

Five years of sloganeering and media pep talks and clever maneuvering failed to persuade developing nations or even inspire much enthusiasm in advanced economies. This is very good news for peoples of the world, though you won't see the story played that way in the American press.

In round-about fashion, the WTO's failure represents belated vindication for the blue-green movement that arose in Seattle six years ago and the Global Social Forum launched later from Porto Alegre, Brazil. These bottom-up political mobilizations offered an alternative vision for globalization – not dominated by the desires and dictates of multinational corporations but by ideas of popular sovereignty and common human aspirations that are shared by people in vastly different trading nations. That promising movement was eclipsed by the drama of 9/11 and war in Iraq, but it was never really sidetracked. Many individual countries have already revolted against the "Washington Consensus" and even establishment experts are beginning to acknowledge its failures. Defeat for them in Geneva is an important marker of progress for those who can imagine a different world.

The International Monetary Fund is perhaps at its most vulnerable state in years.  It is suffering a triple crisis--a crisis of legitimacy, a budget crisis, and a role crisis--that is unparalleled in its 62 years of existence.  These circumstances provide critics of the Fund with an opportunity to radically shrink, disempower, if not decommission it altogether.  If not seized, this opportunity can slip by, and circumstances might come together to reinvigorate and save the Fund.

The global trade talks have collapsed, and already the airwaves are full of the sound of politicians and pundits lamenting this "lost opportunity" for the world's poor. Cue the obligatory statistics from the World Bank as to how much better off the world would be if the talks had succeeded in freeing up global trade. Roll out the Jeremiahs to predict that this will destroy the multilateral trading system and condemn the poorest to everlasting despair.

Don't believe it. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has shown itself unfit for purpose when it comes to addressing the needs of the world's poorest communities, and the "deal" on the table in Geneva would have exposed developing countries to immense damage. Both the EU and USA have long insisted on significant new business opportunities for their own multinationals as a condition for taking part in the talks, despite the fact that these would have come at the expense of producers in developing countries and would have cost millions of local jobs. Abandoning the negotiations was the only positive option left, and we should be thankful for it.

In case you haven’t got anything else to worry about—like war in the Middle East, nuclear showdowns, global warming or Apocalypse Now—how about the suicide of capitalism?

Late last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down a new rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring mandatory registration with the SEC for most hedge funds. This may not strike you as the end of the world, but that’s because you’ve either forgotten what a hedge fund is or how much trouble they can get us into.

These investment pools for rich folks are now a $1.2 trillion industry (known to insiders, I am pleased to report, as “the hedge fund community"). Hedge funds are now beginning to be used by average investors and pension investors. Back in 1998, there was this little-bitty old hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management. Because hedge funds make high-risk bets, Long Term Capital got itself in so much trouble its collapse actually threatened to wreck world markets, and regulators had to step in to negotiate a $3.6 billion bailout. A similar fiasco at this point probably would break world markets.

Nearly eleven years after the WTO came into existence, as the impasse over a multi-lateral trade regime continues, it is the ‘development’ aspect that has been sacrificed at the altar of international trade, argues Devinder Sharma.