Wednesday, January 20, 2010
death of a communist
Jyoti Basu, who was the longest-serving democratically-elected communist leader in the world, has died in Kolkata. For students of international development in the North in the 21st century, the name of Jyoti Basu is all but unknown. It should be known. First elected to the legislature in 1946, before India's independence, as leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) in West Bengal he turned a slogan into a reality: land to the tiller.
In 1977 Basu's CPM was first among equals in the newly-elected Left Front Government in West Bengal, and Basu became Chief Minister. The Left Front under Basu's leadership implemented Operation Barga: it broke the concentration of land in the hands of a few rural oligarchs, offering tenurial security for sharecroppers and small plots of land to the landless. In so doing, the Left Front halted the rapid de-peasantization that had been taking place in West Bengal. The Left Front also implemented a decentralization of elected governance down to the local, or panchayat, level, allowing the peasantry to bypass the rural oligarchy and the lower rungs of the state bureaucracy, which was controlled by the rural elite in any case, and take more effective, more direct control of their lives. In effect, Basu was able to build a rural redoubt for a political party that in theory was supposed to be the party of the urban working class. Basu's accomplishment lead to 5 consecutive election victories for the Left Front, and Basu retired, undefeated, in 2000.
A very fair obituary of Jyoti Basu has been posted on The Guardian's website. You can read it at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jan/17/jyoti-basu-obituary
Pragmatic but radical change is possible within the prevailing social and economic system: Jyoti Basu, 1914 - 2010, showed this to be so.
In 1977 Basu's CPM was first among equals in the newly-elected Left Front Government in West Bengal, and Basu became Chief Minister. The Left Front under Basu's leadership implemented Operation Barga: it broke the concentration of land in the hands of a few rural oligarchs, offering tenurial security for sharecroppers and small plots of land to the landless. In so doing, the Left Front halted the rapid de-peasantization that had been taking place in West Bengal. The Left Front also implemented a decentralization of elected governance down to the local, or panchayat, level, allowing the peasantry to bypass the rural oligarchy and the lower rungs of the state bureaucracy, which was controlled by the rural elite in any case, and take more effective, more direct control of their lives. In effect, Basu was able to build a rural redoubt for a political party that in theory was supposed to be the party of the urban working class. Basu's accomplishment lead to 5 consecutive election victories for the Left Front, and Basu retired, undefeated, in 2000.
A very fair obituary of Jyoti Basu has been posted on The Guardian's website. You can read it at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jan/17/jyoti-basu-obituary
Pragmatic but radical change is possible within the prevailing social and economic system: Jyoti Basu, 1914 - 2010, showed this to be so.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
how to help Haiti
I have just come across an excellent posting by Food First, giving a list of organizations that it is confident can both provide immediate emergency medical assistance, as well as engaging in fighting the looming hunger crisis in the country.
They are:
Partners in Health
Founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, this nonprofit health delivery program has served Haiti’s poor since 1987. To donate for earthquake relief, go to
https://donate.pih.org/page/contribute/haiti_earthquake?source=earthquak...
In an urgent email from Port-au-Prince, Louise Ivers, Partners in Health clinical director in Haiti, appealed for assistance from her colleagues in the Central Plateau: "Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us."
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
Doctors Without Borders was working in Haiti prior to the quake with a staff of 800. Here is a report on January 13, 2009 with a link to their donation page.
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=4148&cat=field-news
Haiti Action
Haiti’s grassroots movement – including labor unions, women’s groups, educators, human rights activists, support committees for prisoners and agricultural cooperatives – will attempt to funnel needed aid to those most hit by the earthquake. Grassroots organizers are doing what they can with the most limited of funds to make a difference. Please take this opportunity to lend them your support.
http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/1_12_10.html
Grassroots International
Long time Food First partner Grassroots International has a long history of working with organizations on the ground in Haiti. Grassroots has committed to the extent possible to, “provide cash to our partners to make local purchases of the items they most need and to obtain food from farmers not hit by the disaster.”
http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/blog/all-hands-responding-haiti-eme...
As usual, Food First has provided excellent assistance to the international development activist community.
They are:
Partners in Health
Founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, this nonprofit health delivery program has served Haiti’s poor since 1987. To donate for earthquake relief, go to
https://donate.pih.org/page/contribute/haiti_earthquake?source=earthquak...
In an urgent email from Port-au-Prince, Louise Ivers, Partners in Health clinical director in Haiti, appealed for assistance from her colleagues in the Central Plateau: "Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us."
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
Doctors Without Borders was working in Haiti prior to the quake with a staff of 800. Here is a report on January 13, 2009 with a link to their donation page.
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=4148&cat=field-news
Haiti Action
Haiti’s grassroots movement – including labor unions, women’s groups, educators, human rights activists, support committees for prisoners and agricultural cooperatives – will attempt to funnel needed aid to those most hit by the earthquake. Grassroots organizers are doing what they can with the most limited of funds to make a difference. Please take this opportunity to lend them your support.
http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/1_12_10.html
Grassroots International
Long time Food First partner Grassroots International has a long history of working with organizations on the ground in Haiti. Grassroots has committed to the extent possible to, “provide cash to our partners to make local purchases of the items they most need and to obtain food from farmers not hit by the disaster.”
http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/blog/all-hands-responding-haiti-eme...
As usual, Food First has provided excellent assistance to the international development activist community.
the real cost of a hamburger
One of the most startling claims in Raj Patel's excellent new book, The Value of Nothing: Why Everything Costs So Much More Than We Think, is that the 'true' economic cost of a hamburger in the United States would be around $200. When I told my students this last week, they were flabbergasted, and, being my students, they wanted to know the basis of the calculation.
I went back to the book to find out. Raj says that it is based on a report done by the Center for Science and Environment (www.cseindia.org) in India, as quoted in the Financial Times. Unfortunately, the FT article is from 1994: and so both the article and the original report, being 15 years old, are not available on the web--yet!
Luckily, I have found Raj's own explanation in an interview with the NYC Independent Media Center (www.indypendent.org). Here it is:
'The Center for Science and Environment in India tried a few years ago to figure out the true cost of a hamburger. Assuming that it was raised on pasture that was once rainforest, the ecological services provided by that rainforest, the loss of diversity, carbon sequestration, water cycling, fuel and tropical product sources, among many other things, the cost would come to $200. The U.S. food industry has huge hidden costs, from the agricultural run-off that causes a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to the cultural destruction wrought by the “Western” diet. There are also huge health costs associated with poor diet — in 2007, $174 billion was spent in the U.S. caring for people with diabetes — as well as the public funds that support the industrial food system.
Cheap food is “cheat food.” There are all kinds of costs that are externalized from the price we pay at the checkout. We pay those costs one way or another — but the food companies don’t. Merely having a system of free markets with accurate prices still doesn’t address the underlying issues of poverty and disenfranchisement.'
Incidentally, I have arranged for Raj Patel to deliver the 2011 David Morrison Lecture in International Development at Trent University.
I went back to the book to find out. Raj says that it is based on a report done by the Center for Science and Environment (www.cseindia.org) in India, as quoted in the Financial Times. Unfortunately, the FT article is from 1994: and so both the article and the original report, being 15 years old, are not available on the web--yet!
Luckily, I have found Raj's own explanation in an interview with the NYC Independent Media Center (www.indypendent.org). Here it is:
'The Center for Science and Environment in India tried a few years ago to figure out the true cost of a hamburger. Assuming that it was raised on pasture that was once rainforest, the ecological services provided by that rainforest, the loss of diversity, carbon sequestration, water cycling, fuel and tropical product sources, among many other things, the cost would come to $200. The U.S. food industry has huge hidden costs, from the agricultural run-off that causes a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to the cultural destruction wrought by the “Western” diet. There are also huge health costs associated with poor diet — in 2007, $174 billion was spent in the U.S. caring for people with diabetes — as well as the public funds that support the industrial food system.
Cheap food is “cheat food.” There are all kinds of costs that are externalized from the price we pay at the checkout. We pay those costs one way or another — but the food companies don’t. Merely having a system of free markets with accurate prices still doesn’t address the underlying issues of poverty and disenfranchisement.'
Incidentally, I have arranged for Raj Patel to deliver the 2011 David Morrison Lecture in International Development at Trent University.
land grabbing in Africa
I have just been sent this excellent report from the NHK World Service on land grabbing in Africa. It is well worth the 9 minutes it takes to view. Note that the first 8 seconds the screen is blank.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
current activities, fall 2009
The fall of 2009 will be a very busy time, if for no other reason that I have become Chair of the Department of International Development Studies for the first time, and envisage a steep learning curve in administering the affairs of faculty, staff and students.
In addition to these administrative tasks, I will, as usual, be doing my regular teaching of IDST 100, Human Inequality in Global Perspective, and IDST-ANTH 221, Agrarian Change and the Global Politics of Food. Both courses have been substantially revised for the 2009 - 2010 academic session. I also will be externally examining two PhD theses, one from Australia and one from the United Kingdom.
In terms of my ongoing research activities, I will be revising my two-part survey article on the agrarian question for The Journal of Peasant Studies, my chapter in the forthcoming textbook An Introduction to Gender and Economics: Foundations, Theories and Policies, as well as revising my forthcoming monograph, Hungry for Change? Farmers, Agrarian Questions and the Global Food Crisis. I also have a number of smaller publishing commitments that I need to honour.
In short, it will be a busy few months.
In addition to these administrative tasks, I will, as usual, be doing my regular teaching of IDST 100, Human Inequality in Global Perspective, and IDST-ANTH 221, Agrarian Change and the Global Politics of Food. Both courses have been substantially revised for the 2009 - 2010 academic session. I also will be externally examining two PhD theses, one from Australia and one from the United Kingdom.
In terms of my ongoing research activities, I will be revising my two-part survey article on the agrarian question for The Journal of Peasant Studies, my chapter in the forthcoming textbook An Introduction to Gender and Economics: Foundations, Theories and Policies, as well as revising my forthcoming monograph, Hungry for Change? Farmers, Agrarian Questions and the Global Food Crisis. I also have a number of smaller publishing commitments that I need to honour.
In short, it will be a busy few months.
hypocrisy over Haiti
The horrific earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, on Tuesday has apparently destroyed large parts of the city and will result in tens of thousands of deaths: the Haitian Prime Minister is already saying at least 100,000 have died. As communications were restored, the world started to respond: the US, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, China, Mexico and Venezuela all pledged immediate support in terms of personnel, cash and supplies, while the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations and the World Bank have all released money to be used for emergency relief.
No one should doubt the extent of Haiti's need in the face of the worst earthquake to rock the country in 200 years. But the reality is that the need has been present in Haiti for decades. The response of the global community to the calamity is necessary: but Haitians have been living in a calamity for years. More to the point, some of the very countries that are rushing to the aid of the country are the ones that are responsible for the systemic calamity that Haitians have had to endure. The hypocrisy in evidence over the Haitian earthquake is breathtaking: the countries and their corporations that have mired Haiti in poverty must now be seen to be 'doing something' because a global media event demands a response. They rush in, having created the very conditions that enabled the earthquake to be so deadly.
Haiti, the first country to overthrow colonial slavery and achieve independence, is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Two-thirds of its population of 10 million live on less than US$2 a day, and two-thirds of the population still live and work in the countryside. Yet Haiti is a prime example of the fact that poverty is not a naturally-occurring phenomena: it is created, and has been created in Haiti.
Between 1957 and 1986 Haiti was brutally ruled by Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude, or "Baby Doc". Their private militia, the Tontons Macoutes, killed tens of thousands as the country lived in fear. As was common during this period, the United States, which had occupied the country between 1915 and 1934, turned a blind eye to the terror in its backyard, as the Duvaliers were fiercely anti-communist. But there was more to the support of the US than just political ideology: there was also an economic interest at stake, because during the reign of the Duvaliers Haiti set up two tax-free export-processing zones in Port-au-Prince, with, at their peak, 180 factories assembling light manufactures for US transnationals exporting into the US market. So Haiti had a classic 'dual' economy: a small enclave of a manufacturing sector owned and operated by US capital that generated dollars for the Haitian elite, surrounded by a vast agrarian hinterland; beyond the small number of jobs that were generated in the export-processing zone, the linkages between the enclave and the hinterland were minimal. This economic structure became the modern foundation of the extreme inequality that has characterized Haiti since independence and which continues to do so: within the French-speaking minority that constitutes Haiti's ruling class, 1 per cent of the population own nearly half the country's wealth even as the Creole-speaking black majority remains impoverished.
The political instability that has rocked Haiti since the overthrow of the Duvaliers in a military coup in 1986 has its origins in this profound inequality. A vibrant civil society fought it; it was from civil society that Lavalas, a popular movement for social change, emerged, and their candidate, the Roman Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected President in 1990. Yet when Aristide's government started proposing radical reforms that challenged the interests of Haiti's dominant class, the military intervened again in support of the status quo. It was only a US-led intervention that forced a return to constitutional government in 1994, and that intervention came with a price: the restored government of Aristide had to implement an IMF-led structural adjustment program. Radical reform was overthrown, along with the military, by the US intervention. Aristide was de-fanged--he now lives in exile in South Africa--and the former radicals that had confronted the Duvaliers and the military starting scrambling for the crumbs of elected office as the boundaries between political parties and urban gangs faded and the state became increasingly dysfunctional.
One aspect of the structural adjustment program was particularly pernicious: the country had to dramatically reduce import tariffs on rice, the staple food of Haitians. To an uninformed outsider, this might seem sensible--why not import rice that was cheaper than Haitian rice? But the impact of this reform for the bulk of the Haitian population, who were peasant farmers, was nothing short of catastrophic. Even in the late 1980s Haiti was self-sufficient in rice, which meant that Haitian peasants could make a rudimentary living selling their surpluses for urban consumption. Cheap imports undermined Haitian rice farming, and hence peasant livelihoods, and now 2 out of every 3 spoonfuls of rice that are eaten in Haiti are imported.
The wanton destruction of Haitian farming massively contributed to the deforestation that plagues the country and, through the latter's impact on flooding, severely aggravates the destructive impact of the tropical storms that periodically sweep Hispaniola. It forced hundreds of thousands to leave the land to search for non-existant jobs in the cities: a lucky few were able to migrate to the US or Canada, but most ended up unemployed and living in squalid shanties such as Cite Soleil, in wooden or tin shacks, with no running water, no sewage systems, and no electricity. Cite Soleil, the outcome of an economic policy foisted on the country by outsiders, was at the epicenter of the destruction on Tuesday.
Cheap rice imports sustained the perverse inequalities of wealth, power and privilege that define Haiti's ruined political economy. Where did those rice imports come from? The United States. From which countries did the rice trading companies originate? The United States. Structural adjustment may have been a disaster for Haiti's agrarian economy, but, as I argue at length in a chapter in my forthcoming book Hungry for Change? Farmers, Agrarian Questions and the Global Food Crisis, it was a boon for Louisana's rice farmers and trading companies.
That the United States and other advanced capitalist countries, which propped up the Duvaliers in return for cheap manufactures and then not only neutered radical reform but indeed destroyed the livelihoods of Haiti's peasantry, should now express dismay at the destruction of Port-au-Prince compounds the depth of the tragedy on Tuesday: to the social wreckage wrought by decades of foreign tutelage and about which we did very little there now lies physical wreckage, to which we will respond.
No one should doubt the extent of Haiti's need in the face of the worst earthquake to rock the country in 200 years. But the reality is that the need has been present in Haiti for decades. The response of the global community to the calamity is necessary: but Haitians have been living in a calamity for years. More to the point, some of the very countries that are rushing to the aid of the country are the ones that are responsible for the systemic calamity that Haitians have had to endure. The hypocrisy in evidence over the Haitian earthquake is breathtaking: the countries and their corporations that have mired Haiti in poverty must now be seen to be 'doing something' because a global media event demands a response. They rush in, having created the very conditions that enabled the earthquake to be so deadly.
Haiti, the first country to overthrow colonial slavery and achieve independence, is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Two-thirds of its population of 10 million live on less than US$2 a day, and two-thirds of the population still live and work in the countryside. Yet Haiti is a prime example of the fact that poverty is not a naturally-occurring phenomena: it is created, and has been created in Haiti.
Between 1957 and 1986 Haiti was brutally ruled by Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude, or "Baby Doc". Their private militia, the Tontons Macoutes, killed tens of thousands as the country lived in fear. As was common during this period, the United States, which had occupied the country between 1915 and 1934, turned a blind eye to the terror in its backyard, as the Duvaliers were fiercely anti-communist. But there was more to the support of the US than just political ideology: there was also an economic interest at stake, because during the reign of the Duvaliers Haiti set up two tax-free export-processing zones in Port-au-Prince, with, at their peak, 180 factories assembling light manufactures for US transnationals exporting into the US market. So Haiti had a classic 'dual' economy: a small enclave of a manufacturing sector owned and operated by US capital that generated dollars for the Haitian elite, surrounded by a vast agrarian hinterland; beyond the small number of jobs that were generated in the export-processing zone, the linkages between the enclave and the hinterland were minimal. This economic structure became the modern foundation of the extreme inequality that has characterized Haiti since independence and which continues to do so: within the French-speaking minority that constitutes Haiti's ruling class, 1 per cent of the population own nearly half the country's wealth even as the Creole-speaking black majority remains impoverished.
The political instability that has rocked Haiti since the overthrow of the Duvaliers in a military coup in 1986 has its origins in this profound inequality. A vibrant civil society fought it; it was from civil society that Lavalas, a popular movement for social change, emerged, and their candidate, the Roman Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected President in 1990. Yet when Aristide's government started proposing radical reforms that challenged the interests of Haiti's dominant class, the military intervened again in support of the status quo. It was only a US-led intervention that forced a return to constitutional government in 1994, and that intervention came with a price: the restored government of Aristide had to implement an IMF-led structural adjustment program. Radical reform was overthrown, along with the military, by the US intervention. Aristide was de-fanged--he now lives in exile in South Africa--and the former radicals that had confronted the Duvaliers and the military starting scrambling for the crumbs of elected office as the boundaries between political parties and urban gangs faded and the state became increasingly dysfunctional.
One aspect of the structural adjustment program was particularly pernicious: the country had to dramatically reduce import tariffs on rice, the staple food of Haitians. To an uninformed outsider, this might seem sensible--why not import rice that was cheaper than Haitian rice? But the impact of this reform for the bulk of the Haitian population, who were peasant farmers, was nothing short of catastrophic. Even in the late 1980s Haiti was self-sufficient in rice, which meant that Haitian peasants could make a rudimentary living selling their surpluses for urban consumption. Cheap imports undermined Haitian rice farming, and hence peasant livelihoods, and now 2 out of every 3 spoonfuls of rice that are eaten in Haiti are imported.
The wanton destruction of Haitian farming massively contributed to the deforestation that plagues the country and, through the latter's impact on flooding, severely aggravates the destructive impact of the tropical storms that periodically sweep Hispaniola. It forced hundreds of thousands to leave the land to search for non-existant jobs in the cities: a lucky few were able to migrate to the US or Canada, but most ended up unemployed and living in squalid shanties such as Cite Soleil, in wooden or tin shacks, with no running water, no sewage systems, and no electricity. Cite Soleil, the outcome of an economic policy foisted on the country by outsiders, was at the epicenter of the destruction on Tuesday.
Cheap rice imports sustained the perverse inequalities of wealth, power and privilege that define Haiti's ruined political economy. Where did those rice imports come from? The United States. From which countries did the rice trading companies originate? The United States. Structural adjustment may have been a disaster for Haiti's agrarian economy, but, as I argue at length in a chapter in my forthcoming book Hungry for Change? Farmers, Agrarian Questions and the Global Food Crisis, it was a boon for Louisana's rice farmers and trading companies.
That the United States and other advanced capitalist countries, which propped up the Duvaliers in return for cheap manufactures and then not only neutered radical reform but indeed destroyed the livelihoods of Haiti's peasantry, should now express dismay at the destruction of Port-au-Prince compounds the depth of the tragedy on Tuesday: to the social wreckage wrought by decades of foreign tutelage and about which we did very little there now lies physical wreckage, to which we will respond.
Un atomiste iranien assassiné
From La Presse, 13 January 2010:
Un atomiste iranien assassiné
Judith Lachapelle
La Presse
Le nucléaire iranien a fait une autre victime, et ce n'est pas la faute aux radiations. Massoud Ali Mohammadi, professeur de physique nucléaire à l'Université de Téhéran âgé de 50 ans, a été tué hier par l'explosion commandée à distance d'une moto piégée alors qu'il quittait son domicile à Téhéran, selon le correspondant d'AFP sur place.
Le gouvernement iranien a attribué l'attentat à Israël et aux États-Unis. «Les premiers éléments de l'enquête montrent des signes de l'action maléfique du triangle États-Unis, régime sioniste et leurs mercenaires», a accusé le porte-parole des Affaires étrangères iraniennes, Ramin Mehmanparast.
«Ces actions terroristes et l'élimination de savants nucléaires du pays n'empêcheront certainement pas le programme nucléaire de l'Iran mais vont l'accélérer bien au contraire», a-t-il ajouté.
Les États-Unis ont été prompts à démentir toute implication. «Absurde», ont répondu les porte-parole de la diplomatie américaine à Washington et celui de la Maison Blanche.
Second à disparaître
M. Ali Mohammadi est le second scientifique nucléaire iranien à disparaître en un an. L'an dernier, un autre physicien nucléaire, Shahram Amiri, a disparu lors d'un pélerinage en Arabie Saoudite.
L'Iran est menacé de nouvelles sanctions internationales pour son programme nucléaire. Le régime affirme qu'il utilise le nucléaire à des fins pacifiques, mais l'Occident craint plutôt qu'il ne cherche à se doter de l'arme atomique.
Qui pouvait bien vouloir la peau de Massoud Ali Mohammadi? Hier, les activités du scientifique dans le domaine nucléaire n'étaient pas confirmées. Selon des étudiants interrogés par l'AFP, l'homme était spécialiste en physique des particules. Il avait travaillé avec le Corps de Gardiens de la Révolution et a été présenté comme «un professeur bassidji», ou membre de la milice islamique.
Mais selon un porte-parole de l'Agence atomique iranienne, cité par AP, le scientifique n'était pas lié à l'agence.
Certaines sources officielles ont désigné des groupes d'opposition au régime, appuyés par Israël, tandis que des sites d'opposition ont affirmé que le scientifique avait appuyé Mir Hossein Moussavi, le candidat rival d'Ahmadinejad aux dernières élections.
Les Israéliens ou le régime?
Pour le professeur Haroon Akram-Lodhi, de l'Université Trent, une implication américaine est à écarter d'emblée. Les services secrets israéliens, par contre, pourraient y avoir trouvé un intérêt. Les installations nucléaires iraniennes sont bien protégées, note-t-il.
«Ce serait extrêmement difficile de les détruire, dit M. Akram-Lodhi, joint hier par La Presse. C'est donc possible que le Mossad ait pu être impliqué parce qu'éliminer un des dirigeants du programme nucléaire serait une méthode plus efficace que détruire les installations. Mais en ne sachant pas si le scientifique était impliqué ou non dans le nucléaire, c'est difficile à dire.»
L'auteur le plus plausible serait le régime lui-même, croit Haroon Akram-Lodhi. «Son appui à l'opposition est documenté et sa mort envoie un message au mouvement vert, dit-il. Sa mort n'aura aucun impact sur le programme nucléaire, puisque le professeur travaillait dans une autre discipline de la physique.»
Un atomiste iranien assassiné
Judith Lachapelle
La Presse
Le nucléaire iranien a fait une autre victime, et ce n'est pas la faute aux radiations. Massoud Ali Mohammadi, professeur de physique nucléaire à l'Université de Téhéran âgé de 50 ans, a été tué hier par l'explosion commandée à distance d'une moto piégée alors qu'il quittait son domicile à Téhéran, selon le correspondant d'AFP sur place.
Le gouvernement iranien a attribué l'attentat à Israël et aux États-Unis. «Les premiers éléments de l'enquête montrent des signes de l'action maléfique du triangle États-Unis, régime sioniste et leurs mercenaires», a accusé le porte-parole des Affaires étrangères iraniennes, Ramin Mehmanparast.
«Ces actions terroristes et l'élimination de savants nucléaires du pays n'empêcheront certainement pas le programme nucléaire de l'Iran mais vont l'accélérer bien au contraire», a-t-il ajouté.
Les États-Unis ont été prompts à démentir toute implication. «Absurde», ont répondu les porte-parole de la diplomatie américaine à Washington et celui de la Maison Blanche.
Second à disparaître
M. Ali Mohammadi est le second scientifique nucléaire iranien à disparaître en un an. L'an dernier, un autre physicien nucléaire, Shahram Amiri, a disparu lors d'un pélerinage en Arabie Saoudite.
L'Iran est menacé de nouvelles sanctions internationales pour son programme nucléaire. Le régime affirme qu'il utilise le nucléaire à des fins pacifiques, mais l'Occident craint plutôt qu'il ne cherche à se doter de l'arme atomique.
Qui pouvait bien vouloir la peau de Massoud Ali Mohammadi? Hier, les activités du scientifique dans le domaine nucléaire n'étaient pas confirmées. Selon des étudiants interrogés par l'AFP, l'homme était spécialiste en physique des particules. Il avait travaillé avec le Corps de Gardiens de la Révolution et a été présenté comme «un professeur bassidji», ou membre de la milice islamique.
Mais selon un porte-parole de l'Agence atomique iranienne, cité par AP, le scientifique n'était pas lié à l'agence.
Certaines sources officielles ont désigné des groupes d'opposition au régime, appuyés par Israël, tandis que des sites d'opposition ont affirmé que le scientifique avait appuyé Mir Hossein Moussavi, le candidat rival d'Ahmadinejad aux dernières élections.
Les Israéliens ou le régime?
Pour le professeur Haroon Akram-Lodhi, de l'Université Trent, une implication américaine est à écarter d'emblée. Les services secrets israéliens, par contre, pourraient y avoir trouvé un intérêt. Les installations nucléaires iraniennes sont bien protégées, note-t-il.
«Ce serait extrêmement difficile de les détruire, dit M. Akram-Lodhi, joint hier par La Presse. C'est donc possible que le Mossad ait pu être impliqué parce qu'éliminer un des dirigeants du programme nucléaire serait une méthode plus efficace que détruire les installations. Mais en ne sachant pas si le scientifique était impliqué ou non dans le nucléaire, c'est difficile à dire.»
L'auteur le plus plausible serait le régime lui-même, croit Haroon Akram-Lodhi. «Son appui à l'opposition est documenté et sa mort envoie un message au mouvement vert, dit-il. Sa mort n'aura aucun impact sur le programme nucléaire, puisque le professeur travaillait dans une autre discipline de la physique.»
Thursday, January 7, 2010
what's happening in Yemen
The international community has turned its full attention to Yemen in the wake of the attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound aircraft on Christmas day. This is not only because Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting the attack, appears to have been radicalized while living in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. Ever since the attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in October of 2000, US security advisors have been aware of the potential of Yemen to become a focal point for Islamist radicalism on the Arabian peninsula. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since the assassination of the previous president in 1978, was swift to visit Washington and pledge support for US actions following the September 11 2001 attacks, fearing that Yemen might be a target in the aftermath of those attacks, and Yemen has received significant US military aid since 2001. Indeed, the US Administration has doubled its military aid to Yemen since the attempted attack on Christmas day. Yet the events of the past two weeks betrays the extent to which the US and its allies are, as in Afghanistan, getting involved in a place that they know remarkably little about and understand even less.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world: half of the population of 23 million lives on less than US$2 a day. It is also a deeply unequal country. The country is plagued by a dwindling supply of oil, its principle export, and high unemployment in urban centers. But first and foremost Yemen is an agricultural country: the agriculture of Yemen is perhaps facing the most acute water shortage of any farming country in the world, and it is in the rural economy that the causes of openness to militancy can be found.
As I demonstrated in a paper for the United Nations Development Programme in Yemen in the early 2000s, following the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990 the country drifted towards a civil war that erupted in 1994. It was during this time that President Saleh expanded the use of the state’s coffers to maintain the system of patronage over powerful tribal leaders that he had established in order to sustain his political supremacy and the concentration of power around his family. A pivotal act in the creation of this system of governance was land redistribution towards the already powerful during the 1990s. With the redistribution of land came the redistribution of water, which was pumped out of the ground by the powerful in pursuit of money-generating agricultural exports; and the livelihoods of Yemen’s vast number of smallholding peasants quickly became unsustainable. The result was that President Saleh presided over a remarkably rapid rise in rural poverty and inequality, an economic malaise that the state failed to address because of the patronage network around the President and his family. As the state all but disappeared in rural Yemen, basic services—education and health care—failed to be delivered, the secessionist movement in the south grew, and a political rebellion in the north arose, making the country even more ungovernable.
It is poverty combined with the absence of the state that has allowed Islamist militants to establish a foothold within Yemen. In 2003 and 2004 a number of Saudi Islamists fled the kingdom following a crackdown by the authorities. In 2006 a number of Yemeni militants escaped from a high-security prison in Sana’a. Last year militants began to shift from the Afghanistan/Pakistan border to Yemen. Yet what allows the militants to establish support in the ungoverned regions of rural Yemen is not fealty to a vision of the meaning of Islam but rather money: the money that can buy the loyalty of deeply impoverished people by providing jobs, education, health care and the smallest modicum of social protection. In other words: the outcomes of the very mechanisms that President Saleh has used to sustain his power are the basis by which militant Islamism flourishes.
In this light, the attempt to shore up the position of President Saleh by increasing military aid is precisely the wrong thing to do if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is to be challenged. As Yemeni reformers know, the problems in Yemen are economic and political: problems of poverty and power that need to be addressed if the foundations of Islamic radicalism are to be undermined. As I argued in the last decade, a decisive step in this direction would be pro-poor redistributive land reform; but given the current alignment of political forces and factors in Yemen, this is, as yet, still remote. Yet it nonetheless remains the case that helping a political leader complicit in the system does not even constitute offering a band-aid; it constitutes supporting militancy. As in Afghanistan, this is the likely outcome of the current course of action being pursued by the US and its allies in Yemen.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world: half of the population of 23 million lives on less than US$2 a day. It is also a deeply unequal country. The country is plagued by a dwindling supply of oil, its principle export, and high unemployment in urban centers. But first and foremost Yemen is an agricultural country: the agriculture of Yemen is perhaps facing the most acute water shortage of any farming country in the world, and it is in the rural economy that the causes of openness to militancy can be found.
As I demonstrated in a paper for the United Nations Development Programme in Yemen in the early 2000s, following the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990 the country drifted towards a civil war that erupted in 1994. It was during this time that President Saleh expanded the use of the state’s coffers to maintain the system of patronage over powerful tribal leaders that he had established in order to sustain his political supremacy and the concentration of power around his family. A pivotal act in the creation of this system of governance was land redistribution towards the already powerful during the 1990s. With the redistribution of land came the redistribution of water, which was pumped out of the ground by the powerful in pursuit of money-generating agricultural exports; and the livelihoods of Yemen’s vast number of smallholding peasants quickly became unsustainable. The result was that President Saleh presided over a remarkably rapid rise in rural poverty and inequality, an economic malaise that the state failed to address because of the patronage network around the President and his family. As the state all but disappeared in rural Yemen, basic services—education and health care—failed to be delivered, the secessionist movement in the south grew, and a political rebellion in the north arose, making the country even more ungovernable.
It is poverty combined with the absence of the state that has allowed Islamist militants to establish a foothold within Yemen. In 2003 and 2004 a number of Saudi Islamists fled the kingdom following a crackdown by the authorities. In 2006 a number of Yemeni militants escaped from a high-security prison in Sana’a. Last year militants began to shift from the Afghanistan/Pakistan border to Yemen. Yet what allows the militants to establish support in the ungoverned regions of rural Yemen is not fealty to a vision of the meaning of Islam but rather money: the money that can buy the loyalty of deeply impoverished people by providing jobs, education, health care and the smallest modicum of social protection. In other words: the outcomes of the very mechanisms that President Saleh has used to sustain his power are the basis by which militant Islamism flourishes.
In this light, the attempt to shore up the position of President Saleh by increasing military aid is precisely the wrong thing to do if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is to be challenged. As Yemeni reformers know, the problems in Yemen are economic and political: problems of poverty and power that need to be addressed if the foundations of Islamic radicalism are to be undermined. As I argued in the last decade, a decisive step in this direction would be pro-poor redistributive land reform; but given the current alignment of political forces and factors in Yemen, this is, as yet, still remote. Yet it nonetheless remains the case that helping a political leader complicit in the system does not even constitute offering a band-aid; it constitutes supporting militancy. As in Afghanistan, this is the likely outcome of the current course of action being pursued by the US and its allies in Yemen.
what's happening in Yemen
The international community has turned its full attention to Yemen in the wake of the attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound aircraft on Christmas day. This is not only because Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting the attack, appears to have been radicalized while living in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. Ever since the attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in October of 2000, US security advisors have been aware of the potential of Yemen to become a focal point for Islamist radicalism on the Arabian peninsula. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since the assassination of the previous president in 1978, was swift to visit Washington and pledge support for US actions following the September 11 2001 attacks, fearing that Yemen might be a target in the aftermath of those attacks, and Yemen has received significant US military aid since 2001. Indeed, the US Administration has doubled its military aid to Yemen since the attempted attack on Christmas day. Yet the events of the past two weeks betrays the extent to which the US and its allies are, as in Afghanistan, getting involved in a place that they know remarkably little about and understand even less.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world: half of the population of 23 million lives on less than US$2 a day. It is also a deeply unequal country. The country is plagued by a dwindling supply of oil, its principle export, and high unemployment in urban centers. But first and foremost Yemen is an agricultural country: the agriculture of Yemen is perhaps facing the most acute water shortage of any farming country in the world, and it is in the rural economy that the causes of openness to militancy can be found.
As I demonstrated in a paper for the United Nations Development Programme in Yemen in the early 2000s, following the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990 the country drifted towards a civil war that erupted in 1994. It was during this time that President Saleh expanded the use of the state’s coffers to maintain the system of patronage over powerful tribal leaders that he had established in order to sustain his political supremacy and the concentration of power around his family. A pivotal act in the creation of this system of governance was land redistribution towards the already powerful during the 1990s. With the redistribution of land came the redistribution of water, which was pumped out of the ground by the powerful in pursuit of money-generating agricultural exports; and the livelihoods of Yemen’s vast number of smallholding peasants quickly became unsustainable. The result was that President Saleh presided over a remarkably rapid rise in rural poverty and inequality, an economic malaise that the state failed to address because of the patronage network around the President and his family. As the state all but disappeared in rural Yemen, basic services—education and health care—failed to be delivered, the secessionist movement in the south grew, and a political rebellion in the north arose, making the country even more ungovernable.
It is poverty combined with the absence of the state that has allowed Islamist militants to establish a foothold within Yemen. In 2003 and 2004 a number of Saudi Islamists fled the kingdom following a crackdown by the authorities. In 2006 a number of Yemeni militants escaped from a high-security prison in Sana’a. Last year militants began to shift from the Afghanistan/Pakistan border to Yemen. Yet what allows the militants to establish support in the ungoverned regions of rural Yemen is not fealty to a vision of the meaning of Islam but rather money: the money that can buy the loyalty of deeply impoverished people by providing jobs, education, health care and the smallest modicum of social protection. In other words: the outcomes of the very mechanisms that President Saleh has used to sustain his power are the basis by which militant Islamism flourishes.
In this light, the attempt to shore up the position of President Saleh by increasing military aid is precisely the wrong thing to do if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is to be challenged. As Yemeni reformers know, the problems in Yemen are economic and political: problems of poverty and power that need to be addressed if the foundations of Islamic radicalism are to be undermined. As I argued in the last decade, a decisive step in this direction would be pro-poor redistributive land reform; but given the current alignment of political forces and factors in Yemen, this is, as yet, still remote. Yet it nonetheless remains the case that helping a political leader complicit in the system does not even constitute offering a band-aid; it constitutes supporting militancy. As in Afghanistan, this is the likely outcome of the current course of action being pursued by the US and its allies in Yemen.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world: half of the population of 23 million lives on less than US$2 a day. It is also a deeply unequal country. The country is plagued by a dwindling supply of oil, its principle export, and high unemployment in urban centers. But first and foremost Yemen is an agricultural country: the agriculture of Yemen is perhaps facing the most acute water shortage of any farming country in the world, and it is in the rural economy that the causes of openness to militancy can be found.
As I demonstrated in a paper for the United Nations Development Programme in Yemen in the early 2000s, following the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990 the country drifted towards a civil war that erupted in 1994. It was during this time that President Saleh expanded the use of the state’s coffers to maintain the system of patronage over powerful tribal leaders that he had established in order to sustain his political supremacy and the concentration of power around his family. A pivotal act in the creation of this system of governance was land redistribution towards the already powerful during the 1990s. With the redistribution of land came the redistribution of water, which was pumped out of the ground by the powerful in pursuit of money-generating agricultural exports; and the livelihoods of Yemen’s vast number of smallholding peasants quickly became unsustainable. The result was that President Saleh presided over a remarkably rapid rise in rural poverty and inequality, an economic malaise that the state failed to address because of the patronage network around the President and his family. As the state all but disappeared in rural Yemen, basic services—education and health care—failed to be delivered, the secessionist movement in the south grew, and a political rebellion in the north arose, making the country even more ungovernable.
It is poverty combined with the absence of the state that has allowed Islamist militants to establish a foothold within Yemen. In 2003 and 2004 a number of Saudi Islamists fled the kingdom following a crackdown by the authorities. In 2006 a number of Yemeni militants escaped from a high-security prison in Sana’a. Last year militants began to shift from the Afghanistan/Pakistan border to Yemen. Yet what allows the militants to establish support in the ungoverned regions of rural Yemen is not fealty to a vision of the meaning of Islam but rather money: the money that can buy the loyalty of deeply impoverished people by providing jobs, education, health care and the smallest modicum of social protection. In other words: the outcomes of the very mechanisms that President Saleh has used to sustain his power are the basis by which militant Islamism flourishes.
In this light, the attempt to shore up the position of President Saleh by increasing military aid is precisely the wrong thing to do if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is to be challenged. As Yemeni reformers know, the problems in Yemen are economic and political: problems of poverty and power that need to be addressed if the foundations of Islamic radicalism are to be undermined. As I argued in the last decade, a decisive step in this direction would be pro-poor redistributive land reform; but given the current alignment of political forces and factors in Yemen, this is, as yet, still remote. Yet it nonetheless remains the case that helping a political leader complicit in the system does not even constitute offering a band-aid; it constitutes supporting militancy. As in Afghanistan, this is the likely outcome of the current course of action being pursued by the US and its allies in Yemen.
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