This is an Arab 1848. But US hegemony is only dented

With western-backed despots being turfed out politics has changed for ever. So just how far can the revolution spread?

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o Tariq Ali
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 February 2011 22.59 GMT
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revolutionary murals Tahrir Square protests Revolutionary murals on the walls of newly established toilet facilities for protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP

The refusal of the people to kiss or ignore the rod that has chastised them for so many decades has opened a new chapter in the history of the Arab nation. The absurd, if much vaunted, neocon notion that Arabs or Muslims were hostile to democracy has disappeared like parchment in fire.

Those who promoted such ideas appear to the most unhappy: Israel and its lobbyists in Euro-America; the arms industry, hurriedly trying to sell as much while it can (the British prime minister acting as a merchant of death at the Abu Dhabi arms fair); and the beleaguered rulers of Saudi Arabia, wondering whether the disease will spread to their tyrannical kingdom. Until now they have provided refuge to many a despot, but when the time comes where will the royal family seek refuge? They must be aware that their patrons will dump them without ceremony and claim they always favoured democracy.

If there is a comparison to be made with Europe it is 1848, when the revolutionary upheavals left only Britain and Spain untouched – even though Queen Victoria, thinking of the Chartists, feared otherwise. Writing to her besieged nephew on the Belgian throne, she expressing sympathy but wondered whether "we will all be slain in our beds". Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown or bejewelled headgear, and has billions stored in foreign banks.

Like Europeans in 1848 the Arab people are fighting against foreign domination (82% of Egyptians, a recent opinion poll revealed, have a "negative view of the US"); against the violation of their democratic rights; against an elite blinded by its own illegitimate wealth – and in favour of economic justice. This is different from the first wave of Arab nationalism, which was concerned principally with driving the remnants of the British empire out of the region. The Egyptians under Nasser nationalised the Suez canal and were invaded by Britain, France and Israel – but that was without Washington's permission, and the three were thus compelled to withdraw.

Cairo was triumphant. The pro-British monarchy was toppled by the 1958 revolution in Iraq, radicals took power in Damascus, a senior Saudi prince attempted a palace coup and fled to Cairo when it failed, armed struggles erupted in Yemen and Oman, and there was much talk of an Arab nation with three concurrent capitals. One side effect was an eccentric coup in Libya that brought a young, semi-literate officer, Muammar Gaddafi, to power. His Saudi enemies have always insisted that the coup was masterminded by British intelligence, just like the one that propelled Idi Amin to power in Uganda. Gaddafi's professed nationalism, modernism and radicalism were all for show, like his ghosted science-fiction short stories.

It never extended to his own people. Despite the oil wealth he refused to educate Libyans, or provide them with a health service or subsidised housing, squandering money on absurdist projects abroad – one of which was to divert a British plane carrying socialist and communist Sudanese oppositionists and handing them over to fellow dictator Gaafar Nimeiry in Sudan to be hanged, thus wrecking the possibility of any radical change in that country, with dire consequences, as we witness every day. At home he maintained a rigid tribal structure, thinking he could divide and buy tribes to stay in power. But no longer.

Israel's 1967 lightning war and victory sounded the death knell of Arab nationalism. Internecine conflicts in Syria and Iraq led to the victory of rightwing Ba'athists blessed by Washington. After Nasser's death and his successor Saadat's pyrrhic victory against Israel in 1973, Egypt's military elite decided to cut its losses, accepted annual billion-dollar subsidies from the US and do a deal with Tel Aviv. In return its dictator was honoured as a statesman by Euro-America, as was Saddam Hussein for a long time. If only they had left him to be removed by his people instead of by an ugly and destructive war and occupation, over a million dead and 5 million orphaned children.

The Arab revolutions, triggered by the economic crisis, have mobilised mass movements, but not every aspect of life has been called into question. Social, political and religious rights are becoming the subject of fierce controversy in Tunisia, but not elsewhere yet. No new political parties have emerged, an indication that the electoral battles to come will be contests between Arab liberalism and conservatism in the shape of the Muslim Brotherhood, modelling itself on Islamists in power in Turkey and Indonesia, and ensconced in the embrace of the US.

American hegemony in the region has been dented but not destroyed. The post-despot regimes are likely to be more independent, with a democratic system that is fresh and subversive and, hopefully, new constitutions enshrining social and political needs. But the military in Egypt and Tunisia will ensure nothing rash happens. The big worry for Euro-America is Bahrain. If its rulers are removed it will be difficult to prevent a democratic upheaval in Saudi Arabia. Can Washington afford to let that happen? Or will it deploy armed force to keep the Wahhabi kleptocrats in power?

A few decades ago the great Iraqi poet Muddafar al-Nawab, angered by a gathering of despots described as an Arab Summit, lost his cool:

… Mubarik, Mubarik,

Wealth and good health

Fax the news to the UN.

Camp after Camp and David,

Father of all your Camps.

Damn your fathers

Rotten Lot;

The stench of your bodies floods your nostrils …

O Make-Believe Summit

Leaders

May your faces be blackened;

Ugly your drooping bellies

Ugly your fat arses

Why the surprise

That your faces resemble both ...

Summits … summits … summits

Goats and sheep gather,

Farts with a tune

Let the Summit be

Let the Summit not be

Let the Summit decide;

I spit on each and every one of you

Kings … Sheikhs … Lackeys …

Whatever else, Arab summits will not be the same again. The poet has been joined by the people.

The Myth Of The U.N. Creation Of Israel

 

By Jeremy R. Hammond

21 February, 2011
Voltairenet.org

Many of the historical beliefs, which have percolated down to us, are based on half-truths or on no truths at all. According to independent political analyst Jerry R. Hammond, the predominant view regarding the creation of Israel, which lies at the core of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is no exception. He renders a detailed account of a manipulation, injustice and UN failure to abide by its own rules, which have wreaked political turmoil and humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East region for more than sixty years.

There is a widely accepted belief that United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 "created" Israel, based upon an understanding that this resolution partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority or legitimacy to the declaration of the existence of the state of Israel. However, despite its popularity, this belief has no basis in fact, as a review of the resolution's history and examination of legal principles demonstrates incontrovertibly.

Great Britain had occupied Palestine during the First World War, and in July 1922, the League of Nations issued its mandate for Palestine, which recognized the British government as the occupying power and effectively conferred to it the color of legal authority to temporarily administrate the territory. [1] On April 2, 1947, seeking to extract itself from the conflict that had arisen in Palestine between Jews and Arabs as a result of the Zionist movement to establish in Palestine a "national home for the Jewish people", [2] the United Kingdom submitted a letter to the U.N. requesting the Secretary General "to place the question of Palestine on the Agenda of the General Assembly at its next regular Annual Session", and requesting the Assembly "to make recommendations, under Article 10 of the Charter, concerning the future government of Palestine." [3] To that end, on May 15, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 106, which established the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to investigate "the question of Palestine", to "prepare a report to the General Assembly" based upon its findings, and to "submit such proposals as it may consider appropriate for the solution of the problem of Palestine". [4]

On September 3, UNSCOP issued its report to the General Assembly declaring its majority recommendation that Palestine be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab states. It noted that the population of Palestine at the end of 1946 was estimated to be almost 1,846,000, with 1,203,000 Arabs (65 percent) and 608,000 Jews (33 percent). Growth of the Jewish population had been mainly the result of immigration, while growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase. It observed that there was "no clear territorial separation of Jews and Arabs by large contiguous areas", and even in the Jaffa district, which included Tel Aviv, Arabs constituted a majority. [5] Land ownership statistics from 1945 showed that Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district in Palestine. The district with the highest percentage of Jewish ownership was Jaffa, where 39 percent of the land was owned by Jews, compared to 47 percent owned by Arabs. [6] In the whole of Palestine at the time UNSCOP issued its report, Arabs owned 85 percent of the land, [7] while Jews owned less than 7 percent. [8]

Despite these facts, the UNSCOP proposal was that the Arab state be constituted from only 45.5 percent of the whole of Palestine, while the Jews would be awarded 55.5 percent of the total area for their state. [9] The UNSCOP report acknowledged that:

"With regard to the principle of self-determination, although international recognition was extended to this principle at the end of the First World War and it was adhered to with regard to the other Arab territories, at the time of the creation of the 'A' Mandates, it was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there. Actually, it may well be said that the Jewish National Home and the 'sui generis' Mandate for Palestine run counter to that principle." [10]

In other words, the report explicitly recognized that the denial of Palestinian independence in order to pursue the goal of establishing a Jewish state constituted a rejection of the right of the Arab majority to self-determination. And yet, despite this recognition, UNSCOP had accepted this rejection of Arab rights as being within the bounds of a legitimate and reasonable framework for a solution.

Following the issuance of the UNSCOP report, the U.K. issued a statement declaring its agreement with the report's recommendations, but adding that "if the Assembly should recommend a policy which is not acceptable to both Jews and Arabs, the United Kingdom Government would not feel able to implement it." [11] The position of the Arabs had been clear from the beginning, but the Arab Higher Committee issued a statement on September 29 reiterating that "the Arabs of Palestine were determined to oppose with all the means at their disposal, any scheme that provided for segregation or partition, or that would give to a minority special and preferential status". It instead:

"advocated freedom and independence for an Arab State in the whole of Palestine which would respect human rights, fundamental freedoms and equality of all persons before the law, and would protect the legitimate rights and interests of all minorities whilst guaranteeing freedom of worship and access to the Holy Places." [12]

The U.K. followed with a statement reiterating "that His Majesty's Government could not play a major part in the implementation of a scheme that was not acceptable to both Arabs and Jews", but adding "that they would, however, not wish to impede the implementation of a recommendation approved by the General Assembly". [13]

The Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question was established by the General Assembly shortly after the issuance of the UNSCOP report in order to continue to study the problem and make recommendations. A sub-committee was established in turn that was tasked with examining the legal issues pertaining to the situation in Palestine, and it released the report of its findings on November 11. It observed that the UNSCOP report had accepted a basic premise "that the claims to Palestine of the Arabs and Jews both possess validity", which was "not supported by any cogent reasons and is demonstrably against the weight of all available evidence." With an end to the Mandate and with British withdrawal, "there is no further obstacle to the conversion of Palestine into an independent state", which "would be the logical culmination of the objectives of the Mandate" and the Covenant of the League of Nations. It found that "the General Assembly is not competent to recommend, still less to enforce, any solution other than the recognition of the independence of Palestine, and that the settlement of the future government of Palestine is a matter solely for the people of Palestine." It concluded that "no further discussion of the Palestine problem seems to be necessary or appropriate, and this item should be struck off the agenda of the General Assembly", but that if there was a dispute on that point, "it would be essential to obtain the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on this issue", as had already been requested by several of the Arab states. It concluded further that the partition plan was "contrary to the principles of the Charter, and the United Nations have no power to give effect to it." The U.N. could not:

"deprive the majority of the people of Palestine of their territory and transfer it to the exclusive use of a minority in the country…. The United Nations Organization has no power to create a new State. Such a decision can only be taken by the free will of the people of the territories in question. That condition is not fulfilled in the case of the majority proposal, as it involves the establishment of a Jewish State in complete disregard of the wishes and interests of the Arabs of Palestine." [14]

Nevertheless, the General Assembly passed Resolution 181 on November 29, with 33 votes in favor to 13 votes against, and 10 abstentions. [15] The relevant text of the resolution stated:

"The General Assembly….

Recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union set out below;

Requests that

(a) The Security Council take the necessary measure as provided for in the plan for its implementation;

(b) The Security Council consider, if circumstances during the transitional period require such consideration, whether the situation in Palestine constitutes a threat to the peace. If it decides that such a threat exists, and in order to maintain international peace and security, the Security Council should supplement the authorization of the General Assembly by taking measure, under Articles 39 and 41 of the Charter, to empower the United Nations Commission, as provided in this resolution, to exercise in Palestine the functions which are assigned to it by this resolution;

(c) The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution;

(d) The Trusteeship Council be informed of the responsibilities envisaged for it in this plan;

Calls upon the inhabitants of Palestine to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put this plan into effect;

Appeals to all Governments and all peoples to refrain from taking action which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations…." [16]

A simple reading of the text is enough to show that the resolution did not partition Palestine or offer any legal basis for doing so. It merely recommended that the partition plan be implemented and requested the Security Council to take up the matter from there. It called upon the inhabitants of Palestine to accept the plan, but they were certainly under no obligation to do so.

A Plan never implemented

The matter was thus taken up by the Security Council, where, on December 9, the Syrian representative to the U.N., Faris El-Khouri, observed that "the General Assembly is not a world government which can dictate orders, partition countries or impose constitutions, rules, regulations and treaties on people without their consent." When the Soviet representative Andrei Gromyko stated his government's opposing view that "The resolution of the General Assembly should be implemented" by the Security Council, El-Khouri replied by noting further that:

"Certain paragraphs of the resolution of the General Assembly which concern the Security Council are referred to the Council, namely, paragraphs (a), (b) and (c), outlining the functions of the Security Council in respect of the Palestinian question. All of the members of the Security Council are familiar with the Council's functions, which are well defined and clearly stated in the Charter of the United Nations. I do not believe that the resolution of the General Assembly can add to or delete from these functions. The recommendations of the General Assembly are well known to be recommendations, and Member States are not required by force to accept them. Member States may or may not accept them, and the same applies to the Security Council." [17]

On February 6, 1948, the Arab Higher Committee again communicated to the U.N. Secretary General its position that the partition plan was "contrary to the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter". The U.N. "has no jurisdiction to order or recommend the partition of Palestine. There is nothing in the Charter to warrant such authority, consequently the recommendation of partition is ultra vires and therefore null and void." Additionally, the Arab Higher Committee noted that:

"The Arab Delegations submitted proposals in the Ad Hoc Committee in order to refer the whole legal issue raised for a ruling by the International Court of Justice. The said proposals were never put to vote by the president in the Assembly. The United Nations is an International body entrusted with the task of enforcing peace and justice in international affairs. How would there be any confidence in such a body if it bluntly and unreasonably refuses to refer such a dispute to the International Court of Justice?

"The Arabs of Palestine will never recognize the validity of the extorted partition recommendations or the authority of the United Nations to make them", the Arab Higher Committee declared, and they would "consider that any attempt by the Jews or any power or group of powers to establish a Jewish State in Arab territory is an act of aggression which will be resisted in self-defense by force." [18]

On February 16, the U.N. Palestine Commission, tasked by the General Assembly to prepare for the transfer of authority from the Mandatory Power to the successor governments under the partition plan, issued its first report to the Security Council. It concluded on the basis of the Arab rejection that it "finds itself confronted with an attempt to defect its purposes, and to nullify the resolution of the General Assembly", and calling upon the Security Council to provide an armed force "which alone would enable the Commission to discharge its responsibilities on the termination of the Mandate". In effect, the Palestine Commission had determined that the partition plan should be implemented against the will of the majority population of Palestine by force. [19]

In response to that suggestion, Colombia submitted a draft Security Council resolution noting that the U.N. Charter did "not authorize the Security Council to create special forces for the purposes indicated by the United Nations Palestine Commission". [20] The U.S. delegate, Warren Austin, similarly stated at the 253rd meeting of the Security Council on February 24 that:

The Security Council is authorized to take forceful measures with respect to Palestine to remove a threat to international peace. The Charter of the United Nations does not empower the Security Council to enforce a political settlement whether it is pursuant to a recommendation of the General Assembly or of the Security Council itself. What this means is this: The Security Council, under the Charter, can take action to prevent aggression against Palestine from outside. The Security Council, by these same powers, can take action to prevent a threat to international peace and security from inside Palestine. But this action must be directed solely to the maintenance of international peace. The Security Council's action, in other words, is directed to keeping the peace and not to enforcing partition. [21]

The United States nevertheless submitted its own draft text more ambiguously accepting the requests of the Palestine Commission "subject to the authority of the Security Council under the Charter". [22] Faris El-Khouri objected to the U.S. draft on the grounds that "before accepting these three requests, it is our duty to ascertain whether they are or are not within the framework of the Security Council as limited by the Charter. If it is found that they are not, we should decline to accept them." He recalled Austin's own statement on the lack of authority of the Security Council, saying, "It would follow from this undeniable fact that any recommendation on a political settlement can be implemented only if the parties concerned willingly accept and complement it." Furthermore, "the partition plan itself constitutes a threat to the peace, being openly rejected by all those at whose expense it was to be executed." [23] Austin in turn explained the intent of the U.S. draft that its acceptance of Resolution 181 is:

subject to the limitation that armed force cannot be used for implementation of the plan, because the Charter limits the use of United Nations force expressly to threats to and breaches of the peace and aggression affecting international peace. Therefore, we must interpret the General Assembly resolution as meaning that the United Nations measures to implement this resolution are peaceful measures.

Moreover, explained Austin, the U.S. draft:

does not authorize use of enforcement under Articles 39 and 41 of the Charter to empower the United Nations Commission to exercise in Palestine the functions which are assigned to it by the resolution, because the Charter does not authorize either the General Assembly or the Security Council to do any such thing. [24]

When the Security Council did finally adopt a resolution on March 5, it merely made a note of "Having received General Assembly resolution 181" and the first monthly Palestine Commission report, and resolved:

to call on the permanent members of the Council to consult and to inform the Security Council regarding the situation with respect to Palestine and to make, as the result of such consultations, recommendations to it regarding the guidance and instructions which the Council might usefully give to the Palestine Commission with a view to implementing the resolution of the General Assembly. [25]

During further debates at the Security Council over how to proceed, Austin observed that it had become "clear that the Security Council is not prepared to go ahead with efforts to implement this plan in the existing situation." At the same time, it was clear that the U.K.'s announced termination of the Mandate on May 15 "would result, in the light of information now available, in chaos, heavy fighting and much loss of life in Palestine." The U.N. could not permit this, he said, and the Security Council had the responsibility and authority under the Charter to act to prevent such a threat to the peace. The U.S. also proposed establishing a Trusteeship over Palestine to give further opportunity to the Jews and Arabs to reach a mutual agreement. Pending the convening of a special session of the General Assembly to that end, "we believe that the Security Council should instruct the Palestine Commission to suspend its efforts to implement the proposed partition plan." [26]

The Security Council President, speaking as the representative from China, responded: "The United Nations was created mainly for the maintenance of international peace. It would be tragic indeed if the United Nations, by attempting a political settlement, should be the cause of war. For these reasons, my delegation supports the general principles of the proposal of the United States delegation." [27] At a further meeting of the Security Council, the Canadian delegate stated that the partition plan "is based on a number of important assumptions", the first of which was that "it was assumed that the two communities in Palestine would co-operate in putting into effect the solution to the Palestine problem which was recommended by the General Assembly." [28] The French delegate, while declining to extend either approval for or disapproval of the U.S. proposal, observed that it would allow for any number of alternative solutions from the partition plan, including "a single State with sufficient guarantees for minorities". [29] The representative from the Jewish Agency for Palestine read a statement categorically rejecting "any plan to set up a trusteeship regime for Palestine", which "would necessarily entail a denial of the Jewish right to national independence." [30]

Mindful of the worsening situation in Palestine, and wishing to avoid further debate, the U.S. proposed another draft resolution calling for a truce between Jewish and Arab armed groups that Austin noted "would not prejudice the claims of either group" and which "does not mention trusteeship." [31] It was adopted as Resolution 43 on April 1. [32] Resolution 44 was also passed the same day requesting "the Secretary General, in accordance with Article 20 of the United Nations Charter, to convoke a special session of the General Assembly to consider further the question of the future government of Palestine." [33] Resolution 46 reiterated the Security Council's call for the cessation of hostilities in Palestine, [34] and Resolution 48 established a "Truce Commission" to further the goal of implementing its resolutions calling for an end to the violence. [35]

On May 14, the Zionist leadership unilaterally declared the existence of the State of Israel, citing Resolution 181 as constituting "recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State". [36] As anticipated, war ensued.

The Authority of the U.N. with regard to partition

Chapter 1, Article 1 of the U.N. Charter defines its purposes and principles, which are to "maintain international peace and security", to "develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and selfdetermination of peoples", and to "achieve international co-operation" on various issues and "promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all".

The functions and powers of the General Assembly are listed under Chapter IV, Articles 10 through 17. It is tasked to initiate studies and make recommendations to promote international cooperation and the development of international law, to receive reports from the Security Council and other organs of the U.N., and to consider and approve the organization's budget. It is also tasked with performing functions under the international trusteeship system. Its authority is otherwise limited to considering and discussing matters within the scope of the Charter, making recommendations to Member States or the Security Council, or calling attention of matters to the Security Council.

Chapter V, Articles 24 through 26, states the functions and powers of the Security Council. It is tasked with maintaining peace and security in accordance with the purposes and principles of the U.N. The specific powers granted to the Security Council are stated in Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and XII. Under Chapter VI, the Security Council may call upon parties to settle disputes by peaceful means, investigate, and make a determination as to whether a dispute or situation constitutes a threat to peace and security. It may recommend appropriate procedures to resolve disputes, taking into consideration that "legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties to the International Court of Justice". Under Chapter VII, the Security Council may determine the existence of a threat to peace and make recommendations or decide what measures are to be taken to maintain or restore peace and security. It may call upon concerned parties to take provisional measures "without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned." It may call upon member states to employ "measures not involving the use of armed force" to apply such measures. Should such measures be inadequate, it may authorize the use of armed forces "to maintain or restore international peace and security". Chapter VIII states that the Security Council "shall encourage the development of pacific settlements of local disputes" through regional arrangements or agencies, and utilize such to enforce actions under its authority.

The functions and powers of the International Trusteeship System are listed under Chapter XII, Articles 75 through 85. The purpose of the system is to administer and supervise territories placed therein by agreement with the goal of "development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned". The system is to operate in accordance with the purposes of the U.N. stated in Article 1, including respect for the right of self-determination. The General Assembly is tasked with all functions "not designated as strategic", which are designated to the Security Council. A Trusteeship Council is established to assist the General Assembly and the Security Council to perform their functions under the system.

Chapter XIII, Article 87 states the functions and powers of the Trusteeship Council, which are shared by the General Assembly. Authority is granted to consider reports, accept and examine petitions, provide for visits to trust territories, and "take these and other actions in conformity with the terms of the trusteeship agreements." Another relevant section is Chapter XI, entitled the "Declaration Regarding NonSelf-Governing Territories", which states that:

Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories…

To that end, Member states are "to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions".

Conclusion

The Partition Plan put forth by UNSCOP sought to create within Palestine a Jewish state contrary to the express will of the majority of its inhabitants. Despite constituting only a third of the population and owning less than 7 percent of the land, it sought to grant to the Jews more than half of Palestine for purpose of creating that Jewish state. It would, in other words, take land from the Arabs and give it to the Jews. The inherent injustice of the partition plan stands in stark contrast to alternative plan proposed by the Arabs, of an independent state of Palestine in which the rights of the Jewish minority would be recognized and respected, and which would afford the Jewish population representation in a democratic government. The partition plan was blatantly prejudicial to the rights of the majority Arab population, and was premised on the rejection of their right to self-determination. This is all the more uncontroversial inasmuch as the UNSCOP report itself explicitly acknowledged that the proposal to create a Jewish state in Palestine was contrary to the principle of selfdetermination. The plan was also premised upon the erroneous assumption that the Arabs would simply acquiesce to having their land taken from them and voluntarily surrender their majority rights, including their right to self-determination.

U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 neither legally partitioned Palestine nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority to unilaterally declare the existence of the Jewish state of Israel. It merely recommended that the UNSCOP partition plan be accepted and implemented by the concerned parties. Naturally, to have any weight of law, the plan, like any contract, would have to have been formally agreed upon by both parties, which it was not. Nor could the General Assembly have legally partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority for the creation of Israel to the Zionist leadership, as it simply had no such authority to confer. When the Security Council took up the matter referred to it by the General Assembly, it could come to no consensus on how to proceed with implementing the partition plan. It being apparent that the plan could not be implemented by peaceful means, the suggestion that it be implemented by force was rejected by members of the Security Council. The simple fact of the matter is that the plan was never implemented. Numerous delegates from member states, including the U.S., arrived at the conclusion that the plan was impracticable, and, furthermore, that the Security Council had no authority to implement such a plan except by mutual consent by concerned parties, which was absent in this case.

The U.S., Syria, and other member nations were correct in their observations that, while the Security Council did have authority to declare a threat to the peace and authorize the use of force to deal with that and maintain or restore peace and security, it did not have any authority to implement by force a plan to partition Palestine contrary to the will of most of its inhabitants. Any attempt to usurp such authority by either the General Assembly or the Security Council would have been a prima facie violation of the Charter's founding principle of respect for the right to selfdetermination of all peoples, and thus null and void under international law.

In sum, the popular claim that the U.N. "created" Israel is a myth, and Israel's own claim in its founding document that U.N. Resolution 181 constituted legal authority for Israel's creation, or otherwise constituted "recognition" by the U.N. of the "right" of the Zionist Jews to expropriate for themselves Arab land and deny to the majority Arab population of that land their own right to self-determination, is a patent fraud.

Further corollaries may be drawn. The disaster inflicted upon Palestine was not inevitable. The U.N. was created for the purpose of preventing such catastrophes. Yet it failed miserably to do so, on numerous counts. It failed in its duty to refer the legal questions of the claims to Palestine to the International Court of Justice, despite requests from member states to do so. It failed to use all means within its authority, including the use of armed forces, to maintain peace and prevent the war that was predicted would occur upon the termination of the Mandate. And most importantly, far from upholding its founding principles, the U.N. effectively acted to prevent the establishment of an independent and democratic state of Palestine, in direct violation of the principles of its own Charter. The consequences of these and other failures are still witnessed by the world today on a daily basis. Recognition of the grave injustice perpetrated against the Palestinian people in this regard and dispelling such historical myths is essential if a way forward towards peace and reconciliation is to be found.

==

Article by Dr. Mordechai Nisan refuting Mr. Hammond's arguments: Is UN Creation of Israel a Myth? Ask Foreign Policy Journal, published by Israel National News (INN) on 27 October 2010.
Mr. Hammond's response of 28 October 2010 to Dr. Nisan's rebuttal: Rejoinder to 'Is UN Creation of Israel a Myth? Ask Foreign Policy Journal'.

Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst whose articles have been featured in numerous print and online publications around the world. He is the founder and editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com), an online source for news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy. He was a recipient of the 2010 Project Censored Awards for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. Read more articles by Jeremy R. Hammond.

Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst whose articles have been featured in numerous print and online publications around the world. He is the founder and editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com), an online source for news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy. He was a recipient of the 2010 Project Censored Awards for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. Read more articles by Jeremy R. Hammond.

 

[1] The Palestine Mandate of the Council of the League of Nations, July 24, 1922.

[2] Great Britain had contributed to the conflict by making contradictory promises to both Jews and Arabs, including a declaration approved by the British Cabinet that read, "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." This declaration was delivered by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to representative of the Zionist movement Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild in a letter on November 2, 1917, and thus came to be known as "The Balfour Declaration".

[3] Letter from the United Kingdom Delegation to the United Nations to the U.N. Secretary-General, April 2, 1947.

[4] U.N. General Assembly Resolution 106, May 15, 1947.

[5] United Nations Special Committee on Palestine Report to the General Assembly, September 3, 1947.

[6] "Palestine Land Ownership by Sub-Districts (1945)", United Nations, August 1950, http://domino.un.org/maps/m0094.jpg. The map was prepared on the instructions of Sub-Committee 2 of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian question and presented as Map No. 94(b). Statistics were as follows (Arab/Jewish land ownership in percentages): Safad: 68/18; Acre: 87/3; Tiberias: 51/38; Haifa: 42/35; Nazareth: 52/28; Beisan: 44/34; Jenin: 84/1, Tulkarm: 78/17; Nablus: 87/1; Jaffa: 47/39; Ramle: 77/14; Ramallah: 99/less than 1; Jerusalem: 84/2; Gaza: 75/4; Hebron: 96/less than 1; Beersheeba: 15/less than 1.

[7] UNSCOP Report

[8] Walid Khalidi, "Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution", Journal of Palestine Studies XXVII, no. 1 (Autumn 1997), p. 11. Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1992), pp. 23, 98.

[9] Khalidi, p. 11.

[10] UNSCOP Report.

[11] "U.K. Accepts UNSCOP General Recommendations; Will Not Implement Policy Unacceptable by Both Arabs and Jews", Press Release, Ad Hoc Committee on Palestinian Question 2nd Meeting, September 26, 1947.

[12] "The Arab Case Stated by Mr. Jamal Husseini", Press Release, Ad Hoc Committee on Palestinian Question 3rd Meeting, United Nations, September 29, 1947.

[13] "Palestine Committee Hears U.K. Stand and Adjourns; Sub-Committees Meet", Press Release, Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine 24th Meeting, United Nations, November 20, 1947.

[14] "Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question Report of Sub-Committee 2", United Nations, November 11 1947.

[15] United Nations General Assembly 128th Plenary Meeting, United Nations, November 29, 1947.

[16] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, November 29, 1947.

[17] United Nations Security Council 222nd Meeting, December 9, 1947.

[18] "First Special Report to the Security Council: The Problem of Security in Palestine", United Nations Palestine Commission, February 16, 1948.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Draft Resolution on the Palestinian Question Submitted by the Representative of Colombia at the 254th Meeting of the Security Council, February 24, 1948.

[21] U.N. Security Council 253rd Meeting (S/PV.253), February 24, 1948.

[22] Draft Resolution on the Palestinian Question Submitted by the Representative of the United States at the Two Hundred and Fifty Fifth Meeting of the Security Council, February 25, 1948.

[23] United Nations Security Council 260th Meeting, March 2, 1948.

[24] Ibid

[25] United Nations Security Council Resolution 42, March 5, 1948.

[26] U.N. Security Council 271st Meeting, March 19, 1948.

[27] Ibid.

[28] United Nations Security Council 274th Meeting, March 24, 1948.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid.

[31] United Nations Security Council 275th Meeting, March 30, 1948.

[32] United Nations Security Council Resolution 43, April 1, 1948.

[33] United Nations Security Council Resolution 44, April 1, 1948.

[34] United Nations Security Council Resolution 46, April 17, 1948.

[35] United Nations Security Council Resolution 48, April 23, 1948.

[36] The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948.

 

The Bullet and the Elephant Express

 
By Raja Murthy

MUMBAI - While China has begun to earn billions of dollars exporting high-speed bullet train technology to the United States and Europe, the struggle of Indian Railways to manage its financial woes and modernization delays serves as a stark contrast between the operators of the world's two largest railway networks.

Cash-strapped Indian Railways has asked the Indian Finance Ministry for US$8.6 billion in the annual railway budget to be released this month, more than double the allocation of $3.47 billion in the 2010 budget for modernization programs.

Though railway revenues went up by 10.40% for the period 11th to 20th January 2011 - to $570 million from $517 million during the same period in 2010 - unconfirmed insider accounts says Indian Railways faces a $547 million budgetary deficit, with losses of $875 million between April and December 2010, the first nine months of its financial year.

In contrast, China Railways, which will invest $106 billion in railway infrastructure this year, has no money worries, allowing it to expand a high-speed railway network that with a combined length of 7,531 kilometers, is longer than the rest of the world's high-speed networks put together.

China latest fast train, the CRH380A, set a new record on December 3, 2010 by clocking 486.1 kilometers an hour in its Beijing to Shanghai trial. India's fastest trains, the Rajdhani and Shatabdi categories, average about 100 km per hour on their better days.

China's Railway Ministry plans to nearly double the high-speed rail network for its sleek bullet trains to 13,000 kilometers by 2012. In the same year, India hopes only to start basic work on its first high-speed rail track between New Delhi and Mumbai. Indian Railways has commissioned international consultants for pre-feasibility studies.

India might benefit from consulting China Railways for high-speed corridors, but this lack of a neighborly railway partnership only highlights how China and India, both expected to dominate global economy by 2050, have divergent strategies for their vast rail networks, a key to economic growth.

The 157-year old Indian Railways, hauling over 13 million passengers daily and calling itself the "Lifeline of the Nation", is closely linked to the common man, with its heavily subsidized fares; it offers 25% to 75% fare concessions to 50 categories of travelers, from the physically and mentally impaired to patients traveling for medical treatment, war widows, the elderly and students, including those from overseas.

China runs 91,000 km of train tracks, compared with India's 63,327 km, and both the state-owned behemoths are their country's single largest employer. The Indian Railways pay roll has over 1.6 million entries, with an additional 300,000 jobs to be filled in the next six months, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee declared on January 27. China's Ministry of Railways employs nearly 3.2 million people, more than the country's 2.3 million army troops.

In contrast to the flashy, high-speed Chinese train dragon, the slower Indian elephant steadily trudges with a more down-to-earth outlook. The 2011 Railway budget, presented separately to parliament in February ahead of the general budget, is expected to stress enhancing passenger safety, such as improving signaling systems and installing safety-related technology such as anti-collision devices (ACD) and a train protection warning system (TPWS).

China Railways, on the other hand, is being accused of paying more attention to on-rail showboats like the bullet trains, whose tickets cost nearly that of air fares, instead of improving services for the masses.

Such grumbles are reported louder during the just completed week-long Lunar New Year holidays, when around 230 million people have to be transported, the largest annual migration in the world.

Migrant Chinese workers can wait for as much as three days, often braving bitter winter winds and hunger, for train tickets that cost about 400 yuan (US$61), nearly one-third of a blue collar worker's monthly pay.

The stress was too much for migrant worker Chen Weiwei this January, who removed his clothes, except for grey underpants, and ran shouting around Jinhua Railway Station in eastern China's Zhejiang province. He had snapped after waiting third in a queue for 14 hours, only to be told that tickets were "sold out". Later, the station authorities magically changed the "sold out" status and gave Chen five tickets.

In contrast, the equivalent Indian worker need pay only 629 rupees (about $13) for a reserved second-class ticket with a sleeping berth on the Himsagar Express, in its three-night, 3,715-km odyssey between Kanyakumari, in India's southern-most tip, to Jammu city, in India's northern-most Jammu and Kashmir state.

Indian Railways has the world's largest online ticketing service - but insider fraud is often suspected, with tickets in very popular trains sold out almost instantly when reservations opens three months in advance.

For most trains and routes though, India's nationally computerized train booking system ensures that tickets, from anywhere to anywhere within the country, can be bought from thousands of Indian Railways counters nationwide, including in a small one-high-street town like Igatpuri, 150 km from Mumbai.

Internet booking, too, has cut short once daunting queues, saving millions of man-hours. The Centre for Railway Information Systems, created to use the latest information technology, reported 8.8 million online ticket transactions in January 2011, a 75% success rate from 11.7 million transactions attempted.

While Indian Railways benefits from the country's rich software expertise, it continues to import technology, such as coaches from Germany for the fully air-conditioned Rajdhani trains, even though it owns facilities like the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai.

China, in contrast, has done with its railways what it has done in other industrial sectors: import high technology, jiggle it a bit, label it as "advanced Chinese technology" and then export it heavily, undercutting the original foreign technology providers such as Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom.

Not surprisingly, China's largest train maker, CSR, last week said it expected profits in 2010 to have gained more than 50% last year from $254 million in 2009. CSR earned $1.24 billion in overseas sales. CSR is now the world's third-largest high-speed train producer, just behind Bombardier and Alstom.

In December, CSR also signed an agreement with General Electric for a 50-50 joint venture to manufacture high-speed trains in the United States. The $1.4 billion deal is expected to add 2,000 jobs in the US.

China is also competing with Japan, South Korea, France, Germany and Belgium to build a 1,100-kilometer high-speed railway in California, connecting San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego in 150 minutes, at a speed of 350 kph.

The Indian Railways suffers no such international competition anxieties as its Chinese counterpart, but with increasing traffic between the two nations, possibilities of a trans India-China rail network, and a New Delhi-Beijing Friendship Express by year 2025 will not be far-fetched.

Its Asian prosperity that's undermined dysfunctional Arab states

 Food and failed Arab states
By Spengler

Even Islamists have to eat. It is unclear whether President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt will survive, or whether his nationalist regime will be replaced by an Islamist, democratic, or authoritarian state. What is certain is that it will be a failed state. Amid the speculation about the shape of Arab politics to come, a handful of observers, for example economist Nourel Roubini, have pointed to the obvious: Wheat prices have almost doubled in the past year.

Egypt is the world's largest wheat importer, beholden to foreign providers for nearly half its total food consumption. Half of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day. Food comprises almost half the country's consumer price index, and much more than half of spending for the poorer half of the country. This will get worse, not better.

Not the destitute, to be sure, but the aspiring and frustrated young, confronted the riot police and army on the streets of Egyptian cities last week. The uprising in Egypt and Tunisia were not food riots; only in Jordan have demonstrators made food the main issue. Rather, the jump in food prices was the wheat-stalk that broke the camel's back. The regime's weakness, in turn, reflects the dysfunctional character of the country. 35% of all Egyptians, and 45% of Egyptian women can't read.

Nine out of ten Egyptian women suffer genital mutilation. US President Barack Obama said Jan. 29, "The right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny … are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere." Does Obama think that genital mutilation is a human rights violation? To expect Egypt to leap from the intimate violence of traditional society to the full rights of a modern democracy seems whimsical.

In fact, the vast majority of Egyptians has practiced civil disobedience against the Mubarak regime for years. The Mubarak government announced a "complete" ban on genital mutilation in 2007, the second time it has done so - without success, for the Egyptian population ignored the enlightened pronouncements of its government. Do Western liberals cheer at this quiet revolt against Mubarak's authority?

Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt's First Lady, continues to campaign against the practice, which she has denounced as "physical and psychological violence against children." Last May 1, she appeared at Aswan City alongside the provincial governor and other local officials to declare the province free of it. And on October 28, Mrs Mubarak inaugurated an African conference on stopping genital mutilation.

The most authoritative Egyptian Muslim scholars continue to recommend genital mutilation. Writing on the web site IslamOnline, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi - the president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars - explains:

The most moderate opinion and the most likely one to be correct is in favor of practicing circumcision in the moderate Islamic way indicated in some of the Prophet's hadiths - even though such hadiths are not confirmed to be authentic. It is reported that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to a midwife: "Reduce the size of the clitoris but do not exceed the limit, for that is better for her health and is preferred by husbands."

That is not a Muslim view (the practice is rare in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan), but an Egyptian Muslim view. In the most fundamental matters, President and Mrs Mubarak are incomparably more enlightened than the Egyptian public. Three-quarters of acts of genital mutilation in Egypt are executed by physicians.

What does that say about the character of the country's middle class? Only one news dispatch among the tens of thousands occasioned by the uprising mentions the subject; the New York Times, with its inimitable capacity to obscure content, wrote on January 27, "To the extent that Mr. Mubarak has been willing to tolerate reforms, the cable said, it has been in areas not related to public security or stability.

For example, he has given his wife latitude to campaign for women's rights and against practices like female genital mutilation and child labor, which are sanctioned by some conservative Islamic groups." The authors, Mark Landler and Andrew Lehren, do not mention that 90% or more of Egyptian women have been so mutilated. What does a country have to do to shock the New York Times? Eat babies boiled?

Young Tunisians and Egyptians want jobs. But (via Brian Murphy at the Associated Press on January 29) "many people have degrees but they do not have the skill set," Masood Ahmed, director of the Middle East and Asia department of the International Monetary Fund, said earlier this week. "The scarce resource is talent," agreed Omar Alghanim, a prominent Gulf businessman. The employment pool available in the region "is not at all what's needed in the global economy." For more on this see my January 19 essay, Tunisia's lost generation. There are millions of highly-qualified, skilled and enterprising Arabs, but most of them are working in the US or Europe.

Egypt is wallowing in backwardness, not because the Mubarak regime has suppressed the creative energies of the people, but because the people themselves cling to the most oppressive practices of traditional society. And countries can only languish in backwardness so long before some event makes their position untenable.

Wheat prices 101 and Egyptian instability
In this case, Asian demand has priced food staples out of the Arab budget. As prosperous Asians consume more protein, global demand for grain increases sharply (seven pounds of grain produce one pound of beef). Asians are rich enough, moreover, to pay a much higher price for food whenever prices spike due to temporary supply disruptions, as at the moment.

Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians and Yemenis are not. Episodes of privation and even hunger will become more common. The miserable economic performance of all the Arab states, chronicled in the United Nations' Arab Development Reports, has left a large number of Arabs so far behind that they cannot buffer their budget against food price fluctuations.

Earlier this year, after drought prompted Russia to ban wheat exports, Egypt's agriculture minister pledged to raise food production over the next ten years to 75% of consumption, against only 56% in 2009. Local yields are only 18 bushels per acre, compared to 30 to 60 for non-irrigated wheat in the United States, and up 100 bushels for irrigated land.

The trouble isn't long-term food price inflation: wheat has long been one of the world's bargains. The International Monetary Fund's global consumer price index quadrupled in between 1980 and 2010, while the price of wheat, even after the price spike of 2010, only doubled in price. What hurts the poorest countries, though, isn't the long-term price trend, though, but the volatility.

People have drowned in rivers with an average depth of two feet. It turns out that China, not the United States or Israel, presents an existential threat to the Arab world, and through no fault of its own: rising incomes have gentrified the Asian diet, and - more importantly - insulated Asian budgets from food price fluctuations. Economists call this "price elasticity." Americans, for example, will buy the same amount of milk even if the price doubles, although they will stop buying fast food if hamburger prices double. Asians now are wealthy enough to buy all the grain they want.

If wheat output falls, for example, due to drought in Russia and Argentina, prices rise until demand falls. The difference today is that Asian demand for grain will not fall, because Asians are richer than they used to be. Someone has to consume less, and it will be the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, in this case the poorer Arabs.



That is why the volatility of the wheat price (the rolling standard deviation of percentage changes in the price over twelve months) has trended up from about 5% during the 1980s and 1990s to about 15% today. This means that there is a roughly two-thirds likelihood that the monthly change in the wheat price will be less than 15%.

It also means that every so often the wheat price is likely to go through the ceiling, as it did during the past 12 months. To make life intolerable for the Arab poor, the price of wheat does not have to remain high indefinitely; it only has to trade out of their reach once every few years.

And that is precisely what has happened during the past few years:



After 30 years of stability, the price of wheat has had two spikes into the $9 per bushel range at which very poor people begin to go hungry. The problem isn't production. Wheat production has risen steadily - very steadily in fact - and the volatility of global supply has been muted:



The line in Chart 3 above marked "production volatility" is the five-year standard deviation of annual percentage changes in world wheat supply (data from US Department of Agriculture). During the 1960s and 1970s, it hovered around the 3% to 5% range, but fell to the 1% to 3% range.

It shows an approximately two-thirds likelihood that world wheat supply will change by less than 3% each year. Wheat supply dropped by only 2.4% between 2009 and 2010 - and the wheat price doubled. That's because affluent Asians don't care what they pay for grain. Prices depend on what the last (or "marginal") purchaser is willing to pay for an item (what was the price of the last ticket on the last train out of Paris when the Germans marched on June 14, 1940?). Don't blame global warming, unstable weather patterns: wheat supply has been fairly reliable. The problem lies in demand.

Officially, Egypt's unemployment rate is slightly above 9%, the same as America's, but independent studies say that a quarter of men and three-fifths of women are jobless. According to a BBC report, 700,000 university graduates chase 200,000 available jobs.

A number of economists anticipated the crisis. Reinhard Cluse of Union bank of Switzerland told the Financial Times last August:

"Significant hikes in the global price of wheat would present the government with a difficult dilemma.

Do they want to pass on price rises to end consumers, which would reduce Egyptians' purchasing power and might lead to social discontent?

Or do they keep their regulation of prices tight and end up paying higher subsidies for food? In which case the problem would not go away but end up in the government budget.

Egypt's public debt is already high, at roughly 74% of gross domestic produce (GDP), according to UBS. Earlier this year the IMF projected that Egypt's food subsidies would cost the equivalent of 1.1% of GDP in 2009-10, while subsidies for energy were expected to add up to 5.1%.
...
Tensions over food have led to violence in bread queues before and it wouldn't take much of a price rise for the squeeze on many consumers to become unbearably tight."

One parameter to watch closely is the Egyptian pound. Insurance against Egyptian default was the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) +3.3% a week ago; on Friday, it stood at Libor + 4.54%. That's not a crisis level, but if banks start reducing exposure, things could get bad fast. In 2009 Egyptian imports were $55 billion against only $29 billion of exports; tourism (about $15 billion in net income) and remittances from Egyptian workers (about $8 billion) and other services brought the current account into balance. Scratch the tourism, and you have a big deficit.

Egypt has $35 billion of central bank reserves, adequate under normal conditions, but thin insulation against capital flight. Foreigners hold $25 billion of Egypt's short-term Treasury bills, for example. It would not take long for a run on the currency to materialize - and if the currency devalues, food and fuel become all the more expensive. A vicious cycle may ensue.

Under the title The Failed Muslim States to Come (Asia Times Online December 16, 2008), I argued that the global financial crisis then at its peak would destabilize the most populous Muslim countries:

Financial crises, like epidemics, kill the unhealthy first. The present crisis is painful for most of the world but deadly for many Muslim countries, and especially so for the most populous ones. Policy makers have not begun to assess the damage. The diplomatic strategy of the industrial nations now resembles a James Clavell potboiler, in which an earthquake interrupts a hopelessly immured plot. Moderate Islam was the El Dorado of the diplomatic consensus.

It might have been the case that Pakistan could be tethered to Western interests, or that Iran could be engaged peacefully, or that Turkey would incubate a moderate form of Islam. I considered all of this delusional, but the truth is that we shall never know. The financial crisis will sort them out first.

I was wrong. It wasn't the financial crisis that undermined dysfunctional Arab states, but Asian prosperity. The Arab poor have been priced out of world markets. There is no solution to Egypt's problems within the horizon of popular expectations. Whether the regime survives or a new one replaces it, the outcome will be a disaster of, well, biblical proportions.

The best thing the United States could do at the moment would be to offer massive emergency food aid to Egypt out of its own stocks, with the understanding that President Mubarak would offer effusive public thanks for American generosity. This is a stopgap, to be sure, but it would pre-empt the likely alternative. Otherwise, the Muslim Brotherhood will preach Islamist socialism to a hungry audience. That also explains why Mubarak just might survive. Even Islamists have to eat. The Iranian Islamists who took power in 1979 had oil wells; Egypt just has hungry mouths. Enlightened despotism based on the army, the one stable institution Egypt possesses, might not be the worst solution.

Those at the nucleus may not have the best view

 

By John Kay
Published: February 1 2011 23:06 | Last updated: February 1 2011 23:06

This year we celebrate the centenary of the discovery by Ernest Rutherford of the nucleus of the atom. Rutherford's work would lead directly to the atomic bomb, nuclear energy and many other events of political and economic, as well as scientific, significance.
Rutherford was professor of physics at Manchester University, and he presented his findings in 1911 to a meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. The audience consisted mainly of local business people. The announcement of one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century was preceded by a session in which a Manchester fruit importer exhibited a rare snake he had discovered in a consignment of bananas.
Modern physics is difficult but any good physicist will be pleased to try to explain it. The gift of exposition is not necessarily aligned with intellectual distinction: as a student, I was disappointed to find that the most distinguished of my lecturers, the economist Sir John Hicks, had never mastered how to hold the attention of a class. But clarity of thought and clarity of expression tend to go together. The best textbooks are often written by the best researchers: Richard Feynman could not only do physics brilliantly but also brought it alive with words.
So when someone tells you something is too complex for you to understand, the usual reason is that they do not really understand it themselves. Sometimes they know that they do not really understand it: often they do not.
For the inquisitive intellectual, few people are as irritating as those whose combination of ignorance and arrogance is so profound that they claim to understand things they do not even know they do not know.
The world of business and finance, which values confidence and certainty, is full of such people. "It isn't really like that," they will say; and when you ask what it is really like, they will tell you it is too complicated for you to apprehend. What they really mean, but do not recognise, is that it is too complicated for them to apprehend.
The bad financier, or businessman, like the bad scientist, pursues complexity almost wilfully because he believes such complexity demonstrates his knowledge and sophistication. So the blind lead the blind through the mysteries of structured financial products and the jargon-ridden thickets of corporate strategy. People sell securities whose properties they only dimly appreciate to people who do not understand them at all. Consultants describe the business world in language – and, of course, PowerPoint presentations – whose elaboration disguises the banality of the thought.
Real understanding lies in finding simplifications that bring order to disparate facts. Such was the nature of Rutherford's discovery and of his understanding; and why he felt able to reveal his findings to the Manchester Library and Philosophical Society. But Rutherford's task was easier in one important sense: the world he laboured to make sense of was unchanging and unaffected by our understanding, if not necessarily our observation, of it. The same is not true of business and finance.
Some patterns become apparent only with hindsight. David Hackett Fischer wrote of "the historian's fallacy" – the explanation of the behaviour of participants in the light of later knowledge. Perhaps Henry Ford and Bill Gates were the men who really understood the automobile and computer industries, or perhaps they were just the people whose opinions turned out to be right, which is not the same at all.
People in the middle of events often know less about them than those watching from the outside, which is why interviews with senior business figures inform us about what these people think rather than what is happening. The panels of grandees at Davos who pronounce on the future of the world may know less about the subject than spectators on the lower slopes. After all, it was the observer Rutherford, not the nucleus itself, who told those Manchester businessmen what the atom was really like.

After the Chinese Mother, another instance of Americans spooked by the Chinese

 Nation of 'wusses' gets wake-up call
By Benjamin A Shobert

In the midst of a particularly cold, unusually blustery winter blizzard, Governor Ed Rendell (Democrat-Pennsylvania) decided to make a particularly interesting, unusually candid comment on local radio.

Obviously frustrated at the National Football League's decision to cancel a Philadelphia Eagles game due to weather, Rendell suggested this was part of America becoming a "nation of wusses". The reaction to this momentary lapse of honesty on the part of a modern politician was immediate and appeared to be the sort one remembers from sibling "you just crossed my side of the bedroom" fights, full of symbolism and short on substance.

Rendell's comments resonated with the American public in part because Rendell's stream of consciousness ably connected a canceled national football game to a shortage of national fortitude, and to why those pesky Chinese are beating the US at a game it invented - national economics.

One need not rely on inference to make the connection as the governor made the job fairly easy: "My biggest beef is that this is part of what's happened in this country. I think we've become wussies. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down."

While Rendell might pay a price come next election for this sort of atypical truth telling from a national political figure, his comments expressed in raw form what many Americans are beginning to wonder themselves: Are we in economic trouble partially because we've gone soft?

Asked more directly, the governor's assertion suggests that our economic doldrums are less because of other countries' comparative advantages through lower labor costs and rather because our global competitors work harder for longer, anticipate more setbacks and absorb more sacrifice than we are willing to accept in the US. Calling Americans "wusses" may be playground talk, but it has struck a nerve.

On more occasions that most of us would like to admit, Americans have sheepishly exited the bathroom having stood one moment too long at the faucet, waiting and wondering at why the water has not been triggered by the sensor only to realize that it is an "old-fashioned" manual sink, or sporting a bruised nose (and ego to match) at having walked into what one assumed was an automatically opening door.

True enough then Rendell: American living standards are hardly Spartan, and for most of the people, what constitutes struggle and sacrifice would be unrecognizable as such to Depression-era grandparents. It has only now begun to dawn on America and its leaders that the role of sacrifice, specifically the sort required to renew society, is poorly understood and even more poorly embraced.

This realization isn't where we started. In the 1990s, Americans believed economic gains from the country's innovation engine would outstrip economic losses, so much so that we comfortably unleashed a great good on the world - the wonders of free and unfettered trade - with little expectation that the swap might not be quite that simple.

But for most of the 1990s, the costs of this transaction went overlooked as cheap credit made Americans feel their standard of living was increasing when, in fact, they were barely treading water. Now overwhelmed by the consequences of this exchange, we are acutely aware that we spent too much of the 1990s focused on using that credit for consumption instead of investment. And, to Rendell's point, money spent on consumption rarely hardens the soul or stiffens the spine.

This is perhaps why his hasty comment, said tongue-in-cheek but remarkable for its clarity, interjected itself so quickly into America's consciousness. Americans are beginning to come to grips with the idea that maybe our current struggle is more our own fault than we were willing to admit in the aftermath of 2008.

The villains of Beijing and Wall Street will always provide convenient fodder for those who want to be distracted, but Rendell's comments force an admittedly unpopular gaze inwards. His comments harbor a deeper truth, an acknowledgement that American politics - more than any canceled football game - reflect a national wussiness, a marked inability and unwillingness to make the difficult choices necessary to maintain a fiscally responsible government, capable of executing meaningful economic-development initiatives through bipartisan leadership.

Rendell's criticism of American culture isn't necessarily unique to the US. Voices within Japan have been asking similar questions since Japan's economic climax over two decades ago, wondering aloud if the country's struggles are due in part to a generation that does not understand the sort of work ethic and single-minded focus on achievement that staying on top demands. And, frankly, within America's own story, this sort of criticism isn't unique either: in the midst of the Roaring Twenties, themes of decadence and decay are woven throughout the American novels of William Faulkner, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

Perhaps becoming a nation of wusses is an inevitable, if regrettable, stage for countries that experience unparalleled success. Already, the lauded Chinese are seeing a different sense of shared sacrifice reveal itself within its youth, marked by the current generation's fixation on material possessions above a sense of community or social sacrifice.

Some China-watchers believe the slightly more heavy hand of President Hu Jintao's regime is the result of these very fears among old-timers within the Communist Party. It may well be that regardless of which country this transition presents itself in, the stage marks a very real inflection point where society must choose between descending into a further morass of materialism, or calling once again for the sort of dedication and striving that marked earlier success.

For Americans, Rendell's comments may be a necessary wake-up call, the sort of gut check that harkens back to an era where coaches could yell at their players, daring to risk emotional damage through their heavy-handed use of negative reinforcement, but always with an eye towards improving the players' - and the team's - performance.

The reality, which may strike some as harsh, is that as bad as today's economy feels, and as real the pain many Americans feel today, those who came through the Great Depression had it much worse.

Our ideas of what pain and sacrifice mean today are nowhere near the sorts of deprivation and scrap for survival that our grandparents knew. We may not be a nation of wusses, but we do need a reminder that to keep what we have is going to take a lot more dedication, effort, and hard choices from our elected leaders than the false promises of the 1990s held out.

Benjamin A Shobert is the managing director of Teleos Inc (www.teleos-inc.com), a consulting firm dedicated to helping Asian businesses bring innovative technologies into the North American market.