Hamas’s triumph in Wednesday’s Palestinian elections is the best news from the Middle East for a long time. The poll was a more impressive display of democracy than any other in the region, outstripping last year’s votes in Lebanon and Iraq both in turnout and the range of views that candidates represented.
Whereas in Iraq parties that opposed the occupation had to downplay or even obscure their views, Palestinian supporters of armed resistance to Israel’s expansionist strategies were able to run openly. It is true that Hamas candidates did not make relations with Israel the centrepiece of their campaign. They focused on reform in the Palestinian Authority. But few voters were unaware of Hamas’s uncompromising hostility to occupation and its record in fighting it.

Wednesday’s election was remarkable also in owing nothing to Washington’s (selective) efforts to promote democracy in the Arab world. Instead, it was further proof that civil society in Palestine is more vibrant than anywhere else in the region and that Palestinian politics has its own dynamics, dictated not by outside pressure but the social and economic demands of ordinary people in appalling conditions. Providing a forum to freely express hopes and fears, debate policy and seek agreed solutions is, after all, what democracy is about.

In Israel and Washington reaction to Hamas’s victory has been predictably negative. European governments should take a more sensitive view. The first watchword is caution. Applaud the process but don’t take issue with the result. While the dust settles and Hamas works out its own priorities for government, Europeans should calmly analyse why Hamas got so much support.
guardian.co.uk

Bush Defends His Goal of Spreading Democracy to the Mideast
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — The sweeping victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections threw President Bush and his aides on the defensive on Thursday, complicating the administration’s policy of trying to promote democracy as an antidote to the spread of terrorism.

Reacting uneasily to the Hamas triumph, Mr. Bush said the results spoke to the failures of President Mahmoud Abbas and the “old guard” of his Fatah faction to root out corruption and mismanagement, not to any flaws in the administration’s policy of advocating democracy.

ha. They set up a bogus US/Isreali puppet government and then made the fatal error of allowing the Palestinian people to vote, and now they have to backpedal on this democratic fiction they’ve been trying to foist on the region.

After Hamas Victory, Israel’s Likely Course
JERUSALEM, Jan. 26 — The Hamas landslide in Palestinian elections has stunned Israelis, but it may also have brought them a rare moment of clarity: with peace talks off the table, Israel will most likely pursue unilateral actions, drawing its own borders and separating itself from the Palestinians.

Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister, made it clear after an emergency cabinet meeting that talks with Hamas, a Palestinian party sworn to Israel’s destruction, were out of the question, while experts said Israel was now freer to establish its future on its own.

This is not one bit different from what Israel has always been doing, except that it doesn’t have its bogus ‘Palestinian Authority’ to be ‘negotiating’ with.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 26 — A magazine article calling on nations to boycott Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians has provoked a tempest at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting here, prompting the organizers to pull the magazines from the forum’s shelves here and issue an apology.

The article, which appeared in Global Agenda, a magazine published by the forum and distributed to participants, carried the headline “Boycott Israel.” The author, Mazin Qumsiyeh, equated Israel’s policies toward Palestinians with apartheid and said that countries should withdraw their investments and boycott Israel.

After a member raised questions about the article, the organizers removed the magazines from shelves at the conference center in this Alpine resort. The forum’s executive director, Klaus Schwab, said the article should not have been published and had slipped through the editing process.
nytimes.com

aw too bad. How dare they try to harsh the mellow of this politico-Euro-trash feelgood fest? Shame. It’s ok though, they have their police-state tactics to fall back on.

Merkel Makes Waves at Davos
In astonishingly short time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged as the most dynamic leader in Europe. That at least seemed to be the verdict of the applause meter at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 25. “You have given us hope for the first time in a long time,” Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman and chief executive of Swiss food giant Nestle (nsrgy.pk.PK), told Merkel after she delivered the keynote address to a packed auditorium.

Merkel called for a massive reduction in bureaucracy in both Europe and Germany, and an increase in the retirement age, among other measures. “We have to be more flexible. We’re holding back enormous potential,” she said.

SHOW OF STATESMANSHIP. Merkel’s Davos performance was only the latest in a series of coups for the Chancellor. Since she was chosen in November to lead a coalition government of her Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats, Merkel has repaired relations with the U.S., strained by the Iraq war. She also has displayed a new toughness toward Russia by visiting human-rights groups during a trip in January to see Russian President Vladimir Putin.

These and other shows of statesmanship have made her Germany’s most popular leader in years, banishing memories of last year’s national election campaign, when she squandered a commanding lead to barely achieve a plurality against the Social Democrats. Immediately after her speech, Merkel showed she’s comfortable in the world of business as well as politics, bantering on stage with members of a panel that included Michael Dell, chairman of computer retailer Dell (NasdaqNM:DELL – News), and Henry McKinnell, chairman and CEO of drugmaker Pfizer (NYSE:PFE – News). Dell advised Merkel to cut jobless benefits to remove the incentive not to work. “Good advice,” replied Merkel in English.

Merkel delivered the rest of her remarks in German, even though she speaks English well — a sign she was aiming at a domestic audience and setting the tone for policy moves to come. In a Continent dominated by the likes of such battle-scarred political warhorses as France’s Jacques Chirac and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Merkel is a badly needed fresh face. It’s not just image. As the chancellor reminded her listeners, she grew up in Communist East Germany and has no emotional stake in the social-welfare state that holds down economic growth.

She’s gonna fit right in…

From Chennai with Love: Chennai Hosts 3rd Asia Pacific Regional Cuba Solidarity Conference
…Chennai’s link with Cuba is not new. On June 12, 1960, C. M. Annadurai, a legendary leader of the Dravidian movement, wrote to his cadres of America’s atom bomb and its ability to “destroy the whole world.” Meanwhile, Cuba has none of these arms, and yet because of the wide support to the Revolution, “if America attacks not even a nail will remain in the US after the attack.” It is this tradition that provoked the Dravidian movement’s M. Karunanidhi to write an ode to Castro, which he read out at the Solidarity Conference’s last day. Cuba is a honeycomb, Tamil Nadu’s senior mass leader exclaimed, for “whenever America touches it in an unguarded moment, the people of Cuba, like honey bees, will sting.” This was all good rhetoric, even as it typically came without a program of action toward solidarity. (Contrast this political situation with that of the US, where even within the Left there is an allergic reaction against Cuba, and a hasty attempt to appear “reasonable” by making all sorts of anti-Cuban gestures. The record on this is nicely laid out by the Harvard scientist Richard Levins in “Progressive Cuba Bashing,” Socialism and Democracy, vol. 19, no. 1, March 2005).

With Caracas hosting the annual World Social Forum and Washington pondering the pronounced regional tilt to the left, it may be time for a clear-eyed look at the most radical protagonist of that leftward tilt, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. There is no easy characterization of Chávez, but it is clear that he has become one of Latin America’s most astute, self-confident and, for now, influential political leaders, intent on changing the Hemispheric balance of power, significantly improving the lot of the region’s poor majority, and happily—at times with a twinkle in his eye —engendering hopes and fears from South America to Washington and beyond.

Chávez’s recent trip to Brazil demonstrates his political savvy. This past Jan. 19, at his initiative, he and his Argentine and Brazilian counterparts, Néstor Kirchner and Lula da Silva, met in Brasilia to discuss the construction of a 4,500-mile South American pipeline that would carry Venezuela’s natural gas to the region’s Southern Cone.

The project is emblematic of Chávez’s recent initiatives in two ways: It represents a drive toward greater Latin American economic integration and independence, and a faith in public investment as a means to stimulate regional growth and development. Both these elements of Chavista policy—regional integration and public investment—if successful, will redistribute global income to poorer countries and poorer people, reversing more than two decades of widening income inequality throughout the Americas.
tompaine.com

…Progressives reliance on identity politics is in sharp contrast with the historical materialist approach adopted by right wing political regimes and the big business press, which focus on her [Bachelet’s] political practice over the past 15 years, her role as a Cabinet minister (Health and Defense Minister) and her unconditional adherence to neo-liberal free market policies and US regional military doctrine.

To understand the meaning of Bachelet’s election and why the Bush regime is ecstatic one must delve briefly into the background of the so-called “Left-center” regimes, which have governed Chile over the past 16 years.
counterpunch.org

In a June 2005 Jamaica Observer column about the significance of the Haitian revolution, John Maxwell wrote, “the slaves of Saint Dominique, the world’s richest colony, rose up, abolished slavery and chased the slavemasters away.” Maxwell, one of the more astute journalists covering US foreign policy, added, “Unfortunately for them, they did not chase all of the slavemasters away, and out of the spawn of those arose in Haiti a small group of rich, light-skinned people – the elites, whose interests have fitted perfectly into the interests of the racists in the United States. Between them, last year, on the second centenary of the abolition of slavery and the Independence of Haiti, those interests engineered the re-inslavement of Haiti, kidnapping and expelling the president and installing in his place a gang of murderous thugs, killers, rapists and con-men.”

Vehement opponents of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas party, the Bush Administration helped orchestrate the February 2004 coup which ousted the democratically-elected government of Haiti. Among other pro-poor social programs, the Aristide/Lavalas government’s doubling of the minimum wage was anathema to Washington’s “free trade” corporate agenda.
pambazuka.org

Whenever I travel to international gatherings to talk about the war in Iraq, economic development and women’s rights, the question I get asked most frequently is: “Where are the women in the United States? Why aren’t they rising up?”

I hear it from women in Africa, who have lost funding for their health clinics because of the Bush Administration’s ban on even talking about abortion; from Iraqi women, who are suffering the double oppression of occupation and rising fundamentalism; from European women, who wonder how we can tolerate the crumbling of our meager social services; and from Latina women opposed to unresponsive governments that represent a tiny elite.

The question is variously posed with anger, contempt, curiosity or sympathy. But always, there is a sense of disappointment. What happened to the proud suffragettes who chained themselves to the White House fence for the right to vote? What happened to the garment workers, whose struggles for decent working conditions inspired the first International Women’s Day in 1910? What about those who emulated Rosa Parks, risking their lives or livelihoods to confront the evils of racism? Given their tradition of activism, why aren’t American women today rising up against a government that dragged them into war with lies, that spies on their peaceful activities and diverts money from their children’s schools or their mothers’ nursing homes to pay for an immoral war?
commondreams.org

WASHINGTON – January 26 – While Americans suffered through hurricanes Katrina and Rita and sky-high spikes in oil prices this year, ExxonMobil netted the largest profit in the history of corporate America. On Monday, the world’s largest oil company is expected to announce a record-breaking annual profit of roughly $32 billion for 2005.

As the company prepares its announcement, the environmental problems caused by the company are lampooned in a new animated cartoon to be released on Monday by the ExxposeExxon.com Coalition. The funny one-minute FLASH cartoon, “Toast the Earth” mocks the company for spending its record profits on backwards energy policies while sabotaging efforts to slow global warming and shortchanging communities affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

ExxonMobil is the only major oil company that is still a member of Arctic Power, the special interest group that lobbies Congress in support of drilling in the Arctic Refuge, and funds organizations working to confuse the public about the broad scientific consensus on the causes of and solutions to global warming.
commondreams.org

…the Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, together with Lords Justices Chadwick and Laws, all dismissed the newspaper’s argument that the 2003 story that the MP received money from Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was covered by qualified privilege.

The judges also agreed that the £150,000 damages awarded to the MP by High Court judge Mr Justice Eady in December 2004 should not be reduced.

“Given the seriousness of the key allegation Mr Galloway had taken money from Iraq for personal profit, we can see no basis upon which this court could interfere with the amount of damages.”
independent.co.uk

In less than a year, India and China have managed to confound analysts around the world by turning their much-vaunted rivalry for the acquisition of oil and gas assets in third countries into a nascent partnership that could alter the basic dynamics of the global energy market.

At stake is not just the issue of joint acquisition, although the most important of the agreements signed in Beijing on January 12 during the visit of Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar envisages ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) and the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) placing joint bids for promising projects elsewhere. Rather, the prospects for Sino-Indian cooperation across the length of the hydrocarbon chain could pave the way for the creation of an Asian energy market and architecture — an Asian axis of oil – with major geopolitical consequences for the United States.

…Linked to an Asian oil market is the billion euro question of non-dollar denominated energy trade. Asian countries collectively hold more than two trillion dollars worth of foreign reserves, the overwhelming share of which is in dollar-denominated instruments. Prudential norms suggest the diversification of the Asian reserve portfolio is overdue. In China, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE has signalled its intention to explore the more “efficient use” of the country’s forex reserves and in India, commentators like S. Venkitramanan have suggested the RBI start thinking along similar lines.

One way to sustain this shift would be to consider yen or euro-based trading in energy. The economic dynamism of Asia for the foreseeable future suggests what is needed is a strategic rather than tactical change in the composition of reserves. The huge and unsustainable deficits being run by the U.S. are undermining the “oil standard” that has been central to the hegemony of both the dollar and Washington for more than three decades. Relying on the dollar for energy trade will hurt Asia’s producers and consumers alike in the long run. An Asian oil market trading in European euros. Now surely that’s a good recipe for a multipolar world.
zmag.org

A week after scrambling to handle a discharge of tonnes of poisonous metals into a local river on which millions rely for drinking water, Jiang Yimin, the chief of the environment protection bureau in Hunan, south-central China, was adamant. Further spillages would be prevented, he vowed to visitors.

In Mr Jiang’s sights were 50 to 60 small factories producing indium, a metallic element used in the manufacture of semi-conductors and liquid-crystal display screens, near the Xiang river, about an hour by road from the provincial capital, Changsha. “I am signing the order to close them today!” he declared.
ft.com