Beijing must be very desperate for oil if abductions and killings of Chinese workers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, and so on haven't given them any second thoughts at all about its African venture and it is wiling to get into even Somalia*** (cf. Edward Cody, "China's Expansion Puts Workers in Harm's Way: Attack on Ethiopian Oil Field Highlights Political Perils of Pursuing Resources Abroad," Washington Post, 26 April 2007, A24, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/25/AR2007042500736.html>).
Where are secular anti-imperialists? Only the Cubans and Venezuelans, (and Maoists in Nepal, India, the Philippines, and so forth), and they, their nations not being major military powers, have only megaphones to use on the international stage.
Where is practical opposition to the multinational empire? Only Islamists, whose revolutionary doctrine and practice, like "[t]he revolutionary literature that accompanied . . . first movements of the proletariat," have "necessarily a reactionary character" and often inculcate "universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form" (<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm#c>) .
Social liberals cannot tolerate such leveling and asceticism. To them proletarian Muslims attracted to Islamists are merely a horde of invaders who come to occupy _their_ city:
En mi vida ha habido dos acontecimientos principales:
en primer lugar, la ocupación de mi país en 1941 por
parte de las fuerzas aliadas, durante la Segunda
Guerra Mundial. Yo tenía seis o siete años, y lo
recuerdo todo muy bien. Y mucho más tarde, casi
cuarenta años después, ya maduro, viví otra ocupación,
aunque más bien se trataba de una invasión desde
adentro: la horda furiosa de los desheredados que se
apoderaron de la ciudad y ocuparon todos los rincones,
eliminando todo lo que osara oponerles resistencia, de
manera que los antiguos habitantes tuvieron que
"emigrar" adentro de sus casas y convertirse en
exiliados endógenos. En realidad, la primera ocupación
fue menos larga y menos importante para nosotros,
porque, en primer lugar, nos abría nuevos horizontres
hacia un mundo desconocido, y en segundo lugar
porque, aparte de los soviéticos que crearon un estado
títere en el Azerbaiyán, los otros ocupantes se fueron
en el momento oportuno.
(Daryush Shayegan, "¿Es Teherán una ciudad
emblemática?" Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de
Barcelona, Conferencia pronunciada en francés,
en el marco del ciclo "Alta tensión en Teherán",
marzo de 2006, Traducción de Juan Puig, <http://www.letraslibres.com/index.php?art=12060>)
In English:
In my life there have been two main events: first, the
occupation of my country in 1941 by the Allied forces,
during World War II. I was six or seven years old,
and I remember everything very well. And, much later,
almost forty years afterwards, already an adult, I lived
another occupation, although this one was rather an
invasion from inside: a furious horde of disinherited
who seized the city and occupied all the corners,
eliminating all who dared to resist them, so that the
city's old inhabitants had to "emigrate" inside their
houses and become internal exiles. In fact, the first
occupation was less long and less important for us,
because, firstly, it opened for us new horizons towards
an unknown world, and, secondly, because, aside from
the Soviets who created a puppet state in Azerbaijan,
the other occupiers departed at the opportune moment.
* <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/US_renting_Pak_army_for__100_million_a_month/articleshow/2202810.cms> US renting Pak army for $ 100 million a month 14 Jul 2007, 0340 hrs IST,CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA,TNN
WASHINGTON: The United States is paying around $ 100 million a month for the deployment of 80,000 Pakistani troops on its border with Afghanistan ostensibly for the war on terrorism, a key US official revealed on Thursday.
The money is meant to be "reimbursements" to Pakistan "for stationing troops and moving them around, and gasoline, and bullets, and training and other costs that they incur as part of the war on terror," US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, told a Congressional panel.
"That's a lot of money," Boucher admitted before the panel about what amounts to a $ 1.2 billion per year reimbursement. "I don't know if it comes to the whole amount of their expenses, but we support their expenses, yes."
In all, US aid to Pakistan is now close to $ 2 billion a year, according to figures provided by Boucher, the top U S diplomat for South Asia.
Besides, the $ 1.2 billion reimbursements, Washington also gave Pakistan an addition $ 738 million in 2006 in assistance programs, including $ 300 million in separate military aid.
The overall figure would put Pakistan on par with Israel and Egypt -- with a higher component ($ 1.5 billion) in overall military assistance -- as the top three recipients of US aid.
** <http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=23592> Editorial: The public renouncements of Hamas affiliation must end Date: 03 / 07 / 2007 Time: 17:26
<http://www.maannews.net/cache/200X150/28292_200X150.jpg> Nasser Al-Lahham (MaanImages)
Bethlehem - Ma'an - Editor in Chief Nasser Al Lahham - Six days after Hamas' attack on Palestinian Authority departments, one Hamas nominee for a local council in the West Bank announced that he is no longer a member of Hamas, saying that his declaration was due to what Hamas did in the Gaza Strip.
The London-based newspaper 'Al Hayat' announced: "Mahmoud Lutfi Nayef from Tayba village in the Jenin area has announced that he has taken a decision, by his own volition, and that nobody forced him to do so." The paper added that Nayef declared his "full support to Abbas" and he also urged "all those with a living conscience to declare their legitimate and sharia [Islamic jurisprudence] position regarding the incidents in the strip."
In another incident, Abdullah Salih Issa, from Anin village, another village in the Jenin district, very close to Tayba, also declared in a paid announcement in the 'Al Hayat Al Jadida' Palestinian newspaper said that he had been a member of the Islamic bloc when he was a student at the Arab American University in Jenin but now he had renounced his affiliation to Hamas "because of his beliefs." He also declared his condemnation of the events in the Gaza Strip and everything that Hamas did there.
In fact, Palestine has never witnessed such incidents before, in which factional loyalists backstab their factions in such a way. If there were Palestinians who regretted their factional membership, they left peacefully and continued their normal life. The Palestinian affiliation to any faction has always been assumed willingly rather than compulsorily and nobody in the world could force a Palestinian to join a faction which he does not want to join.
In the sixties or seventies, people were forced by some regimes to make such declarations renouncing their party affiliation. This used to be one of the conditions to gain freedom from jail and from future persecution by the intelligence services in such countries. Such a thing was embarrassing to the person and to their faction; some political parties, especially left-wing parties, used to threaten their members against making such declarations.
Many patriots have consequently spent long years in jail refusing to make such declarations, even though they could have left jail just by making one such declaration.
I have noticed that the papers allow such trends and they publish such announcements, but I am calling on these papers to review this policy as these announcements are humiliating. What is requested from the information minister is to intervene and stop such acts, even though the commercial departments of the newspapers will blame us.
*** <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/20a8a430-3167-11dc-891f-0000779fd2ac.html> Somalia oil deal for China
By Barney Jopson in Nairobi
Published: July 13 2007 22:02 | Last updated: July 13 2007 22:02
The Chinese state oil giant, CNOOC, has won permission to search for oil in part of Somalia, underlining China's willingness to brave Africa's most volatile regions in its hunt for natural resources.
Somalia has been a no-go area for US oil companies since it descended into anarchy in the early 1990s. This year the capital, Mogadishu, has seen its worst violence in 16 years as insurgents seek to topple a fragile interim government.
But CNOOC has not been deterred and last month met Somali government officials in a Nairobi hotel to hammer out the details of its planned survey work, which is due to begin in September.
Chinese state-owned companies have become a heavyweight presence in Africa as the country seeks to secure resources for its booming economy as well as market access for its own goods and services.
CNOOC, China's largest offshore oil and gas producer, has been at the vanguard of the drive: it constructed oil pipelines in southern Sudan in the late 1990s even as a civil war raged between separatist rebels and the Islamist regime in Khartoum.
The Chinese company's deal with Somalia's transitional federal government gives it exploration rights in the north Mudug region, some 500km north-east of the capital.
CNOOC and a smaller group, China International Oil and Gas (CIOG), signed a production-sharing contract with the interim government in May 2006. The contract, which gives the government 51 per cent of oil revenues, was endorsed at last November's China-Africa summit in Beijing.
At a meeting in Nairobi on June 24 – a record of which has been seen by the Financial Times – parts of the agreement were clarified by Abdullahi Yusuf Mohamad, the Somali energy minister, Chen Zhuobiao, managing director of CNOOC Africa, and Judah Jay, managing director of CIOG.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, Somalia has no proved oil reserves and only 200bn cubic feet of proved natural gas reserves, which have not been tapped.
In the late 1980s exploration concessions were held by companies including Conoco and Phillips, which have since merged; Amoco, now part of BP; and Chevron. They fled the country after dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown during civil war in 1991.
The data collected by oil companies has formed the basis of interest in Somalia today. Range Resources, an oil group listed in Sydney, estimates that the Puntland province – which includes the Mudug region – has the potential to yield 5bn-10bn barrels of oil.
Puntland is semi-autonomous and relatively stable compared with Mogadishu, where insurgents are launching near-daily assaults on the government and its Ethiopian military backers.
A reconciliation conference due to open on Sunday is expected to attract still more attacks.
The government is preparing a new national oil law even though its authority across the country is limited. Its decision to grant CNOOC exploration rights in Puntland could spark a dispute with the local authorities, which have given Range Resources exploration rights elsewhere in the province.
A western diplomat who follows Somalia from Nairobi cautioned that he had seen copies of three similar deals signed by the interim government in the past two years. "If there is ever enough peace and stability to allow oil to be extracted, there'll be a huge [argument over the agreements] down the line," he said.
-- Yoshie
