A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Get moving, exploiters; disaster capitalism already running in Libya

Posted: 21 Oct 2011

A country is in ruins. Months of war.

Not to worry, business opportunities abound. Let a thousand disaster capitalist flowers bloom.

Libya, you are about to be mauled:

The starting pistol for British firms to pursue contracts in Libya has been fired by the new defence secretary, Philip Hammond, who urged companies to “pack their suitcases” and head there to secure reconstruction contracts.

As Nato announced that it plans to wind up operations in Libya, Hammond said that great care had been taken during the campaign to avoid destroying critical infrastructure.

“Libya is a relatively wealthy country with oil reserves, and I expect there will be opportunities for British and other companies to get involved in the reconstruction of Libya,” he told the BBC in an interview.

“I would expect British companies, even British sales directors, [to be] packing their suitcases and looking to get out to Libya and take part in the reconstruction of that country as soon as they can,” said Hammond, who replaced Liam Fox as defence secretary a week ago.

He added that after a “hugely successful” British mission in Libya, Britain now needed “to support the Libyans to turn the liberation of their country into a successful stabilisation so that Libya can be a beacon of prosperity and democracy in north Africa going forward.”

The National Transitional Council has already said that it intends to reward countries who showed support for its fight against the Gaddafi regime, with Britain and France likely to lead the way.

The success of British contractors in the country – which could see billions of pounds spent on reconstruction over the next decade – will be seen as a huge victory for prime minister David Cameron, who visited Tripoli and NTC members last month, along with Nicolas Sarkozy.

British gains in Libya include business and reconstruction contracts, as well as oil. As Libya’s £100bn in frozen assets around the world are released, it is a sizeable pot.

Lord Green, a trade minister, has already met with British firms to discuss potential opportunities in Libya, and oil company BP is believed to have already held talks with the NTC.

…

France has already begun its own campaign to secure business in the country. French foreign minister Alain Juppé has said it was only “fair and logical” for its companies to benefit.

Daniel Kawczynski, a Conservative backbencher and chair of the cross-party parliamentary group on Libya, said Britain should come first when it comes to awarding contracts, which would also pay back some of the cost of some £300m spent on military action.

“The question that remains is, who should ultimately bear this cost?” he said. “Should the burden fall on those who could be counted on? Or should, in time, Libya repay those who fought with her, and for her?”

He added: “In these difficult economic times, it should not be too much to ask a country with Libya’s wealth and resources to pay their share of the gold.”

One-state solution for Middle East growing by default

Posted: 21 Oct 2011

Nobody serious believes a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians will ever emerge (here’s just the latest reason why). Tragically, we’ll still have suffer years of delusions about the how and why but the one-state equation is growing (via the Forward):

It’s an ideology with few followers among Israeli Jews, but activists for the one-state solution are reaching out to American visitors via tours of the Arab-Jewish town of Jaffa. And they are doing so with the help of Israel’s Reform movement.

Jaffa, now part of the municipality of Tel Aviv, was a town in which a Jewish minority lived for centuries with Arab Muslims and Christians before Israel was established in 1948. Now, its graceful Arab architecture provides a rich historical background for one-state advocates Yuval Tamari, a Jewish schoolteacher, and Wasim Bearumi, an Arab psychologist, to tell a story of the past that feeds their vision of the future.

“The two-state solution is said to be a practical solution, but it’s division,” Tamari told a recent tour group. “I want to be able to visit Nablus and other places from my history. And Arabs have a lot of history here in Jaffa.”

Recently, Jaffa, where Jews now make up about two-thirds of the population, has become a hotspot of sectarian attacks. In early October, unknown attackers desecrated Muslim and Christian graves — the third in a series of attacks on Arab sacred sites in Israel and the occupied territories. This was followed by someone throwing a firebomb onto a Jaffa synagogue roof. Still, Tamari and Bearumi, both of whom declined to comment on these recent events, are undeterred.

On a recent summer day, a group of 30 tourists from the Temple Israel Center, a Conservative synagogue in White Plains, N.Y., heard the message of the tour, which was that Jaffa should actually be seen as a model for coexistence. The Daniel Centers for Progressive Judaism, a large complex of Reform cultural and community centers in Jaffa, has been running the “Coexistence Tour” for four years, giving a platform for the activists to share their political vision with almost 500 Diaspora Jews yearly, mostly as part of communal Israel trips.

Clinton on Qaddafi: “We Came, We Saw, He Died”

Posted: 21 Oct 2011

Lest we forget that the Americans loved Gaddafi very recently. When he was useful. Now, of course, Libyan oil is the prize, already being divided by the Western powers.