The New Nation - Internet Edition

GLOBAL trade talks aimed at liberalising markets and stimulating growth in developing countries are in an 'extremely dangerous' phase as mentioned by Brazil's representative to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) the other day. According to recent press reports from Geneva, the Western countries, he said, are putting 'too much pressure' on the developing countries in a bid to secure a deal. Western countries themselves 'should show they are willing to make movements' with serious concessions on agricultural subsidies; he was quoted to have remarked. The developing countries, on the other hand, have shown their willingness to compromise by accepting tariff cuts across thousands of products. This is the 'most important contribution' in the history of multilateral negotiations; it was specifically pointed out along with the debacle like the WTO's ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico in 2003, which ended in acrimony amid a North-South standoff on agriculture.

The WTO Doha Round, which was launched in 2001, should have ended in 2004 with an agreement to cut barriers to trade in farm produce, industrial goods and services. However, it has been dogged by long-standing disputes between wealthy and developing nations, especially on protective barriers for agriculture, as well as between the European Union and the United States on the same issue. The European Union remains the world's largest provider of agricultural subsidies, doling out 138 billion dollars in 2006, according to statistics released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The heads of WTO's two main negotiating groups on agriculture and industrial products issued fresh proposals in July for breaking the impasse, including a cut in industrial tariffs charged by 27 developing nations to less than 23 per cent. The United States said last month it was prepared to negotiate on the basis of proposal to cut its subsidies up to $16.2 billion.

The WTO, on the other hand, is expected to break its own rules by not holding a ministerial conference in 2007, given the low chances of securing a global trade deal by the year end as reported by AFP news agency recently quoting trade sources in Geneva. The global trade body's rules state that a conference of ministers from the 151 members should be held once every two years, and the last such meeting took place in Hong Kong in December 2005. But the chairman of the WTO general council told delegates that such a meeting was 'unlikely to happen' given the continuing impasse in multilateral trade liberalisation talks. According to him, all members are of the view that as a practical consequence it will not be possible to hold the conference before the end of 2007. It was stressed that many trading nations were concerned about the likely breach of the WTO rules. In the backdrop of all these, WTO director general Pascal Lamy believes that a deal is 'as doable as it is essential'.

IT is now speculated credibly that the US plan to attack Iran may be implemented within Bush's tenure. President Bush recently alleged Iran's provision of weapons to Iraqi insurgents that "kill American soldiers". Recently, one research at AIPAC's (American-Israel Public Relations Committee) web site suggested that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are training terrorists, from "Afghanistan to Gaza" including Iraq. Within days, based on that report, Bush also labelled Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. This is the first time that a "state actor" of a sovereign country was branded "terrorists" by the US. This statement can mean many things including a possible attack on Iran.

Along with the AIPAC's "research", if we evaluate Israeli Military Intelligence chief General Amos Yadlin's statement presented to the Israeli cabinet that "Israel faces five adversaries in what could result in an " imminent confrontation". Iran was on the top of the list along with Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda. US naval exercises in the Gulf were the early steps of the possible attack, in which two US Naval striker groups, USS Enterprise and USS Iwo Jima, participated, both of the striker groups are assigned on America's "war on terror". These exercises were so close to the Iranian coastline that "Time" reported one could partly see them standing on the coast. The recent US arms package to the Middle Eastern countries and Israel is clearly formulated out of Iranian "threat".

Back in 2005, when Hirsh's report suggested possible US attacks, many analysts and commentators ruled it out giving a few reasons such as Iraq's already a disaster and the US cannot afford another venture. But if one analyses why Bush may be prompted to attack Iran one might feel that Bush will not reserve his "problems" for the next administration to resolve. The Bush doctrine has neo- conservative ideology and Bush would want to make sure that it is continued and transferred to the next administration. Attacks on Iran will undoubtedly provoke a chain of reactions in the region, but the next administration won't have any choice.

AIPAC is also important for both Republicans and Democrats for the coming US elections. An attack on Iran will win AIPAC's much needed support for Republicans. Israel is growing impatient and after its "defeat" at the hands of Iran-backed Hezbollah is looking to make it "square". It would really want to decrease Iranian nuclear capabilities for its own "security and survival" (General Yadlin's statement is a clear example) after the "failure of UN sanctions over Iran". Again, Bush has numerously stated that the war on terror is a "long war" and he would want to make sure that the next administration keeps it this way. Attacks on Iran will be another phase of the war on terror, and since Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan are considered the new "frontline on terrorism".

Maswood Alam Khan

Peace has traditionally been viewed as absence of war and health free from disease. Millions of people have died and megatons of money have been spent in fights against wars and diseases to convey peace and tranquility. Those fights ultimately fatigued the combatants to a point when they started staying away from hostilities after learning an expensive lesson that 'an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure'. So has small pox been made preventable and next World War not so visible in the offing.

An inexpensive vaccine immunizes a human body against the deadly scourge of small pox; but the vaccine against the scourge of war does not come so cheap. Deterrence deemed a measure of prevention is impelling countries to pile up weapons as a ploy to bristle their hairs and flex their muscles with rages of threats, if not to wage wars. With hostile traits indented deep in our genetic makeup, tribal conflicts and civil wars in countries like Sudan and Congo have become rampant though offensive wars among states may have become less common out of war fatigue. As usual, countries are spending money to buy weapons to wage or prevent war and people are dying from hunger as they don't have money to buy foodstuff.

Say, there is no war, no violence, no civil strife, no conflicts---and tranquility is prevailing in a country with no voice of protest heard. Is that country in peace? No, if peace is foisted upon citizenry under duress as is now felt in Myanmar where human voices have been muffled by guns trained on their heads resulting in a deafening silence haunting the country. Myanmar people know well they will not get justice if they wag their fingers against the gun-toting governors of the military regime. Living in peace in an eerie silence without justice is like dying a slow death without groans inside airtight compartments being gradually loaded with poisonous gases---whimpers of the dying not audible from outside.

Peace is totally absent from homes of people who are socially dominated, politically oppressed, or economically exploited with uproars or protests not so much heard in the press or on the street. Such silent invasion to rob homes of peace is what Juhan Galtung, a Norwegian professor, termed as 'structural violence' denoting a form of brutality which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a given social structure or social institution kills people slowly by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Vaccinating a child against small pox, polio, typhoid, tuberculosis and hepatitis may cost our government quite a substantial amount of money; but not doing so is tantamount to infanticide of millions of lives. Such killing is a classic example of structural violence.

Peace in the absence of war, violence, injustice or ruthlessness of a despot may also not be peace in the intrinsic sense of the terminology if a citizen living in a crimeless society under the best democracy with the finest healthcare facilities is not hopeful that his/her progenies would likewise live in peace and tranquility in future.

Peace as a singular noun is a misnomer. Peace should be thought in the sense of "many peaces" as a noun with a plural. Nobody under the sun can ever claim that s/he has attained peace at the end of the day or at the end of his/her life because there are many peaces available and not all peaces can be attainable by one however healthy or wealthy s/he might be. The best piece of peace one can derive is from nature if one knows how to remain content with whatever s/he has been blessed by the nature. And the best way of living a peaceful life is not to ruminate over the past pains and not to brood over the possibility of future pains. Living today is the wisest way to live a happy life provided we know beforehand that at least the roads ahead are not bumpy even if there is possibility of dying from a road accident.

But, alas! We are busy more on burning our bridges than on smoothing our highways so that our progenies cannot hope to reach their destinations after our safe passages. Living today with peace in mind is impossible when all the scientists in unison are warning that neither birds will sing nor trees will dance in a climate that is going to be too scorching for any life to live on this planet. Here comes Al Gore looking aghast at the sight of destructing frenzy people the world over are competing in their wars against our Mother Nature to turn this earth into an arid planet!

We cannot imagine a more urgent time of planetary emergency than now when Nobel Prize for peace could go to Al Gore---a person who is better known as the Tree Man of the world than the former Vice President of the USA. American people made plans to make Al Gore their President in November general election of the year 2000; Al Gore was almost elected as the first US President of the current century by bagging around 300,000 more votes nationally than his opponent George W. Bush.

But, "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will", said Shakespeare paraphrasing a Latin axiom "Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit" (Man proposes, but God disposes). However strongly American people proposed for Gore to be elected by popular votes God instead disposed Bush, with the help of Florida, get the needed state-based 270 electoral votes to win the White House, though a legal controversy over the Florida election recount, as settled by the US Supreme Court favoring Bush, made the election one of the most controversial in American history. God in fact conspired with a different scheme not to place Gore into the pigeonhole of the White House which can be managed by a small fry like a Bush or a Hilary. Daring to mobilize the world population to wage a war against the destructors of the planet Earth is a job that demands a personality who must be much stouter and taller than Reagan, Bush, Hilary or Carter.

Millions of Americans and people of the world who cried like babies at Al Gore's defeat by the narrowest imaginable margin to Bush in the US November 2000 general election flashed their tear-soaked smiles when, on 23 January 2007, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and actress Salma Hayek in the 79 th Academy Awards ceremony pronounced the name of Al Gore as the Oscar winner for his starring in the documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" discussing environmental threats from global warming.

The Academy award bolstered Al Gore to explore further avenues and devise popular ways to draw global attention to how people, who are too busy to think what awaits them tomorrow in the chase for earning their fortunes, are unknowingly chopping their own legs. Last July, his organization "Save Our Selves" spearheaded a benefit concert named "Live Earth" with some of the world's most famous pop stars, including Madonna and Police, to urge fans and governments to fight global warming.

Tear-soaked smiles of millions of Al-Gorian devotees turned into thunderous rumbles of screams out of ecstasy when, on 12 October 2007, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Professor Ole Danbolt Mjos announced the name 'Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.' as a co-recipient to share this year's Nobel Peace Prize with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Al-Gorian devotees cried once again---this time out of victory---when Nobel Committee in their citation eulogized Al Gore and IPCC "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

In late 1970s when even climatologists did not scream their battle cries in perfect pitch to warn against a grim future due to greenhouse effects Gore was one of the first few politicians in the world who did grasp the seriousness of climate change and held the first US congressional hearings on the subject and earnestly called for reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That he was perhaps the only American Senator who in spite of his busy schedules snatched at some moments to gape at the stars in the sky became obvious when subscribers to Washington Post read an editorial where the author Senator Al Gore argued that, "Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate."

In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but was vehemently opposed by the Senate. Of late, Gore has remained busy trotting the globe speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards global warming awareness and prevention. In 2004, he launched Generation Investment Management. This firm, which he chairs, seeks out companies which take a responsible view on global issues such as climate change. Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft. Gore and his family drive hybrid vehicles. The Gore Family has done much to offset their carbon footprint and electrical usage, such as through the installation of solar panels.

Our planet Earth will get along fine without us; she does not need our helping hands in her planetary journeys. But our life would be in peril if we don't nurse the garden she has offered us to live in. Stratospheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultraviolet radiation at the earth's surface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level and acid precipitation are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests, and crops. Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damages to the environment and critical resources. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about. Prodigies, including a majority of the living Nobel Laureates in the sciences, have already prophesized that the entire Human Species is in danger of extinction, along with most other life on Earth due to overexploitation of natural resources mostly by human species.

We don't need to panic or despair. God willing, it is not too late. We humans are extraordinarily resilient and have the natural wisdom to survive. If enough of us recognize the problems in time, act responsibly, and have a leader like Al Gore, we can take positive action, and turn the negation around. We should remember that we are not Masters of Nature, we are a part of Nature and she is our Mother.

Miss Samantha Rogers, the global warming campaigner of Greenpeace, in her recent letter mass circulated through internet appealed nature lovers of the world to choose the next Saturday (03 November 2007), the day exactly one year before the 2008 US general election, to raise a strong chorus of their voices in the fight against global warming with a view to sending a clear message to presidential candidates of the USA that it is time for our leaders to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, increase fuel economy standards, and make big investments in renewable energy.

Al-Gorian devotees who shed oceans of tears for the last seven years to see their maharishi inside the White House seem to have been brokenhearted as Al Gore in an interview with Norway's NRK TV said last week, "I don't have plans to be a candidate again so I don't really see it in that context at all" in response to a question about how the Nobel Prize would affect his political career---though a chance for his making a bid for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential election at the last minute is not yet over.

Al Gore vehemently opposed the Vietnam War. But, nevertheless, he was drafted (compulsorily enlisted to serve US Army) in 1969 and was shipped to Vietnam in 1971. In a similar vein millions of tear-shedding Al-Gorian devotees all over the world are conspiring to draft their guru by lassoing his neck to accept the Democratic nomination and run for 2008 American presidency. The devotees loathe the idea of Gore's staring at the stars with a philosophical look; they want Gore to handle the American Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles by his own hands to train the nozzles of the missiles on those who would dare to take a stand against our Mother Nature.

An organisation called www.draftgore.com said that 200,000 people had signed a petition to urge Gore to run, with a jump of 70,000 signatures in four days after the Nobel Peace Prize was declared. If a campaign in response to 'Greenpeace's appeal to alert or cajole the probable American presidents about the ominous climate change' can be organized on November 03 in Bangladesh, I am sure, millions---not thousands---would queue up to put their signatures in similar petitions requesting Gore to run the US presidential election because we Bangladeshis know that Al Gore has been crying for the last few decades not so much for his own country as for countries like Bangladesh which will be submerged under water melted from glaciers due to unwelcome warmth of the climate. Thousands of people of Bangladesh would then---if especially allowed under present emergency rule---march in processions in metropolitan towns and shout slogans at the top of their lungs: "Al Gore, tumi egiye cholo, aamraa asi tomaar shathey." (Al Gore, you go ahead! We all are behind you).

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Why do you hate America?" As some of my perceptive readers might have already concluded, I get loads of fan mail from the land of the free. Most of it's rather interesting and revealing. Some of it is not most flattering and in what we in the subcontinent call 'unparliamentary' language.

Yet the question, Why do you hate America? from an all-American and all-white girl was a little startling. For I never see myself as an America-phobe. As regular readers might recall, I've often shared with them my early impressions of America, formed of course from a safe distance of thousands of miles.

The influence of American literature, Hollywood, pop culture and their collective glorification of ambition, excellence, grit and hard work left a lasting impact on an impressionable Muslim boy. Those influences are still a part of my consciousness. Just as they are a part of the people of my generation and generations after that. For none of us - wherever we are and whoever we are - can escape the influences of McWorld. You don't have to be a Star Wars fan, drink Coke or sport Levi's and Nike to be a part of the empire of mind created by America. There is a little America in all of us. And we all love and admire in various degrees what America stands for or once stood for: Democracy, freedom, civil liberties, freedom of speech and action and a celebration of individualism and doing your own thing. If you are born with imagination, original ideas or just happen to be a plain hard working guy, then the land of the free is for you. No matter where you were born or where you com

e from, Uncle Sam would embrace you.

If you have guts for glory, patience and persistence, it's not impossible for anyone to get your slice of the American pie. Life is beautiful!

This is what we once believed about America. Many of us still do. At least, I still do. I still enjoy Hollywood potboilers, Westerns and John Grisham's legal thrillers where small, insignificant men are pitted against big, bad corporate leviathans and who ultimately prevail over their far more powerful opponents. Despite the watershed transformation that America has undergone after September 11, there's been little change in the essential character and soul of the country discovered by Columbus.

It might have changed in the way foreigners are received at US airports. The punishing frisking, scanning and daunting questioning certainly make all visitors to the land of the free feel unwelcome. This gets all the more unpleasant when visitors happen to be or look like, you know, who! But then that's how it is in the rest of the world - from European airports to Asian holiday destinations. The welcome ceremony doesn't vary much whether you are at LaGuardia airport in New York or passing through Charles de Gaulle of Paris. That now infamous date in September 2001 has changed, perhaps forever, the way we fly and the way we look at each other. Especially the way the Americans view the rest of the world and the Muslims in particular. Yet, notwithstanding the unprecedented curbs the US administration has imposed on civil liberties and basic rights of the Americans at home and the usual suspects around the world, Muslim Americans are still better off than their counterparts - sa

y in Europe. This is borne out by several recent opinion polls.

This may come as a surprise but Muslim Americans still feel and see themselves as a part of the US mainstream. This despite the pathological aversion of this administration for all things Islamic and its disastrous war on terror. In total contrast, the European Muslims, long paraded as a model of the continent's fabled multiculturalism and tolerance, are dangerously angry and unhappy with the Western policies in the Muslim world in general and their host countries in particular. Unlike the Muslim Americans who are a healthy part of the mainstream, Muslims in Europe have been living on the sidelines of their societies.

And unlike their fellow believers across the Atlantic who've been enjoying the fruits of America's economic progress, Europe's Muslims live in deprivation and isolation in their ghettos and enclaves. So it's no coincidence that the US hasn't witnessed a single incident of terror involving Muslims since September 11, 2001. None of those who blew themselves up against the World Trade Center six years ago were born or grew up in US. On the other hand, Europe has reported several so-called terror plots involving desperate Muslims.

Remarkably, the US Muslims responded swiftly to the challenge posed by 9/11 developments. First, they closed their ranks. Secondly, they reached out to the main street America addressing the accusations and misconceptions vis-a-vis Islam and Muslims. Instead of withdrawing into their shells, they tried their best to present the true face of their noble faith. But I must point out that this is also a tribute to the US model of tolerance and assimilation. If the US Muslims today identify themselves with America without compromising their religious and cultural identity, the credit goes in no small measure to the US spirit of genuine tolerance and embracing new comers.

Perhaps this can happen only in America. It's only in the US that an Austrian immigrant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, can scale Hollywood heights to become governor of California. Or Bobby Jindal, an Indian American, can become governor of Louisiana.

And who knows you might even have a Muslim governor soon! On the other hand, across the Atlantic you're still known as a Paki or Moroccan butcher despite having being born and brought up in Europe. As Mohsen Hamid, the author of Reluctant Fundamentalist says in The New York Times: 'If you speak with an American accent, you're an American (it doesn't matter whether you are a Muslim or Hindu). In Europe, although I'm a British citizen, they still refer to me as a Pakistani novelist. In the US, even though I've never had an American passport, I am called a Pakistani American.'

I love and admire this side of America. The America of Robert Frost, - The woods are lovelyt - Mark Twain and Hemingway. This is the land of Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr and Mohammed Ali; the country of Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Robert de Niro, Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer.

This America is different from the one that media punditocrasy obsesses over day after day. The America that repels and agitates you and me is like a different country altogether. Represented by neocons, Zionist lobbies and powerful corporate interests, this entity is self-centred and most often doesn't seem to see beyond its nose. It seeks to run the whole world as its extended colony. It doesn't lose sleep over a couple of million innocent lives wasted here and there. It's this leviathan that we often deal with in the Middle East and Muslim world. Yesterday, you encountered it in Vietnam. Today it's stuck in Iraq and raring to go after Iran tomorrow.

Unfortunately, this America controls and manipulates the America that we all know and love. Hamid's Reluctant Fundamentalist, one of the six novels short-listed for the Booker prize this month and already a global best-seller, tackles these two perceptions of America. The 36-year old author who attracted global attention with his novel Moth Smoke, is well qualified to do so. Half of his life has been spent in the US even though he was born in the UK. The New York-based writer shares a fascinating relationship of infatuation and disillusionment with the US. He is like you and me. And like us, Hamid loves and loathes the US in equal measure.

For like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, America appears to suffer from a split personality. You don't quite know which side of America is real and which is a facade. But it is not for us - the outsiders - to determine which side of America is not plastic. It's for the Americans to decide which America they want the world to see: The America of Cheney and company with its legacy of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay or the freedom-loving and humane America that comes forward to help the helpless, as it did during World War II and recently in the Balkans? Will the real America please stand up!

(Aijaz Zaka Syed is a senior editor and columnist of Khaleej Times.)