"If a Palestinian falls over and twists his ankle within sight of Israeli soldiers El País is quick to talk of the thirst for blood inherent in the makeup of the only army in the world that has mostly Jewish members. In this case, however, it reports the story in the most matter-of-fact way and makes no attempt to call into question the Spanish army’s version of events."
Because Wars Are Either Won Or lost, by Eamonn McDonagh, Z Word
You remember all the fuss at the start of the year about Israel’s supposedly disproportionate use of force in Gaza, no? Well, unless you are a close student of Afghan affairs it may have escaped your attention that last Thursday Spanish forces killed 13 members of the Taliban without suffering so much as a scratch on their own side.
We know that they were members of the Taliban because there were independent NGO or ICRC people on the spot who checked and made sure that none of the dead were civilians who grabbed the family AK47 and stuck their heads outside when they heard the firefight start, don’t we? It’s inconceivable that the Spanish soldiers on the spot might have sought to avoid future embarrassing questions by making sure there was a weapon close to each dead Afghan, isn’t it? Even to hint at the possibility of such a thing would be to stain the honor of a noble army, wouldn’t it?
El País of Madrid is the newspaper that reports the story. If a Palestinian falls over and twists his ankle within sight of Israeli soldiers El País is quick to talk of the thirst for blood inherent in the makeup of the only army in the world that has mostly Jewish members. In this case, however, it reports the story in the most matter-of-fact way and makes no attempt to call into question the Spanish army’s version of events. Natalia Junquera and Miguel González, the authors of the report, even manage to give a humanitarian slant to the calling up of a Mangusta attack helicopter to assist the Spanish infantry by saying that it was called off when the Taliban took refuge in caves near to a village with civilian inhabitants. The Mangusta has a three barrel 20mm steerable cannon under its nose as well as a variety of other weapons mounted on pods. A 20mm cannon shell that doesn’t hit its intended target is quite capable of killing a person miles away. It can also penetrate light armor and the walls of domestic residences and kill anyone in the wrong place on the other side. How good that Junquera and Gonzaléz are so certain that nothing like this occurred in this case.
Gabriel Albiac has his say on the matter in ABC today. There follows an edited translation of his column.
Read the whole piece here
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Monday, 7 September 2009
'The Spanish are not anti-Semitic', they don't know the facts ...
This statement is a bit rich. No other country is so obsessively and negatively covered by the Spanish media as Israel is and the President of the Socialist Spanish party talks of "lack of knowledge". Who does she think she is fooling ? "There is a lack of knowledge in Spain regarding the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. There isn't a deep understanding of the problems facing the region, and because Spaniards don't know all of the facts, because they don't see that this conflict is not black and white, they can sometimes get into superficial arguments."
Source: article by Abe Selig in TJP
Spain's El Mundo daily should not have run its interview with Holocaust denier David Irving over the weekend, Delia Blanco Teran, president of the Spanish Socialist Party in the Madrid region, has told The Jerusalem Post.
Anyone who questioned the Holocaust was "crazy," and "it wasn't correct to write the article," Teran told the Post on Thursday, before the Irving interview ran. "Even in a democratic country, it's not correct to print something like that," she said.
El Mundo published the interview as part of a series with "experts" marking the start of World War II 70 years ago.
The conservative Spanish People's Party (Partido Popular), which is considered pro-Israel, led the country's government until 2004, when the March 11 train bombings in Madrid helped to bring the PSOE to power.
The PSOE's national leader, current Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriquez Zapatero, has been an outspoken critic of Israeli military operations and has made numerous public appearances sporting the Palestinian keffiyeh [photo].
And though her party has not traditionally been considered friendly toward Israel, Teran said that the Israeli public's impression of Spanish sentiment toward the Jewish state had not always been accurate.
"The Spanish people are not anti-Semitic," she said. "And I don't think that all journalism in Spain [covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] is directed against Israel. The Jews lived alongside the Spanish for such a long time, and I think that a lot of the problems with Spanish attitudes toward Israel are based in a lack of understanding."
"There is a lack of knowledge in Spain regarding the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians," she added. "There isn't a deep understanding of the problems facing the region, and because Spaniards don't know all of the facts, because they don't see that this conflict is not black and white, they can sometimes get into superficial arguments."
That lack of understanding, Teran said, was the reason for her visit to the region. With help from the the Madrid-based Association for the Solidarity of Israel-Spain, last week Blanco led a delegation of politicians from the Spanish Socialist Party to the region, where they met with Israeli and Palestinian officials and travelled around Israel and the West Bank.
While Teran said a large part of the visit was aimed at improving the delegation members' grasp of the problems facing the region before Spain assumes the revolving European Union presidency in January, another goal was to reconnect with Israel's Labor Party, which once had close relations with the PSOE.
"When the Labor Party was in power in Israel, we had better contact with them," Teran said. "But now that the Socialist Party is in power in Spain, we wanted to reestablish that connection." Still, Teran emphasized that her group had met with representatives of a number of parties, including the Likud, Kadima and Meretz. "We want to talk to the Israeli government no matter who is in charge, she said. "We also spoke with representatives from Fatah."
However, her party had no plans to speak with Hamas representatives.
"And while we want to arrive at a solution, and find the resolution to the conflict, our aim is not to tell anybody what to do. We're coming to help - in no way is the Spanish people anti-Semitic. We want to help advance the peace process process between Israel and the Palestinians, and help Spanish society to better understand the issues."
- Spain : a pacifist country but ... an arms exporter
- Spain helping to rebuild illegal homes in e. J'lem
- US members of Congress write to P.M. Zapatero about anti-semitism in Spain
- Anti-Semitism in Spain
- Spain's Jewish problem, by Michael Freund
- Spain to limit judges' jurisdiction; includes probe against Israelis
- EU-funded Palestinian NGO leading the 'Spanish inquisition'
- 46 per cent of Spanish have a negative/very negative view of Jews (52 percent in Spain have a negative view of Muslims)
- Catalunya government: a Palestinian holocaust is taking place
- Spanish and Basque NGOs Join Palestinians and AIC in Boycott conference
- Spanish unique expertise on Jewish bankers' genealogy
- Israel targets foreign gov't NGO funds (see section on Spain)
Sunday, 6 September 2009
Israel basher replaces another at head of World Council of Churches
Ecumenical Blast Against Israel, Mark Tolley, FrontPage Magazine
The departing chief of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) slammed Israel’s "sin against God" in his August 26 good-bye to the world’s largest ecumenical group.
"Occupation along with the concomitant humiliation of a whole people for over six decades constitutes not just economic and political crimes but, like anti-Semitism, it is a sin against God," declared Kenyan Methodist minister Samuel Kobia, during his farewell to the WCC’s governing central committee.
The WCC was founded after World War II and, in the wake of the Holocaust, robustly denounced anti-Semitism as a "sin against God." Evidently equating the Holocaust on some level with the Israeli presence in the West Bank, Kobia asked his international church audience: "Are we ready to say that occupation is also a sin against God?"
On paper, the WCC is important, with 349 denominations as members, representing over 500 million Christians, or about 25 percent of global Christianity. But in truth, the WCC never fully recovered from its 1970’s alliances with Marxist liberation movements. Catholics and most evangelicals do not belong to the WCC, which friends and foes alike view primarily as the voice of declining Western left-wing Protestantism.
Read the whole piece here
_______________
Now read this :
New Norwegian WCC general secretary supports extreme Palestinian demand
Published: Friday August 28th 2009
From Med Israel for Fred (MIFF)
Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary in Mellomkirkelig råd (MR), was on Thursday elected general secretary in the World Council of Churches.
"We can be proud over how a Norwegian is granted such an important post in the world’s largest ecumenical organization with more than half a billion members, says Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in a press release.
Views "right of return" as "fair"
For friends of Israel and the Jewish state there is reason to grieve. Fykse Tveit supports the Palestinian demand of right to move at least five million Palestinians into the state of Israel. He has over several years been a driving force for presenting this as a “just demand” for the church, both domestically and internationally.
Fykse Tveit is yet to find how the right of return is to be solved. “It is not thereby said that it is a solution that the jews leave their homes”, Tveit said to DagenMagazinet, April 28th 2008. "There are different ways in which to accomodate the demand”, he wrote in an op-ed two days later. Is Tveit at all willing to contemplate that Jews must leave their homes? [...]
If Fykse Tveit had been preoccupied with the right of return for all large groups of refugees, his support to the Palestinians would have been more credible. If it additionally had been correspondingly attentive to a complete vindication and reimbursement of the Jewish refugees from the Arab world, it might even had been fair. But when the demand for rights of return are furthered solely for the Palestinians, and an implementation of this would mean the end of the world’s only state with a majority of Jews, one needs to ask oneself what the driving force is. It is in any case extreme."
Read the whole piece here (Norway, Israel and the Jews blog)
The departing chief of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) slammed Israel’s "sin against God" in his August 26 good-bye to the world’s largest ecumenical group.
"Occupation along with the concomitant humiliation of a whole people for over six decades constitutes not just economic and political crimes but, like anti-Semitism, it is a sin against God," declared Kenyan Methodist minister Samuel Kobia, during his farewell to the WCC’s governing central committee.
The WCC was founded after World War II and, in the wake of the Holocaust, robustly denounced anti-Semitism as a "sin against God." Evidently equating the Holocaust on some level with the Israeli presence in the West Bank, Kobia asked his international church audience: "Are we ready to say that occupation is also a sin against God?"
On paper, the WCC is important, with 349 denominations as members, representing over 500 million Christians, or about 25 percent of global Christianity. But in truth, the WCC never fully recovered from its 1970’s alliances with Marxist liberation movements. Catholics and most evangelicals do not belong to the WCC, which friends and foes alike view primarily as the voice of declining Western left-wing Protestantism.
Read the whole piece here
_______________
Now read this :
New Norwegian WCC general secretary supports extreme Palestinian demand
Published: Friday August 28th 2009
From Med Israel for Fred (MIFF)
Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary in Mellomkirkelig råd (MR), was on Thursday elected general secretary in the World Council of Churches.
"We can be proud over how a Norwegian is granted such an important post in the world’s largest ecumenical organization with more than half a billion members, says Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in a press release.
Views "right of return" as "fair"
For friends of Israel and the Jewish state there is reason to grieve. Fykse Tveit supports the Palestinian demand of right to move at least five million Palestinians into the state of Israel. He has over several years been a driving force for presenting this as a “just demand” for the church, both domestically and internationally.
Fykse Tveit is yet to find how the right of return is to be solved. “It is not thereby said that it is a solution that the jews leave their homes”, Tveit said to DagenMagazinet, April 28th 2008. "There are different ways in which to accomodate the demand”, he wrote in an op-ed two days later. Is Tveit at all willing to contemplate that Jews must leave their homes? [...]
If Fykse Tveit had been preoccupied with the right of return for all large groups of refugees, his support to the Palestinians would have been more credible. If it additionally had been correspondingly attentive to a complete vindication and reimbursement of the Jewish refugees from the Arab world, it might even had been fair. But when the demand for rights of return are furthered solely for the Palestinians, and an implementation of this would mean the end of the world’s only state with a majority of Jews, one needs to ask oneself what the driving force is. It is in any case extreme."
Read the whole piece here (Norway, Israel and the Jews blog)
Friday, 4 September 2009
Aftonbladet: behind the banner 'freedom of press', by Lisa Abramowicz
"Is there any other country in the world that has been as demonized and delegitimized as Israel in Aftonbladet during the last 30 years?" Source: article by Lisa Abramowicz, Secretary General of the Swedish Israel Information Center in Stockholm, in EJP
On August 17 Sweden's largest-circulation newspaper, Aftonbladet published an article on a two-page spread on its culture pages which included a disturbing photo of, among other things, a person who had been the subject of an autopsy, Bilal Ahmed Ghanem.
In the article the Israeli army is accused of stealing organs from dead Palestinians for use in Israel. Indeed, the article even insinuates that the Israeli army is killing Palestinians for the very purpose of using their organs for Israeli patients.
Israeli officials have commented on the picture of the dead man, a wanted Palestinian resistance fighter. According to the IDF, the photo is of an ordinary autopsy. The photo was taken in 1992 (!). Ghanem was killed in a firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militia. The photograph is the same as the one found in Boström's book Insh'allah from 2001. No new evidence of organ theft has surfaced.
Donald Boström says that he doesn't know whether or not any organs where stolen, but that he was told by the family that they believe that to have been the case. According to Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh on August 25, the Ghanem family hadn't spoken to any foreign journalist of their suspicions at the time of their son's death, only that a foreign journalist was taking pictures during the funeral and then disappeared. (Palestinian family: We never told ‘Aftonbladet’ organs were taken)
This is a very important detail in the context, as Boström has pointed out in interviews that he is not the one suspecting organ theft, but the family he has been speaking to. He assumes the role of mouthpiece for the family. Clearly Boström is lying when he says that the Ghanem family has spoken to him about this. No further autopsies have been performed on Ghanem or any of the other Palestinians allegedly killed. There are no witnesses. Nothing at all to indicate that any crime of organ theft has taken place.
Then why was Ghanem autopsied by Israel when the cause of death was clear, Boström asks? Certainly to determine the cause of death and whether he had been killed by Israeli or Palestinian fire. Something which isn't always completely obvious. A lot of people are in fact killed by so-called "friendly fire" in the war between Israelis and Palestinians. (Most of the Israeli soldiers killed during the Gaza war this winter fell to friendly fire.)
The accusations are unreasonable for medical reasons since the organs of people who have been injured or killed by gunshots are unsuitable for transplantations. Per Gahrton, president of the Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden, told Expressen that he chose not to include the rumors of organ theft in his book "Palestinas frihetskamp", which was released last year: "There isn't enough support? But if the Palestinians are to continue with spreading rumors of the Israelis gathering organs they'll have to show a body that is missing organs", Gahrton says.
The head of human rights organization Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, Bassem Eid, is one of the foremost human rights activists in Israel and the Palestinian territories. He, too learned of the rumors of organ theft. Eid could find nothing to support the information. "I have never seen an article like this in any Arab newspaper. No one has reported on this subject - because it is just a rumor", Bassem Eid says.
Boström writing and Aftonbladet publishing is certainly due to them their feeling that this is an opportune moment, after the Gaza war and with Israel’s new right-wing government.
A corruption scandal has erupted in New Jersey, in which, among many other things, an American rabbi is charged with being involved in the transporting of Israelis to the US in order to sell and donate their organs there. Ergo, it is likely that the state of Israel is party to this foul affair and that these matters are somehow interconnected. Hence the publication value, apparently.
Boström and Aftonbladet want a legal investigation into the matter of organ theft. But in a society where rule of law reigns, something both Israel and Sweden are, a prosecutor will only press charges if he/she has enough evidence to convict the accused. Anything else would be a waste of society resources. A court - including the International Criminal Court in The Hague - is not supposed to investigate rumors in a propaganda war. As for the cases invoked by Boström, it's not a matter of "insufficient evidence"; but of "absolutely no evidence".
Jesper Svartvik, president of the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism, comments that "the text is an example of criticism of Israel alluding to and mixing in ancient anti-Semitic myths, in this case the medieval myths of ritual murder. Shakespeare’s Shylock can also be sensed in the background, wanting his pound of flesh at any price." Therefore, it is not so strange that Jews in Sweden, Israel and all over the world have taken offence at the article in Aftonbladet.
Åsa Linderborg, chief cultural editor, admits that she has never heard of the historical anti-Semitic myths of ritual murder, despite holding a Ph. D. in history ! Now, editor-in-chief Jan Helin would prefer discussing the matter of freedom of speech and the press as well as the forceful Israeli reaction to discussing the veracity of the article or how appropriate it was to publish it. I can understand that, as it enables him to portray Aftonbladet as a victim of Israel's "aggression".
Ref. Aftonbladet August 28, with the war headline "Israel attackerar Aftonbladet (Israel attacks Aftonbladet)" at page 1 and references to pages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Did anyone say "Exaggerated backlash"?
The freedom of information legislation is part of the constitution. No preliminary censoring is to be used. But if you publish a text that is of a dubious nature, you will have to suffer being criticized and questioned. Freedom of speech is not absolute. There is also a law against hate speech, and incitement, although judicial tolerance is extremely lenient. For chief cultural editors and editors-in-chief there is also something called press ethics and standards. The heads of Aftonbladet do not seem to take those very seriously.
It is worth studying the publication policy of Aftonbladet regarding Israel over a period of time, and that goes for all of its pages. Is there any other country in the world that has been as demonized and delegitimized as Israel in Aftonbladet during the last 30 years? It is clear that Aftonbladet’s policy regarding freedom of speech and of the press has been completely different concerning, for example, the Danish Muhammad cartoons or Lars Vilks' roundabout dogs (which weren't published in Aftonbladet) a few years ago. AB declined because they didn't want to offend Muslims. But offending Jews and Israelis is apparently fine.
I don't think that either Linderborg or Helin were unaware of the ruckus that would be caused by publishing this lousy and poorly substantiated article. I think that they were consciously attempting to push the boundaries of what can be written about Israel and Jews and hide behind the banner - freedom of the press.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Norway: divest in Israel, invest in Turkmenistan
While it is unethical to invest in Israeli compay Elbit Systems, it is ethical for State-owned Norwegian oil company StatoilHydro to invest in Turkmenistan (Norway suspects Israel unethical, invests in Turkmenistan) Nigeria, Angola and Azerbaijan. And feel good about it.
Source: article in TJP
Norway's finance minister on Thursday announced that the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd. has been dropped from the Nordic country's pension fund due to ethical concerns.
A major optics and electronics manufacturer,the company supplies surveillance equipment used to monitor the security barrier between Israel and the West Bank.
"We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law," said Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen [see below]. She said the shares were sold secretly ahead of the announcement.
Halvorsen said the security barrier has unacceptably restricted the movements of Palestinians on the West Bank, so that an investment in any company involved in the project causes "unacceptable risk of contribution to particularly serious violations of fundamental ethical norms." [...]
Since 2004, a national Council of Ethics has routinely reviewed investments by the fund, and periodically recommends dropping some shares based on a range of ethical issues, including human rights, labor rights, environmental issues and production of nuclear weapons and cluster bombs.
_________
- Norwegian Minister of Finance marches with thugs
- Kristin Halvorsen and the demonstration on January 8th
- Minister of Finance sticks to her guns
- Norway: Israel is unethical but investments in Turkmenistan are fine
- Behind the Humanitarian Mask: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland
Source: article in TJP
Norway's finance minister on Thursday announced that the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd. has been dropped from the Nordic country's pension fund due to ethical concerns.
A major optics and electronics manufacturer,the company supplies surveillance equipment used to monitor the security barrier between Israel and the West Bank.
"We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law," said Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen [see below]. She said the shares were sold secretly ahead of the announcement.
Halvorsen said the security barrier has unacceptably restricted the movements of Palestinians on the West Bank, so that an investment in any company involved in the project causes "unacceptable risk of contribution to particularly serious violations of fundamental ethical norms." [...]
Since 2004, a national Council of Ethics has routinely reviewed investments by the fund, and periodically recommends dropping some shares based on a range of ethical issues, including human rights, labor rights, environmental issues and production of nuclear weapons and cluster bombs.
_________
- Norwegian Minister of Finance marches with thugs
- Kristin Halvorsen and the demonstration on January 8th
- Minister of Finance sticks to her guns
- Norway: Israel is unethical but investments in Turkmenistan are fine
- Behind the Humanitarian Mask: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland
Spanish paper calls Holocaust denier Irving 'expert' on WWII
"Even freedom of the press, Schutz wrote, had limits. One sentence that was edited out of his letter was his charge that the paper was printing the interview to cause a sensation."El Mundo article will appear a day after interview with Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev.
Source: article by Herb Keinon in TJP
First the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet cited freedom of the press as its justification for accusing IDF soldiers of harvesting Palestinian organs. Now the Spanish daily El Mundo is using the same argument to defend including Holocaust denier David Irving among its list of experts to be interviewed this week to mark 70 years since the start of World War II.
An interview with Irving, who served time in an Austrian prison for his Holocaust denial, is scheduled to appear in the paper on Saturday, a day after an interview with Yad Vashem's chairman Avner Shalev.
When Israeli Ambassador to Spain Raphael Schutz learned of the plans, he wrote a letter to the newspaper, saying it was obscene to include Irving in the list of experts and give him an esteemed platform. Such exposure, Schutz argued, lent Irving credibility. Schutz's letter appeared in the paper on Wednesday.
Schutz wrote that one of the problems facing the post-modern age was an inability to recognize anything as true, saying instead that there were only "different narratives." As such, Schutz wrote, there was no capacity to differentiate between truth and lies, between the important and the superfluous. And in this world void of truth, everything is at the same level - the murderer and the victim, the wise and the ignorant, Mozart's opera and the latest pop song.
Even freedom of the press, Schutz wrote, had limits. One sentence that was edited out of his letter was his charge that the paper was printing the interview to cause a sensation.
The paper's response, which was run under the letter, was not to endorse Irving's ideas, but rather to cite press freedom and the right for everyone to decide on their own.
Yad Vashem spokesman Estee Yaari, speaking for Shalev, said that it was "shocking" that a paper like El Mundo would include an interview with Irving as an "expert." Shalev, she said, "would never have agreed to be interviewed had he known." [...]
- US members of Congress write to P.M. Zapatero about anti-semitism in Spain
- Anti-Semitism in Spain
- Spain's Jewish problem, by Michael Freund
- Spain to limit judges' jurisdiction; includes probe against Israelis
- EU-funded Palestinian NGO leading the 'Spanish inquisition'
- 46 per cent of Spanish have a negative/very negative view of Jews (52 percent in Spain have a negative view of Muslims)
- Catalunya government: a Palestinian holocaust is taking place
- Spanish and Basque NGOs Join Palestinians and AIC in Boycott conference
- Spain : a pacifist country but ... an arms exporter
- Spanish unique expertise on Jewish bankers' genealogy
- Israel targets foreign gov't NGO funds (see section on Spain)
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Norway: Israel is unethical but investments in Turkmenistan are fine
"This is a country which does not admit journalists and which lies at the bottom of the index for press freedom together with North Korea and Myanmar. It is a completely sealed off, totalitarian dictatorship with some of the largest human rights violations in the world. StatoilHydro is, in other words, entering into a country which is far worse than countries they have been operating in previously. Among the countries in which the company is investing heavily are Nigeria, Angola and Azerbaijan. Sætre describes Turkmenistan as a suppressed nation."
Surely, this self-serving, cynical and ruthless business behaviour qualifies as fairness by Norwegian standards of morality, as this example of how Norwegian state-owned petroleum company StatoilHydro does business in less than democratic oil rich countries shows.
Source: article in Norway, Israel and the Jews blog
Norwegian left-of-centre parties are quick to criticize Israel, pointing out that with privilege (the oil/pension fund) comes ethical responsibility. The ethical thing to do, the anti-Israel lobby argues, is do desinvest from Israel. And incidentally, invest heavily in Turkmenistan.
Unauthorized translation from the communist daily Klassekampen (Class struggle) by journalists Yohan Shanmugaratnam and Eline Lønnå.
Sets up shop in dictatorship
Gas: There is little reason to believe that StatoilHydro can change the rules of the undemocratic countries they want to enter into, such as Turkmenistan, says Simen Sætre, who is publishing a book.
The Norwegian "oil adventure" is becoming increasingly international. StatoilHydro is aggressively pursuing a favourable position in "new countries" which are being opened for foreign investors, among others in the closed of and authoritarian central Asian country Turkmenistan.
- Turkmenistan is attractive for StatoilHydro. The country is being opened up and StatoilHydro, which needs something new to do after having been in neighbouring Azerbaijan for a long time, is working to establish an office there. That means they want in, says Simen Sætre, journalist in Morgenbladet and author of the new book "Petromania" to Klassekampen.
In the book he depicts a voyage through the oil-rich nations of the world, in the middle of an oil price boom, in what he came to define as "Petromania": "a condition of euphoria / megalomania / un-inhibition accompanied by an unconscious change of personality / mentality / thought patterns as well as loss of overview / self-perception / judgment as a consequence of extraordinary hydrocarbon income, connected to booming petro-States.
Sætre attempts to find the answer to the question of what oil and gas does for us Norwegians, but also what it does to the countries in possession of this natural resource which many believe geo-politics revolves around. He tells a personal story of what the situation is like in the countries where our state-owned petroleum company are entering in order to engage in business operations.
Totalitarian
- Gas deposits stand for Turkmenistan's largest source of income and, according to the International Energy Bureau, the country is the world’s tenth largest producer and sixth largest exporter.
Simen Sætre tried in all possible manners to enter the country which is the object of desire for StatoilHydro. Finally he slipped into the country as a tourist, and travelled around the nation for two weeks in order to observe the conditions.
- This is a country which does not admit journalists and which lies at the bottom of the index for press freedom together with North Korea and Myanmar. It is a completely sealed off, totalitarian dictatorship with some of the largest human rights violations in the world. StatoilHydro is, in other words, entering into a country which is far worse than countries they have been operating in previously. Among the countries in which the company is investing heavily are Nigeria, Angola and Azerbaijan. Sætre describes Turkmenistan as a suppressed nation.
- The large income from oil and gas is controlled by one person, who has spent the money on magnificent constructions and a city made of marble. No resistance, counter-arguments or free media are allowed. If StatoilHydro enters, they will be in the pocket of the leaders of the nation, he believes.
In his book Sætre points to how oil states also statistically are less democratic than others, and provides three reasons. Oil money provides larger financial room to shape the lives of the inhabitants, and state money dominates most sectors. Furthermore one requires less income from other sources, and low taxation may lead to fewer demands for representation and responsibility – central pillars of democracy. Finally it is also about the absence of a civilian society which is independent of state, trade unions and other checks and balances.
Oil plattform made of gold
During his visit to Turkmenistan, Sætre came across, among others, a gift from a Malaysian oil company to the deceased president-for-life Saparmurat Nijazov, known as Turkmenbashi ("Father of all Turkmenis"): A miniature oil platform, made of gold.
Sætre also shows to how foreign companies which desire contracts in Turkmenistan have had to translate Turkmenbashi’s book "Ruhnama" ("Book of souls") to their respective languages.
- It must be embarrassing for StatoilHydro to see what other competing companies are doing in order to gain entrance into Turkmenistan, says Sætre. Based on studies of the oil-nation Angola, Sætre has also promoted a theory on what role a Norwegian oil company can play in what is diplomatically termed "challenging countries".
According to what he calls "The heart of Darkness" theory about oil companies, it is a myth that a Norwegian company can introduce new methods and more openness in such host countries, as StatoilHydro and many Norwegians claim. Thereby it is made to appear as if the company has an ethical reason to enter into these countries, in addition to the pure business aspects. This is a myth which is built and cultivated by StatoilHydro's PR-machinery. If it holds true then one ought to get as many Norwegian oil companies into Myanmar at once, so we can get things sorted out.
After having studied Angola’s oil sector I have realized that it is Angola itself which sets the parameters. The foreign oil companies stand in line for the available contracts, and in order to get them, the companies need to play by Angola’s rules, says Sætre, who believes the analysis may be transferred to Turkmenistan.
He ties "The heart of Darkness" theory to the controversial "debate on being good" where Norway attempts to appear as a humanitarian superpower – materialized by how StatoilHydro, with its "social democratic luggage" virtually has a moral commitment to become more international.
Government follows
- There is a battle over oil-and gas resources here, and there is little left which is not already allocated. Turkmenistand is in a position where they can set Russia, China and to a certain extent the USA and the West up against one other, he points out.
– How does the Norwegian government view StatoilHydro’s ambitions in Turkmenistan?
– I can’t see that they have this on their agenda. I have been in touch with a former deputy minister who travelled there, after what I understand virtually at StatoilHydro’s bequest, in order to meet important figures of the state and to open doors for StatoilHydro. Instead of taking a critical stance here, Norway, by means of the Foreign Department and the Oil and Energy Ministry, is actively opening Turkmenistan for StatoilHydro. The opening of a large embassy in Kazakhstan is probably part of this strategy, Sætre believes.
Surely, this self-serving, cynical and ruthless business behaviour qualifies as fairness by Norwegian standards of morality, as this example of how Norwegian state-owned petroleum company StatoilHydro does business in less than democratic oil rich countries shows.
Source: article in Norway, Israel and the Jews blog
Norwegian left-of-centre parties are quick to criticize Israel, pointing out that with privilege (the oil/pension fund) comes ethical responsibility. The ethical thing to do, the anti-Israel lobby argues, is do desinvest from Israel. And incidentally, invest heavily in Turkmenistan.
Unauthorized translation from the communist daily Klassekampen (Class struggle) by journalists Yohan Shanmugaratnam and Eline Lønnå.
Sets up shop in dictatorship
Gas: There is little reason to believe that StatoilHydro can change the rules of the undemocratic countries they want to enter into, such as Turkmenistan, says Simen Sætre, who is publishing a book.
The Norwegian "oil adventure" is becoming increasingly international. StatoilHydro is aggressively pursuing a favourable position in "new countries" which are being opened for foreign investors, among others in the closed of and authoritarian central Asian country Turkmenistan.
- Turkmenistan is attractive for StatoilHydro. The country is being opened up and StatoilHydro, which needs something new to do after having been in neighbouring Azerbaijan for a long time, is working to establish an office there. That means they want in, says Simen Sætre, journalist in Morgenbladet and author of the new book "Petromania" to Klassekampen.
In the book he depicts a voyage through the oil-rich nations of the world, in the middle of an oil price boom, in what he came to define as "Petromania": "a condition of euphoria / megalomania / un-inhibition accompanied by an unconscious change of personality / mentality / thought patterns as well as loss of overview / self-perception / judgment as a consequence of extraordinary hydrocarbon income, connected to booming petro-States.
Sætre attempts to find the answer to the question of what oil and gas does for us Norwegians, but also what it does to the countries in possession of this natural resource which many believe geo-politics revolves around. He tells a personal story of what the situation is like in the countries where our state-owned petroleum company are entering in order to engage in business operations.
Totalitarian
- Gas deposits stand for Turkmenistan's largest source of income and, according to the International Energy Bureau, the country is the world’s tenth largest producer and sixth largest exporter.
Simen Sætre tried in all possible manners to enter the country which is the object of desire for StatoilHydro. Finally he slipped into the country as a tourist, and travelled around the nation for two weeks in order to observe the conditions.
- This is a country which does not admit journalists and which lies at the bottom of the index for press freedom together with North Korea and Myanmar. It is a completely sealed off, totalitarian dictatorship with some of the largest human rights violations in the world. StatoilHydro is, in other words, entering into a country which is far worse than countries they have been operating in previously. Among the countries in which the company is investing heavily are Nigeria, Angola and Azerbaijan. Sætre describes Turkmenistan as a suppressed nation.
- The large income from oil and gas is controlled by one person, who has spent the money on magnificent constructions and a city made of marble. No resistance, counter-arguments or free media are allowed. If StatoilHydro enters, they will be in the pocket of the leaders of the nation, he believes.
In his book Sætre points to how oil states also statistically are less democratic than others, and provides three reasons. Oil money provides larger financial room to shape the lives of the inhabitants, and state money dominates most sectors. Furthermore one requires less income from other sources, and low taxation may lead to fewer demands for representation and responsibility – central pillars of democracy. Finally it is also about the absence of a civilian society which is independent of state, trade unions and other checks and balances.
Oil plattform made of gold
During his visit to Turkmenistan, Sætre came across, among others, a gift from a Malaysian oil company to the deceased president-for-life Saparmurat Nijazov, known as Turkmenbashi ("Father of all Turkmenis"): A miniature oil platform, made of gold.
Sætre also shows to how foreign companies which desire contracts in Turkmenistan have had to translate Turkmenbashi’s book "Ruhnama" ("Book of souls") to their respective languages.
- It must be embarrassing for StatoilHydro to see what other competing companies are doing in order to gain entrance into Turkmenistan, says Sætre. Based on studies of the oil-nation Angola, Sætre has also promoted a theory on what role a Norwegian oil company can play in what is diplomatically termed "challenging countries".
According to what he calls "The heart of Darkness" theory about oil companies, it is a myth that a Norwegian company can introduce new methods and more openness in such host countries, as StatoilHydro and many Norwegians claim. Thereby it is made to appear as if the company has an ethical reason to enter into these countries, in addition to the pure business aspects. This is a myth which is built and cultivated by StatoilHydro's PR-machinery. If it holds true then one ought to get as many Norwegian oil companies into Myanmar at once, so we can get things sorted out.
After having studied Angola’s oil sector I have realized that it is Angola itself which sets the parameters. The foreign oil companies stand in line for the available contracts, and in order to get them, the companies need to play by Angola’s rules, says Sætre, who believes the analysis may be transferred to Turkmenistan.
He ties "The heart of Darkness" theory to the controversial "debate on being good" where Norway attempts to appear as a humanitarian superpower – materialized by how StatoilHydro, with its "social democratic luggage" virtually has a moral commitment to become more international.
Government follows
- There is a battle over oil-and gas resources here, and there is little left which is not already allocated. Turkmenistand is in a position where they can set Russia, China and to a certain extent the USA and the West up against one other, he points out.
– How does the Norwegian government view StatoilHydro’s ambitions in Turkmenistan?
– I can’t see that they have this on their agenda. I have been in touch with a former deputy minister who travelled there, after what I understand virtually at StatoilHydro’s bequest, in order to meet important figures of the state and to open doors for StatoilHydro. Instead of taking a critical stance here, Norway, by means of the Foreign Department and the Oil and Energy Ministry, is actively opening Turkmenistan for StatoilHydro. The opening of a large embassy in Kazakhstan is probably part of this strategy, Sætre believes.
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