The dragon capitulates
According to Gordon Brown, the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is ready to speak with the Dalai Lama.
“I spoke to Premier Wen this morning and I made it absolutely clear that there had to be an end to violence in Tibet,” Brown said.
“The premier told me that, subject to two things that the Dalai Lama has already said — that he does not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounces violence — that he would be prepared to enter into dialogue with the Dalai Lama.”
Has the pressure of the torrent of net information about China’s repression in Tibet and the need for the Chinese to smooth the way for the Olympics assisted with this concession?
Prince Charles, a long term friend and supporter of the Dalai Lama, has already indicated he will not be attending the Olympic Games in Beijing.
Kowtowing to China
Seized, occupied and colonised by invading Han Chinese in 1950, Tibet is a litmus test for countries who claim to uphold human rights. For years, most nations, including Australia and New Zealand, have paid only lip service to human rights where China is concerned, frightened that an angry dragon will incinerate existing trade agreements and close its doors once more to the west. Nation heads who dare to meet with the ever cheerful Dalai Lama habitually cause the Chinese dictatorship to spout caustic recriminations.
In a sense, Tibet is the Palestine of the Orient, both areas being occupied by colonising aggressors around 60 years ago. Their lands appropriated for the benefit of Han hordes, like the Palestinians dispossessed and ethnically cleansed during their horrific Nakba, indigenous Tibetans driven from their homeland are unable to return or be granted compensation. Like Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, Tibetans supporting self-determination and resisting occupation are imprisoned, persecuted and sometimes killed. As unpopular as it is to voice support of the Palestinian people’s cause, so it is for nations to utter commitment to the cause of the Tibetan people. In both cases, the big bully calls the shots and vents slippery propaganda to justify criminal acts of abuse. In that vein, China has blamed the current riots in Lhasa on activist opportunists seeking to use the coming Olympic games to force the bully’s hand.
Tibetan sources however say the protests, in which 20 people thus far have been killed, began when the Chinese government demanded over 20 monasteries in occupied Tibet raise the Chinese flag. Protests spread spontaneously across Tibet and throughout the world, ignited by the need for freedom after 58 years of brutal occupation, borne by ubiquitous cellphone. With alarm and palpable guilt, China blocked YouTube too late to prevent eyewitnesses broadcasting images via cellphones to the net, along with material obtained by some intrepid tourists present in Lhasa at the commencement of the protests. Too late, mate – the cat is out of the bag and will never be be caught. The whole world is watching, including Chinese people sympathetic to the plight of Tibetans and their cause – so block this, you ridiculous, cruel, power-mad old dinosaurs. A healthy society can withstand and even welcome scrutiny and criticism.
Today, China’s growing economy is irrevocably intermeshed with the rest of the world. Educated youth bourgeoisie hungry for prestige, western goods and internet communication contrast with austere authoritarian rule. Without Mao-style bloody pogroms and a crippled economy, there can be no retreat for China. Particularly with the forthcoming Olympic Games to be held in Beijing, is it realistic to think that expressing solidarity with Tibetan rights (along with pressuring China over its bankrolling of the genocide at Darfur) will create a vast economic reprimand from the ruling Chinese junta? Why are Rudd and Helen Clark proferring customary kneejerk tut tuts rather than roundly condemning both the Chinese occupation of Tibet and its continued oppression of Tibet’s people?
If the west spoke in solidarity to condemn China’s human rights abuses in Tibet, what can China really do without harming itself?
Perhaps sensing this, Condisleezer has called for China to open talks with the Dalai Lama – an unprecedented request to which China has demurred unless the Dalai Lama gives up independence plans. The Dalai Lama however is not seeking independence – he simply wants Tibet to be a REAL autonomous region within China. Why has Kevvie not added his voice in support of Condi’s request? Is China to be our new master now rather than the US?
Next month, our Kevvie is to visit Beijing where it is reported he plans to raise human rights issues. Perhaps he feels that to preempt these talks by supporting Condi’s suggestion may damage his effectiveness.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith expressed the Australian government’s current position:
“The Australian government believes that China’s best interests are served by implementing policies which will foster an environment of greater respect and tolerance,” Mr Smith said.
“We remain concerned about serious inadequacies in the protection of Tibetans’ civil and political rights.”
But he stressed that Australia remained committed to a one-China policy.
Is it desirable or even possible to create an environment of respect and tolerance for oppressive, mass murdering thieves without tainting oneself with the blood of their victims?
Senator Bob Brown rightly criticises Rudd for his lack of support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people, emphasising that
the media lockout of the Beijing University protests was a reminder China was being ruled by a nasty dictatorship.
“This is a police state,” he said.
“It’s a repressive dictatorship. It’s the last huge Communist dictatorship on the planet and there’s a great need for Kevin Rudd and other political leaders around the world to call a spade a spade.
“The Tibetans have a right to self-determination.
“Kevin Rudd should be speaking up for it.”
Frank Zappa, who often said things best, can have the last word in this post (from “How the Pigs’ Music Works” off the Civilisation Phase 111 album):
Spider: I think I can explain about about how the pigs’ music works
Monica: Well, this should be interesting
Spider: Remember that they make music with a very dense light
John: Yeah
Monica: O.K.
Spider: And remember about the smoke standing still and how they they really get uptight when you try to move the smoke, right?
Monica: Right
John: Yeah?
Spider: I think the music in that dense light is probably what makes the smoke stand still. As soon as the pony’s mane starts to get good in the back any sort of motion, especially of smoke or gas, begins to make the ends split
Monica: Well don’t the splitting ends change the density of the ponies’ music so it affects the density of the pigs’ music, which makes the smoke move which upsets the pigs?
Spider: No, it isn’t like that
John: Well, how does it work?
Spider: Well, what it does is when it strikes any sort of energy field or solid object or even something as ephemeral as smoke, the first thing it does is begins to inactivate the molecular motion so that it slows down and finally stops. That’s why the smoke stops. And also have you ever noticed how the the smoke clouds shrink up? That’s because the molecules come closer together. The cold light makes it get so small, this is really brittle smoke
John: And that’s why the pigs don’t want you to touch it
Spider: See, when the smoke gets that brittle what happens when you try to move it is it disintegrates
John: And the pigs get uptight ’cause you know they, they worship that smoke. They salute it every day
Monica: You know we’ve got something here
John: And, and, and, and that’s the basis of all their nationalism. Like if they can’t salute the smoke every morning when they get up…
Spider: Yeah, it’s a vicious circle. You got it.
Israel’s water theft
Mohammad Ghamlush, “the engineer heading the Wazzani river pumping systems, told Agence France Presse the Israeli army sabotaged the water pumps on the river last week and installed a pipe to pump hundreds of cubic meters to Israel.”
He said the Israeli army has installed two water pumps to transport water from the Wazzani river through two pipes, which run toward villages in Israel.
Ghamlush said the Israelis were pumping every day between 200 and 300 cubic meters of water from the Wazzani to Ghajar and to Israeli villages.
As for water stolen from the West Bank, there’s plenty of evidence for that. It is illegal under international law to retain land captured by warfare. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Shebaa Farms and Golan Heights is illegal whilst resisting the Israeli occupation is legal.
Of course, Israel doesn’t give two hoots about international law.
Israeli work on diverting the water of the Jordan River was only temporarily suspended — perhaps for as long as two years. By 1960, however, the diversion project — which came to be known as the National Water Carrier — was complete and in fact was the target of the PLO’s first (and unsuccessful) attack in 1964.
Jordan and Syria strongly protested Israel’s unilateral appropriation of their water because Israel’s diversion made local agricultural activity impossible.
Before the Israeli diversion, the U.S. plan apportioned 33% of Jordan River water for Israel’s use. As Stephen Green points out, the significance of this figure is that only 23% of the flow of the Jordan River originates in Israel. The Israelis, however, wanted more than 33%. Today, Israel takes virtually all of the Jordan River flow leaving only brackish, unusable water for the Syrians and Jordanians. Moreover, Israel’s diversion of the Jordan River water to the Mediterranean littoral and to the Negev, defies an important principle of international law regarding water use; namely that water should not be diverted from its catchment basin.”
“When Israel conquered the Golan Heights, they captured the headwaters of the Jordan and thus secured for themselves the greatest part of the flow of the Jordan River. Israel captured the final portion of the Jordan River flow in their 1982 invasion of Lebanon when they included as part of their self-declared “security zone” the Hasbani and Wazzani Rivers which arise in Lebanon and flow into the Jordan.”
“West Bank water not only makes up 30% of the water in Tel Aviv households but also is critical to preserving the pressure balance which keeps the salt water of the Mediterranean from invading the coastal aquifers.
Israel has permitted no new drilling of agricultural wells for water for the Palestinians in the territories and has permitted fewer than a dozen for domestic use. Moreover, the Israelis charge the Palestinians fees that are three times higher than they charge Israelis for water for domestic use (with even higher relative charges in Gaza).
As Sharif Elmusa points out: “[I]n terms of relative GNP per capita, Palestinians pay a minimum of fifteen times more than Israeli consumers — a phenomenal difference for water systems managed by the same company.” (“Dividing the Common Palestinian-Israeli Waters: An International Water Law Approach” in Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1993, No. 87, p. 63. See also note 11, p. 74.) ”
Here’s more history of Israel’s theft of water from the Jordan and the disastrous consequences.
“The main flow of the Jordan River has now been all but totally preempted by Israel’s diversions. All the headwaters’ flow is now collected by Israel and pumped out of the Jordan Basin, across the mountains, for use in irrigation or municipal water along the Mediterranean littoral of Israel.
The planning for diverting the Jordan River water by the Israelis started as early as the 1940s, but the very idea of capturing it is even more ancient. Much of the design of the civil works for capturing the Jordan River was completed in the 1950s, and they succeeded in diverting the entire volume of sweet water from the Upper Jordan by the late 1960s, when construction of the National Water Carrier system was completed. Pumps lift Jordan River water out of Lake Tiberias, also known as the Sea of Galilee, and convey it across the watershed. The diverted flow is then pumped to Israeli consumers on the Mediterranean coast and down into the northern Negev.”
“To make things even more difficult, there is another source of extra-boundary water that Israel diverts for its own use, albeit less obviously. The amount of water that Israel take from the underground of the West Bank is almost as important as the water diverted from the Upper Jordan Valley. This could surprise as the West Bank appears to be quite dry much of the year. In fact it receives more rain than the coastal plain, mostly in wintertime. As the soil is extremely porous much goes into the ground and thus into the aquifers underneath which is now pumped by the Israelis. This subsurface flow of water is a major contributor to Israel’s water balance, representing with its 400 mcm/y of water just over 20% of total Israeli consumption. This explains why Palestinians have not been allowed to dig new wells since 1967 and why their water consumption was constantly restricted by the occupier: the hegemony over the West Bank is critical for Israel’s water supply.”
The Wazzani River is in Lebanon.
Not Israel. Israel may think it owns all the water in the region, but it doesn’t.
“Withdrawing from some villages, the Israeli forces redeployed to other areas leaving behind them a trail of destruction, such as in Labbouneh, whose trees and horticulture have been totally destroyed by bulldozers. In addition, convoys of Israeli trucks are transporting Lebanese agricultural soil over the border to Israeli settlements and Israeli soldiers are building a water duct to carry water from the Wazzani river to Israel. The deployment of Lebanese and UNIFIL forces is being hampered by Israel’s refusal to hand over the maps indicating the land mines they planted prior to their withdrawal in 2000 and the cluster bombs they dropped on Lebanese sites during the last three days of the recent war. Moreover, reports about Israeli commando operations shifting the border away from the Blue Line into Lebanese territory have prompted the Lebanese government to file a complaint with the United Nations under the new regulations set up by Resolution 1701 which is supposed to safeguard Lebanon against violations of its territory.”
And more:
“There are no bilateral water agreements between Lebanon and Israel, but both states are bound by the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, which has NOT been formally ratified. It must be noted that even this convention does NOT give Israel the right to actually draw water from within Lebanese territory. It merely puts a loose restriction on Lebanon in its usage of international watercourses that have downflow across the boundary. The Convention merely says that the state from which the watercourse flows should make sure to use the water source on its territory in a reasonable manner. This does NOT mean that Israel has the right to extend pipes across its boundary and pump water into Israel!!! Such a thing would fall under a bilateral agreement, which does NOT exist between Lebanon and Israel. Water diversion from the territory of one country by a foreign country is illegal under international law.
In fact, Israel’s occupation of Al-Ghajar and theft of water is merely a measure of revenge at a Lebanese project that dates a few years back, in which the Wazzani waters were to be put into use as part of a project to provide water to south Lebanese villages with no water access (a perfectly legitimate, legal project), and over which Israel was throwing a tantrum. It also explains why Israel has been pressuring Lebanon for the past 3 decades to initiate economic ties with it. This would basically mean the beginning of bilateral agreements, of which water is deemed to be an inseparable part. Direct access to these water sources would ensure that Israel would cover at least 40% of its water needs, not taking into account the Litani.
Between 1982 and 2000 Israel was pumping water OUT of Lebanon. Actually there is a very interesting study on this, I think done by the Lebanese ministry of energy & water, in the form of a booklet, but I think it’s only available in Arabic (a colleague once showed it to me, but I have not been able to get my hands on it). Throughout the occupation, the government in Beirut was prevented from having access to the water in the occupied south, while Israel pumped millions of cubic meters of water into Israel. From 1978 (Operation Litani) onwards, Israel stopped publishing full water and cultivation figures. Instead, only loose estimates were made available. As a counter-proposal to the Johnston plan for an agreement on the allocation of water sources to Arab countries and Israel, Israel proposed the diversion of the waters of the Litani (which does not feed any of the water sources inside Israel). Of course, the Johnston proposal was in itself inherently racist, and though its aspirations were high on resolving water conflict in the M.E as a precedent to political settlement, it nevertheless was a big failure not merely technically but also theoretically, in that it did not look at the core sources of the conflict (dispossession and colonization), but rather focused entirely on arriving to an artificial solution (settling the Palestinians in the Sinai desert). If you can, you should check out an article by John K. Cooley titled ‘The War over Water’, in the journal Foreign Policy, No. 54. (Spring, 1984), pp. 3-26.
For example, the article points out that when they captured the dam and lake at Qirawn in June 1982 the Israelis immediately seized all the hydrographic charts and technical documents relating to the Litani and its installations. The Israelis were openly augmenting the flow of the Hasbani across the frontier into Israel by laying surface pipes to catch the run-off and other waters from the mountains and nearby springs. Moreover, a watchful American military observer claims to have seen Israelis burying pipes deep in a hillside near Marjâuyn [Marjaâayoun] after the Israeli incursion of 1978, indicating that the Israelis might be secretly siphoning water underground from the Marj Plain in southern Lebanon into Israel, without affecting the measured flow of the Litani. Such a diversion would trap the extensive underground aquifer, which is fed by seepage from both the Litani and the Hasbani rivers and by underground streams from the Mount Hermon region. [S]eismic soundings and surveys had been conducted at a spot on the Litani gorges called Deir Mimas – soundings that Lebanese Litani River Authority officials were certain had been undertaken to find the optimum place for the inlet of a diversion tunnel to be dug about three miles into Israel (p. 22-23).
Another interesting read is an article titled ‘Israel’s Water Policies’, by Uri Davis, Antonia E. L. Maks, and John Richardson, which appeared in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2. (Winter, 1980), pp. 3-31.”
And yet more:
According to a United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Israel was using water from the Lebanese Litani River, by means of an 11 mile tunnel it had drilled, as well as from Lebanons Wazzani springs (source: UPI). Note that no journalists can get to the area to confirm information about the siphoning of water and, indeed, such claims are contested (Aaron Wolf, in a U.N. publication, says there’s no way Israel would dream of stealing from the Litani).
But even whilst President Clinton and the Israeli government refused to negotiate over the right of return for Palestinian refugees, Israel imported over 100,000 Jews into the occupied West Bank. Those 100,000 use around the same amount of water that one million Palestinians do (something to do with swimming pools, say partisan analysts). As the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs says:
“Israel’s water economy is on the brink of a crisis.”
Related Links
“No Peace Without Water” – The Role of Hydropolitics in the Israel-Palestine Conflict