One of the Australian Lebanese and Arabic communities’ best –loved poets, Fouad Neeman El-koury, is renowned for his intimate way of visualizing the presence, his beautiful expressions, his visionary intuitions, his use of words and allegories in a delightful manner, his attractive presentation and the way of reading his poems in a passionate way. All these creative talents were sensed and shared in the event.

El-koury launched his new book Nidr El’ lahfeh, meaning “That Moment’s Vow” on Friday 27 June 2014 held at Our Lady of Lebanon Church Hall, Harris Park, Sydney, in the presence of a number of eminent guests: Mr Tony Issa, OAM MP, Member of Legislative Assembly and Member of Liberal Party, Monsignor Marcellino Joseph representing Bishop Antoine Tarabay, Father Antoine Tohme representing the President of the Monastery of Saint Charbel, Father Joseph Solomon head of the Maronite Center for Studies, Father Tony Moses, Tawfiq Queiroz, head of the Maronite League, Wally Wehbe, head of the gathering of the Christian , Michael Duwaihi, former president of the Australian Lebanese Cultural Association, And a number of representatives of parties and movements and heads of organizations, associations and cultural bodies, journalists of various media, writes, poets, artists, a and a crowd of  prominent personalities and members of the communities. 

The evening began with a video presentation titled “Raceael El-Mahabbah” which was specially organised and made for the event by Mrs Leila El-Koury. The video featured a number of the poet’s fans and friends from Australia and Lebanon who expressed their appreciation towards El-Koury’s amazing poetry. 

Claudine Mansour Germanos the MC presented the event and guest speakers included: John Bechara, Sylva Mezher (SBS Arabic Radio), Anis Ghanem (An-Nahar Arabic Newspaper), Sayed Mikhael (National News Agency, Australian Middle East Media), George Mansour  the poet, Yves El- Koury (Gibran Khalil Gibran Cultural Heritage). And not to forget the beautiful song of “My Faith Shining” poem, page 114 from the book which was specially composed and sung for the event by the composer and singer Fouad Harraka.  

The event was culminated with an inspiring poetry reading by El-koury including his new poems. The event concluded with the cake cutting, cocktail and book signing.

El-Koury’s work is so exquisite that has beauty which springs from within the soul. His poetry reads the poetic Arabic words of the Lebanese dialect. At the same time it is a great reflection of the Australian migrants’ feelings of alienations, suffering and happiness, for he experiences a life of alienation and integration in the Diaspora world at one time. His poems are often full of images that are captured in a few words which give rise to a striking thought. For those new to El-Koury’s work as well as his many fans, “Nidr El’ lahfeh’s” poetry proved to be a real joy.  

Marcelle Mansour

REUTERS: 

Samsul Said Muslim demonstrators chant slogans outside Malaysia''s Court of Appeal in Putrajaya, outside Kuala Lumpur, March 5. 4 hr ago By AFP Malaysia's highest court on Monday dismissed a bid by Christians for the right to use the word "Allah", ending a years-long legal battle that has caused religious tensions in the Muslim-majority country. 

The Catholic Church had been seeking to reverse a government ban on it referring to God by the Arabic word "Allah" in the local Malay-language edition of its Herald newspaper. But a seven-judge panel in the administrative capital Putrajaya ruled a lower court decision siding with the government stood. 

 "It (the Court of Appeal) applied the correct test, and it is not open for us to interfere," chief justice Arifin Zakaria said. "Hence, the application is dismissed." 

 S. Selvarajah, one of the church's lawyers, said the decision meant the end of the court case. 

 "It's a blanket ban. Non-Muslims cannot use the word," he told AFP. Outside the court, which was cordoned off, about a hundred Muslim activists shouted "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great", and held banners that read "Uniting to defend the name of Allah" ahead of the verdict. 

 The dispute first erupted in 2007 when the Home Ministry threatened to revoke the publishing permit of the Herald for using the Arabic word in its Malay-language edition. 

 The church launched a court case to challenge the directive, arguing "Allah" had been used for centuries in Malay-language Bibles and other literature to refer to "God" outside of Islam. But authorities say using "Allah" in non-Muslim literature could confuse Muslims and entice them to convert, a crime in Malaysia. 

 An appeals court last October reinstated the ban, overturning a lower court's 2009 ruling in favour of the church that had led to a spate of attacks on houses of worship.

31st of June, Friday, Lake Placid

Senator Richard leaned back in the couch in his luxury yacht savoring some peace and comfort after the demanding party he just hosted. He lit a cigar and puffed gently its fragranced smoke into the calm saline atmosphere around him while pondering the produces of his conference with the general. Quite a profitable deal for him if the grounds do promise the yields mentioned in the map. If at all discovered and evaluated as salvageable for sale, he would easily smuggle the contents out of Jordan and into New York by sea where his connections waited. The figures for such sales were dazzling and made the trouble of organizing the campaign worth every single second of it; but if however unsuccessful he was safe with the general handling all the expenses. All he had to do was wait till they were back to see the outcome of things and especially the fate awaiting the general. 

The mistakes he made while handling the map and the Forest murders opened up too many eyes on them and were endangering the whole organization. The police already attempted to plant a spy between his men and this alone was an alarming signal that had to be dealt with immediately. When all would be back from the expedition Ivan would have a very big chore to fulfill for him; a chore that once done would relief him of the incompetence of the general for good. With that taken care of the entire merchandise of the expedition would be soled to his benefit alone. An excellent plan that would heave on him a one hundred percent profit.

The entire drug and antique transactions were done by men under the supervision of the general with no tangible evidence involving any of the organization members with him. The cocaine, which was bought by the Senator and the organization, would be imported in bulk sacks to New York from South America via sugar shipments registered in the name of the general's company. It was usually mixed within the 50 kg sacks of sugar and each cocaine shipment never exceeded one ton of the ships cargo making it impossible to locate. Upon its arrival the ship's cargo was trucked immediately from the port to the general's sugar stores where it was unloaded. However embedded within the stores were underground rooms where the cocaine sacks were taken and then repackaged into one kilogram sacks for external distribution to their dealers. The senator would then pay the general handsomely for ferrying the cargo into New York and send his own vehicles to pick up the packaged sacks for distribution to his dealers. 

Antiques upon availability from the organization's many world wide contacts in Arabia and the Far East were also shipped in with the sugar. The small pieces were packaged and buried deep within the sugar sacks to prevent them from being damaged while bigger pieces where placed inside completely sealed small rooms within the ship's walls and interior. Those rooms were secretly opened during the night time's camouflage or when the harbor was least active and their contents were loaded on smaller boats to be taken to safer shores. The general's men would be waiting at designated meeting points to take them to their stores where they would rest till their buyers arrive. 

So many things were at stake and every single arrangement had to be made to protect the organization's reputation and businesses interest. Since the general's shipments contained the smuggled material and his stores kept them until their sales the organization members were safe if the material was caught by the police. The general would hold full responsibility. However the members weren't fools to totally leave the general to vessel their purchases unguarded. As much as the general thought he was smart the senator always found a way to outsmart his mentality. Its' true his long years as a general in the US marines taught him a lot of things in the military world but he was no longer in charge of an aircraft carrier managing weapons and army units like in the army days. He was in a world where things were played by a different set of rules. Things were weighed by people with shrewd minds and not only by the power of guns. During his two years of service to the organization the general was an instrument to execute orders and had done so unaware of the close surveillance he was under. The Russian assistant they planted in his group never failed to report to them his movements and kept a careful record of his contacts. He gave them periodically a time list of his expected shipments and stealthily spied on all his correspondences when his master was away. He frequently broke into his company's offices and searched through the staff's bureau's for anything that might prove to be suspicious and of importance to the organization. How else was the spy uncovered if it wasn't for those Russian eyes that saw through the mistake she committed?

After her recruitment as secretary in one month she was seated in the general's office writing down a communication he wanted her to send to a contact of his company. Ivan was in the office too waiting for orders concerning a quick errand. The general's telephone rang interrupting his dictation to his secretary. He abruptly welcomed, "lieutenant" succeeding in grabbing his secretary's attention and making her involuntarily look up. Ivan studied her surprised for a couple of seconds as she sat uncomfortably then everything proceeded as normal. In one week's time the senator pulled a couple of strings and her file was sent to Ivan. Ivan took the credit to himself and told the general how he noticed her abrupt sudden behavior and how he took the time to investigate her ID, furthermore cementing his much needed loyalty to the general. If it wasn't for him the general he wouldn't have changed the dates for the upcoming cocaine transfers and all hell would have broken loose.     

The sudden light tick tocks of high heels awakened him from his thinking. He smiled as he felt her coming towards the lounge. As the door slowly opened and gradually revealed the caller to his yacht a wave of surprise suddenly engulfed him. Although expecting a Jordanian woman promised by a business contact to give him the sexual desires he wished mostly, nevertheless it was Raghda. He eyed as the fifty year old Egyptian lady with her unbelievable sexy figure walked in, her hips causing a superb aching as they swayed sideways in the tight denims she wore. Her waist long black hair that neatly flowed around her danced with every move she took. Sparkling blue cat eyes mesmerized the viewer with heavens of beauty and complimented her heart shaped face. Her white complexion gleamed under the lights of the lounge and her ample breasts that were nicely displayed underneath her low cut shirt made him suddenly sizzle with the pains of want. 

Raghda was a gift he tremendously cherished that was given to him through an Arabic Sheikh that had big enterprises in Cairo. She flew with the Sheikh to New York to entertain him while on a business trip two years ago where she met him and gained his favor. Noticing how enchanted he was with her the Sheikh asked her to take good care of him. Ever since then when ever his wife would be away or when he would be in need of her company, Raghda traveled from Cairo to New York especially to pleasure him with her visits and services. She provided him with a time out period where his deep stresses and sexual preferences would role unrestrained. 

"Come on in Raghda. How was your trip?"

"Hello Senator." She hugged him in a cold manner then sat down on a couch with an expressionless face displayed. He politely excused himself saying, "In a minute I will be at your disposal ma'am." He kissed her cheeks and departed the lounge. Within seconds the boat bloomed to life as it departed the silent dock of luxury yachts towards the dark seas. 

They sailed through the still summer waters till gradually the glowing lights of the marinas minimized in size. Achieving the required distances Richard halted the motors and anchored bringing the boat to a full stop. The breathtaking sounds of the rolling sea waves surfaced in the air that was saturated with the coast's warm humid salinity. The clear skies above shimmered handsomely with their nightly population. The horizons that sometimes sparkled with the car lights shuffling between the street lights in the roads were quite captivating from where he was. But his senses quickly drifted back to the lady that waited in the lounge. It was truly mind-blowing that she maintained such magnificent beauty at her age. She resembled a vintage wine bottle, matured with enchanting taste. She had with her a handsome gift for him and mustn't be kept alone for too long.  

He walked back into the lounge and poured his guest a drink. His senses pleasured greatly at the flowery feminine perfume that permeated the closed quarters and that contrasted greatly with the natural marine settings only moments ago.  

He asked in an inquisitive manner, "Very nice perfume. What is it called? No let me guess, Ah Sexy Eve."

His question and comment met no reply as he expected. Placing the drink on the table in front of her he sat down besides her and attempted to kiss her lips. She moved away commanding in a stern voice, "Not yet. We have something to discuss first." 

Richard's mind lighted with expectancy. He calmly began to explain. "If it's about the last time…" He paused in thought for a few seconds then continued, "Look I know I have upset you ma'am but believe me I didn't mean to. She cut her visit without prior notice and called me from the airport saying she was on her way home."

Raghda, barely smiling back at his explanation stood up and gestured him to do likewise. She gently kicked off her high heels and gave him a reprimanding look, "It looks like you're up to your mischief with me again son; and you know well when you’re a naughty boy…come here!"    

The senator's spirit began choking with anticipation as he slowly approached his sexy guest. Waves of déjà vu flashed through his mind and captivated his sexually aroused emotions returning him to his childhood days and the excellent lickings his stepmother used to give him. He swallowed hard as he saw her hands unbuckle the thick leather belt that she wore. The shuffling sound it caused as it moved around her fine waist and the clanking of its' metal buckle made his heart beats race wildly and drenched his instincts with frustrating pain and desire. She was just so sexy with that leather belt in her hand.  

"How long will she be gone this time?" 

"We have a good two weeks to ourselves. Please Raghda." 

"I will make those weeks worth your while senator. But you have to compensate me in a certain way."

"How?"

She pranced the grounds in front of him explaining with the grace of a soft gazelle, "Canceling an appointment on the last minute, you made me loose a client. That will cost you five hundred dollars you know."

He replied daring her, "And what will you do if I don't pay Raghda."

"Suite yourself," She grabbed him by his left arm and attempted to turn him around. He quickly lost her grip and crouched down begging and kissing her feet for forgiveness. "Sorry but you are in for it son. This will teach you how to fool around with me."

She grabbed his left arm again and yanked him up with firmness. He surrendered into her demanding authority and swirled around like a child in her arm begging, "Please forgive me."

"Its been some time since your last whipping son…keep silent."

She dragged him to the whipping post that rested in the corner of the lounge and unbuttoned his shirt. She undressed him and tied his arms to the post firmly. A narrow mirror rested at a short distance in front of the post placing Raghda in full view of Richard. She took a few steps back. Within seconds he began screaming as he tasted her leather belt on his back. The smacks echoed through the yacht as a swift royal trio made him twist and turn madly in his place begging for mercy. Unconcernedly she raised her belt and continued the whipping reprimanding him for his behavior. Her sexy figure that swayed with the movement of her arm as she lifted the belt ravaged him with choking frustration as his body careened from the pain at every time the belt fell on his back. His crying and shrieking filled the yacht as his mistress's whipping began leaving torturing welts on his skin. Soon he began showering promises of obedience at her. But she was still a long way from finished with him. She took off her blouse revealing her exquisite voluptuous motherly breasts. She managed a slight smile as she saw his face and eyes rage with vicious want. She approached him and stood in front of him saying, "I don't want you to ever pull any funny tricks on me again. Do you understand?" 

He answered sobbing, "Yes mistress, I will do want you want. I'm sorry."

"I don't have time to play around with kids! When you call me you will have to make time for me. Do you understand?!"

"I understand mistress."

The sight of her breasts in front of him made him involuntarily tilt his head to kiss them but she swiftly pulled back and turned around with firm steps towards his back. She raised the belt giving him a powerful smack across his back again. He cried like a child as his mistress yelled back at him saying, "Did I give you permission to do that!!! Did I!!!"

The belt resumed its furious attack making him careen again with agony. Raghda's breasts shook wildly in the mirror in front of him as she raised her belt repeatedly and lashed him burning his skin mercilessly and sizzling him with woes of frustration. After a few moments the lashing ceased and nothing was heard but his sobbing and begging, "Please mistress, forgive me, I will never upset you again! Mercy!" 

Raghda untied Richard from the post and wore back her belt. He fell down to the floor weeping as she sat down on a nearby couch breathing heavily after her strenuous struggle with him. She lit a cigarette and dragged deeply attempting to ignore his childish crying and restless rubbing at the red welts that filled his back. She knew she had just ignited her partner's sexual appetite and in moments wild love making will be taking place. Seated barefoot with her large breasts that were exposed to his full view forbidden to him for a while will tantalize him even more. However deep inside herself and at every time she gave him the belt she couldn't help but pity him. Why on earth didn't he seek medical advice instead of the burning lashing just baffled her. She never liked his pathetic game that he had her play with him before he slept with her. She never used her leather belt on any of her clients as this field truly lurked with dangers but against the handsome money the senator offered she agreed that he be the only exception. After a few successful trials it became a pastime for him to enjoy her disciplining and sexual sessions. But as the days passed by his addiction to his masochist practices and to her services got more demanding and began to annoy her.  When he ended up calling her more than once a month she attempted to ignore his calls. However the worst of her fears shortly happened. He unearthed her private home address, flew especially to meet with her in Cairo and ask for her services once more. It was crystal clear to her then that he was sentimentally involved with her and could never leave her alone. Daring not to frustrate such a personality she accepted but on condition that her visits not exceed more than twice a month. Very soon she resumed her rendezvous with him on the yacht. She understood that he was a reality that she had to deal with and not resist.    

Ten minutes had passed before she decided to break her silence with him. She gave him a warm sympathetic smile and gestured him to approach her with her hand. As he came close she began stripping off her denims and lingerie gluing his attention to her. In a few seconds she was completely naked revealing the full superbness of her gleaming white complexion. His red eyes blazed with desire as she pressed his head against her breasts in a motherly way. She groaned with pleasure as she felt him intentionally give the cleavage of her breasts a hard kiss. She explained, "You know the lashing I just gave you was for your own good. You should know how to respect your appointments more son. Don't you? I love you. You know that well."

Richard looked up at her face that beamed with warm sympathy. A couple of small age wrinkles formed around the tips of her eyes and mouth as she smiled back affectionately at him. He shook his head with understanding as their lips immediately kissed and their hands roamed freely searching for ways to pleasure each other. The coming moments held nothing but the sounds of their panting and sensual love words. 

*****

--:--, --/--/--

The two diggers were no longer in view as they restlessly shoveled the sands and deepened the two hundred sixty nine square foot hole they created besides the Pyramid of Khafra. The other worker along with Mustafa worked the pulley on the grounds that pulled out the big sand basket when full. Two electrical spot lights that were connected to a portable generator powered by diesel lit the excavated area for the convenience of the project and thus killing the darkness that the desert beasts sometimes roamed in hunting for prey. 

The Pyramids of Giza in the daytime of the summers witnessed excellent activity as it was the main sight of many tourist groups that visited Egypt and its many ancient ruins. However during the nighttime it was quiet as ever with no close towns to encourage any excursions. Countless stories were told of how the mafias and treasure-hunters used the darkness to conceal their ransacking of the different sights, thus adding an extra something to worry about for Angel and Nigel. But the police patrols that came by periodically to check on their digging site made them a bit secure, and also their private weapons that were hidden in the nearby parked jeep. Although the patrols were perplexed by the fact that they were digging at night the legal documents that they bore with them allowing their activity minimized their interferences and left their visits only to check on their safety. 

Looks of despair overcame Angel's face as the sands of time seeped through the hours with no nearing signs that the stairs ever existed in the area. She sat besides Nigel a small distance away from the digging pondering whether to call the digging off that had started ever since three hours or to wait a few extra moments in hopes of a break through. They dug at the middle point of the east side of the Pyramid of Khafra exactly where the map was indicating. Nigel's point of view suddenly felt logical and it became apparent to her that she was chasing after unachievable goals. After all anybody could have scratched down those details on the ancient papyrus. Its old age didn't necessarily mean its contents were true.

"You know love dawn is after one hour. Do you think we should call everything off?"

Nigel wrapped his arm around her and answered, "Well lengths were not mentioned on the map. They could be buried still at a deeper distance than our digging."

"I don't have the proper money to finance the required equipment for such digs, and with no guarantee that the details do exist…" 

"Don’t worry about money Angel. Our relationship is worth far more than a couple of hundred pounds if this will help you accomplish what you want."

Angel smiled back and softly said, "Thank You Nigel. I hope that someday…"

Suddenly elated cries sounded from deep inside the hole. Angel and Nigel stood up amazed as Mustafa turned around and ran up to them exclaiming, "A sealed entrance of some type was found. Come and have a look!" 

Excluding “boots on the ground” and leaving combat missions to local and regional “partners,” President Barak Obama and his administration say the United States keeps “all options on the table” to respond militarily to the terrorists’ threat to “American interests” in Iraq, which are now in “danger.”

Similarly, former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on TV screens and in print has recently urged western governments to “put aside the differences of the past and act now” and to intervene militarily in Iraq “to save the future” because “we do have interests in this.”

Both men refrained from indicating what are exactly the “American” and “western” interests in Iraq that need military intervention to defend, but the major prize of their invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the country’s hydrocarbon assets. There lies their “interests.

On June 13 however, Obama hinted to a possible major “disruption” in Iraqi oil output and urged “other producers in the Gulf” to be “able to pick up the slack.”

The United States has already moved the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, escorted by the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun, from the northern Arabian Sea into the Arabian Gulf (Persian according to Iran) “to protect American lives, citizens and interests in Iraq,” according to Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, on June 14. Media is reporting that U.S. intelligence units and air reconnaissance are already operating in Iraq.

The unfolding collapse of the U.S. proxy government in Baghdad has cut short a process of legalizing the de-nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry in Iraq, which became within reach with the latest electoral victory of the Iraqi prime minister since 2006, Noori al-Maliki.

Anti-American armed resistance to the U.S. proxy ruling regime in Baghdad, especially the Baath-led backbone, is on record as seeking to return to the status quo ante with regard to the country’s strategic hydrocarbon assets, i.e. nationalization.

De-nationalization and privatization of the Iraqi oil and gas industry began with the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. Al-Maliki for eight years could not pass a hydrocarbons law through the parliament. Popular opposition and a political system based on sectarian distribution of power and “federal” distribution of oil revenues blocked its adoption. Ruling by political majority instead by sectarian consensus was al-Maliki’s declared hope to enact the law.

Al-Maliki’s plans towards this end together with his political ambitions for a third term were cut short by the fall to armed opposition on this June 10 of Mosul, the capital of the northern Ninawa governorate and second only to Baghdad as Iraq’s largest metropolitan area.

Three days on, with the fighting moving on to the gates of Baghdad, “the most important priority for Baghdad right now is to secure its capital and oil infrastructure,” a Stratfor analysis on June 11 concluded.

The raging war in Iraq now will determine whether Iraqi hydrocarbons are a national asset or multinational loot. Any U.S. military support to the regime it installed in Baghdad should be viewed within this context. Meanwhile this national wealth is still being pillaged as spoils of war.

Al-Maliki is not now preoccupied even with maintaining Iraq as OPEC’s No. 2 oil producer, but with maintaining a level of oil output sufficient to bring in enough revenues to finance a defensive war that left his capital besieged and his government with southern Iraq only to rule, may be not for too long.

Even this modest goal is in doubt. Al-Maliki is left with oil exports from the south only, the disruption of which is highly possible any time now.

Worries that fighting would spread to the southern city of Basra or Baghdad have already sent oil prices to nine-month high on Thursday.

Legalizing the de-nationalization of Iraqi hydrocarbon industry has thus become more elusive than it has ever been since 2003.

On June 1 forty two years ago the process of the nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry kicked off in Iraq. Now Iraq is an open field for looting its only strategic asset.

On April 15 last year the CNN, reviewing “The Iraq war, 10 years on,” reported: “Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with winners: Big Oil.”

“Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms,” the CNN report concluded, indicating that, “From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.

The international rush for the Iraqi “black gold” by trans-national oil and gas corporations is at its height with no national law or competent central authority to regulate it.

Iraq’s “oil industry” now “operates, gold rush–style, in an almost complete absence of oversight or regulation,” Greg Muttitt wrote in The Nation on August 23, 2012.

Nothing changed since except that the “rush” was accelerating and the de-nationalization process was taking roots, squandering the bloody sacrifices of the Iraqis over eighty two years to uproot the foreign hold on their major strategic asset. The ongoing fighting is threatening to cut this process short.

Tip of iceberg

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has been awarding hydrocarbon contracts to foreign firms independently without reference to the central government in Baghdad.

Since early 2014, it has been pumping crude to Turkey via its own independent pipeline built last December. On this June 4, Turkey and the KRG announced the signing of a 50-year deal to export Iraqi oil from Kurdistan via Turkey.

Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraq's deputy prime minister, threatened legal action against firms that purchased "smuggled oil" via the Turkish-KRG arrangements; he accused Turkey of “greed” and trying “to lay (its) hands on cheap Iraqi oil.

Baghdad filed for arbitration against Turkey’s state-owned pipeline operator BOTAS with the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris.

Baghdad says those Turkish-KRG arrangements are illegal and unconstitutional, but its own contract awarding is also unlawful. Should a change of guard occur in Baghdad, al-Maliki and his government would be held accountable and probably prosecuted.

The dispute between Baghdad on the one hand and Turkey and the KRG on the other is only the surfacing tip of the iceberg of the “gold rush–style” looting of Iraq’s national wealth.

One of the main priorities of al-Maliki all along has been to legalize the de-nationalization and privatization process.

Muttitt, author of Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq, wrote a few months before al-Maliki assumed his first premiership that American and British governments made sure the candidates for prime minister knew what their first priority had to be: To pass a law legalizing the return of the foreign multinationals. This would be the vital biggest prize of the U.S. 2003 invasion.

Al-Maliki is the right man to secure a pro-privatization government in Baghdad. Thomas L. Friedman described him in the New York Times on this June 4 as “our guy,” “an American-installed autocrat” and a “big gift” the U.S. occupation “left behind in Iraq.”

Various drafts of hydrocarbon privatization laws failed to gain consensus among the proxy sectarian parties to the U.S.-engineered “political process” and the “federal” entities of Iraq’s U.S.-drafted constitution.

Al-Maliki’s government endorsed the first draft of a privatization law in February 2007 and on August 28, 2011 endorsed an amended draft which the parliament has yet to adopt.

Iraqi trade unions, amid popular protests, opposed and fought the privatization draft laws. Their offices were raided, computers confiscated, equipment smashed and their leaders arrested and prosecuted. Nonetheless, the parliament could not pass the law.

Al-Maliki government began awarding contracts to international oil and gas giants without a law in place. They are illegal contracts, but valid as long as there is a pro-privatization government in Baghdad.

U.S. Executive Order 13303

Former British and U.S. leaders of the invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair and George Bush junior, were on record to deny that the invasion had anything to do with oil, but the U.S. President Barak Obama has just refuted their claim.

On last May 16, Obama signed an Executive Order to extend the national emergency with respect to Iraq for one year. His predecessor Bush signed this “order” for the first time on May 22, 2003 “to deal with the … threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by obstacles to the continued reconstruction of Iraq.”

Details of Bush’s Executive Order (EO) No. 13303 are still kept out of media spotlight. It declared that future legal claims on Iraq’s oil wealth constitute “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

Section 1(b) eliminates all judicial process for “all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons.”

EO 13303 was rubber-stamped by the UN Security Council Resolution No. 1483, which protected the U.S.-controlled governmental institutions in Iraq.

Muttitt wrote in August 2012: “In 2011, after nearly nine years of war and occupation, U.S. troops finally left Iraq. In their place, Big Oil is now present in force.”

“Big Oil” is now the only guarantor of the survival of the U.S. proxy government in Baghdad, but the survival of “Big Oil” itself is now threatened by the escalating and rapidly expanding armed opposition.

Obama said the “threats” and “obstacles” to U.S, interests in Iraq have not changed eleven years after the invasion; Iraq has not enacted yet a hydrocarbon law to legalize the privatization of its oil and gas industry.

The developments of the last week in Iraq vindicate Obama’s renewal of EO 13303. The U.S. war on Iraq is not over and it is not won yet. Hence Obama’s recent extension of the national emergency with respect to Iraq for one year.

Since Great Britain granted Iraq its restricted independence in 1932, the nationalization of Iraqi oil wealth was the national and popular battle cry for complete sovereignty. It is now the battle cry of the armed opposition.

Iraq has been targeted by western powers since the “republic” under the late Abd al-Karim Qasim enacted law No. 80 of 1961, which deprived foreign companies of the right to explore in 99.5% of the Iraqi territory, but mainly since the Baath regime led by the late Saddam Hussein decided to nationalize the hydrocarbon industry on June 1, 1972.

* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com

On June 5, Australian Attorney-General George Brandis in a statement said: ''The description of East Jerusalem as 'Occupied East Jerusalem' is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful.''

Similarly, the Australian Representative in Ramallah, Tom Wilson, was summoned by the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to convey “deep concern” because Brandis’ remarks “contradict all international resolutions.” They requested “official clarification.”

Bishop’s “no change” statement came in response. It was followed on June 14 by Prime Minister Tony Abbott who said, while on a trip to North America, that his government had made only a “terminological clarification.”

Abbot two days earlier stated that the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are in “truth … disputed territories."     

Canberra is showing no signs of backing down. Australian ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, on June 11 said Brandis’ reasoning could lead his government to similar official linguistic change on the West Bank.

Either case the change in “terminology” serves neither Australian nor Palestinian interests. Coming ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to Australia this summer, to be the first ever sitting Israeli premier to visit Canberra, it serves only as a free of charge welcoming present.

By Bob Carr and Gareth Evans* 

June 10, 2014

Australia’s new policy of refusing to describe East Jerusalem as “occupied”, confirmed by a statement made by Attorney-General George Brandis in consultation with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, will not be helpful to Australia’s reputation, the peace process or Israel itself.

The Abbott government’s new position shatters what has been for nearly 50 years a completely bipartisan position. Neither Fraser and Peacock, nor Howard and Downer either adopted or even explored taking a similar stance. And for very good reason.

East Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in 1967. No other state – not even the US – describes the situation in any other terms. There are multiple Security Council resolutions rejecting Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem. The International Court of Justice in 2004 declared not only that the West Bank was occupied but that this was illegal. The court made no distinction between East Jerusalem and other parts of the Palestinian territories.

If East Jerusalem is not to be referred to as “occupied”, why not Nablus or Bethlehem? If the Australian government can say “occupied East Jerusalem” is fraught with “pejorative implications” what is to stop Ms Bishop applying this to the occupied West Bank as a whole? It is a short step away for the Coalition government to declare that all the West Bank, with its population of more than 2 million Arabs, is no more than a “disputed" territory.

The government’s statement follows Julie Bishop’s earlier break from bipartisan consensus when she said in Israel in January that she’d like to see which international law has declared Israel’s settlements illegal. The answer is that there is overwhelming international consensus that Israel is in clear breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, specifically Article 49, paragraph 6, which states that “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.

Even within Israel, there is distinguished support for that view. Then-legal counsel to the Foreign Ministry and now a leading international judge, Theodore Meron, told Prime Minister Eshkol at the start of the occupation in 1967 that settlements would be illegal, and he adheres to this advice today.

Four leading Israeli lawyers, including former attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair, wrote to Ms Bishop restating the international legal consensus. They said they viewed with deep concern the Foreign Minister’s comments on settlements. So did a number of other eminent Israelis, including four winners of the Israel Prize, the country’s most prestigious award.

None of this means that it is neither desirable nor possible to negotiate a peace settlement in which some of the Palestinian territory now occupied and illegally settled by Israel is recognised as part of Israel, in return for Israel giving up an equivalent land area in return. Every realistic two-state formula envisages some territory swaps.

The successive statements of the Abbott government reinforce the annexationists and rejectionists within the Israeli government, who are now engaged in a torrent of further settlement building, and are utterly unhelpful in creating an environment in which the peace talks that US Secretary of State John Kerry has tried so hard to kick start can resume.

Israeli realists know that indefinite occupation of the West Bank will degrade their own country, maintaining its Jewish identity only at the price of compromising its democracy. As former prime minister Ehud Barak put it so clearly: “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”

In March this year US casino owner and mega-donor to the Republican Party Sheldon Adelson hosted a gathering of what is known as the Republican Jewish Coalition, an opportunity for presidential candidates to strut their wares.

When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie referred to visiting Israel and flying over "the occupied territories", he was immediately upbraided by Adelson and required to issue a clarification. Tea Party Republican orthodoxy prohibits reference to occupation: "occupied territories" are now “disputed" only.

This has never been the American position under any Democrat or Republican president. It should not be the Australian one.

·        Bob Carr was Foreign Minister (2012-13) and Gareth Evans was Foreign Minister (1988-96).

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/australia-hinders-progress-in-middle-east-peace-process-20140608-zs15x.html

Pope Francis’ “”pilgrimage” to the Holy Land last week proved to be an unbalanced impossible mission. The pontiff failed to strike a balance of neutrality between contradictory and irreconcilable binaries like divinity and earth, religion and politics, justice and injustice and military occupation and peace.

Such neutrality is viewed by the laity of Christian believers, let alone Muslim ones, in the Holy Land as religiously, morally and politically unacceptable.

The 77-year old head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics “is stepping into a religious and political minefield,” Naim Ateek, the Anglican priest who founded the Palestinian liberation theology movement and runs the Sabeel Ecumenical Center in Jerusalem and Nazareth, was quoted as saying by “Time” on last May 24, the first day of the pope’s “pilgrimage.”

Ironically, the symbolic moral and spiritual power of the Holy See was down to earth in Pope Francis’ subservient adaptation to the current realpolitik of the Holy Land in what the Catholic Online on May 26 described as “faith diplomacy.”

The pontiff’s message to the Palestinian people during his three-day “pilgrimage” to the Holy Land boils down to an endorsement of the Israeli and U.S. message to them, i.e.: “The only route to peace” is to negotiate with the Israeli occupying power, refrain from unilateral actions and “violent” resistance and recognize Israel as a fait accompli.

The UK-based Jordanian-Palestinian journalist Lamis Andoni, a Christian herself, wrote on May 27: “We don’t need the Vatican blessing of negotiations … Whoever sees occupation and remains neutral has no justice in his vision.”

The Vatican and the pope himself had insisted that his visit to the birthplace of the three monotheistic “Abrahamic faiths” of Islam, Christianity and Judaism was “purely spiritual,” “strictly religious,” a “pilgrimage for prayer” and “absolutely not political.”

But the Vatican expert John Allen, writing in the Boston Globe a week ahead of the pope’s visit, had expected it to be a “political high-wire act,” and that what it truly was, because “religion and politics cannot be separated in the Holy Land,” according to Yolande Knell on BBC online on May 25.

Pope Francis would have performed much better had he adhered “strictly,” “purely” and “absolutely” to making his trip a “pilgrimage for prayer” and one that is committed to Christian unity and to helping indigenous Christians survive the highly volatile and violent regional environment.

Instead he had drowned his spiritual role in a minefield of symbolic political semantics and semiotics.

The pope finished his “pilgrimage,” which was announced as a religious one but turned instead into a political pilgrimage, with a call for peace.

However, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hussein, while welcoming the pontiff inside Islam’s third holiest site of Al-Aqsa Mosque on May 26, said: “Peace in this land will not happen until the end of the [Israeli military] occupation.”

Palestinian-American Daoud Kuttab on May 25 wrote in a controversial column that the pope “exceeded expectations for Palestinians.”

He flew directly from Jordan to Bethlehem in Palestine without passing through any Israeli entry procedures, implicitly and symbolically recognizing Palestinian sovereignty.

He addressed the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as the head of the “State of Palestine,” announced that there must be “recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to a sovereign homeland and their right to live with dignity and with freedom of movement” and met with Palestinian children whose parents were refugees whom Israelis displaced from their homes in 1948.

And in an undeniable expression of solidarity with the Palestinians, he made an unplanned stop to pray at Israel’s apartheid wall of segregation in Bethlehem, because, as he said, “the time has come to put an end to this situation which has become increasingly unacceptable.”

However, the word “occupation” was missing in more than thirteen of his speeches during his “pilgrimage” as was any reference to world’s “largest open-air prison” in Gaza Strip or to Dahiyat a-Salam (literally: Neighborhood of Peace) and other five neighbourhoods in eastern Jerusalem, including the Shu’fat Refugee Camp, where some eighty thousand Palestinians were cut off from the city services, including water, since March 2014 and isolated from Jerusalem by Israel’s segregation wall. His itinerary did not include the Galilee and Nazareth where most Palestinian Christians are located.  

Eight papal messages

However, within less than twenty four hours the pontiff was to offset his positive overtures to Palestinians and his call for a “just solution” and a “stable peace based on justice” for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with eight messages to them.

The pontiff’s arrival in the Palestinian Holy Land came three days before Israel’s celebration of its 47th anniversary of its military occupation and annexation of the Christian and Muslim holy sites in the Arab east Jerusalem and ten days after the Palestinian commemoration of the 66th anniversary of their Nakba on the creation of Israel in 1948 on the ruins of more than 500 towns and villages from which the Zionist paratroops ethnically cleansed forcefully more than 800,000 Arab Muslim and Christian native Palestinians.

The pope had nothing to say or do on both occasions to alleviate the ensuing plight of the Palestinians except prayers, because “the concrete measures for peace must come from negotiations … It is the only route to peace,” according to the pope aboard his flight back to Rome.

That was exactly the same futile message the Israeli occupying power and its U.S. strategic ally have been sending to Palestinians for sixty six years, but especially since 1967: Palestinians should be held hostages to exclusively bilateral negotiations with their occupying power. This was the pope’s first message to Palestinians.

For this purpose, the pope invited Palestinian and Israeli presidents, Abbas and Shimon Peres, to pray for peace at “my home in the Vatican as a place for this encounter of prayer” on June 8. The pope's spokesman, Federico Lombardi, told the BBC it was “a papal peace initiative.” This was his second message.

His third message to Palestinians was to “refrain from initiatives and actions which contradict the stated desire to reach a true agreement” with Israel, i.e. to refrain from unilateral actions, which is again another Israeli and U.S. precondition which both allies do not deem as deserving Israeli reciprocity.

By laying a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the atheist founder of Zionism who nonetheless believed in God’s promise of the land to His Jewish “chosen people,” the pope legitimized Herzl’s colonial settlement project in Palestine. This was his fourth message: Israel is a fait accompli recognized by the Vatican and blessed by the papacy and Palestinians have to adapt accordingly. The Washington Post on May 23 went further. “Some are interpreting” the pope’s act “as the pontiff’s tacit recognition of the country’s Jewish character.”

The pope sent his fifth message to Palestinians when he addressed young Palestinian refugees from the Dehiyshe Refugee Camp in Bethlehem: “Don't ever allow the past to determine your life, always look forward.” He was repeating the Israeli and U.S. call on Palestinian refugees to forget their Nakba and look forward from their refugee camps for an unknown future in exile and diaspora.

On the same occasion he sent his sixth message: “Violence cannot be defeated by violence; violence can only be defeated with peace,” the pope advised the young Palestinian refugees. This is again the Israeli and U.S. message to them, which after more than two decades of Palestinian commitment produced neither peace nor justice for them.

The pope prayed at the Holocaust memorial, the western al-Buraq Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which Israelis call “The Wailing Wall,” the memorial of the Israeli victims of Palestinian resistance, laid a wreath at Herzel’s grave, visited Israeli president at his residence where he “vowed to pray for the institutions of the State of Israel,” which are responsible for the Palestinian Nakba, and received Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Notre Dame complex. The pontiff was in fact blessing and granting the Vatican legitimacy to all the Israeli symbolic casus belli claims to the land, which justify the Palestinian Nakba. This was his seventh message.

All those events took place in Jerusalem, which Israel annexed as the “eternal” capital of the Hebrew state and the “Jewish people.” Reuven Berko, writing in Yisrael Hayom, said that the Pope's meetings with Peres and Netanyahu were “de facto expressions of the Vatican's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel.”

The pope’s eighth message to Palestinians was on the future of Jerusalem: “From the negotiations perhaps it will emerge that it will be the capital of one State or another … I do not consider myself competent to say that we should do one thing or another.”

Normalization with Israel

The “greatest importance” of Pope Francis’ visit “may lie in the fact that it reflects the normalization of relations between the Vatican and the State of Israel,” head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, wrote on May 23.

The Second Vatican Council early in the sixties of the last century rejected the collective Jewish guilt for Jesus Christ’s death. Since then the Vatican’s “normalization” of relations with the Jews and Israel has been accumulating.

Rabbi David Rosen, director of inter-religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, was quoted as saying by the USA Today on May 26: There “has been a revolution in the Christian world.”

At Ben-Gurion airport on May 25, Pope Francis reiterated his predecessor Benedict’s call for “the right of existence for the [still borderless] State of Israel to be recognized universally,” but was wise enough not to reiterate his “thanks to God” because “the Jews returned to the lands of their ancestors.”

To emphasise interfaith coexistence he broke the precedent of including a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim sheikh in his official delegation. “It’s highly symbolic,” said Rev. Thomas Rosica, a consultant to the Vatican press office.

By laying a wreath of white and yellow flowers, the colours of the Vatican, on the Herzl’s grave, the pope broke another historic precedent. It was an unbalanced act, 110 years after Pope Pius X met Herzl and rejected the idea of a Jewish state.

The pontiff’s “pilgrimage” could not dispel the historical fact that lies deep in the regional Arab memory that papacy was “still linked to the Crusades of the 11th through 13th centuries” when the successive popes’ only link to the Holy Land was a military one, according to the international editor of NPR.org, Greg Myre, on this May 24.

Of course this does not apply to Christianity. The indigenous oriental churches’ link to the land has never been interrupted while the Catholic Church was cut off from the region since the end of the Crusades until it came back with the European colonial domination since the nineteenth century.

No pope ever travelled to Jerusalem until Paul VI spent one day in the city, on January 4, 1964, when the holy sites were under the rule of the Arab Jordanians. John Paul visited thirty six years later and established a new papal tradition that has been followed by Pope Benedict, who visited in 2009, and now Pope Francis.

It doesn’t bode well with the Arabs and the Palestinians in particular that the new papal tradition is building on the background of recognizing Israel, which is an occupying power and still without a constitutional demarcated borders, as a fait accompli that the Palestinian people should recognize as well.

* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. An edited version of this article was first published by the Middle East Eye. nassernicola@ymail.com