Gilad Atzmon

As the rift between Israel and Turkey deepens, the Israeli media is preparing its crowd for another possible exciting bloody conflict.

Israel’s leading news outlet Ynet, published yesterday a detailed comparison between Israel’s and Turkey’s military capacity - it outlines the size of the air force, navy, ground forces in the respective countries. “Turkey”, it says, “posses much bigger navy but our air force is larger.’

I guess that this is what one would expect from Israel, a morbid collective driven by war enthusiasm and some bizarre craving for bloody conflict.

We have to remember, that at least on the face of it, this new emerging rift between Israel and Turkey, is not about land, oil or assets. It is all about apology. Relations between the two old allies have soured further in recent days after the publication of the UN investigation into Israel's murderous assault on a Turkish Mavi Marmara in high seas. In the attack nine peace activists were murdered; some of them were clearly executed in cold blood. Turkey demands Israel’s. apology. For some reason Israel failed to react. The meaning of it is simple. Israel prefers the prospect of a violent development instead of confronting its sin.

I will make myself as simple, short and clear just to make sure that the Israelis and their allies around the world understand how futile their agenda is.

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Stef Terblanche

Last week the world was treated to the spectacle of the Paris Conference where one Western leader after the other – together with a few token Arab dictators – patted themselves on the back for “liberating” Libya from the rule of Muammar Gaddafi. It quickly brought to mind the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884 at which Africa was sliced up among its European colonisers.

Quite rightly so, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma let it be known - as any self-respecting African should have done - that he would have nothing to do with this cynical circus initiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, onstensibly to decide Libya's future ... as if Libyans and Africans themselves should not be doing that.

In the end there was a conspicuous absence of influential African leaders, with a number of African countries and the African Union (AU) having refused to recognise the Nato-installed National Transitional Council (NTC) as the new government of Libya. Libya’s neighbour, Algeria, was there, but only as an observer and perhaps only because its shared border with Libya gave it a pressing reason.

Russia and China – both of which opposed the Nato-led military campaign to oust Gaddafi - attended as observers, with Russia having recognised the NTC only days earlier. However, both these countries have major vested interests in Libya, with China having enormous interests further afield in Africa, such as Angola now being its biggest supplier of oil.

For many Sarkozy and Cameron’s 2011-style “scramble for Africa” conference also brought to mind erstwhile ANC leader Chief Albert Luthuli’s acceptance speech in Norway in 1960 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize and said: “Our continent has been carved up by the great powers. Alien governments have been forced upon the African people by military conquest and by economic domination”.

As Vusi Gumede of the University of Johannesburg so eloquently reminded us in an opinion piece in the Sunday Independent this weekend: “A case in point 50 years later is the painful issue of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. There are other cases such as Côte d’Ivoire, which is a ticking time-bomb”.

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Abayomi Azikiwe

Imperialist Plot Theft of African Wealth

Even though the corporate media is daily championing the nearly seven-month-old war against the North African state of Libya, the combined forces of NATO and the National Transitional Council rebel units are tightening their noose around the areas of the country where armed resistance has prevented the intervention of the counter-revolution. Those millions of Libyans who remain loyal to the government and are actively opposing the efforts to loot the national wealth of this oil-producing nation, are being pressured to lay down their arms and surrender.

On September 4 it was announced that the purported negotiations between the NTC rebel leaders and the people of Bani Walid had failed to persuade the loyalist forces inside the city of 100,000 to allow the intervention of the NATO-backed rebels. On September 3 NATO figther jets carried out at least 48 airstrikes in and around Bani Walid.

The battle for Bani Walid is viewed by the imperialists and their allies as key in their strategic objective of taking control of the central and southwest regions of Libya. These areas are viewed as bastions of defense against the United States and Western European ruling class plot to seize the natural resources of the country and establish North Africa as a beachhead for imperialist intrigue on the continent.

Roads leading into Bani Walid have been blocked by NATO airstrikes that bolster the armed checkpoints of the rebels. People attempting to leave Bani Walid have been halted with men being arrested and women and children sent back into the city in order to face further NATO airstrikes that have targeted fuel depots, water and food storage facilities and other surviving infrastructural resources.

The Wall Street Journal, which serves as the voice of the bankers and transnational oil firms that are estatic over the prospects of robbing Libya of its vast wealth, indicated on September 15 that the seizure of Bani Walid is essential in consolidating their plans for Libya. This country is reported to contain the largest known oil reserves in Africa where prior to the imperialist-instigated war on February 17, 1.5 million barrels per day were being produced.

Charles Levinson writing for the Wall Street Journal on September 5 asserted that "If Bani Walid falls, it could help expedite the fall of Sirte, since it would help cutoff Sirte's access to the south, leaving it fully invested by rebel forces from the east, west and south and from North Atlantic Treaty Organization warships at sea to the north." (WSJ, Sept. 5)

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Andre Damon

National Bank of Switzerland in Bern

The world currency crisis is rooted fundamentally in the long-term decline of American capitalism and the US dollar, the foundation of the post-war currency regime.

Amid a torrent of disastrous news for the world economy, the Swiss National Bank on Tuesday took the drastic step of setting a ceiling for the Swiss franc, a move that harkens back to to the competitive devaluations and currency wars of the 1930s.

The Swiss National Bank announced that it would adopt a minimum exchange rate of SFr1.20 to the euro, and that it is prepared to purchase foreign currency in “unlimited quantities” in order to defend the franc.

The move triggered a massive sell-off of the currency, which almost immediately lost nearly ten percent of its value against the euro.

The Swiss franc has risen 25 percent against the euro in the past two years, as the currency became a safe haven for investors amidst an intensifying debt crisis in the eurozone.

In its press release announcing the measure, the Swiss National Bank said that the “overvaluation of the Swiss franc poses an acute threat to the Swiss economy,” and that the central bank is “aiming for a substantial and sustained weakening of the Swiss franc.”

The bank will enforce the new minimum rate with “the utmost determination,” the statement added.

The Swiss economy is highly export-driven, and a continued increase in the value of the Franc would significantly increase the price of exports, hitting Swiss manufacturers’ sales to its main trading partners in the European Union. Swedish economic forecaster BAK Base on Tuesday cut its estimated growth rate for Switzerland next year to 0.8 per cent, compared to the rate of 1.9 percent estimated for this year.

The Swiss franc increased sharply during the past week in response to the exacerbation of the European debt crisis and fears of an even sharper downturn of the world economy. Since August 30, the Swiss franc has risen eight percent against the euro, offsetting all previous efforts by the country's central bank to control its appreciation.

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