Friday, January 14, 2011

JOE MCCARTHY MOVES TO JERUSALEM

In Israel, Joe McCarthy has found a new home as the Knesset looks at probing Israeli left, peace, and human rights groups for suspected funding ties to "terrorist organizations." Amongst the suspected terrorist funders is the European Union."

The following is from the Jewish Daily Forward.

Knesset To Investigate Funding of Left-Wing Israeli NGOs for Terror Ties

NGOs Decry Effort as an Attempt To ‘Silence Criticism,’ While American Pro-Israel Groups Voice Condemnation

COURTESY OF DAVID ROTEM AND DANY DANON

Common Cause: Knesset members David Rotem and Danny Danon have both presented bills targeting NGOs.

By Nathan Jeffay and Nathan Guttman

Published January 12, 2011, issue of January 21, 2011.

Amid growing fury on the Israeli right toward the country’s human rights groups, the Knesset has approved two motions aimed at examining whether there are skeletons in NGO closets.

The separate but similar motions, submitted by the Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud parties, mandate a Knesset investigation of funding sources of left-leaning nongovernmental organizations. The motions, passed January 6 by large majorities, emerged from the Knesset’s two largest right-wing parties.

The response in America from mainstream Jewish groups was swift, and mostly critical of the motions.

In Israel, the sponsor of one of the two measures claims that mandated legal reports filed by NGOs such as Breaking the Silence, which publicizes testimony by Israeli soldiers of alleged Israeli military abuses in the occupied territories, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, do not tell the full story of where their money comes from.

Yisrael Beiteinu lawmaker David Rotem told the Forward that his party is convinced that funding comes from Saudi Arabia, and suspects it has terrorist origins. “If [an NGO] is being backed by terrorists or Al Qaeda, we ought to know,” he said.

At a Knesset party caucus on January 10, Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman, who is also Israel’s foreign minister, said that some NGOs are “terror-aiding organizations.”

Danny Danon, initiator of the Likud-backed motion, wants to report on the extent of “interference” by foreign governments and the European Union in the Israeli political process by ascertaining how much money they are giving to NGOs.

“These organizations have failed to gain public support [in Israel], so they are doing a bypass by receiving funds from foreign governments,” he said, adding that he wants to chair the committee and see that it recommends outlawing such donations.

Some 17 NGOs, including those singled out by the politicians, responded to the motions with a declaration that “similar attempts to silence criticism have failed in the past; this attempt will fail, too.”

The Israeli left, the centrist Kadima party and a small libertarian contingent in Likud have voiced anger. “Recently, the Knesset has knitted together a racist, McCarthyist mix that transcends parties and endangers the State of Israel,” Labor lawmaker Avishay Braverman, the government’s minority affairs minister, declared in the Knesset.

In the United States, a number of Jewish groups were taken aback by the motions, including some that are normally loath to criticize Israel. The American Jewish Committee, nestled well within the mainstream of American Jewish organizational life, issued a statement saying that the Knesset had contravened “the democratic principles that are Israel’s greatest strength.” AJC’s executive director, David Harris, added in the statement that “the selective targeting of groups critical of the [Israel Defense Forces] runs counter to Israel’s legal and political tradition, and does no service to the one state that is a beacon of democracy in the Middle East.”

Harris, through a spokesman, declined to elaborate on the group’s decision to speak out on this issue.

Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, which supports several of the groups that are expected to be investigated by the Knesset, said he was “incredibly heartened” by the AJC’s stance.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said that the decisions on establishing the committees were “unwise” and that they created “unease.” Yoffie spoke of a “certain ugliness that has emerged in Israel’s political coalition reality,” noting that American Jews “are basically centrists and Israel now has a right-wing coalition.”

The politicians initiating the probes dismissed these criticisms. Danon told the Forward that faced with foreign governments working in their countries against national interests, “every democracy would do the same.” Rotem denounced the charge of McCarthyism as “rubbish.”

“I’m not going to investigate anyone privately as a person, and I’m not going to fire anyone from their job,” he said. “We just want everything to be shining in the sun so that people should know the facts.”

The parties found a strong supporter in the United States in the Zionist Organization of America, which joined them in rebutting their detractors. “The American Jewish Committee is mistaken to see any sort of assault on Israel’s democratic traditions,” ZOA President Morton Klein said in a statement released January 10. “To the contrary, anything that results in obliging these groups to reveal their sources of funding and their foreign associations is of democratic service.”

Whatever the reservations of critics in Israel and America, the commissions — one in response to each motion, unless they are merged — will be assembled over the coming weeks. The Knesset plenum will not have opportunity to block them from forming, though lawmakers can try to hamper them from becoming active when they return for a vote on their membership and on their parameters for investigation.

Yet it is unclear exactly what these committees will do once formed. Danon and Rotem both told the Forward that they want to see the committees probing the NGOs’ financial accounts and calling witnesses. But annual accounts are already in the public domain. And ad hoc committees voted into existence by the Knesset, such as these, have no right to compel witnesses to testify or to make public bodies hand over information. This means that from a strictly legal viewpoint, the committees will have no rights above and beyond those of an activist group such as NGO Monitor, which has been probing NGOs critical of Israel for years.

But Haifa University law academic Amnon Reichman said that the parliamentary committees’ clout as official bodies will make it easier for them to secure the cooperation of the government. He believes that the committees could provide forums to release information about the NGOs already held by the Foreign Ministry and other ministries “in a respectable manner.”

“From the right-wing perspective, it is a way to launder this information, so to speak,” he said.

The other main advantage is simply that reports from the Knesset will have a greater “seal of authority” than those from unofficial groups.

Hagai Katz, director of the Center for Third-Sector Research at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, said that NGOs “don’t have anything to worry about” legally, as he believes them to be law abiding. But from a public relations perspective, he believes that the damage has already been done, as the decisions to establish the commissions have attracted mass publicity. The fact that human rights NGOs are under investigation — whatever the final outcome — is what sticks in people’s minds, Katz said.

“If [the sponsors of the probes] want to give the organizations a hard time, that’s what they’ll do,” he said, adding, “It’s about scaring away donors.”

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com

Contact Nathan Jeffay at jeffay@forward.com

"HOLDER VS HUMANITARIAN LAW PROJECT" AND THE CHICAGO GRAND JURY

The Jewish Daily Forward has a long history as a "liberal-progressive" voice of sorts in the Jewish community. The linked article is an interesting look at the scope of the grand jury proceedings underway directed at a number of midwestern activists and the Supreme Court's dangerously repressive ruling in "Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project."

FROM THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD

Federal Probe May Open New Front in Terror War

By Josh Nathan-Kazis

Published January 11, 2011, issue of January 21, 2011.

If an American communist website publishes a statement issued by a Palestinian terrorist group, has the communist website committed a crime?

That’s a question that some Midwestern activists could face as grand jury hearings approach for members of pro-Palestinian and left-wing groups who have received subpoenas in recent months from federal prosecutors. The exact nature of the investigation is unclear, as the office of Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, would neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation. But news reports and people familiar with the subpoenas say they appear to be aimed at people who have supported groups designated by the U.S. Department of State as “foreign terrorist organizations”: in this case, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC.

If the inquiry by Fitzgerald — known for pursuing a number of high-profile cases, including the prosecution of Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame affair — is an investigation into material support for terrorism, it could be the first test case of a new legal regime confirmed by a June 2010 Supreme Court decision. The ruling, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, upheld the federal government’s view that material support for terrorism could include speech coordinated with terrorist groups and providing nonviolent training or advice. Plaintiffs contended that this is an overbroad intrusion into First Amendment speech protections.

Search warrants in the apparent investigation were first executed in September. According to Michael Deutsch, a Chicago attorney representing one person called to testify, some of the warrants and subpoenas ask for documents relating to material support for the FARC and the PFLP.

Among the groups that appear to be under scrutiny is the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a communist group that has published statements by the PFLP on the news website it operates. Lawyers say this group likely violated the material support statute if it coordinated with the PFLP to publish the statements. But one high-profile critic of the current material support law said that it’s not clear that they would be innocent of material support if they independently published the statement after finding it on the PFLP website.

“This is where the gray area is,” said Georgetown University Law Center professor David Cole.

Subpoenas issued in December reportedly included no details on the information requested. Maureen Clare Murphy, an activist called to testify, said her subpoena simply told her to appear at a hearing January 25. She said she believes that the subpoena came as a result of her work organizing “solidarity delegations to the West Bank.” Managing editor of the pro-Palestinian website Electronic Intifada and an organizer with the Palestine Solidarity Group in Chicago, Murphy said she did not think that her delegations had met with anyone affiliated with the PFLP. She said that she planned to exercise her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

It’s not yet clear what conduct the grand jury will investigate. But advocates say it could include conduct confirmed as criminal in the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, in which individuals and groups who wished to support the nonviolent activities of groups designated as terrorist by the federal government challenged portions of the material support law. That law bars people from knowingly providing money to groups designated as terrorist organizations by the Department of State, but it also bars providing training, expert advice or assistance, and personnel, among other things, to the groups. The Humanitarian Law Project argued that certain provisions of the law were overly restrictive of speech, association and more. The court found in favor of the government.

“Under the material-support statute, plaintiffs may say anything they wish on any topic,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. “[T]he statute is carefully drawn to cover only a narrow category of speech to, under the direction of, or in coordination with, foreign groups that the speaker knows to be terrorist organizations.”

Critics of the decision say that it creates peril for activists and others. “If you’re a cautious lawyer advising people, you’re going to tell activists that they have to be extremely cautious and assume that there’s a chance that they’d get prosecuted for doing advocacy with any degree of coordination” with designated terrorist groups, said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights who served as the project co-counsel on the Humanitarian Law Project case.

Kadidal said that activists can’t be convicted if they don’t know that they are coordinating with a terrorist group, or if their speech in support of the group is not coordinated with that group.

But in a brief filed in the case, Cole, who represented the Humanitarian Law Project before the Supreme Court, warned that op-ed pieces penned by Hamas leaders and published by The New York Times and other outlets could be prosecuted under the statute.

Op-eds are “clearly covered by the statute, which according to the government covers any coordinated advocacy, and obviously in order to publish an op-ed by the leader of Hamas you have to coordinate with that leader on editing and the terms of publication,” Cole said in an interview with the Forward.

Tom Neumann, executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, challenged this.

“The New York Times does not coordinate,” said Neumann, whose group signed on to an amicus curiae brief in support of the government in the Humanitarian Law Project case. “It editorializes. There’s a difference between coordinating and editorializing,” Neumann said.

Cole conceded that it’s unlikely for the Times to be prosecuted. This underscores the concerns of Kadidal and others that the Supreme Court ruling could open the door to selective prosecution.

“I don’t think it’s going to be The New York Times that’s going to be prosecuted. I think it’s going to be the small solidarity groups who are working to change the status quo,” said Murphy, the subpoenaed activist.

And, critics like Cole say, the law is simply too broad. “It’s very, very sweeping,” he said.

Neumann disputes this characterization. “I don’t worry about this particular law,” he said. “It doesn’t stop anyone. You want to be a left-winger… be a left-winger. If you want to be a left-winger with the terrorists, it’s a different story.”

One pro-Palestinian student activist said that he could see material support prosecutions having a chilling effect on his organization’s work. “I think its impact is going to be tremendous,” said Yaman Salahi, a law student at Yale University and a member of Yale’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Salahi said that he could see groups like his refraining from organizing book drives for Palestinian schools, for fear that the schools may have members of designated terrorist groups in their administrations.

Pro-Palestinian groups at more than 50 North American campuses have signed a joint statement condemning the apparent Fitzgerald investigation.

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at nathankazis@forward.com or on Twitter at @joshnathankazis

Thursday, January 13, 2011

UNDERCOVER PIGGY UNDERCUTS CROWN PROSECUTORS CASE, ME THINKS

I am not one of those people who expresses shock at the discovery of undercover cops and other nefarious agents and provocateurs crawling around the floorboards of any movement organization. However, it's always a good time when one is so clearly exposed for his/her dastardly ways as a certain Mr. Mike Kennedy has been recently. It's also amusing to see people set free because THE GOVERNMENT gets a wee carried away and a wee bit not so careful, shall we say. Such freedom will come one hopes with the revelations which are being printed for all to see in Great Britain over some good people convicted of bothering the powers that be with an environmental protest they took part in at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, near Nottingham, in 2009.

Photograph: Guardian/ caption: OD
STAR, HEROIN DEALER, OR MR. PIG?

By the way, you have to admit, that the undercover "officer" looks like he ought to be playing guitar in U2 not befriending trusting people and then doing all he can to wreck their lives.

But I digress...

The following is from the Guardian.

Activists challenge convictions in wake of police spy revelations

Paul Lewis, Afua Hirsch and Rob Evans
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 January 2011 20.39 GMT
Article history

Photograph: Guardian/ caption: OD

Twenty environmental activists are seeking to overturn recent criminal convictions in the wake of the Guardian's revelations about a network of undercover police officers embedded deep in the movement.

Lawyers for the group claim that a failure to disclose the role of covert police operative Mark Kennedy during their trial may have led to a miscarriage of justice and have written to the Crown Prosecution Service demanding details of his role.

Six other activists walked free from court earlier this week after their lawyer, Mike Schwarz, demanded details of the part played by Kennedy in planning the environmental protest they took part in at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, near Nottingham, in 2009.

However, last month, in a separate trial, the 20 green campaigners were convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass during the same protest, after failing to convince a jury that their actions were designed to prevent immediate harm to human life and property from climate change.

"The police allowed this trial, unlike the later one, to run all the way to conviction," said Schwarz, whose firm, Bindmans, represents both groups of protesters. "In the light of events last week, this must be seen as a potential miscarriage of justice."

Revelations of PC Kennedy's activities by the Guardian this week have triggered a crisis in undercover policing. He is alleged to have played a central role in organising a proposal to break into the power station.

Kennedy used the fake identity "Mark Stone" to live for seven years in the protest movement, infiltrating activist groups in 22 countries. He had sexual relationships with a number of women. He also revealed the identity of another undercover officer to fellow activists, leading to a security operation this week as police tried to ensure all their undercover officers were safe.

An investigation into the collapse of the trial of the six activists is expected to be launched shortly by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The body is also considering widening its inquiry to take into account whether or not Kennedy acted as an agent provocateur during his years undercover. A further review into the wider undercover operation and those organising it may also follow.

The case of Kennedy and the other undercover officer – a woman the Guardian is calling Officer A after representations from senior police officers – has thrown a spotlight on the role of secretive police intelligence units, overseen by the Association of Chief Police Officers, to which Kennedy and Officer A were seconded.

Today the former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald said the handling of undercover officers appeared to be "alarming" and "opaque". "There should be published guidelines," he said. "It is particularly important that the public understands what the principles and what the rules are. The fact this operation is so opaque, nobody knows how it was run, what the objectives were, why it ran for so long. I think that's quite alarming."

The defence used by the 20 convicted activists – known as "necessity" – is similar to one that has been used successfully in the past by environmental protesters. In 2008, six Greenpeace activists were acquitted of causing criminal damage after scaling a chimney atKingsnorth power station after convincing jurors that they sought to protect property around the world threatened by climate change.

But the defence relies on convincing a jury that defendants genuinely believed they were acting through "necessity" to prevent death and serious injury caused by carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. During last month's trial of the six Ratcliffe-on-Soar defendants, the prosecution argued that they were not really intending to stop carbon emissions, but instead engaged in a publicity stunt.

But the activists' lawyers now believe that Kennedy, who they say was central to the protest from the moment the idea was hatched, would have been in a prime position to reject that claim.

Kennedy has been described by activists involved in the Ratcliffe action as having been "in the thick of it". His name appeared on receipts for the hire of a 7.5-tonne truck to transport equipment for the protest. He used his fake passport and driving license for the transaction, which cost a £778.

In a letter to the CPS seen by the Guardian, the lawyers have asked for disclosure of material relating to Kennedy "any other undercover officers or informers" that could have undermined the prosecution's case.

"The crown's case to the jury was that the defendants were lying when they told the jury in evidence that the action was about preventing carbon dioxide emissions," the letter said.

"The defendants believe that the undercover officer Mark Stone/PC Kennedy – and any other officer involved in the planning and implementation of the proposed action – would have been in a position to rebut these assertions. Mark Stone/PC Kennedy was well connected to the organisation of the action and was involved in planning discussions from an early stage."

The letter added: "He was a vehicle driver and present at the school before the arrival of the majority of campaigners. He had a central role in the black conveyor belt team. He had many discussions with individuals about the proposed action. He observed what many of the defendants did, discussed and sought to achieve."

It goes on to request disclosure of "any material, statements, briefing notes, contact logs or similar documents generated" generated by Kennedy or other spies.

Police have claimed that the plan to break into the power station would have endangered lives and was a serious criminal act. However, handing down sentences to 18 activists ranging from 18 months' conditional discharge to 90 hours' unpaid work, Judge Jonathan Teare gave a different view. He described them as individuals with "the highest possible motives".

TUNISIA BACKGROUND

Trying to figure out what the heck is going on in Tunisia. These posts may help.

The first post below provied some current information and is from al-bab.com . The second is a bit more analytical and is from ZNet.org by way of The Indypendent...

People chant during a demonstration in Tunis, Tunisia, against high prices and unemployment, Saturday Jan.8, 2011.

TUNISIA: THE LAST DAYS OF BEN ALI

Today is exactly four weeks since the start of the Tunisian uprising and I was planning to write another summary of the day's main events. But, honestly, I can't. There's so much going on, so much chaos.

Let me just point to two things which, basically, say it all.

One was the demonstration today in Kairouan. I've been there on holiday and it's not an especially big town. But look at the video: that protest is huge, huge, huge.

The other is this report from the New York Times: "Tunisia Rioters Overwhelm Police Near Capital". Referring to today's events in Hammamet, it says:

The police on Thursday all but abandoned this exclusive Mediterranean beach town — haven to the capital’s rich and powerful — as rioters calling for the ouster of Tunisia’s authoritarian president swarmed the streets, torched bank offices and ransacked a mansion belonging to one of his relatives.

That is not the only place where the security forces are fighting a losing battle.

Regional commanders are no doubt bracing themselves to deliver the bad news to President Ben Ali if they haven't already done so: they can no longer cope and the only way to restore order now is through a political solution.

Ben Ali is speaking as I write this. In any normal country it would have been his resignation speech. Instead, he has promised to stand down in 2014, but the thought in many Tunisians' minds must surely be: why wait till then?

In the meantime, he seems to be offering a bit more freedom and promising to stop shooting demonstrators. But even that seems too late now and, anyway, after 23 years of repression who is going to take him at his word? The Muslim weekend is upon us and, I suspect, many Tunisians will judge that this is the moment to finish him off.

Unless the president has some totally unexpected tricks up his sleeve (which I doubt), he'll be gone well before 2014. If the protests continue on the same scale this weekend, I'd give him about three days.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tunisia: Yezzi Fock! (It’s Enough)

By Rob Prince

Yezzi Fock!

This has become the theme of the nationwide protests in Tunisia which continue unabated. `Enough’ refers to the high levels of unemployment in the country, the pervasive corruption, especially of the two ruling families and the decades of seething repression which has kept Zine Ben Ali in power now for 23 years.

Triggered originally on December 17, 2010 by the suicide of a 26 year old university graduate who had had his unauthorized fruit and vegetable stand confiscated in Sidi Bouzid – and who soaked himself with gasoline and lit a match – the protests have only intensified, despite government attempts to suppress them continue.

Latest Developments

If anything, the situation is intensifying as the opposition is only intensifying in the face of growing, if not massive repression. As `Kerym’ my unknown but insightful Tunisian correspondent (see comments in `Tunisian Intifada’ below) comments: The demonstrations will continue because:

“The people know very well that he’s (Ben Ali) trying to cool things down, and once the situation returns to normal, he will betray them again….just like he did before . In other words , this people happen to distrust this weird man and his mobster gangs . Therefore quitting the protests now, means more repression and more arrests to be expected, and unemployment will remain an unsolved issue in tunisian society.

So far, the situation is snafu, but not without hope.

Among the confirmed reports:

• Joining Tunisia’s lawyers, the countries artists have taken to the streets and joined the calls for an end to repression, corruption along with calls for the government to deal with the unemployment crisis. A number of the country’s leading cultural figures – artists, rappers, and leading intellectuals have been arrested.

• The trade union confederation in Sfax, Tunisia’s second largest city after Tunis, have joined the protests, called for a strike in the city

• The Tunisian government has closed all the high schools and universities in the country `until further notice’ in an attempt cool what started as a `youth rebellion’, but which has long extended to broad sectors of the population

• That at least some of the weapons being used against demonstrators are `made in the USA’, including tear gas

Unconfirmed but worrisome

• That in Kasserine were a number of people were killed by security forces over the weekend, the government employed snipers on building tops who shot into the demonstrations, killing people at random. There are reports that the snipers are not from the Tunisian military who are actually trying to protect the demonstrators but from a special unit of Ben Ali’s security police called the Brigaude de l”Ordre Publique (BOP). Formed in the 1980s, the B.O.P. is based upon a French model

• That demonstrations have now erupted in the interior agricultural center of Beja, in Djendouba and the northern coastal city of Bizerte. According to one source, in Beja, the police station, the local offices of the ruling party (Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique) and a bank in which the Ben Ali/Trabelsi families are part owners were burnt to the ground today.

• That some members of the Ben Ali/Trabelsi familes are leaving the country, in one case for Canada

• That Tunisians living outside the country, all over the world, including in the United States are mobilizing, overwhelming in opposition to the current government.

Economic Considerations

Although the protests in Tunisia began in opposition to the country’s economic policy, they have more and more become political in nature, with growing calls for Zine Ben Ali, the country’s dictator-president, to step down. To date, Ben Ali refuses, hoping to crush the opposition with the country’s 180,000 strong security police. He combines fierce repression with promises of economic reform and a government jobs program.

Tunisians have heard these promises before. Three years ago, when a six month long protest over unemployment and social decay in the country’s mining district around Gafsa erupted, Ben Ali pursued a similar approach – repression and the promise of jobs, except virtually no economic development followed.

The country’s official unemployment rate stands at 14%. However youth unemployment for people between the ages of 15-24 is at least double that, and in some parts of the interior, as high as 50%. Furthermore the main areas of job creation – the tourism industry, textile manufacturing targeting the European market in `free trade zones’ and what is left of Tunisia’s agricultural sector – are producing low wage jobs. And as in response to IMF/World Bank pressures, government subsidies continue to be reduced or eliminated from food and gasoline; even those with jobs find themselves having difficulty making ends meet.

None of the current economic problems weighing on Tunisia are new. Low wage jobs and growing unemployment for the country’s university graduates, high unemployment has been plaguing the country for some time as has Ben Ali’s long standing policies of repressing dissent of any kind, in the name of course, of countering Islamic radicalism; this despite the fact that Islamic radicalism, while it exists, has less of a base in Tunisia than virtually any other Arab state.

Tunisia: Stuck in the Semi-Periphery of the Global Economy

The economic rut in which Tunisia finds itself is a result what has long been its strategic role in the global economy as primarily a peripheral or semi-peripheral country whose mission has been to provide cheap manufactured products – and now cheap vacations – to core countries, especially in Europe. Can the Tunisian economy evolve, break the role that it has played in the global economy since its reality was reshaped by French colonialism to meet the needs of Europeans for cheap Thibar wine? I think it can. It has the human capital to do so.

Can the Tunisian economy evolve, break the role that it has played in the global economy since its reality was reshaped by French colonialism to meet the needs of Europeans for cheap Thibar wine?

Other countries – among them China, S. Korea, even the Nordic countries if we spread the historical time line a little, have reconstructed themselves. Perhaps out of the ashes and pain of the current moment, fresh ideas, directions for the country’s future will emerge and the suffering the country is now enduring will not be in vein. Indeed, if Tunisians at present are appalled and saddened by the repression, people would be missing the point not to realize that this is also a moment of great hope, of transition, of the possibility of the success of reform.

Tunisia: Gets Half of the Korean Model: Authoritarianism With Developmental Stagnation

This combination – authoritarian political system that `supposedly’ delivers economic growth is often referred to as `the Korean Model’ based on the dramatic development of the South Korean economy since the 1950s from an economic backward to one of the most dynamic economies of modern times – albeit not a miracle either, but still very impressive.

At the heart of the Korean model is the need to keep wages low and labor union activity in check through a repressive government in order that the accumulation of capital thus resulted can be re-invested into modernizing the economy. The logic continues that once the economy is modernized, authoritarianism can be eased and democratic processes encouraged. I would argue that it `sort of’ happened in South Korea.

But the Tunisian economic comparison with Tunisia fails on a number of key counts:

• In Korea, there was something of a transition to democracy after 3 decades of repressive rule

• The South Korean economy was a highly protectionist economy that did not open itself up to foreign capital until very late in the game and even then, not that much. Its industries were protected as was its currency. Foreign investment had to follow strict criteria. Perhaps most importantly, the role of the state in the S. Korean economy, as in Japan, has always been central to the country’s economic development

• South Korea benefitted from its status as a front-line state in the Cold War. As with the competition between East and West Germany, there was always a political dimension to the economic competition between North and South Korea, with the former being something of a basket case, the latter one of the `Asian Tigers’. The point here is that South Korea could break the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment rules and get away with it in a way that Tunisia couldn’t and didn’t. And a large measure of its economic success comes from the fact that S. Korea did not have to follow the rules that were imposed upon Argentina, Mexico or Russia.

• Tunisia on the other hand began opening up its economy, privatizing elements of it, opening the country to foreign investment with fewer and fewer strings already in the early 1980s and has, as a result I would argue, paid the price.

• The economic sectors which were modernized – textiles, mining did not produce enough domestic capital to invest in new technologies and take the country in new directions, despite its highly educated work force. Foreign investment, let loose with fewer and fewer regulations, as in Thailand, concentrated in real estate, the financial sector and tourism, none of which help development that much.

So Tunisia has gotten `the authoritarian’ aspect of the S. Korean model without producing the development revolution.

If one looks closely at Tunisian society on the eve of independence in 1956, it is rather striking – there was most definitely what is referred to today as a highly developed `civil society’ with participation of most sectors of society in the political movement that led to independence. But that civil society was first seriously weakened by the country’s first president, Habib Bourguiba who saw it as a threat to his personal power. Then it was smothered by Ben Ali — or more accurately, Ben Ali tried to snuff it out. And yet despite everything, under the surface it has continued – until it erupted once again full force after the death of Mohammed Bouazizi.

Why the uprising (for that is what it appears to be) now?

So why is it now that the country as a whole has been pushed over the edge if these trends have been in play for so long?

In the end one never knows why it is that objective social conditions erupt into revolt. More often than not they do not. But still, there are a number of factors which might explain the current unprecedented protests.

Income distribution has sharply polarized in the past few years. As Basel Saleh points out, the top 10% of Tunisia’s economic ladder control 32% of the national income. The top 20% control nearly half. Tunisia’s income inequality is so severe that the bottom 60% of the population control only 30% of the country’s wealth, again with 40% of the population taking home 70% of the national income. At the same time, two families at the top, the Ben Ali’s and Trabelsi’s have come to dominate the country’s economy. One WikiLeaks cable from the U.S. embassy in Tunis suggests that the two families have their hands in and on 50% of the country’s economy. As the disparity between wealth and poverty increases, the corruption of the two ruling families has come more into focus.

There are regional disparities too, well known in the economic literature, with the northern and coastal cities benefitting much more from Ben Ali’s economic policies than the interior and the south which have long suffered. It should not be surprising to anyone who has followed Tunisian events over the past 30 years that social unrest, protest and rebellion tend to originate in the interior and the south.

2009 was not a good year and Tunisia’s economy suffered despite World Bank/IMF claims that the country has weathered the global financial crises better than many places. Tourism was down as were textile exports to Europe only aggravating the already existing socio-economic crisis

But the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back in this case is the growing distrust and distaste among the broader population for president Ben Ali’s wife, Leila Trabelsi and her siblings who have been scrambling to dominate whatever sectors of Tunisia’s economy they could, dominating the IMF pressured privatizations which have marked the country’s economic transition.

It appears rather likely that Ben Ali was positioning his wife to `take over’ the country in four years when he supposedly would retire. The thought that Zine Ben Ali would turn over power to Leila Trabelsi – and that the corruption at the top would thus be blessed and institutionalized that much more only added to the seething anger about to explode.

However else the situation in Tunisia plays out, the likelihood that the Trabelsi family will replace Ben Ali has all but gone up in smoke. Mohammed Bouazizi, the young unemployed man whose suicide by fire started this protest movement, has inadvertently taken one of Tunisia’s richest families, the Trabelsi’s along with him. The first result of the Tunisian intifada is to de-legitimize that clan to such a degree so that politically speaking they are dead. It was not just Mohammed Bouazizi that went up in a ball of flames but the Trabelsi family’s political future in Tunisia.

Let us see what other lessons unfold.

This article was originally published on ZNet.org.