Marbella, Spain / Morocco Board News — As we, in Europe and America, are moving to cultural idealism when Christianity is in decline and even the US neo-conservatives have been losing ground to the ‘Tea-Party’ gimmicks; religious slogans are on the increase to counter Islamists terrorists, in spite of a declared secularism and contrary to Article VI of the US Constitution;
thus the role of politics is changing from social justice of the left and liberal inclinations which were dominant from the end of the Second World War to the crisis of 1970s when immigration bashing became the norm from all parties and gradually moving on, with time, as all European/Western governments failed to find solutions to their once guarded economic supremacy and became challenged by the many emerging nations calling from all corners of the planet for a fairer term of trades and their voices could not go unheard. This coupled with the new revolutionary instant communications covering all parts of the world, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of China with India, Brazil and other emerging economies of which Morocco is part changed the nature of the new global economic system. As Montesquieu predicted ‘[t]he deterioration of every government begins with the decay of his principles on which it was founded.’ Western extremism and intolerance started to settle in since the 9/11 and governments resorted to nationalist verbiage in the form of a false national identity forgetting their minorities as being part of that cultural heritage and more than 30% of French people have at least one parent of foreign origin, compared to 100% of Americans with the exception of a small American indigenous Indian population which still exists, but not counted. This exogamy is apparent whether you are walking in London, New York or Paris. On arriving to the French capital two weeks ago, the first song I heard in a public place on French Radio was that of Rai, sang by Sheikh (meaning respectfully old in this sense) rather than Sheb (meaning young) Khaled. It was nothing strange to me as I know Paris very well and that was the norm, but could not help wondering what other passengers landing with me at Charles de Gaulle Airport were thinking. It was, in fact Muslim, Christian, Jewish and others that they were about to experience in either the Ville Juive where Moroccan Muslims and Jews mingle together and where Falafel are savoured whether you try Kosher meat or Middle Eastern Halal food or Moroccan tajeen or couscous and mint tea, a scene repeated in many parts of Paris and its suburbs where the shisha hookah pipes rather than cigarettes are also the norm.
A Syrian student leading a Palestinian campaign with Spanish supporters for 2 weeks in Porta del Sol and Foreign Office in Madrid protesting against Israeli aggression on Humanitarian boats heading for Gaza, 11.07.2011.
The West as a whole is trying to cover up the economic failures witnessed throughout Europe and the US in the last three to four decades. Obama’s policies are faltering, especially regarding record unemployment or rather zero job creation happening on his watch, a thing which one has to go back to 1945 to find a similar situation. The US economy is in the doldrums and the political system is crumbling and ignoring the foundation on which the state was founded under article VI, adopting a theocratic system which can only lead to collapse and backwardness, the same thing could be said of Sarkozy’s preaching or that of a certain ambitious politician, Segolene Royal and many others. Obama’s policies are becoming hollow; the national debt is not improving and the US declaration to veto any decision on the creation of a Palestinian state is in the least helpful for its image within the Muslim and Arab world which Obama was trying to capitalize on. He is failing just like Sarkozy who is now backtracking on the promise of supporting such a resolution if no progress was made by October 2011. There was no such veto when Israel declared itself a state in 1948, but the pressure from the Jewish lobby and the panic to lose Jewish votes are stronger than moral principles or justice, as politics has no morality and humans are only eager to seize power at all costs. Obama has made his choice and America with him and that is the new US foreign policy at the eve of 11 September 2011, marking the 10th anniversary of the tragic event which took the lives of so many innocent people including MUSLIMS, a fact which is ignored by all officials, the media hardly mentions and never stressed enough that the attack was against humanity of all faiths and non-faiths but always highlighting a Muslim attack on Christians, rather than an Islamist terrorists attack on all. The extremists have nothing to do with the religion Islam as practiced by 1.9 billion people. They do not represent any government other than themselves unlike the violent actions of the US, NATO and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, and the ordinary Muslims are the victims of both.
The right in Spain is headed by Rajoy, a successor of the fascist leader Aznar. Rajoy, a native of Galicia, the original homeland of a certain Generalissimo Franco, is making so much noise and threatening language towards Morocco and its Western Sahara, as a cover up for the main issues which are, the economy and trade apart, the problem of resolving the question of the occupation of Ceuta and Melilla as well as providing compensation for Moroccan gassed victims of the Rif war. Morocco should use the many weapons at its disposal to sort out some of these far-right elements in the PP and use all the legal means to counter them. Spain’s economic problems are not going to be resolved by tomorrow even if the right wins the next elections planned for November 2011. The area that hurts most is trade and this should be targeted to deal with the few intransigent hardliners that are still reminiscing Franco’s era. In addition, Morocco has to use its own muscles to influence issues with Spanish industrialists and investors who committed their meagre investment to expand into Moroccan business rather than the bankrupt Spanish one. The Moroccan government should also use its influence with the GCC to apply economic pressure on Spain as well as gather support from other friendly nations throughout the world to fight Spanish neocolonialism in all its forms and shapes. The question of Moroccan unification to include the Western Sahara and the occupied Moroccan territories should be part and parcel of a pro-active Moroccan foreign policy and regional democracy, as implied in the new Constitution.
Morocco can only win and prosper if it respected its population, tackled corruption and made sure that the rule of law is seen equitable and fair. The Moroccan youth have to realize that unemployment is a challenge to all governments and they have only to look at Spain with more than 20% of the jobless and the US standing at 9.1%, a figure which is comparable nowadays to most European countries. It is wrong to assume that the government should provide jobs for all graduates because they hold a degree, but create opportunities for jobs. This is nonsense and lacks foresights and good judgement. Overcrowding the civil service leads to inefficiency and corruption as well as it has a negative effect on the economy, which is the case not only in Morocco but also in Greece, Spain and Italy. Graduates have a better chance of being entrepreneurial and have every right like all other Moroccans, whether in rural areas or in cities to ask for mini-credits to help them out to set up a particular co-operative and that what makes a state strong when it has its youth geared to challenge innovation, creation and develop business acuteness rather than the boring and stale jobs in the civil service everyone is fighting for and calculating how much they could make out of corruption and vegetating by doing nothing all day being the cost they have to incure. A certain Norman Tebbit in Margaret Thatcher’s government created a motto for the unemployed in the UK, ‘get on your bike and look for work’, an active search for work rather than lying idle in cafés or brooding at home and ‘Waiting for Godot’ to arrive. Nevertheless, the Moroccans have the right to unemployment benefit and not rely on charity and Ramadan distribution of food baskets which dehumanize them and make them lose their dignity for a bit of harira and sugar, while the middle man makes fortune out of Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’. It is only by having such a system that Morocco can give credence to unemployment statistics which I have previously criticized when Morocco pretended and still does to have 9% unemployed people when half of the population is ready to leave the country for Spain with just over more than 20% unemployment or to the rest of Europe and the US with around 9%. These benefits would restore pride and dignity as well as the feeling of belonging to a state at the same time giving the authorities reliable statistics on which to plan accurately and make the Moroccan economy a vibrant and transparent one; rewarding innovation, targeting help where it is most needed and above all provide security for all rather than the reign of frustration which can only lead to social unrest due mainly to poverty, bleak future and mediocre health service.
In the light of the efforts of Italian fascist activism and Spanish support to delay agreement on Agriculture, Morocco should actively counter these two countries as well as review its relations with the 24 voters who supported the proposal and deal with them accordingly. In the case of Italy and Spain Morocco should freeze all future contracts and economic cooperation with them, as both Spain and Italy are on the verge of economic bankruptcy and both need the Maghreb, the Middle East and Africa to survive. As Italy was able together support against the interest of Morocco, the latter should use all its diplomatic channels, especially the GCC group, which it is about to join, and other friendly nations from Africa to show solidarity by boycotting and fighting in a concerted effort all remnants of colonialist designs that are still thriving in the so-called democratic states of Europe. Morocco, together with its Maghreb/Tamazgha, Arab and African friends should target equally the Liga Nord within the Italian regime (supported by some of the Francoist element and far-right of Europe, Girt Wilders of the Netherlands Party for Freedom PVV amongst them) for taking action against its interests in many areas, not least the Italian procedure led by the sceptic MEP Lorenzo Fontana at the EU Parliament against EU-Morocco’s ‘Agreement on Agriculture’. The WTO should be lobbied to gather support from all its non-EU members to stop EU subsidies accorded to some of the sectors of the European economy and push for the abolition of the CAP. There are other enemies of Morocco/Africa and the Muslim world who should be dealt with accordingly and that can only be achieved if there was a consorted effort to refuse all cooperation with them and those who support them.
Morocco should actively link its claims on Melilla, Ceuta and the other islands (including the return of Shafarrine Islands from Spanish Shafarra) to those of Madrid-London on Gibraltar and their destiny should lead to the same outcome. Notwithstanding the Touareg claims to a homeland in the Sahel and Algerian southern region which the French already planned in the 1950s, the question of the Africanization of the Canary Islands and the Guanch-Amazigh people should be part of the decolonization process of Africa by European colonialists. Europe needs more Morocco, Africa and the Arab world than the other way around. As mentioned elsewhere, Africa has 99% of the non- Communist world’s diamonds, 60% of its gold, 42% of its cobalt, and 34% of its bauxite. The US and Europe are losing ground in Africa to China; Africa represents 30% of the world uranium supply and 20% of oil. Nigeria alone supplies as much oil to the US as Saudi Arabia, in addition to Algerian oil and gas and the dominance of Moroccan, Tunisian, Jordanian and Syrian phosphates which are needed in the world of tomorrow’s food supply.
The future remains with Asia headed by China and India; Brazil, Africa and the Middle East. Europe has been on a nosedive for several years with its standard of living on a constant decline and a GDP which remains almost unchanged, with a mediocre growth fluctuating between 0 to 2% at best over the past few years, if not decades or since the hyper-inflation of the 1980s caused by the Arab-Israeli war of 1972 provoking the oil crisis of the century. Furthermore, France as ‘innovator’ has been trying to revive its economy by the traditional expansion of the European cultural idealism, surpassing the politics of the FN, leading to xenophobia as politicians are far removed from solving the country’s economic, political and social problems.
The EU started with the THREE Benelux countries moving from the ECSC to the ‘SIX’ adding France, Germany and Italy to secure the expansion of business within the inner circle of Europe and thus benefitting from the artificial ‘Common Market’ established by the Rome Treaty of 1957, coming into effect in January 1958. As the time went by the economy stagnated and new ideas were called for within the integration principles, rather than theories, to include more members to provide ‘star’ markets, but these markets were not secure as they could just as much prosper as fail. As the ‘stars’ failed to deliver, the SIX opted for ‘cash cows’, which they could still milk when the ‘stars’ failed to deliver. This integration continued from 1958 to the saturation of the EU (or in the case of France to the malaise Français of the 1970s or ‘La Période de la Triste France’ from 1968 to 1974/75 when the French boom ended) by further membership from Southern, Northern and Eastern Europe culminating in the reunification of Germany, after the economic collapse of the Soviet Union, which proved the catalyst of its failure to growth, in spite of the Eastern market the country benefits from at the expense of southern Europe. France, headed by a son of an East-European émigré in the name of Sarkozy, half Jewish, half Catholic, and fully-fledged opportunist, is trying to raise his rating using many means including the search of wealth in Libya or to give his punch to revive the EU’s dynamism by creating his zone of influence within the ‘Union pour la Méditerranée’, opting to go further south crossing to the other side of the Mediterranean (short of offering full membership of the EU but conceded a special status to Morocco, the only country which had inspirations to membership during the reign of Hassan II), thus isolating Angela Merkel from the South, as France was isolated from the East. Both countries have shown hostility to Turkey’s joining the EU as the latter will be a real challenge to their economies, as Turkey is fairing a lot better and has competitive advantages over the two. The survival of Europe is no longer dependent on itself as it reached full capacity and there are no more ‘cows’ to milk and is now reverting to the old imperialist policies of neocolonialism to further its expansion and create wealth for its citizens by integrating or rather absorbing the southern region into their economic planning following the principle of acting from the centre to the periphery and next stage will be to move from North Africa to the Sahel regions, Central Africa and finally to South Africa, if the Chinese let them through. The race is on the cards and China is already dislodging them and their trade in Africa has seen extraordinary upward trends in all fields while that of the EU and the US has been on constant decline.
Dr. Ben Kirat was educated at Oxford and Nottingham Universities and, holds a Post Graduate Certificate in Education from Westminster College Oxford, an M.A in French Studies and a PhD in International Relations from Nottingham University. He worked as a SONASID Project Co-ordinator for Davy Mackee (Sheffield UK) and has been working as an International Consultant for over 20 years, specializing in European-US affairs, North Africa and the Middle East. He was an adviser to ‘Le Quotidien de l’Economie’ (R.P.C.) Brussels Bureau. He was a Senior Lecturer at Northumbria University and M.A Supervisor in French Studies and held other post as Head of Department, Director of Studies and Marketing Manager in Colleges in Oxford and Europe. He was Examiner, Regional Co-ordinator and Examinations’ Consultant for the Institute of Linguists. He is bilingual English/French, fluent in Spanish, Amazigh and Arabic with intermediate level in Italian.
Dr. Ben Kirat is a freelance journalist/author and writes frequently on current Affairs
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