Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Converting To Christianity, Islam: Does It Prove Anything? – Book Review

"From fire by water: My journey to the Catholic faith," by Iranian American Sohrab Ahmar

"From fire by water: My journey to the Catholic faith," by Iranian American Sohrab Ahmar

July 11, 2023

Religious conversions later in life are generally greeted as evidence that something terrible must have happened to the converter. The Onion published a satire in 2016, ridiculing Paul D’Amatol, who took up a life of Christian piety in late middle age. It must be ‘drugs or maybe he killed someone in a car accident. Something super messed up.’

No room in satire for something good as the cause. Interestingly, it’s not Protestant evangelical born-again-ism but the Catholic bells-and-smells and Islamic mysticism that attract those interested in spiritual growth as they approach the end, despite (because of?) Rome’s/ Islam’s hard teachings on divorce, homosexuality, the ordination of women. Catholics and Muslims take their religion seriously.

From fire by water: My journey to the Catholic faith, a memoir by Iranian American Sohrab Ahmari, is provocative, to say the least.

Such conversions are rare and never casually broadcast. Muslims do not look kindly on such apostates. You can interpret that as you like, but I figure it is a good indication that they take their beliefs seriously, something that we can’t say about most of the Christianities or Judaisms on offer. Yes, schisms abound; even the monolithic Catholic church struggles to keep the faith in this truly godless age of ‘anything goes’.

But good for Ahmari. His own life has been charmed, from a bohemian childhood in post-revolutionary Iran to Wall Street Journal London correspondent and still in his mid-30s. He remembers his grandparents being pro-revolution, as Iranians generally are bitter about foreign meddling, with good reason. But many of the urban, educated young look to the West. The taste of western living under the Shah, the open culture, comedy, the arts, racey theatre, the high life – all suddenly gone. His uncle went to the US right away. Ahmari and his mother emigrated in 1993.

His religious training in Tehran was actually stimulating and entertaining. His first instructor was clearly from the wild tribal lands, hair disheveled, shirt half tucked in, a rube from the hicks thrust into downtown Tehran. His acting out of the Battle of Karbala transfixed little Ahmed. He learned that Hussein stuck by his friend unto death. Stood for the Truth.

He lived what is probably a typical 1990s childhood in the urban upper middle class – pirate Hollywood films, Shah-era soap operas, Twain, Salinger, whatever foreign. He finally cursed God for his frustrations, his dysfunctional home, the unjustice ways of adults, though he realized if there is no god, then there is no one to address. And called himself atheist.

Morality police

He recounts a trip to the Caspian second house of friends, a long standing Iranian tradition of group parties at large vacation homes. Booze in hot water bottles. The low grade fear of a swoop by the morality cops. Much of the conversation during the party weekend is about incidents evading, sweet talking, bribing them.

Once, when he was 13, this happened at noon. Cop to party host: ‘Aren’t you ashamed? Not even noon prayer time and you stink of gin.’ Turning to Ahmed, ‘How old are you?’ ‘5,’ he mumbled. He still can’t explain what was going through his mind, maybe if he was younger they wouldn’t be so severe?

Well, that broke everyone up. Even the chief cop couldn’t stop chuckling, and said: ‘I guess you’re just out having some fun. So let’s taste your sweets.’ The guests hurried rounded up their cash and gave it to him.

The whole scene is ridiculous. You can interpret as you like. The ‘victims’ were in fact sinning, realized it, and managed to get out of the scrape with punishment. Yes, such morality police are not pretty, but is our lack morality police, lack of any such control over our sins, really better? To Ahmari’s credit, he depicts the police more as keystone cops and the adults as children scolded for being naughty.

Life really would be better without the constant need to get plastered to enjoy yourself. In rape and car deaths alone. Egypt has a workable model. Only Copt Christians can sell wine and spirits, and there are a few miserable holes-in-the wall on a back street to buy a red or white local wine and ouzo. i.e., discourage it. Do NOT promote it. It’s a social evil. The incidence of alcoholism is minuscule in Egypt.

So I sympathize with any government trying to follow that sensible morality. The Taliban have wiped out drug addiction and poppy growing. No help from the West, just sanctions and loud whining about western values. It is easy to be an armchair critic of Islamic states for their harsh justice, but all evidence points to the US invasion of Afghanistan as the cause of soaring opium production, and the US absence and Taliban policy was the way to stop it. If we bothered to listen, the Taliban would explain that in Islam human life is sacred, and allowing people to defile themselves as addicts is haram.

America, Nietzsche, Marx, Kerouac

A budding atheist at this point and in love with America, Ahmari finally gets to Utah, only to find himself and his mother in a seedy trailer park with an old truck that barely functioned. From well off in Tehran to dirt poor in Mormon land, which was just as oppressive to him as living under the mullahs. ‘At least the mullahs let you have a-tea-and-a-cigarette in peace.’

Conversation at his uncle’s was as specious and boring as non-Iranian Americans, about new cars, classic cars, trucks. ‘This wheels-and-gears babble I found so tedious as to make me long for the weather talk. For all the miseries of the Islamic Republic, there at least people had something to say.’ He joined the nihilist teen crowd but didn’t have sex as the local teens were doing.

He later read the Egyptian Muslim Brother Sayyid Qutb’s reflections on his stay in the US in 1949, expressing horror at the sexually charged atmosphere he saw everywhere. Qutb reacted by becoming a Muslim radical, reacting to Nasser’s secular socialism. Ahrami was reacting to Islamic fundamentalist Iran, so ‘I took my discomfort at physical contact with strange women to be a shortcoming–on my part. I was insufficiently modern and rational in my habits and ways.’

Discovering Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra was a turning point for him, ironically beginning his path to Catholicism. God is dead, biblical morality reflects the will to power of slave-like men, invented for and by people who envied the strong and virile, proscribes strength and virility. The superman is beyond good and evil. Values may be relative but the superman’s actions are by definition better. And the herd, the ‘last men’, live a sterile, gray happiness.

That explained for Ahmari what he saw first in Utah, then Washington State. He joined the local Trotskyist group. For Ahmari, again ironically, Marxism’s greatest attraction was its fanatics, its religious spirit, which he later dismissed as ‘secularized theologies’. The two great critiques of religion, Neitzsche and Marx, were Ahmari’s path to enlightenment.

He had one more detour, postmodernism and identity politics. Marx claimed to reveal the truth about capitalism, but post-Marxists like Foucault,* reframed civilization as a repressive apparatus designed to discipline and control human difference, whether sexual, racial or cognitive. Even empirical science amounted to a sort of performative ‘language game’ that served the needs of power. We ‘perform’ gender in response to societal expectations (Butler). Politics is no longer to seize the means of economic production but to resist racist and sexist hegemony, starting with language.

All this materialism denied the existence of human nature. The individual is a victim of impersonal forces, be they language, economics or history, so not responsible for his actions. i.e., a license to sin.

He dabbled in the Beats, Kerouac, Burroughs, fascinated as much by their dissolute lives as their prose and verse. Debauchery as an authentic style. Which he aped with his own. And increasingly disgusted himself. He dropped the Trotskyist politics, as it was the much like the petty intriguing of mullahs in Iran. Just different hats.

Virtue over intersectionality

His radical studies pushed him into a stint of social injustice, teaching disadvantaged Americans for four years with Teach for America. His best friend was Yossi, an Israeli American whom he admired for his strict discipline with the undisciplined underachievers, who loved this squeaky dynamo precisely for bringing them to order, and for his genuine enthusiasm, making him the outstanding teacher with by far the best results in English. A virtuous teacher. A novelty in inner city Brownsville, on the Mexican border.

Ahmari had turned into a Don Juan and binge drinker by then, his Iranian modesty discarded. He was slowly realizing the lefty emphasis on ‘intersectionality’, the hidden ‘structures of oppression’ race, gender and sexuality, the need for more money, vs good old-fashion discipline, honesty, and excellent teaching, was wrong. Throwing more money, new technology at a broken system will not improve things. The whole left agenda is a recipe for disaster. ‘The friendship with Yossi proved to be a providential source of grace and a spur to conversion.’ More irony: Zionist Yossi joins Neitzsche, Marx and Beat poets as Ahmari’s spiritual mentors.

He realized there are universal, underlying truths, virtue, and that awareness of these universals come from an inner voice, conscience, the soul, urging him to do good and shun evil. He realized there must be a personal god as the ultimate source of absolute truths.

His Marxist theories dumped, his leftist views dumped. Welcome to the club of ex-Trotskyists, born-again neocons. ‘I wanted nothing more to do with man-made utopias of any kind. In fact, I wanted to rededicate my life to thwarting the utopians. I became a conservative almost instantly.’ I would identify this as Ahmari’s ‘conversion’, at least as far as his working life goes. Who cares if you pray now, just be sure to keep the neocon engine purring along.

That is not to dismiss Ahmari’s sincerity concerning his beliefs about truths and virtue. I agree with Ahmari that ‘character and morality trump and determine the order of material things, rather than the other way around.’ Class war won’t improve society unless there is a foundation in society of morality, virtue, that both sides in the ‘war’ respect. And we have Darwin to prove it. A flexible personal code can never replace moral precepts.

But then he goes and spoils it: ‘I had made peace with American society.’

Slave mentality vs free will

He saw through his earlier love of Nietzsche; while he still agreed that Christianity was behind egalitarian democracy, he saw this as a good thing, not a weakness. ‘The real peril was that western democracy would detach itself from its religious underpinnings.’ i.e., we could descend again into Auschwitz. As for Auschwitz, it was ‘possible because God had been pronounced dead and all the old ‘thou shalts’ declared null and void.’ ‘Western democracies were morally superior in large part because they still hewed to a Judeo-Christian line, however faded.’

Ahmari is definitely a foe of Iran’s Islamic state, seeing ‘Khomeini’s stern glare on my back’ when he reads of IS men blowing themselves up, though he fails to mention that Iran has been leading the fight against IS. WSJ journalist Ahmari’s knowledge of facts is sometimes faulty, and he dismisses Islamic governance as just more totalitarianism—no free will—a la Soviet Union or Nazism. Though Christian and Islamic theologies around such principles are largely the same, somehow, in his view, Christianity allows free will, is ‘better’.

His critique of western decadence aligns with the Islamic critique. And he realizes this. ‘A skeptical and infertile West lacked the spiritual resources to deal with an energetic and virile Islam.’ But then he denies the value of shariah courts and insists the US firmly assimilate Muslim immigrants.

Ahmari’s next career move coincided with Iran’s suppression of the Green movement of 2009, when he was just starting out as a journalist. There is no doubt Ahmari is a talented writer, and when he offered the Wall Street Journal commentaries during that disputed months, he suddenly became a useful talking head articulating the western view with an Iranian face. His career took off and he was London editor by 2016, as he finished his conversion.

Conversion – beyond identity politics

The upshot: ‘My two decades as an atheist now appeared as squandered years, during which I had turned my back on God and neglected my immortal soul. Christianity was the precondition of true universality and true brotherhood.’

I would concur with Ahmari but replace Christianity with Islam as the preeminent religion of universality and brotherhood. Ahmari’s journey is quixotic, as he admits. The Judeo-Christian tradition is weak, very weak, and getting weaker as wokeness dissolves spiritual truths, and religious belief–apart from Islam–continues to decline.

Why Catholic? ‘My decision turned precisely on the question of liturgy.’ The smells-and-bells, the Latin Mass. ‘The metaphysical indifference so pervasive in England and the rest of western Europe’ he finds ‘positively revolting’. ‘Endless consumer choice and kaleidoscopic lifestyles, lifestyle-ism—clean eating, mindfulness, banana treatments—was all they had.’

The quasi secular post-Vatican II laid-back Catholicism was almost as bad as the evangelical Anglican church. ‘Evangelical Protestantism, for all its Spirit-infused hand raising and arm swaying, struck me as profoundly abstract. A ‘personal relationship’ built on words alone was incomplete.’ He now relished the supernatural things, which Protestantism downplays in the interest of scientism.

Ahmari provides a sharp critique of postmodernism and the emptiness of modern ‘civilization’. Sin, salvation, the mystery of evil and the reality of his conscience, all pushed him out of his secular what-me-worry life. He committed to the strong version of Catholicism, praying every day at dawn, midday, dusk, preferably in church with others, kneeling.

Almost exactly as if he had returned to Islam, brushed up on his Arabic, and rejoined the ummah as they prostrate in communal prayer five times daily, a vast ripple eternally revolving around the world following the sun. If some space aliens are monitoring us, that surely will impress them.

Like Ahmari, my decision to convert was at least part liturgy. Regular daily prayer is essential to a vibrant faith. One detail that further convinced me about Islam is the insistence on removing your shoes when you enter the prayer hall. Socks or bare feet leave worldly cares behind, leaving you to commune freely with Allah, united and in unison in full-body prayer. Another essential in worship is segregation and modest dress to minimize distractions from your focus in prayer. All of this is much as Christianity was practiced in the middle ages, when it was robust.

I kept looking for a convincing critique of Islam vs Christianity as the truly universal religion, but couldn’t find it. No doubt Ahmari purposely left Islam out to avoid a Salmon Rushdie fate, but I doubt he has taken his search for soul, spirit, conscience that far, or that, in deed, there is a convincing argument there.

Crusade redux

Ahmari points to legendary converts Cardinals Newman and Manning, GK Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene. The list of converts to Islam is also impressive: from Richard Burton (19th c), Marmaduke Pickthall, Leopold Weiss, to Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Keith Ellison, Dave Chappelle. 5,000 Britons convert every year. Converts add vigor to any religion but Catholicism and Islam seem to get the cream.

Ahmari has sampled everything, starting as a Muslim, atheist, Marxist, postmodernist, post-postmodernist, finally landing at the beginning, the alpha-omega, the monolithic Catholic church. For Ahmari, the jump is from the Islamic Jesus-as-prophet to the Christian Jesus-as-God, That is a rare transition, and, no unsurprise, seen as threatening to Muslims, especially when articulated and promoted in the West. Crusade redux.

As a convert, but the other way, from Presbyterianism to Islam, I wish Ahmari well in his new faith, and hope his spiritual growth continues. But his story is flawed. He conveniently converted to the empire‘s religion (that goes back to the founding of the establishment Church under Emperor Constantine), while admitting that the Judeo-Christian tradition has lost its pull, that only Islam is vibrant. He should look again to see why Islam is so resilient, and how that should shape his own spiritual journey.

He spent a third of a lifetime worshipping idols—the idol of ‘history’, ‘progress’, above all the idol of the self. English Catholicism especially attracts him, because it had suffered so much, despised and ridiculed, and yet was stronger that the ‘soupy and fast-secularizing Anglicanism that encircled it.’ Sadly, he doesn’t see that he’s still worshipping an imperial idol.

Alas, if he had reverted to Islam, though welcomed by the ummah, he would have been hounded, despised, no longer a famous WSJ journalist enjoying the perks of US hegemony wherever he is on the planet. No nice memoir dissing Islam. Perhaps the fate of another one-time darling of the empire. Keep on your journey, Sohrab.

—

*Ironically, in search of social justice, Foucault interviewed Khomeini and embraced the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Eric Walberg

Canadian Eric Walberg is known worldwide as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. A graduate of University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics, he has been writing on East-West relations since the 1980s. He has lived in both the Soviet Union and Russia, and then Uzbekistan, as a UN adviser, writer, translator and lecturer. Presently a writer for the foremost Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram, he is also a regular contributor to Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Al-Jazeerah and Turkish Weekly, and is a commentator on Voice of the Cape radio.

ASEAN chair urges unity over Myanmar junta

Top diplomats in Jakarta for the ASEAN regional bloc meeting. Photo: AAP

Kate Lamb, Jul 11, 2023

ASEAN chair Indonesia has stressed the importance of the regional bloc’s unity in remaining credible as its foreign ministers start talks expected to touch on the thorny issue of engaging Myanmar’s ostracised ruling generals.

The meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Jakarta comes as doubts about ASEAN’s effectiveness grow, with some disagreement over how to approach a bloody conflict in Myanmar and the junta’s failure to implement an agreed ASEAN peace plan.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi made no direct mention of Myanmar in her opening remarks at Tuesday’s plenary session, but said ASEAN “can only matter if it has credibility”.

“So we have no choice but to show that ASEAN can navigate the regional and global dynamics and continue to instil the paradigm of collaboration,” she said.

“We can only achieve this if we maintain ASEAN unity and centrality.”

Myanmar has been gripped by fighting since the military seized power in early 2021 before unleashing a fierce crackdown on pro-democracy opponents, which resulted in the formation of an armed resistance movement and an intensification of conflict.

ASEAN has barred the junta from its high-level meetings for not honouring its commitment to a “five-point consensus” agreed two years ago, which includes ending hostilities.

Indonesia has been trying to initiate a peace process behind the scenes by engaging key stakeholders, but those efforts were dealt a blow last month when Thailand called its own meeting to discuss re-engaging with the generals, a move widely criticised as undermining Jakarta’s work.

Foreign ministers of key ASEAN members stayed away, however, with only those of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos attending and some countries sending junior representation.

Sources familiar with Indonesia’s peace effort say it is being complicated by pre-conditions made by all sides to start even informal talks.

Retno last week said any “zero-sum approach” would mean durable peace “will never be achieved”.

Human rights groups and some United Nations experts have accused Myanmar’s military of committing widespread atrocities against civilians.

It says it is fighting “terrorists”.

The United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, recently urged the UN Security Council to refer the escalating violence to the International Criminal Court, and for countries to stop supplying weapons to the junta.

Tuesday’s meetings come ahead of the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum later this week, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov both slated to attend.

China on Tuesday confirmed its foreign minister Qin Gang would not attend due to health reasons.

It said top diplomat Wang Yi would join instead, confirming a Reuters report citing sources familiar with the matter.

-AAP

Little evidence of progress in Myanmar politics, say experts

July 11, 2023

ANN/THE JAKARTA POST – There has been little evidence of progress in Myanmar’s political condition since the 2021 coup, Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said. He said this following a meeting with United States (US) Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, US.

Balakrishnan told a press conference a lack of progress meant it was not the time to re-engage at a high-level with Myanmar’s junta. He said current Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chair Indonesia was engaging with “a wide spectrum of stakeholders” on Myanmar, a reference to talks involving opponents of the coup.

“You do need everyone ultimately to sit down and negotiate. I don’t know how long it will take. The last time it took 25 years for some form of democratic transition to occur in Myanmar. I hope it won’t take that long,” he said, adding that he remained “pessimistic”.

Blinken said he agreed with his Singaporean counterpart and that Washington supports ASEAN’s efforts on Myanmar.

“It’s very important that we continue – all of us – to sustain the appropriate pressure on the junta and look for ways, of course, to engage the opposition,” he said.

The US has issued sanctions against Myanmar’s military and its companies, and urged other countries to stop weapons sales to the junta.

A United Nations (UN) expert in May identified USD254 million of supplies shipped from entities in Singapore to the Myanmar military.

Asked about the report, Balakrishnan said Singapore’s policy was to “do our best” to prevent arms or so-called dual-use items that can be used in warfare getting to Myanmar and said the city-state would act on the UN expert’s findings.

Singapore is a member of the ASEAN, which bar Myanmar’s junta from its high-level meetings after the putsch plunged the country into violence, with the military battling on multiple fronts to crush an armed pro-democracy resistance movement.

Access Now’s UNHRC statement: Urge arms embargo to stave off expanding military abuse of surveillance and digital tools against people of Myanmar

PUBLISHED: 10 JULY 2023

On Thursday, July 6, 2023, Wai Phyo Myint, Asia Pacific Policy Analyst at Access Now, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council at its 53rd session regarding the intensified abuse of surveillance and digital tools by the Myanmar military, ahead of the elections.

In the Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Wai Phyo Myint highlighted how the military is steadily fortifying surveillance infrastructure across the country — including through installing CCTVs with facial recognition powers and activating intercept technologies across military-controlled telecommunications networks.

Wai Phyo Myint also raised the alarm on the military’s abuse of digital tools — allowing it to collect massive amounts of personal data from people’s SIM and IMEI registrations, and from their National Registration Cards. Combined, these information can be used to track people’s communications, location and networks via their mobile devices, and target those who resist the military.

Access Now calls for a comprehensive arms embargo — including a ban on the sale or transfer of surveillance technologies, equipment, intelligence or related assistance to the military, particularly “dual-use” and biometric technologies enabling mass and discriminatory targeted surveillance.

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

Access Now’s UNHRC statement: Urge arms embargo to stave off expanding military abuse of surveillance and digital tools against people of Myanmar - Access Now

Green Climate Fund backs scheme financing farming corporations accused of destroying forests

Published on 11/07/2023, 1:34pm

The fund aims to stop deforestation in the supply chains of major commodities. But campaigners are concerned over money going to big companies linked to irregularities

Cattle raising is one of the biggest driver of deforestation in the Amazon forest. Photo: Bruno Kelly/Greenpeace

By Matteo Civillini

The United Nations’ flagship climate fund is giving nearly $190 million to an investment programme that finances some of the world’s biggest farm companies in a bid to preserve tropical forests.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) approved the project at its board meeting on Tuesday despite opposition from civil society campaigners that accused the “highly dangerous” programme of greenwashing companies linked to deforestation.

The money will support the activities of the &Green Fund, a Dutch investment vehicle that aims to stop deforestation in the supply chains of products like livestock, palm oil and rubber.

The fund claims support from the GCF will avoid emissions of 339m tons, about as much as Poland emits in a year.

Launched in 2017, it counts among its existing backers the Norwegian and UK governments, the Dutch development bank FMO and consumer giant Unilever. Target countries include Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, Ecuador and Indonesia.

The fund says it offers loans to producers on the condition that they adopt sustainable practices. But campaigners have criticised it for financing companies accused of destroying the environment.

Beneficiaries questioned

Brazilian meat processing giant Marfrig Group is among the seven companies currently listed in the &Green portfolio.

Investigations by journalists and campaigners have repeatedly found evidence of illegal tree cutting to make way for cattle grazing in Marfrig’s supply chain.

Last year the Inter-American Development Bank shelved plans to lead a $200 million financing round for Marfrig after talks reportedly broke off over environmental targets.

The UK’s retreat from climate leadership is not in its national interest

With support from the Dutch fund, the Brazilian company aims to rid its operations in the Amazon of deforestation by 2028.

But its commitment has come under question. A recent Guardian investigation said Marfrig continued to be involved in ‘cattle laundering’, a practice in which animals from a deforesting ranch are moved to a supposedly ‘clean’ farm before slaughter, disguising their origin.

Marfrig said it condemns cattle laundering and any other irregularities.

The &Green Fund has also supported two Indonesian companies that have been accused of growing palm oil and rubber in protected forests.

'Paying the polluters'

Florencia Ortuzar, a lawyer at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), says the programme runs contrary to the GCF's principles.

“These companies should have changed their ways years ago, because of laws, regulations and national policies. But they haven’t,” she added. “It is not reasonable to believe the problem will stop by paying the companies behind it. It is paying the polluters instead of having them pay”.

‘Historic milestone’: Ecuador nears vote to keep Amazon oil in the ground

Ortuzar added that climate finance is scarce and this is not how it should be used. The GCF has warned that, unless governments give it more money, it will have to reject or delay projects.

Another point of contention is whether the &Green programme aligns with one of the GCF's core concepts: the paradigm shift.

Projects seeking UN funding need to demonstrate how they contribute to long-lasting change toward low-carbon and climate-resilient sustainable development beyond a one-off investment.

Paradigm shift

In its submission to the GCF, the Dutch bank FMO said support from the UN fund would unlock up to $600 million in additional investment from the private sector.

It claimed private investors currently consider the sector too risky and would be more willing to provide money if a “reputable source of debt financing”, like the GCF, absorbed any potential initial losses.

The GCF will provide a loan worth $180 million and a grant worth $9.35 million. The project's proponent said this support could change how financial markets as a whole approach agriculture and supply chain finance.

Comment: The EU lacks ambition on Cop28 renewable targets

But an independent technical review of the proposal, commissioned by the GCF, cast some doubt over the 'paradigm shift' potential. "

The transactions in the current &Green Fund portfolio are with major agricultural market players who typically do not struggle to access finance for overall operations," the report said. "It is not clear whether the incentives are in place for further market uptake by other sources of finance".

Despite finding that "challenges remain", the advisors endorsed the proposal.

In a statement prior to the approval, a coalition of NGOs said the &Green Fund is not a "huge investment in transformative or paradigm-shifting climate action, but rather in business-as-usual practices that have proven to undermine environmental integrity, effectively greenwashing the very practices that must stop".

The GCF supports developing countries to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. It is funded by government money, mainly from developed countries.

FMO declined to comment, while &Green and the GCF have not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Read more on: Climate finance | Green Climate Fund

Cambodia premier warns against using cluster bombs in Ukraine war

THEY SUFFERED US CLUSTER BOMBS, STILL DEMINING

Hun Sen responds to US President Biden’s decision of providing Kyiv with controversial weapons

. 11/07/2023 Tuesday
AA

The Cambodian prime minister on Monday warned against the use of cluster munitions in the Ukraine war, urging the West to play its role in preventing Washington and Kyiv from employing the "deadly weapon."

In a statement on Twitter, Hun Sen called on NATO members, and US allies such as the UK, Spain, Germany, and Canada, who are signatory to the Convention on the Prohibition of Cluster Munitions, “to take responsibility and jointly prevent the US President Joe Biden and the president of Ukraine from using this deadly weapon.”

His remarks came after the White House confirmed the US would supply Kyiv with the widely condemned bombs as part of a new $800 million security package.

While Biden has defended his move as difficult but necessary, several of the US allies are said to have expressed unease at the decision.

More than 100 countries have signed the 2008 convention to ban the production, stockpiling, use and transfer of cluster bombs, which release large numbers of smaller bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area.

Cluster munitions have been used in 41 countries since World War II, according to data by the Geneva-based Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), an international organization working to ban the widely condemned bombs.

Joe Biden Faces Democrat Backlash Over Ukraine Weapons: 'Deeply Concerned'

BY DARRAGH ROCHE

NEWSWEEK

ON 7/11/23

President Joe Biden is facing criticism from Democrats over his decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine amid the latter's ongoing war against Russia.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democrat, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, have both reportedly expressed concerns about Biden's decision.

Sending cluster munitions, which are banned in more than 100 countries, to Ukraine has proven a divisive move among both Democrats and members of NATO, the announcement coming ahead of the military alliance's summit in Lithuania this week.

President Joe Biden leaves 10 Downing Street after meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (L) on July 10, 2023, in London, England. Biden's decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine has raised concerns among some Democrats and allies.

LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES

CNN's chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju reported on Monday that both Warren and Sanders were concerned about the move.

"I am deeply concerned about the use of a weapon that has such terrible long-term consequences for civilians," Warren reportedly told Raju.

"Bernie Sanders also said he had concerns," Raju tweeted on Monday.

Newsweek has reached out to the White House as well as Warren and Sanders' offices via email for

Cluster munitions work by releasing multiple smaller bombs, or submunitions, over a wide area. These bomblets "explode on impact and can kill everything in an area of several football fields," Guy McCardle, managing editor of Special Operations Forces Report (SOFREP), previously told Newsweek.

Warren and Sanders are leading progressives in the Senate and they have become the latest high-profile figures to express concerns about the provision of cluster munitions to Ukraine.

Democratic Representative Barbara Lee of California said on Sunday that sending Ukraine cluster munitions was "crossing a line."

"Cluster bombs should never be used. That's crossing a line," Lee told CNN host Jake Tapper. "We know what takes place in terms of cluster bombs being very dangerous to civilians. They don't always immediately explode. Children can step on them. That's a line we should not cross."

When reached by Newsweek on Sunday, a White House spokesperson pointed to national security adviser Jake Sullivan's remarks addressing humanitarian concerns during a press conference on Friday and pointed to other Democrats who have supported the decision, like Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona.

"But there is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery. That is intolerable to us," Sullivan said on Friday.

"Ukraine would not be using these munitions in some foreign land. This is their country they're defending. These are their citizens they're protecting. And they are motivated to use any weapons system they have in a way that minimizes risks to those citizens," he said.

Kelly supported the decision in a joint statement with a bipartisan group of senators, saying he appreciated "the work from the administration that went into this plan and will continue working with them and my colleagues in the Senate to provide Ukraine with the weapons and support they need to beat Putin and win this war."

Nonetheless, Biden's decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine has proven controversial with NATO members. The munitions are banned in more than 100 countries, including the U.K., which is a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The U.S., Ukraine and Russia are not parties to the convention.

Biden visited the U.K. on Monday and met Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has previously said his country "discourages" the use of cluster bombs but has not criticized Biden's decision directly.

Spain, Canada and New Zealand also stated their opposition to the use of the weapons.

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said cluster munitions were "indiscriminate, they cause huge damage to innocent people, potentially, and they can have a long-lasting effect as well."

While New Zealand is not a NATO member, the U.K, Spain and Canada are all members of the alliance, which is holding a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Tuesday and Wednesday where the issue of cluster munitions could be discussed.

From cluster bombs to settler violence, where has the morality in US foreign policy gone?

The inconsistencies cannot be overlooked any longer

JAMES
ZOGBY

US President Joe Biden speaks speaks during a Fourth of July event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. Bloomberg

Two recent and seemingly unrelated news stories raise serious questions about whether any consistent values undergird American foreign policy. One involves the US response to attacks by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian village of Turmus Aya. The other is about the Biden administration considering shipping cluster bomb munitions to Ukraine.

Following the armed settler invasion of Turmus Aya, and the burning of homes and cars, killing of one resident and injuring of 12 others, it was reported that many of the Palestinian victims were US citizens or permanent residents.

The State Department quickly condemned the assault, calling on the Israeli government to immediately investigate the crimes committed and bring the perpetrators to justice. In the days that followed, there were more condemnations of escalating settler violence and calls for the Netanyahu government to rein in the “out of control” settlers.

It apparently took the presence of US victims to elicit such a clear response, but several questions were left unaddressed.

In the first place, settler violence is not new. It has been going on for years – spiking annually at harvest time in an effort to deny Palestinians the fruits of their land.

In recent years, these incidents have become more frequent and are now seen as routine, receiving only passing mention in US reports. This raises the first question: is the US only concerned when Palestinian victims are Americans?

Not only is this phenomenon not new, it has an insidious intent – with its roots in the very founding of the Zionist movement – to remove the Palestinians from their land.

Just a week ago, a high-ranking minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet stated that the goal behind the violence was to make the lives of Palestinians so difficult and miserable that they would have three choices: “to submit, leave, or die.”

Why has this clearly racist and ongoing genocidal intent not been directly addressed by the US government? Even if we accept that the US should make a special point of speaking out in defence of its own citizens, is calling on the Israeli government to investigate itself the best the US can do? After all, we are still waiting for accountability and justice to be served in the killings of Omar Assad and Shireen Abu Akleh.

Despite clear evidence demonstrated by major American media outlets that Ms Abu Akleh’s death wasn’t accidental and was at the hands of Israeli personnel, the Israeli government continues to “deny, lie, and obfuscate” regarding the facts of case.

And when it comes to Mr Assad, it’s clear, even from the Israeli telling of the story, that at the very least, his death was due to criminal negligence on the part of the soldiers who bound and gagged this 80-year-old man and left him face down on the cold ground where he died.

At the end of an Israeli “review” of the case, they decided to drop charges against the officers involved. And so, is calling on the fox to investigate the maiming or killings in the chicken coop a satisfactory response?

Finally, the question I asked when this story of Turmus Aya first broke: We know that the victims were US citizens, but were some of the rampaging Israeli settlers also US citizens? And what about the Israeli soldiers who shot at Ms Abu Akleh or whose cruelty resulted in the death of Mr Assad?

This information is important. As US citizens, the Palestinian victims and their families ought to be able to pursue legal action in the US against those who attacked them and torched their homes and cars.

If the US is serious about defending their rights to life and property, they owe it to American citizens to assist them in finding this out. And whether or not the victims are Palestinian Americans, shouldn’t the US government take action against its citizens engaged in unlawful violence on behalf of a foreign government or cause?

American intelligence services work with the Israelis to identify Palestinians who are deemed a security threat. They are placed on a “watch list,” even when violence isn’t involved. Visas to visit the US are routinely denied to prominent Palestinian officials and leaders in civil society simply because they are viewed as anti-Israel. And yet there is no such cataloguing of Israelis who have engaged in violent acts or incitement.

How can we even consider admitting Israel into the Visa Waiver Programme if this could give violent extremists or certain Israeli soldiers or police free access to the US? As a victim of Meir Kahane’s violence four decades ago, I demand to know the answer to that question.