A few years ago when spectrum was just taking off and new cell phone companies were expanding, I was asked to teach a finance course to radio-frequency engineers and technicians who were unfamiliar with the financial side of things. I had to update myself as I had been out-of-touch with the 'great' new developments in the finance field following my 1982 MBA, because I had been swamped fighting legal battles (allegations of the feminist type - see for instance my blog article on the Right to Not Support of January 2009).
Aside from new terms such as IPO to describe old things, new stuff such as 'securitization' and 'off-balance sheet financing' had mushroomed, not to mention derivatives. I did not immediately catch on that 'off-balance sheet financing' was basically illegal, since the balance sheet is required by law to provide 'full disclosure'.
Perhaps fortuitously in retrospect, there wasn't enough money in my manager's training budget to send me on a course for this topic of off-balance-sheet magic. But it should have been clear even then that securitization was a ripoff of sorts - creating new securities from existing assets, in some cases more than once. so that multiple levels of CMOs/CDOs (collateralized mortgage/debt obligations - try to understand that term) were created, with a loss of trail of who really owned the original mortgages and was responsible for managing them.
The original mortgages issued by a bank for example, were shuffled off to another corporation created for this purpose, which took over the bank's mortgages and replaced them with 'securities' (CMOs), and this process could happen again as the second corporation parcelled off pieces of the mortgages to a third new corporation.
All this was motivated by the need for investment banks to make a quick buck - fat commissions and bonuses on these 'new deals'. In the process however, a system of accountability which originally existed with the issuing bank managing its mortgages with trained staff, was diffused and shifted away to corporations owned by individual investors who had no clue what the mortgages were or what they were worth. They were simply enticed into buying the newly created CMOs with attractive rates of return offered on them, with no idea of how risky the CMOs were.
This is what the geniuses of Wall Street were upto, encouraged by what Soros even then was calling 'market fundamentalism' fueled by the Reagan-Thatcher 'revolutions' of killing regulation, selling off government enterprises to the private sector at give-away prices, and relieving the super-rich of any responsibility for taxes, leaving that for the poor and middle-class whose social programs were being ratcheted down. This was the so-called 'supply-side' economics, later labelled 'voodoo' economics by Bill Clinton, by which tax-cuts would stimulate investments by the rich so that the poor and middle-class would benefit - the super-rich 'Atlas' supporting everyone else per the Ayn Rand theory.
The reality of why this worked for a decade and half is a little different - massive WMD expenditures under Reagan created giant fiscal deficits which were financed by overseas lenders such as oil-exporting countries, as the rest of the world absorbed American inflation caused by such currency expansion (way, way beyond the monetarist limits recommended by Friedmanites) since the US dollar continued to be accepted as the international reserve currency because of America's political dominance and economic clout. All that is now all but over, as the latest G20 summit in London, UK, mused about creating an alternative reserve currency the world could accept, the US dollar no longer being valued after the squandering of American political capital by the Bushites.
On the derivatives question, Niall Ferguson, a brilliant star historian (who I despise because he helped sell the 'Armageddon' myth that Iran was building a bomb to evaporate Israel, while saying not a word about the 200+ nuclear weapons Israel already had which could easily evaporate Iran) has written in his latest book The Ascent of Money (a sort of followup to Galbraith's book of a few decades ago Money - Whence it came, Where it went) that the world economy's GNP is around $45 trillion (if I remember right), the stock and bond markets worth approx. $ 47 trillion, and the derivatives markets worth $473 trillion (all figures from 2006 - current estimates exceed a quadrillion!). Huge sums are also involved in credit default swaps..... another ticker. All of this shows how dangerously leveraged the financial house of cards is compared to actual economic output. And how fantastically overpriced the world of finance is compared to the actual value of goods and services.
Paul Krugman was one of the first big-name economists to 'finger' former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for keeping tight control over inflation (unless there was a recession-threat in which case liquidity was quickly released and interest-rates slashed) but (except for occasional comments about 'irrational exuberance') exercising ZERO control of 'asset-prices' - ie the prices of stocks and real-estate and other financial instruments where speculation allowed all sorts of dangerous bubbles to develop. This massive casino allowed a few people to make gigantic fortunes but left millions exposed to huge losses when the bubbles came to a bust. What drives these bubbles and busts?
No real basis in economic or technological advancement, but mostly expectations - the fantasies and panics of investors. For example the 'dot-com' bubble, in which inflated claims of the 'information super-highway' led to huge amounts of venture capital being given to very questionable propositions (sometimes on the basis of a PowerPoint presentation) and the vastly over-priced internet stocks. The Economist predicted the crash of these stocks, and Krugman was one of the lone voices who tried to explain that the Internet could not grow more food, or manufacture more products, or ship anything other than information.
'Fergie' also discusses the 'Chimerica' phenomenon (inspired by Chimera - a fabled monster and name of virus in Mission Impossible 2, plus the word 'Chindia' to describe the re-emergence of China and India which were the world's biggest economies 200 years ago before guns and imperialism transferred wealth to the West) by which massive American trade deficits with China were financed by the latter from its low-but-growing wage-earners with high savings rates, and how the sub-prime mess happened because all this finance flowing from China to America led to billions the Wall-Street geniuses did not know how to invest, so they came up with the brilliant idea of lending to people with no income or job or collateral - the so-called 'ninja loans', predicated on the belief that real estate would keep on going up indefinitely.
Now we are seeing the financial collateral damage. And it is poetic given how much murder and genocide America has done in other parts of the world, shrugging it off as collateral damage, as it was done in the worthy cause of making American capitalists richer than ever. And while the lower and middle classes are paying much of the price in lost jobs, many of these people would have voted for the politicians that created the environment in which the seeds of the current chaos were sown.
Friday, March 27, 2009
AMERICA, ISRAEL, AFGHANISTAN, OIL
Sent to the Star, March 25, 2009.
A fundamental goal of American foreign policy, and one that has been formally enunciated in State Department documents, is to obtain oil cheaply, if necessary by force. That is one of the reasons why America spends half the planet's expenditure on weapons of mass destruction. The American government openly defines access to cheap oil as essential to its 'security'. The use of force in Iran in 1953 for oil, when the CIA acted to remove a democratically-elected leader who threatened to nationalize an oil-company which was taking Iranian oil out at bargain price, is well understood, though not acknowledged. The 'oil' motives in the invasions of Iraq of 1991 and 2003 are also understood, if not acknowledged.
But the 'oil' motive in America's arming of Israel, which has 200 nuclear bombs and every type of state-of-the-art chemical and biological weapon, as well as the best air-force of any non-US NATO country, is less understood. Israel's value to America is that it is the 'gun' pointed at Arab and Iranian heads in the Middle East, the world's most fertile oil region, so that oil continues to flow cheaply to America. Israel is America's gun by proxy, since a gun wielded openly (though it is to Iran and Iraq) is difficult to justify to world opinion.
But delivering the Jews their 'promised land' is a cover story that is very easy to sell, not only to Christian fundamentalists and Bible-thumpers in America, but to most Western governments, because of guilt over the Holocaust. People seem to forget that 200 years ago, when America was being 'settled' by the genocidal unsettling of its original inhabitants, the Puritans invoked the same Old Testament ideas of a 'chosen people' favored by God, who could presumably steal from, murder and exploit 'lesser' peoples. Then it was America that was the 'Promised Land'; now it has shifted to Palestine.
(As 'Zbig' Brzezinski, former US National Security Advisor wrote: "The unwillingess to recognize a historical connection between the rise of anti-American terrorism and America's involvement in the Middle East makes the formulation of an effective strategic response to terrorism that much more difficult".) In simple terms, unless the legitimate and long-standing grievances that have been cynically ignored for decades by a self-serving America are addressed, the terrorism - itself a response to the much greater TERRORISM from America, Britain and Israel - will not die.
It is troubling that PM Harper slavishly follows the rapine policies of former President Bush Jr.. He has apparently not learned from his error in opposition when he would have taken Canada into the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Nor does he seem to appreciate that the real reason for American presence in Afghanistan is not the Taliban, which America never cared about, but that Afghanistan is a gateway to another rich oil region – Central Asia. Canadian soldiers are dying in Afghanistan for all the wrong reasons, and but for former PM Chretien's magnificence, might have been dying in Iraq as well, also for the wrong reasons.
If Afghanistan and Pakistan are today one of the world's most dangerous hot-spots, it is the direct consequence of the short-sighted neglect of the American leaders, who invested billions in giving arms and missiles to local warlords to terrorize the Soviets, but who would not spend a fraction of that to rebuild the shattered country when the Soviets had been pushed out. And of the criminal arrogance and duplicity of the Bush administration which within months of 911 began a shift of resources away from Afghanistan to its real target - the theft of an utterly defenseless but oil-rich Iraq, which 911 gave it the perfect pretext for.
A fundamental goal of American foreign policy, and one that has been formally enunciated in State Department documents, is to obtain oil cheaply, if necessary by force. That is one of the reasons why America spends half the planet's expenditure on weapons of mass destruction. The American government openly defines access to cheap oil as essential to its 'security'. The use of force in Iran in 1953 for oil, when the CIA acted to remove a democratically-elected leader who threatened to nationalize an oil-company which was taking Iranian oil out at bargain price, is well understood, though not acknowledged. The 'oil' motives in the invasions of Iraq of 1991 and 2003 are also understood, if not acknowledged.
But the 'oil' motive in America's arming of Israel, which has 200 nuclear bombs and every type of state-of-the-art chemical and biological weapon, as well as the best air-force of any non-US NATO country, is less understood. Israel's value to America is that it is the 'gun' pointed at Arab and Iranian heads in the Middle East, the world's most fertile oil region, so that oil continues to flow cheaply to America. Israel is America's gun by proxy, since a gun wielded openly (though it is to Iran and Iraq) is difficult to justify to world opinion.
But delivering the Jews their 'promised land' is a cover story that is very easy to sell, not only to Christian fundamentalists and Bible-thumpers in America, but to most Western governments, because of guilt over the Holocaust. People seem to forget that 200 years ago, when America was being 'settled' by the genocidal unsettling of its original inhabitants, the Puritans invoked the same Old Testament ideas of a 'chosen people' favored by God, who could presumably steal from, murder and exploit 'lesser' peoples. Then it was America that was the 'Promised Land'; now it has shifted to Palestine.
(As 'Zbig' Brzezinski, former US National Security Advisor wrote: "The unwillingess to recognize a historical connection between the rise of anti-American terrorism and America's involvement in the Middle East makes the formulation of an effective strategic response to terrorism that much more difficult".) In simple terms, unless the legitimate and long-standing grievances that have been cynically ignored for decades by a self-serving America are addressed, the terrorism - itself a response to the much greater TERRORISM from America, Britain and Israel - will not die.
It is troubling that PM Harper slavishly follows the rapine policies of former President Bush Jr.. He has apparently not learned from his error in opposition when he would have taken Canada into the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Nor does he seem to appreciate that the real reason for American presence in Afghanistan is not the Taliban, which America never cared about, but that Afghanistan is a gateway to another rich oil region – Central Asia. Canadian soldiers are dying in Afghanistan for all the wrong reasons, and but for former PM Chretien's magnificence, might have been dying in Iraq as well, also for the wrong reasons.
If Afghanistan and Pakistan are today one of the world's most dangerous hot-spots, it is the direct consequence of the short-sighted neglect of the American leaders, who invested billions in giving arms and missiles to local warlords to terrorize the Soviets, but who would not spend a fraction of that to rebuild the shattered country when the Soviets had been pushed out. And of the criminal arrogance and duplicity of the Bush administration which within months of 911 began a shift of resources away from Afghanistan to its real target - the theft of an utterly defenseless but oil-rich Iraq, which 911 gave it the perfect pretext for.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
THE ZIONISM OF THE 'PURITANS'
The 'Zionists' of today stole the state of Israel from Palestine by force and are keeping it by force. They are the historical inheritors of the 19th-century Puritan settlers of America, who also justified their armed robbery of the North American continent from the original inhabitants by invoking the Old Testament and its talk of 'chosen people' favored by God, and the right of such people (presumably) to murder, steal from, and otherwise exploit 'lesser' peoples.
Zionism has thus rendered 'unholy' vast sections of the Bible which seem written exclusively for racist and religious propaganda.
In the 1980s, legendary Bollywood film-maker Raj Kapoor (now deceased) ended his career with the superlative 'Ram Teri Ganga Maili', which at one level concerned (as did the very different Vertigo of Hitchcock) the plight of a good soul tormented by deceit and evil, but at another was a commentary on political corruption. The film used the polluted Ganges river - ignorantly revered by millions of Hindus for 'washing away' sins, rivers being as useless as 'confessions' in providing absolution - as a metaphor to say: the sins of humanity overwhelm even the holy river's ability to wash them off.
The crimes of America and Israel - both states invented by armed robbery and genocide, using Zionist ideas of a 'Promised Land' as cover - rely on the unholy sections of the Bible, which nearly one-half of Americans (who vote for the Bible-thumping Republicans) place their literalist 'faith' on. No doubt, at least in the minds of these 'Judeo-Christian' fundamentalists, their crimes have already been 'forgiven' - paid for by the crucifixion of the 'Saviour' - whose teachings therefore no longer hold relevance.
In this moronic ideology, it is not necessary to actually follow any of the Son of Man's teachings, to live by those principles... one can do the total opposite because so long as one 'believes in Jesus' one is 'already saved' ...... (Jesus already paid for the sins of whoever believes in him, so the latter need not worry about sins or crimes ...).
When these murderers reap the consequences of their actions, they'll wish they had never been born, but Mercy will snub their undying screams; as they have meted out, so shall it be done to them. And that 'born-again Christian' who could not resist one last massacre in Gaza even as he exited the White House in near-universal disgrace for earlier crimes - every last molecule of his vanity, whether for the 'white' skin concealing his black soul, the presidential or military power he wielded, or his ill-gotten wealth, will be searingly baked out of him.
This is my curse ...... and the Son of Man's promise.
Zionism has thus rendered 'unholy' vast sections of the Bible which seem written exclusively for racist and religious propaganda.
In the 1980s, legendary Bollywood film-maker Raj Kapoor (now deceased) ended his career with the superlative 'Ram Teri Ganga Maili', which at one level concerned (as did the very different Vertigo of Hitchcock) the plight of a good soul tormented by deceit and evil, but at another was a commentary on political corruption. The film used the polluted Ganges river - ignorantly revered by millions of Hindus for 'washing away' sins, rivers being as useless as 'confessions' in providing absolution - as a metaphor to say: the sins of humanity overwhelm even the holy river's ability to wash them off.
The crimes of America and Israel - both states invented by armed robbery and genocide, using Zionist ideas of a 'Promised Land' as cover - rely on the unholy sections of the Bible, which nearly one-half of Americans (who vote for the Bible-thumping Republicans) place their literalist 'faith' on. No doubt, at least in the minds of these 'Judeo-Christian' fundamentalists, their crimes have already been 'forgiven' - paid for by the crucifixion of the 'Saviour' - whose teachings therefore no longer hold relevance.
In this moronic ideology, it is not necessary to actually follow any of the Son of Man's teachings, to live by those principles... one can do the total opposite because so long as one 'believes in Jesus' one is 'already saved' ...... (Jesus already paid for the sins of whoever believes in him, so the latter need not worry about sins or crimes ...).
When these murderers reap the consequences of their actions, they'll wish they had never been born, but Mercy will snub their undying screams; as they have meted out, so shall it be done to them. And that 'born-again Christian' who could not resist one last massacre in Gaza even as he exited the White House in near-universal disgrace for earlier crimes - every last molecule of his vanity, whether for the 'white' skin concealing his black soul, the presidential or military power he wielded, or his ill-gotten wealth, will be searingly baked out of him.
This is my curse ...... and the Son of Man's promise.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
AIG's 'SCUM'DOG MILLIONAIRES
No further comment needed.
These bonuses are the legacy of the 'free-market' fundamentalism of Reagan and Thatcher, which found its culmination in the lawlessness and greed of the Bush-Cheney years. These adorers of the one-dimensional philosophy of Ayn Rand ('Atlas Shrugged' ought to be renamed 'Atlas Begged', as these hypocrites have been taking handouts in Himalaya-size begging bowls) and the superficial economics of Milton Friedman, purveyor of what George Soros calls the 'false doctrine of monetarism', now stand exposed as the 'scum'dogs they are.
The statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled by the American invaders. Now what's needed is the metaphorical toppling of the 'idols' of Reagan and Thatcher, both of whom - if we had global justice - would have been prosecuted for illegally selling arms to Saddam Hussein for terrorizing Iran. And while the Western news media babbles again about prosecuting a tinpot dictator from Sudan, no one breathes a word about going after the greatest war-criminals of the 21st century - the unholy trinity of Bush Jr., Cheney and Rumsfeld.
That much remains stable amidst the economic chaos.
These bonuses are the legacy of the 'free-market' fundamentalism of Reagan and Thatcher, which found its culmination in the lawlessness and greed of the Bush-Cheney years. These adorers of the one-dimensional philosophy of Ayn Rand ('Atlas Shrugged' ought to be renamed 'Atlas Begged', as these hypocrites have been taking handouts in Himalaya-size begging bowls) and the superficial economics of Milton Friedman, purveyor of what George Soros calls the 'false doctrine of monetarism', now stand exposed as the 'scum'dogs they are.
The statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled by the American invaders. Now what's needed is the metaphorical toppling of the 'idols' of Reagan and Thatcher, both of whom - if we had global justice - would have been prosecuted for illegally selling arms to Saddam Hussein for terrorizing Iran. And while the Western news media babbles again about prosecuting a tinpot dictator from Sudan, no one breathes a word about going after the greatest war-criminals of the 21st century - the unholy trinity of Bush Jr., Cheney and Rumsfeld.
That much remains stable amidst the economic chaos.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
JUDAISM VS. ZIONISM & THE US-ISRAEL AXIS
American propaganda, supported by many Western countries including Canada, accords Israel a near-sacrosanct status. In America this is aided by the ignorance of Bible-thumpers who think their scripture prophecies and 'promises' the nation of Israel to Jews..... but this is just one of the many betrayals and distortions of that book ..... which is (like every other scripture - Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, or other) just a book. Like every other book of scripture, its objective was (or ought to have been) the purification of souls, not the propagating of politics.
But throughout history, priests (including Popes) have used religion to acquire power, just as kings and politicians have done. The religion of Christianity was the creation of the emperor Constantine (who is said to have boiled his wife, executed his son, and remained a pagan until his 'last day' when he converted to Christianity as an insurance policy) to consolidate control over the Roman Empire. It had nothing to do with the Son of Man's request to spread the gospel (and which itself never was meant to create or inspire an institution such as the Church). When the body is the 'temple of the Living God' and 'Earth is my footstool, Heaven My Throne, what temple can you build for Me, man?', all human institutional religions are hopelessly corrupted.
And so the 'Christian' nation of America which was founded on the pursuit of private property (almost enshrined in the American Constitution by the 'founding fathers', but replaced at the last minute by 'happiness') - utterly dismissing the Son of Man's edict that no man can follow 2 Masters - holds the simultaneously oxymoronic (and moronic) beliefs that Jews are destined for hell, yet must be delivered to the 'Promised Land' which the Bible-thumpers now say is in the Middle East. (When they were 'settling' America by the genocidal unsettling of its inhabitants, America was the 'Promised Land' - this is how fundamentalists lie...).
But the 'Land' (whether called Israel or Yerushaleim or even 'Zion') promised by Yahweh to Moses, Isaiah and other prophets has nothing to do with this planet. It belongs to another dimension, being the same place the Son of Man referred to as 'my Kingdom ... not of this world' of 'rust, moth and corruption'. This planet is doomed to die in 4 to 7 billion years, when scientists estimate the Sun's fire will burn out, turning it into a 'brown dwarf' incapable of sustaining life on earth, or a 'black hole' which would suck everything around it including the spaceship we live on into an inexorable abyss. That is though an unimaginably long time away.
But the American government, especially the 'Christian' fundamentalists of the Republican Party, have astutely exploited this ignorance of the thumpers of their holy book. Massive eco-military aid (which has given Israel the latest, most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction of every type - biological, chemical, nuclear and conventional including an air-force more lethal than that of any NATO country but the US) was provided under the guise of delivering the Jews their promised land. But the real objective of this aid (though partly to appease the powerful Zionist lobbies of North America) has been to make Israel what imperial America wants it to be - a gun pointed at Arab and Iranian heads in the oil-rich Gulf.
Those oil-rich states remain constantly under threat from the American-Israeli 'axis-of-evil', so that oil continues to flow cheaply to America. This has been a constant goal of American foreign policy since the Second World War. State Department documents openly assert that American 'security' depends on easy access to Middle Eastern oil. The 20th century was the 'American' century because of cheap oil, obtained at the point of a gun - the state of Israel - along with the CIA backed coup of 1953 in Iran, and the invasions of Iraq of 1991 and 2003.
Iran is hated because it threw out the American backed dictator in 1979, and because its post-1979 religious regime has continued to defy the American government, supplying arms to the Iraqi insurgents and to the terrorized Palestinians (laudable objectives in each case). When Iranian President Ahmadinejad visited New York in Sept. 2007, he was vilified by the American media, which parroted their government's depiction of him as one who wanted to wipe Israel off the map with a nuclear bomb, when what Ahmadinejad had said was that the Zionist state of Israel was an abomination and needed to be replaced by the original nation of Palestine incorporating Jews, through a referendum.
What the criminally-conspiring American media did not report was that several Jewish rabbinical leaders had met with Ahmadinejad during that visit, and not only supported him, but eulogized him. This is captured in the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNcaQ4k7VM8
The rabbis from World Torah Jewry explained in that meeting that the nation-state of Israel has nothing to do with Judaism, but is the result of Zionism which is a violation of the Jewish teachings, and which materialistic Jews have fallen prey to because of the Holocaust. More details about these matters, and what Judaism truly is supposed to be about, versus the propaganda of the American and Israeli governments, is contained in the following Jewish website:
www.jewsagainstzionism.com
And in the rhetoric of the Canadian Arab Federation and of other Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East, this is exactly how Israel is seen - as a Zionist, not Jewish state - created by a naked grab of territory by force, and supported by American force, for geopolitical reasons that have nothing to do with the Jewish diaspora and everything to do with oil...... and money.
But throughout history, priests (including Popes) have used religion to acquire power, just as kings and politicians have done. The religion of Christianity was the creation of the emperor Constantine (who is said to have boiled his wife, executed his son, and remained a pagan until his 'last day' when he converted to Christianity as an insurance policy) to consolidate control over the Roman Empire. It had nothing to do with the Son of Man's request to spread the gospel (and which itself never was meant to create or inspire an institution such as the Church). When the body is the 'temple of the Living God' and 'Earth is my footstool, Heaven My Throne, what temple can you build for Me, man?', all human institutional religions are hopelessly corrupted.
And so the 'Christian' nation of America which was founded on the pursuit of private property (almost enshrined in the American Constitution by the 'founding fathers', but replaced at the last minute by 'happiness') - utterly dismissing the Son of Man's edict that no man can follow 2 Masters - holds the simultaneously oxymoronic (and moronic) beliefs that Jews are destined for hell, yet must be delivered to the 'Promised Land' which the Bible-thumpers now say is in the Middle East. (When they were 'settling' America by the genocidal unsettling of its inhabitants, America was the 'Promised Land' - this is how fundamentalists lie...).
But the 'Land' (whether called Israel or Yerushaleim or even 'Zion') promised by Yahweh to Moses, Isaiah and other prophets has nothing to do with this planet. It belongs to another dimension, being the same place the Son of Man referred to as 'my Kingdom ... not of this world' of 'rust, moth and corruption'. This planet is doomed to die in 4 to 7 billion years, when scientists estimate the Sun's fire will burn out, turning it into a 'brown dwarf' incapable of sustaining life on earth, or a 'black hole' which would suck everything around it including the spaceship we live on into an inexorable abyss. That is though an unimaginably long time away.
But the American government, especially the 'Christian' fundamentalists of the Republican Party, have astutely exploited this ignorance of the thumpers of their holy book. Massive eco-military aid (which has given Israel the latest, most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction of every type - biological, chemical, nuclear and conventional including an air-force more lethal than that of any NATO country but the US) was provided under the guise of delivering the Jews their promised land. But the real objective of this aid (though partly to appease the powerful Zionist lobbies of North America) has been to make Israel what imperial America wants it to be - a gun pointed at Arab and Iranian heads in the oil-rich Gulf.
Those oil-rich states remain constantly under threat from the American-Israeli 'axis-of-evil', so that oil continues to flow cheaply to America. This has been a constant goal of American foreign policy since the Second World War. State Department documents openly assert that American 'security' depends on easy access to Middle Eastern oil. The 20th century was the 'American' century because of cheap oil, obtained at the point of a gun - the state of Israel - along with the CIA backed coup of 1953 in Iran, and the invasions of Iraq of 1991 and 2003.
Iran is hated because it threw out the American backed dictator in 1979, and because its post-1979 religious regime has continued to defy the American government, supplying arms to the Iraqi insurgents and to the terrorized Palestinians (laudable objectives in each case). When Iranian President Ahmadinejad visited New York in Sept. 2007, he was vilified by the American media, which parroted their government's depiction of him as one who wanted to wipe Israel off the map with a nuclear bomb, when what Ahmadinejad had said was that the Zionist state of Israel was an abomination and needed to be replaced by the original nation of Palestine incorporating Jews, through a referendum.
What the criminally-conspiring American media did not report was that several Jewish rabbinical leaders had met with Ahmadinejad during that visit, and not only supported him, but eulogized him. This is captured in the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNcaQ4k7VM8
The rabbis from World Torah Jewry explained in that meeting that the nation-state of Israel has nothing to do with Judaism, but is the result of Zionism which is a violation of the Jewish teachings, and which materialistic Jews have fallen prey to because of the Holocaust. More details about these matters, and what Judaism truly is supposed to be about, versus the propaganda of the American and Israeli governments, is contained in the following Jewish website:
www.jewsagainstzionism.com
And in the rhetoric of the Canadian Arab Federation and of other Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East, this is exactly how Israel is seen - as a Zionist, not Jewish state - created by a naked grab of territory by force, and supported by American force, for geopolitical reasons that have nothing to do with the Jewish diaspora and everything to do with oil...... and money.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
OBAMA MAINTAINS AMERICAN FORKED-TONGUE ON THE MIDEAST
Some months ago, when Obama was campaigning for the Presidency, it was predicted on this blog that he would bring about no significant changes in foreign policy, having appointed the hawk Biden (virulent supporter of the criminal invasion of Iraq) as running mate. Here are more details on Obama's waffling, his obedience to the Zionist (as opposed to Jewish - there is plenty of dissent now in Jews on this question) line in the Middle East, and his lies of omission if not commission - as he pretends not to see his government's conspiracy with its client-terrorist state Israel in murdering Palestinians and their women and children, and taking over whatever precious little remains of the territories they inhabit, however torturously - so it can have its own 'enforcer' in the oil-rich 'Holy' Land.
Some of the highlights:
1. Obama had no comment on the American backed assault on Gaza, which killed over 1400 Palestinians, but which was conveniently halted the day before his inauguration, or (aside from the $4 billion annual eco-military 'aid' Israel has been getting for decades from the US) on 2 ships sent loaded with weapons from the US specifically for the attack on Gaza, one of which was blocked by Greece which refused to allow it to dock. He did however condemn arms shipments to Gaza by others for its defence.
2. He referred supportively to the Arab league's recommendation for Palestinian 'normalizaton' of relations with Israel, while blithely ignoring its central premise - a 2-state settlement, which the US and Israel are virulently opposed to, and with this latest attack, eliminating any hope of.
3. He congratulated Jordan for training Palestinian security forces used to violently suppress Palestinians' support for the democratically elected Hamas; refused to acknowledge Hamas' legitimacy and expressed support only for the defeated party's representatives. He continued the American portrayal of Hamas as a terrorist agency even though it has repeatedly endorsed the 2-state settlement supported by the entire world, except the two 'Holy States'- America and Israel.
4. The US and Israel also voted against a UN resolution affirming the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Naturally, they cannot be allowed to make their own future - only the Americans and Israelis have that inviolable right.
5. Obama repeated US-Israeli demands that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist (utterly ignoring Hamas' public affirmations of the right of both states to exist), and that Hamas renounce violence, without any such renunciation by the US or Israel..... This is exactly how mobsters dictate terms to their victims...
6. As it did (along with the UK) in 1953 in Iran, the US is using overwhelming force to destroy democracy in Palestine (the one Arab state that practices it), because the democrats in question didn't follow American orders, having voted the 'wrong' way.
Obama is thus keeping his pre-election promises to American Jews, which, as one Israeli writer commented, 'broke all records for fawning'... perhaps it is too much to expect otherwise from the first African-American to occupy the White House. And he certainly faces big challenges on the domestic economic front..... Still, to abandon the Palestinians to butchery by the Israelis does not bode well for the world's future......
America's murderous assault (through Israel) on what remains of occupied Palestine is one of the potential seeds of World War III, which Obama's predecessor made more likely with the naked grab of Iraq, the second rich oil nation in the Gulf..... Do the Americans imagine the rest of the world will just let them loot the world's oil? The Iraqi insurgency and the inability of the world's greatest armed force to tame a tiny nation a fraction of its size has apparently taught the American government nothing....
The US is in the Middle East for oil, not Israel, just as it is in Afghanistan for a gateway to Central Asian oil - the Taliban being as convenient a 'red herring' as Israel.
Obama on Israel-Palestine
Noam Chomsky
chomsky.info, January 24, 2009
Barack Obama is recognized to be a person of acute intelligence, a legal scholar, careful with his choice of words. He deserves to be taken seriously -- both what he says, and what he omits. Particularly significant is his first substantive statement on foreign affairs, on January 22, at the State Department, when introducing George Mitchell to serve as his special envoy for Middle East peace.
Mitchell is to focus his attention on the Israel-Palestine problem, in the wake of the recent US-Israeli invasion of Gaza. During the murderous assault, Obama remained silent apart from a few platitudes, because, he said, there is only one president -- a fact that did not silence him on many other issues. His campaign did, however, repeat his statement that "if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that." He was referring to Israeli children, not the hundreds of Palestinian children being butchered by US arms, about whom he could not speak, because there was only one president.
On January 22, however, the one president was Barack Obama, so he could speak freely about these matters -- avoiding, however, the attack on Gaza, which had, conveniently, been called off just before the inauguration.
Obama's talk emphasized his commitment to a peaceful settlement. He left its contours vague, apart from one specific proposal: "the Arab peace initiative," Obama said, "contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts. Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative's promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all."
Obama is not directly falsifying the Arab League proposal, but the carefully framed deceit is instructive.
The Arab League peace proposal does indeed call for normalization of relations with Israel -- in the context -- repeat, in the context of a two-state settlement in terms of the longstanding international consensus, which the US and Israel have blocked for over 30 years, in international isolation, and still do. The core of the Arab League proposal, as Obama and his Mideast advisers know very well, is its call for a peaceful political settlement in these terms, which are well-known, and recognized to be the only basis for the peaceful settlement to which Obama professes to be committed. The omission of that crucial fact can hardly be accidental, and signals clearly that Obama envisions no departure from US rejectionism. His call for the Arab states to act on a corollary to their proposal, while the US ignores even the existence of its central content, which is the precondition for the corollary, surpasses cynicism.
The most significant acts to undermine a peaceful settlement are the daily US-backed actions in the occupied territories, all recognized to be criminal: taking over valuable land and resources and constructing what the leading architect of the plan, Ariel Sharon, called "Bantustans" for Palestinians -- an unfair comparison because the Bantustans were far more viable than the fragments left to Palestinians under Sharon's conception, now being realized. But the US and Israel even continue to oppose a political settlement in words, most recently in December 2008, when the US and Israel (and a few Pacific islands) voted against a UN resolution supporting "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" (passed 173 to 5, US-Israel opposed, with evasive pretexts).
Obama had not one word to say about the settlement and infrastructure developments in the West Bank, and the complex measures to control Palestinian existence, designed to undermine the prospects for a peaceful two-state settlement. His silence is a grim refutation of his oratorical flourishes about how "I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security."
Also unmentioned is Israel's use of US arms in Gaza, in violation not only of international but also US law. Or Washington's shipment of new arms to Israel right at the peak of the US-Israeli attack, surely not unknown to Obama's Middle East advisers.
Obama was firm, however, that smuggling of arms to Gaza must be stopped. He endorses the agreement of Condoleeza Rice and Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni that the Egyptian-Gaza border must be closed -- a remarkable exercise of imperial arrogance, as the Financial Times observed: "as they stood in Washington congratulating each other, both officials seemed oblivious to the fact that they were making a deal about an illegal trade on someone else's border -- Egypt in this case. The next day, an Egyptian official described the memorandum as `fictional'." Egypt's objections were ignored.
Returning to Obama's reference to the "constructive" Arab League proposal, as the wording indicates, Obama persists in restricting support to the defeated party in the January 2006 election, the only free election in the Arab world, to which the US and Israel reacted, instantly and overtly, by severely punishing Palestinians for opposing the will of the masters. A minor technicality is that Abbas's term ran out on January 9, and that Fayyad was appointed without confirmation by the Palestinian parliament (many of them kidnapped and in Israeli prisons). Ha'aretz describes Fayyad as "a strange bird in Palestinian politics. On the one hand, he is the Palestinian politician most esteemed by Israel and the West. However, on the other hand, he has no electoral power whatsoever in Gaza or the West Bank." The report also notes Fayyad's "close relationship with the Israeli establishment," notably his friendship with Sharon's extremist adviser Dov Weiglass. Though lacking popular support, he is regarded as competent and honest, not the norm in the US-backed political sectors.
Obama's insistence that only Abbas and Fayyad exist conforms to the consistent Western contempt for democracy unless it is under control.
Obama provided the usual reasons for ignoring the elected government led by Hamas. "To be a genuine party to peace," Obama declared, "the quartet [US, EU, Russia, UN] has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements." Unmentioned, also as usual, is the inconvenient fact that the US and Israel firmly reject all three conditions. In international isolation, they bar a two-state settlement including a Palestinian state; they of course do not renounce violence; and they reject the quartet's central proposal, the "road map." Israel formally accepted it, but with 14 reservations that effectively eliminate its contents (tacitly backed by the US). It is the great merit of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, to have brought these facts to public attention for the first time -- and in the mainstream, the only time.
It follows, by elementary reasoning, that neither the US nor Israel is a "genuine party to peace." But that cannot be. It is not even a phrase in the English language.
It is perhaps unfair to criticize Obama for this further exercise of cynicism, because it is close to universal, unlike his scrupulous evisceration of the core component of the Arab League proposal, which is his own novel contribution.
Also near universal are the standard references to Hamas: a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel (or maybe all Jews). Omitted are the inconvenient facts that the US-Israel are not only dedicated to the destruction of any viable Palestinian state, but are steadily implementing those policies. Or that unlike the two rejectionist states, Hamas has called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus: publicly, repeatedly, explicitly.
Obama began his remarks by saying: "Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats."
There was nothing about the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against far more extreme threats, such as those occurring daily, with US support, in the occupied territories. But that again is the norm.
Also normal is the enunciation of the principle that Israel has the right to defend itself. That is correct, but vacuous: so does everyone. But in the context the cliche is worse than vacuous: it is more cynical deceit.
The issue is not whether Israel has the right to defend itself, like everyone else, but whether it has the right to do so by force. No one, including Obama, believes that states enjoy a general right to defend themselves by force: it is first necessary to demonstrate that there are no peaceful alternatives that can be tried. In this case, there surely are.
A narrow alternative would be for Israel to abide by a cease-fire, for example, the cease-fire proposed by Hamas political leader Khaled Mishal a few days before Israel launched its attack on December 27. Mishal called for restoring the 2005 agreement. That agreement called for an end to violence and uninterrupted opening of the borders, along with an Israeli guarantee that goods and people could move freely between the two parts of occupied Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The agreement was rejected by the US and Israel a few months later, after the free election of January 2006 turned out "the wrong way." There are many other highly relevant cases.
The broader and more significant alternative would be for the US and Israel to abandon their extreme rejectionism, and join the rest of the world -- including the Arab states and Hamas -- in supporting a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. It should be noted that in the past 30 years there has been one departure from US-Israeli rejectionism: the negotiations at Taba in January 2001, which appeared to be close to a peaceful resolution when Israel prematurely called them off. It would not, then, be outlandish for Obama to agree to join the world, even within the framework of US policy, if he were interested in doing so.
In short, Obama's forceful reiteration of Israel's right to defend itself is another exercise of cynical deceit -- though, it must be admitted, not unique to him, but virtually universal.
The deceit is particularly striking in this case because the occasion was the appointment of Mitchell as special envoy. Mitchell's primary achievement was his leading role in the peaceful settlement in northern Ireland. It called for an end to IRA terror and British violence. Implicit is the recognition that while Britain had the right to defend itself from terror, it had no right to do so by force, because there was a peaceful alternative: recognition of the legitimate grievances of the Irish Catholic community that were the roots of IRA terror. When Britain adopted that sensible course, the terror ended. The implications for Mitchell's mission with regard to Israel-Palestine are so obvious that they need not be spelled out. And omission of them is, again, a striking indication of the commitment of the Obama administration to traditional US rejectionism and opposition to peace, except on its extremist terms.
Obama also praised Jordan for its "constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and nurturing its relations with Israel" -- which contrasts strikingly with US-Israeli refusal to deal with the freely elected government of Palestine, while savagely punishing Palestinians for electing it with pretexts which, as noted, do not withstand a moment's scrutiny. It is true that Jordan joined the US in arming and training Palestinian security forces, so that they could violently suppress any manifestation of support for the miserable victims of US-Israeli assault in Gaza, also arresting supporters of Hamas and the prominent journalist Khaled Amayreh, while organizing their own demonstrations in support of Abbas and Fatah, in which most participants "were civil servants and school children who were instructed by the PA to attend the rally," according to the Jerusalem Post. Our kind of democracy.
Obama made one further substantive comment: "As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regimeÉ" He did not, of course, mention that the US-Israel had rejected much the same agreement after the January 2006 election, and that Israel had never observed similar subsequent agreements on borders.
Also missing is any reaction to Israel's announcement that it rejected the cease-fire agreement, so that the prospects for it to be "lasting" are not auspicious. As reported at once in the press, "Israeli Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who takes part in security deliberations, told Army Radio on Thursday that Israel wouldn't let border crossings with Gaza reopen without a deal to free [Gilad] Schalit" (AP, Jan 22); ÔIsrael to keep Gaza crossings closed...An official said the government planned to use the issue to bargain for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by the Islamist group since 2006 (Financial Times, Jan. 23); "Earlier this week, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that progress on Corporal Shalit's release would be a precondition to opening up the border crossings that have been mostly closed since Hamas wrested control of Gaza from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in 2007" (Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 23); "an Israeli official said there would be tough conditions for any lifting of the blockade, which he linked with the release of Gilad Shalit" (FT, Jan. 23); among many others.
Shalit's capture is a prominent issue in the West, another indication of Hamas's criminality. Whatever one thinks about it, it is uncontroversial that capture of a soldier of an attacking army is far less of a crime than kidnapping of civilians, exactly what Israeli forces did the day before the capture of Shalit, invading Gaza city and kidnapping two brothers, then spiriting them across the border where they disappeared into Israel's prison complex. Unlike the much lesser case of Shalit, that crime was virtually unreported and has been forgotten, along with Israel's regular practice for decades of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on the high seas and dispatching them to Israeli prisons, often held for many years as hostages. But the capture of Shalit bars a cease-fire.
Obama's State Department talk about the Middle East continued with "the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and PakistanÉ the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism." A few hours later, US planes attacked a remote village in Afghanistan, intending to kill a Taliban commander. "Village elders, though, told provincial officials there were no Taliban in the area, which they described as a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds. Women and children were among the 22 dead, they said, according to Hamididan Abdul Rahmzai, the head of the provincial council" (LA Times, Jan. 24).
Afghan president Karzai's first message to Obama after he was elected in November was a plea to end the bombing of Afghan civilians, reiterated a few hours before Obama was sworn in. This was considered as significant as Karzai's call for a timetable for departure of US and other foreign forces. The rich and powerful have their "responsibilities." Among them, the New York Times reported, is to "provide security" in southern Afghanistan, where "the insurgency is homegrown and self-sustaining." All familiar. From Pravda in the 1980s, for example.
Some of the highlights:
1. Obama had no comment on the American backed assault on Gaza, which killed over 1400 Palestinians, but which was conveniently halted the day before his inauguration, or (aside from the $4 billion annual eco-military 'aid' Israel has been getting for decades from the US) on 2 ships sent loaded with weapons from the US specifically for the attack on Gaza, one of which was blocked by Greece which refused to allow it to dock. He did however condemn arms shipments to Gaza by others for its defence.
2. He referred supportively to the Arab league's recommendation for Palestinian 'normalizaton' of relations with Israel, while blithely ignoring its central premise - a 2-state settlement, which the US and Israel are virulently opposed to, and with this latest attack, eliminating any hope of.
3. He congratulated Jordan for training Palestinian security forces used to violently suppress Palestinians' support for the democratically elected Hamas; refused to acknowledge Hamas' legitimacy and expressed support only for the defeated party's representatives. He continued the American portrayal of Hamas as a terrorist agency even though it has repeatedly endorsed the 2-state settlement supported by the entire world, except the two 'Holy States'- America and Israel.
4. The US and Israel also voted against a UN resolution affirming the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Naturally, they cannot be allowed to make their own future - only the Americans and Israelis have that inviolable right.
5. Obama repeated US-Israeli demands that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist (utterly ignoring Hamas' public affirmations of the right of both states to exist), and that Hamas renounce violence, without any such renunciation by the US or Israel..... This is exactly how mobsters dictate terms to their victims...
6. As it did (along with the UK) in 1953 in Iran, the US is using overwhelming force to destroy democracy in Palestine (the one Arab state that practices it), because the democrats in question didn't follow American orders, having voted the 'wrong' way.
Obama is thus keeping his pre-election promises to American Jews, which, as one Israeli writer commented, 'broke all records for fawning'... perhaps it is too much to expect otherwise from the first African-American to occupy the White House. And he certainly faces big challenges on the domestic economic front..... Still, to abandon the Palestinians to butchery by the Israelis does not bode well for the world's future......
America's murderous assault (through Israel) on what remains of occupied Palestine is one of the potential seeds of World War III, which Obama's predecessor made more likely with the naked grab of Iraq, the second rich oil nation in the Gulf..... Do the Americans imagine the rest of the world will just let them loot the world's oil? The Iraqi insurgency and the inability of the world's greatest armed force to tame a tiny nation a fraction of its size has apparently taught the American government nothing....
The US is in the Middle East for oil, not Israel, just as it is in Afghanistan for a gateway to Central Asian oil - the Taliban being as convenient a 'red herring' as Israel.
Obama on Israel-Palestine
Noam Chomsky
chomsky.info, January 24, 2009
Barack Obama is recognized to be a person of acute intelligence, a legal scholar, careful with his choice of words. He deserves to be taken seriously -- both what he says, and what he omits. Particularly significant is his first substantive statement on foreign affairs, on January 22, at the State Department, when introducing George Mitchell to serve as his special envoy for Middle East peace.
Mitchell is to focus his attention on the Israel-Palestine problem, in the wake of the recent US-Israeli invasion of Gaza. During the murderous assault, Obama remained silent apart from a few platitudes, because, he said, there is only one president -- a fact that did not silence him on many other issues. His campaign did, however, repeat his statement that "if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that." He was referring to Israeli children, not the hundreds of Palestinian children being butchered by US arms, about whom he could not speak, because there was only one president.
On January 22, however, the one president was Barack Obama, so he could speak freely about these matters -- avoiding, however, the attack on Gaza, which had, conveniently, been called off just before the inauguration.
Obama's talk emphasized his commitment to a peaceful settlement. He left its contours vague, apart from one specific proposal: "the Arab peace initiative," Obama said, "contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts. Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative's promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all."
Obama is not directly falsifying the Arab League proposal, but the carefully framed deceit is instructive.
The Arab League peace proposal does indeed call for normalization of relations with Israel -- in the context -- repeat, in the context of a two-state settlement in terms of the longstanding international consensus, which the US and Israel have blocked for over 30 years, in international isolation, and still do. The core of the Arab League proposal, as Obama and his Mideast advisers know very well, is its call for a peaceful political settlement in these terms, which are well-known, and recognized to be the only basis for the peaceful settlement to which Obama professes to be committed. The omission of that crucial fact can hardly be accidental, and signals clearly that Obama envisions no departure from US rejectionism. His call for the Arab states to act on a corollary to their proposal, while the US ignores even the existence of its central content, which is the precondition for the corollary, surpasses cynicism.
The most significant acts to undermine a peaceful settlement are the daily US-backed actions in the occupied territories, all recognized to be criminal: taking over valuable land and resources and constructing what the leading architect of the plan, Ariel Sharon, called "Bantustans" for Palestinians -- an unfair comparison because the Bantustans were far more viable than the fragments left to Palestinians under Sharon's conception, now being realized. But the US and Israel even continue to oppose a political settlement in words, most recently in December 2008, when the US and Israel (and a few Pacific islands) voted against a UN resolution supporting "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" (passed 173 to 5, US-Israel opposed, with evasive pretexts).
Obama had not one word to say about the settlement and infrastructure developments in the West Bank, and the complex measures to control Palestinian existence, designed to undermine the prospects for a peaceful two-state settlement. His silence is a grim refutation of his oratorical flourishes about how "I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security."
Also unmentioned is Israel's use of US arms in Gaza, in violation not only of international but also US law. Or Washington's shipment of new arms to Israel right at the peak of the US-Israeli attack, surely not unknown to Obama's Middle East advisers.
Obama was firm, however, that smuggling of arms to Gaza must be stopped. He endorses the agreement of Condoleeza Rice and Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni that the Egyptian-Gaza border must be closed -- a remarkable exercise of imperial arrogance, as the Financial Times observed: "as they stood in Washington congratulating each other, both officials seemed oblivious to the fact that they were making a deal about an illegal trade on someone else's border -- Egypt in this case. The next day, an Egyptian official described the memorandum as `fictional'." Egypt's objections were ignored.
Returning to Obama's reference to the "constructive" Arab League proposal, as the wording indicates, Obama persists in restricting support to the defeated party in the January 2006 election, the only free election in the Arab world, to which the US and Israel reacted, instantly and overtly, by severely punishing Palestinians for opposing the will of the masters. A minor technicality is that Abbas's term ran out on January 9, and that Fayyad was appointed without confirmation by the Palestinian parliament (many of them kidnapped and in Israeli prisons). Ha'aretz describes Fayyad as "a strange bird in Palestinian politics. On the one hand, he is the Palestinian politician most esteemed by Israel and the West. However, on the other hand, he has no electoral power whatsoever in Gaza or the West Bank." The report also notes Fayyad's "close relationship with the Israeli establishment," notably his friendship with Sharon's extremist adviser Dov Weiglass. Though lacking popular support, he is regarded as competent and honest, not the norm in the US-backed political sectors.
Obama's insistence that only Abbas and Fayyad exist conforms to the consistent Western contempt for democracy unless it is under control.
Obama provided the usual reasons for ignoring the elected government led by Hamas. "To be a genuine party to peace," Obama declared, "the quartet [US, EU, Russia, UN] has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements." Unmentioned, also as usual, is the inconvenient fact that the US and Israel firmly reject all three conditions. In international isolation, they bar a two-state settlement including a Palestinian state; they of course do not renounce violence; and they reject the quartet's central proposal, the "road map." Israel formally accepted it, but with 14 reservations that effectively eliminate its contents (tacitly backed by the US). It is the great merit of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, to have brought these facts to public attention for the first time -- and in the mainstream, the only time.
It follows, by elementary reasoning, that neither the US nor Israel is a "genuine party to peace." But that cannot be. It is not even a phrase in the English language.
It is perhaps unfair to criticize Obama for this further exercise of cynicism, because it is close to universal, unlike his scrupulous evisceration of the core component of the Arab League proposal, which is his own novel contribution.
Also near universal are the standard references to Hamas: a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel (or maybe all Jews). Omitted are the inconvenient facts that the US-Israel are not only dedicated to the destruction of any viable Palestinian state, but are steadily implementing those policies. Or that unlike the two rejectionist states, Hamas has called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus: publicly, repeatedly, explicitly.
Obama began his remarks by saying: "Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats."
There was nothing about the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against far more extreme threats, such as those occurring daily, with US support, in the occupied territories. But that again is the norm.
Also normal is the enunciation of the principle that Israel has the right to defend itself. That is correct, but vacuous: so does everyone. But in the context the cliche is worse than vacuous: it is more cynical deceit.
The issue is not whether Israel has the right to defend itself, like everyone else, but whether it has the right to do so by force. No one, including Obama, believes that states enjoy a general right to defend themselves by force: it is first necessary to demonstrate that there are no peaceful alternatives that can be tried. In this case, there surely are.
A narrow alternative would be for Israel to abide by a cease-fire, for example, the cease-fire proposed by Hamas political leader Khaled Mishal a few days before Israel launched its attack on December 27. Mishal called for restoring the 2005 agreement. That agreement called for an end to violence and uninterrupted opening of the borders, along with an Israeli guarantee that goods and people could move freely between the two parts of occupied Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The agreement was rejected by the US and Israel a few months later, after the free election of January 2006 turned out "the wrong way." There are many other highly relevant cases.
The broader and more significant alternative would be for the US and Israel to abandon their extreme rejectionism, and join the rest of the world -- including the Arab states and Hamas -- in supporting a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. It should be noted that in the past 30 years there has been one departure from US-Israeli rejectionism: the negotiations at Taba in January 2001, which appeared to be close to a peaceful resolution when Israel prematurely called them off. It would not, then, be outlandish for Obama to agree to join the world, even within the framework of US policy, if he were interested in doing so.
In short, Obama's forceful reiteration of Israel's right to defend itself is another exercise of cynical deceit -- though, it must be admitted, not unique to him, but virtually universal.
The deceit is particularly striking in this case because the occasion was the appointment of Mitchell as special envoy. Mitchell's primary achievement was his leading role in the peaceful settlement in northern Ireland. It called for an end to IRA terror and British violence. Implicit is the recognition that while Britain had the right to defend itself from terror, it had no right to do so by force, because there was a peaceful alternative: recognition of the legitimate grievances of the Irish Catholic community that were the roots of IRA terror. When Britain adopted that sensible course, the terror ended. The implications for Mitchell's mission with regard to Israel-Palestine are so obvious that they need not be spelled out. And omission of them is, again, a striking indication of the commitment of the Obama administration to traditional US rejectionism and opposition to peace, except on its extremist terms.
Obama also praised Jordan for its "constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and nurturing its relations with Israel" -- which contrasts strikingly with US-Israeli refusal to deal with the freely elected government of Palestine, while savagely punishing Palestinians for electing it with pretexts which, as noted, do not withstand a moment's scrutiny. It is true that Jordan joined the US in arming and training Palestinian security forces, so that they could violently suppress any manifestation of support for the miserable victims of US-Israeli assault in Gaza, also arresting supporters of Hamas and the prominent journalist Khaled Amayreh, while organizing their own demonstrations in support of Abbas and Fatah, in which most participants "were civil servants and school children who were instructed by the PA to attend the rally," according to the Jerusalem Post. Our kind of democracy.
Obama made one further substantive comment: "As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regimeÉ" He did not, of course, mention that the US-Israel had rejected much the same agreement after the January 2006 election, and that Israel had never observed similar subsequent agreements on borders.
Also missing is any reaction to Israel's announcement that it rejected the cease-fire agreement, so that the prospects for it to be "lasting" are not auspicious. As reported at once in the press, "Israeli Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who takes part in security deliberations, told Army Radio on Thursday that Israel wouldn't let border crossings with Gaza reopen without a deal to free [Gilad] Schalit" (AP, Jan 22); ÔIsrael to keep Gaza crossings closed...An official said the government planned to use the issue to bargain for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by the Islamist group since 2006 (Financial Times, Jan. 23); "Earlier this week, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that progress on Corporal Shalit's release would be a precondition to opening up the border crossings that have been mostly closed since Hamas wrested control of Gaza from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in 2007" (Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 23); "an Israeli official said there would be tough conditions for any lifting of the blockade, which he linked with the release of Gilad Shalit" (FT, Jan. 23); among many others.
Shalit's capture is a prominent issue in the West, another indication of Hamas's criminality. Whatever one thinks about it, it is uncontroversial that capture of a soldier of an attacking army is far less of a crime than kidnapping of civilians, exactly what Israeli forces did the day before the capture of Shalit, invading Gaza city and kidnapping two brothers, then spiriting them across the border where they disappeared into Israel's prison complex. Unlike the much lesser case of Shalit, that crime was virtually unreported and has been forgotten, along with Israel's regular practice for decades of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on the high seas and dispatching them to Israeli prisons, often held for many years as hostages. But the capture of Shalit bars a cease-fire.
Obama's State Department talk about the Middle East continued with "the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and PakistanÉ the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism." A few hours later, US planes attacked a remote village in Afghanistan, intending to kill a Taliban commander. "Village elders, though, told provincial officials there were no Taliban in the area, which they described as a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds. Women and children were among the 22 dead, they said, according to Hamididan Abdul Rahmzai, the head of the provincial council" (LA Times, Jan. 24).
Afghan president Karzai's first message to Obama after he was elected in November was a plea to end the bombing of Afghan civilians, reiterated a few hours before Obama was sworn in. This was considered as significant as Karzai's call for a timetable for departure of US and other foreign forces. The rich and powerful have their "responsibilities." Among them, the New York Times reported, is to "provide security" in southern Afghanistan, where "the insurgency is homegrown and self-sustaining." All familiar. From Pravda in the 1980s, for example.
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