FragilePolitics

Palin in the "Holy Land"

2011-03-21T14:06:00.002-04:00

This probably needs no comment but I cannot control myself because among her comments is the claim that "Israel apologizes too much." I am obviously missing something. Has Israel apologized for anything lately? Israel is actually trying to establish for itself conditions that will make apologies seem unnecessary because they will not be demanded. In this spirit, it is legalizing many undemocratic constraints on dissent by Israeli groups, spying on organizations abroad that are critical of its actions, especially with regards to the Palestinians, and generally trying to silence all voices of conscience. Why in the age of social networks and seeing them at work politically the Israeli fascist right wing believes it can silence its opposition just because it can pass some laws since it currently has a coalitionary majority in the Knesset is beyond me.

Union busting

2011-02-22T17:29:00.001-05:00

From Woody Guthry's "Union Maid" (1940)

          Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
          I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
          Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
          I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.

Before supporting union busting measures, one ought to recall what it was like for working people without unions and imagine what it will be like once unions are busted.

And it is not only ordinary benefits that will be lost. In the current conditions union busting is anti-democratic.

Sliding fast toward fascism

2011-02-14T11:36:00.000-05:00

The Knesset, the one chamber Israeli parliament, is set up to vote on a new law prohibiting Israeli citizens from initiating or supporting boycotts or disinvestments against Israel. An Israeli citizen or resident that violates the law will pay a fine of at least 30,000 NIS (today about $8,125) and others may be barred from entering Israel.

There is currently a growing "Boycott, Disinvestment, and Sanctions" (BDS) movement against Israel. Whether one is in support of its actions, just some of its actions, or opposes BDS due to some principle, or on strategic or tactical grounds, one must recognize that something different is at stake because an attempt to legalize punitive measures against BDS activists or backers is anti-democratic. It is also probably in violation of various international and regional laws that are based on treaties that Israel has signed. But, then, the two go together.

Democratization 06?

2011-02-14T10:18:00.000-05:00

Tahrir Square, Cairo will never be the same, though in the past few days its function as the space of a democratic moment is being dismantled, it is being cleaned up, and the traffic flows through it again, suggesting a cautious "return" to or "reassertion" of the "normality" of the rather apolitical daily life of most people.

As an event, Tahrir Square 2011 is like Tiananmen Square 1989 since like it, not only is it a specially visible democratic moment (however one explains this visibility), it belongs with other co-inspiring democratic moments taking place during the same span of time (like the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Tunisian protests in December 2010 and January 2011).

While some protesters have returned to the square, this democratic moment is pretty much over. One may speculate about its long term consequences or not, after all, the military now in control may or may not fulfill its promises and in the long term they need not fear a repeat of Tahrir Square 2011. Tahrir Sqaure 2011, like all true democratic moments, is rather singular.

Democratization 05?

2011-02-10T23:51:00.004-05:00

President Hosni Mubarak is kind of done with his job but not enough to satisfy the protestors who are calling for massive demonstrations and are positioning themselves strategically by the presidential palace, the Parliament, and the radio and television building. Why he is not willing to leave office properly is unclear at all and of course suspicious. The excuse comes as an appeal to a peaceful transition and the promise of free and inclusive elections in September. But should democracy be so managed?

Democratization 04?

2011-02-02T15:13:00.003-05:00

I hope the violent clashes taking place in Egypt stop and quickly since violent provocations are not exactly what will convince the Egyptian change seekers to go home. Egypt needs a peaceful transition into its future as well as a sense of open endedness as it creates that future.

Meanwhile other states in the Middle East are also reworking themselves politically. Thus, President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, who has been in office 32 years just promised to not run for reelection in 2013 when is term comes to an end and is refraining from a dynastic move as well (but he promised before and may not be believable). In Jordan, King Abdullah II dismissed the government and appointed a new Prime Minister, Maruf Bakhit, who has been instructed to introduce political reform (which may or may not work to forestall planned demonstrations for Friday). And "Days of Rage" are being organized in Algeria and Syria.

Democratization 03?

2011-02-01T07:50:00.002-05:00

For a moment and in some ways because the egyptian army declared on Monday that the people have a right to protest peacefully.

I remain skeptical because of the distance between democratic moments and the formation of a functioning democracy.

Democratization 02?

2011-01-30T10:16:00.002-05:00

There are now pictures of women among the demonstrators in Egypt and I find myself thinking of Iran where Ms. Zahra Bahrami, 45, who was arrested for committing security crimes after participating in the 2009 protests against the re-election of the President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was hanged on Saturday on drug trafficking charges. It is not that I do not think that Egypt can democratize. It is that I am afraid that it will not and that among the bearers of higher human rights violation costs will be women.

Democratization 01?

2011-01-29T07:27:00.004-05:00

First Tunisia. Now Egypt. With stronger echoes in Yemen and weaker ones in Jordan. Moments of an open future that cause fear because dictatorial stability has been practiced in the Middle East for so long and has been counted on internally and externally alike. But is the future so open?

Pictures of the demonstrators are pictures of men, mostly angry.

Nonetheless, China seems to think that the echoes may reach it and blocked the word "Egypt"so it is currently unavailable as a web searchable word.

Obama's speech

2011-01-25T20:52:00.002-05:00

Instead of listening to it, I have read it. Unsurprisingly centrist in its proposals and consciously pedagogical in its attempts to make sense of the present.

The formalities of accountability

2011-01-23T15:07:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, the reports countries produce when they investigate themselves in the name of accountability, seem rather suspicious. Take for example the just published report of Israel's "Public Commission to Examine the Maritime Incident of 31 May 2010." Half of the report finds that Israel's blockade of Gaza does not formally violate international law. The other half justify Israel's raid on the six ships Turkish sponsored "Gaza flotilla" in which nine people were killed. The report is probably correct and Turkish protests to the contrary have to be taken with a grain of slat. The Israeli commission had two foreign observers, Brigadier general Ken Watkins of Canada who was Judge Advocate General (JAG) of the Canadian Forces from 2006 to 2010, who specializes in military law, and Lord David Trimble of Northern Ireland, who received the Noble Prize for Peace in 1998, is a previous law professor and a member of the Conservative Party. Both signed the report's conclusions.

The report is not wholly supportive of Israel. It is critical of the land blockade and calls on Israel to examine the medical needs of the people of Gaza and find ways to improve on the current situation.

To find out how terrible the situation in Gaza is, one may want to look at B'tselem's report on the blockade. Given this situation, one may wonder whether international laws regulating blockades are not too permissive and should not be changed to fit better with human rights sensibilities.

Websites to watch

2011-01-21T16:14:00.007-05:00

My new favorite website to watch is that of Business for Democracy. Behind the website is a campaign organized by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the co-founders of Ben & Jerry to take on the January 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United that opened the door to unlimited corporate campaign contributions. The claim of Business for Democracy is that the decision in Citizen United undermines the core democratic principle that gives people the authority to govern themselves, in complex modern democracies, of course, through representation.

A political obscenity

2011-01-18T15:39:00.002-05:00

Obscenity - from the Latin obspenus meaning foul, repulsive, detestable.

There are, no doubt, many political obscenities. The one that struck me today - the fact that the Democrats and Republicans are expected to spend about one billion dollars each as they struggle for/against President Barack Obama's reelection bid.

A Palestinian state

2011-01-18T11:42:00.001-05:00

There are Euro-American commitments to a Palestinian state. Seven South American states have declared their recognition of Palestine as a state. The Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev reaffirmed today Russia's endorsement of a Palestinian state (first given in 1988). The Palestinians believe that a majority of United Nations member states are already behind them (109 out of 192). And Israel still warns against a unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians. Why exactly does Israel believe it has a right to be a major player in decisions about the political fate of the Palestinians after showing so much ill will about it?

Twisted logic

2011-01-18T00:18:00.003-05:00

According to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, it was the left wing of the Israeli Labor party that caused the Palestinians to withdraw from negotiations with Israel. Since I thought that the Palestinians really cared that Israel continues settling on their land and establishing more "facts on the ground" and similar issues, I must take Netanyahu to mean that the Palestinians will realize that there are now no supporters of their point of view in the Israeli government and so they can expect no one to speak for justice and so should accept the bad deal that right-wing Netanyahu is willing to offer.

Democratic (mis)representation?

2011-01-17T16:43:00.004-05:00

Israel does not have direct elections. Because it does matter to people who will represent them, all parties give the names of as many people as they believe have a reasonable enough chance at becoming Knesset members given the percentage of the vote that the party realistically expects to get. The Israeli Labor Party (Zionist Center Left) received thirteen Knesset seats in the last elections. Today the party split. Five of its members formed a new party, the Israeli Independence Party. This party received no votes to the Knesset. Its five Knesset members do not represent anyone. And yet, all of this is happening within the law.

Forms of fascism

2011-01-16T20:47:00.002-05:00

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau's compromise solution to protests by Left wing groups about being targeted for McCarthy-like investigations by the Right wing is to suggest that Right wing groups be investigated as well.

The promise of fascism is the stability one gets from excluding contestation. In Tunisia and Algeria that stability is threatened by angry popular protest.

Blood liable?

2011-01-13T14:07:00.001-05:00

Sara Palin as a victim of blood liable? This is what she alleges in response to pundits and others who are identifying her as profoundly implicated with vitriolic political speech, especially because of the United States map that she published on which gun sights identified the districts of representatives who voted for the health bill, including Giffords' district, and the twit to her followers to go see the map and not retreat but "reload."

"Blood liable" is a term coined to describe false accusations against Jews that claimed that Jews murdered Christian children in order to use their blood in religious rituals and were used to mobilize anti-Jewish-anti-Semitic feelings and acts.

Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish.

Armed civility?

2011-01-12T12:00:00.002-05:00

The Giffords' shooting has led to a renewed interest in civility as a political virtue that has the potential of controlling vitriol in politics. Vitriolic political speech corrodes democratic politics and civility just like toleration is indeed an important political virtue that could be quite instrumental in controlling vitriol in politics. But bringing guns and rifles to a political gatherings also corrodes democratic politics because like vitriolic political speech it introduces a threat of violence into the democratic political arena. So instead of trusting the possibility of armed political civility, if political civility is to be embraced, its meaning should be extended to include prohibitions on physical displays that introduce a threat of violence into democratic political spaces.

Weapons don't ...

2011-01-11T07:19:00.002-05:00

Feeling that Gifford's shooting may call into question current gun laws, defenders of gun ownership are running their familiar mantra, "guns do not kill; people do." An obvious truism from which very little if anything at all follows about gun control. One can regulate gun ownership in multiple ways. One can regulate the ownership of ammunition. One can regulate the uses of guns. One can regulate the spaces available for gun use. One can institute a mandatory curriculum about guns for all interested in gun ownership. Etc. But, given current constitutional interpretations, the strength of the NRA as a a political lobby, and the American romance with and nostalgia about guns, it does not seem that a lot can be done in the directions of better gun control. I's love to be surprised to the contrary.

P.S on the Glock 9-19

2011-01-09T18:08:00.005-05:00

A Glock 9-19 was found on the scene of and is implicated in the Gifford shooting. Here is how it is advertised by Glock.

I doubt that the framers of the United States constitution could have had a Glock in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment, which states that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

It is unfortunate that in its 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court, despite the originalist tendencies of some of its members, held that "The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia."

Troubled men and political speech

2011-01-09T12:58:00.001-05:00

Analysis of the shooting that killed 6 (Christina Green, 9; Gabriel Zimmerman, 30; Judge John M. Roll, 63; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79) and has left Representative Gabriel Giffords (D) in critical condition after she was shot in the head, have been focusing on (a) the shooter (Jared Lee Loughner, 22), who is being described as very troubled, and (b) vitriol political speech. People who want to see the shooting as signifying nothing about the current state of politics in the United States focus on (a). People who think that the shooting does signify something about the current state of politics in the United States focus on (b). Of course, being troubled in a certain way increases the risk that one would act violently in an environment in which vitriol political speech is common. But, vitriol political speech is a motivator of violent political action even if one is not troubled at all.

Meanwhile, Conservatives do point out that Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, who is overseeing the investigation of Saturday's shooting and who has suggested publicly after the shooting that vitriol political speech in Arizona has reached an absurdly high level, is a Democrat, while Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, while denouncing the shooting, also described violence against representatives as a risk that public servants face.

The shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords

2011-01-08T19:55:00.003-05:00

I hope that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords not only makes it but recovers fully. Gifford, who is a Democrat and the only Jewish representative from Arizona, was targeted by conservatives during the past election yet won, even if by a slim margin. Her Tuscon office was vandalized because of her support of the Health Bill. Yet, she might have been shot accidentally. John M. Roll, the chief judge for the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, who was at the town meeting Gifford was holding when she was shot, received death threats after ruling in favor of illegal immigrants in a civil case involving an Arizona rancher, and was killed in the attack in which Gifford was shot. But, then, it could be Roll who was the accidental fatality of this shooting. Gifford too had death threats against her.

The shooter seemed to have not cared who gets hurt in his attack. He used a semi-automatic firearm. The dead (the count is presently at 6) include a 9 year old girl. 10 people were taken to local hospitals to have their wounds attended to.

Republicans and Tea-Partiers are issuing "I am horrified" type statements.

Welcome to the new Israeli McCarthyism

2011-01-05T11:32:00.003-05:00

The Israeli Knesset (the Israeli one chamber parliament) meeting as a plenum (which does not require a quorum) has approved the formation of a parliamentary panel of inquiry to investigate left-wing Israeli organizations that allegedly participate in the delegitimization campaign against the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). The following organizations, many of which might be targeted by the panel, signed a public statement decrying the Knesset's decision:

Adalah: The Legal center for Arab Minority rights in Israel

Assaf

Bimkom

Breaking the Silence

B'Tselem

Coalition of Women for Peace

Hamoked

Hotline for Migrant Workers

Gisha

Ir Amim

Kav Laoved

Machsom Watch

Mossawa Center

Physicians for Human Rights - Israel

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel

The Public Committee Against torture in Israel

Yesh Din

In the United States the legislation targets among other the New Israel Fund.

The panel legislation was initiated by extremely right wing party Israel Beytenu, whose English language public versions of its political agenda can be found here and here . Israel Beitenu has 15 Knesset members. The Knesset has 120 members. 57 Knesset members were present at the plenum meeting. 16 voted against the suggested legislation. The fact that Israel Beitenu sponsored such legislation is not surprising even if disturbing. The fact that the legislation was supported by 41 Knesset members is so much more disturbing even if it too is unfortunately very surprising.

In the past 6 month various pieces of anti-democratic legislation have been suggested and discussed in the Knesset, all aimed at stopping criticisms against Israel, especially by Israelis. A recent legislative move would make it illegal for Israelis to support or aid the boycott of Israel or Israelis and disinvestments sanctions against Israel, or receive money from foreign organizations that advocate or support such boycotts and sanctions. In addition the legislation will make it possible to restrict entry by people who are not Israeli citizens or residents involved in boycott and disinvestment sanction movements from entry into Israel.

To his credit, in August 2010, the Attorney General, Yehuda Weinstein decided against investigating left-wing organizations.

P.S on yesterday's post

2011-01-05T07:43:00.001-05:00

1. Shooting Kassam rockets from Gaza and bombing the sites from which the shooting happens may suggest that things between Israel and Gaza are as usual and in some sense of course they are and they may explain why Livni's picture of what peace is (not) fails to appreciate how simple life things both indicate a change and are constitutive of it.

2. I forgot to mention Turkey as another re-shaper of geopolitical situation in the Middle East.

What peace is (not)

2011-01-04T16:30:00.001-05:00

Tzipi Livni, aspiring to be Israel's next prime minister, declared that "peace is not the same as eating humus in Damascus but rather a serious geopolitical change."Livni, who is an extremely smart woman, seems to be rather confused since for an Israeli to be able to travel to Damascus, go to a restaurant, and order and eat some humus, both presupposes and is constitutive of a geopolitical change.

Meanwhile, it may very well be the case that a geopolitical change is already in the making since as many observers have noted Iran is on the role and is working hard at reshaping the Middle East

Suspect political goals

2011-01-03T15:04:00.001-05:00

The GOP agenda for the 112 Congress is to reverse President Barak Obama's legislative successes and undermine his legislative agenda. The GOP appeals to the United States' Constitution to justify its goals seem to me to suggest an impossible originalism that is compounded by a failure to understand the framers of the Constitution values and concerns for democracy. It also suggests a basic lack of understanding of economics, climate science, and a nostalgic geopolitical view. What is unfortunate is that the GOP can actually cause a lot of damage even if its majority status in the House of Representative is to be reversed in two years or if more Democratic Senators will be elected.

Hate and Politics

2011-01-02T22:27:00.001-05:00

More refreshing news: Israel is investigating the rabbis that have called for advocating discrimination in employment and housing against Israeli-Palestinians. Many of the rabbis who have been summoned for questioning refuse to obey the summons and so it is now up to the police to decide how to continue. I hope that they will find a way to simply enforce the law.

Opening moves

2011-01-01T16:08:00.017-05:00

I have not written in many months, blocked by my sense of pending repetition and a sense of existential despair that for me accompanies the sense of pending repetition.

The judgment that found Israel's ex-president Moshe Katsav guilty of raping and sexually assaulting an employee at the Tourism Ministry while he was the Minister of Tourism, sexually harassing an employee at the President's Residence while he was the President, and of obstruction of justice, by pointing out that in Israel there is a measure of equality before the law has temporarily pulled me out of my malaise. Unlike Benyamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, who ironically enough was also Prime Minister while Katsav was the Minister of Tourism and Netanyahu's deputy (1996-1999) and held important political positions while Katsav was President (2000-2007), I am not prone to optimistic exaggeration when it comes to Israeli law. Still, it is rather wonderful that the law has spoken clearly in this one case.

The bigger picture is bleak as usual. The Economist predicts a new Middle East war more destructive than any that have taken place before, yet one that bold moves by United States' President Barak Obama could prevent. According to Gideon Levi, writing for Haaretz, Obama has fallen into every trap that Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyau devised for him and cannot be expected to do better this coming year.

On a smaller scale but as part of the big picture, (i) Israeli forces killed 1 protester in Bil'in, (ii) 21 people got killed by a car bomb in a church in Alexandria Egypt, (iii) Iran has accused Israel of kidnapping former deputy defense minister Ali Reza Asghari in Istanbul on 09 December 2006, (iv) United States drones killed fifteen militants near the town of Mandi Del in North Waziristan Pakistan, (v) Turkey detained 10 bombing plot suspects in Bursa and Istanbul, 1 of whom is claimed to be a leader of a local Al Qaeda cell.

Jerusalem and other myths

2010-04-20T20:50:00.005-04:00

In Israel various political figures (including of course the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman) have used the occasion of Israel's 62nd Independence day and Palestinian Nakba to declare Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel and what they see as the consequent of this which is that Israel can freely build anywhere in Jerusalem. now for a reality check:

1. The State of Israel, which is a product of modern circumstances, declared its independence and was accepted as an independent state by the majority of members of the United Nation in 1948. What this means is that the state of Israel is a modern political entity.

2. The city of Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel. It is also just a city. As a city it is ancient. There is evidence of permanent settlement in the area that is now Jerusalem going back to circa 3000-2800BCE. King David conquered it circa 1000BCE. In 135 the city was Romanized and Jews were barred from entering it. Christian sites were constructed in Jerusalem in the 4th century. In 638 the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem and Jews were allowed back in the city. Jerusalem was fought for with mixed results by the crusaders and came under Ottoman control in 1517. the British captured Jerusalem in 1917. In 1948 Jerusalem was split and between 1948 and 1967 the Jerusalem that was the capital of Israel was the Western part of the city. In 1980 Israel passed the Jerusalem Law, which declared the united Jerusalem the capital of Israel. The law has been denounced as illegal under international law.

3. The final status of Jerusalem is an item on the peace negotiations agenda.

4. No ambassadors to Israel are located in Jerusalem.

Excommunication

2010-04-15T11:24:00.009-04:00

Haaretz reports that Judge Richard Goldstone, the author of the United Nations report on Israel and the Palestinians conduct during the Gaza War has been banned by pro-Israel activists from attending his grandsons bar-mitzvah in South-Africa.

Meanwhile Anat Kamm and Uri Blau are being demonized by the Israeli security apparatus and as Gideon Levi notes in Haaretz, no one in Israel is up in arms, not even after finding out just yesterday that President Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had in the past instructed the Shin Bet to burglarize journalists' and peace activists' residences.

The Holocaust, another note

2010-04-13T10:10:00.003-04:00

The Holocaust, or the Judeocide, though it acquires some narratival unity from its being a genocide and one that centered Jews, is nonetheless an event that should be told multivocally and as the story of many people and many communities. While numbers are important because they count individuals, families, communities, in a certain way to understand the devastation that is the Holocaust, percentages are no less important because it is they that communicate what is no more culturally.

Nationalizing the holocaust again

2010-04-11T11:09:00.004-04:00

In a speech he gave today at Yad Vashem, Israel's top general, the Israeli Defense Forces' Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said that "We will never again be dependent on the benevolence of others. Never again will Jewish children be fearful or begging for mercy. Never again will an advocate of evil be able to dictate the future of the Jewish people." The lines are the familiar lines that position Israel and especially a militarized Israel in the protector role of all Jews and they are no more than an empty promise.

1. The Jewish population of Israel comprises around a 1/3 of the world's Jewish population. The majority of the world Jewish population, the other 2/3, lives in the diaspora.

2. The diaspora includes a sizable Jewish-Israeli population that is estimated at about 700,000.

3. The state of Israel cannot ecologically support a much larger population than it supports now, not even if it succeeds to hold on to large parts of areas occupied after 1967. Climate change is leading to a higher rate of desertification in the area and though Israel is on the forefront of combating desertification, its usable land and usable water supplies are limited.

4. The state of Israel cannot pursue an isolationist policy since in a globalized world no one can and especially not states that are both small and poor in natural resources.

5. As a matter of fact, Israel is dependent diplomatically, economically, and militarily on the United States and the European Union.

Jews in the world are much more dependent on liberal-democratic rights than on Israel. This does not mean that Israel does not matter. It does but not in the ways claimed for it by Ashkenazi.

Freedom of the press

2010-04-09T09:22:00.003-04:00

In Israel, a gag order that was imposed in early January was lifted by the Supreme Court, which wondered about its usefulness, given that the story it was supposed to muzzle has already been published on the internet and abroad. The story is about Anat Kam, a young Israeli reporter, who allegedly had access to and copied secret documents while a soldier that she later leaked to the press. She has been under secret house arrest since December 2009. Her trial will begin in two weeks. The charges against her include espionage and treason.

Kam, whether she leaked documents or not, tried to tell a story. The story was about illegal conduct by the Israeli military It was written by Uri Blau, an Haaretz reporter and published in 2008 under the title "License to Kill." It described how the military's highest command decided to engage in the assassination of Palestinian militants in contravention of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling which said efforts should be made first to arrest suspected militants rather than assassinating them. Blau cleared this and other stories critical of the military that he wrote subsequently with the military censor.

This is what freedom of the press is really about.

Build baby build

2010-04-06T11:15:00.000-04:00

Building in East Jerusalem remains on Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agenda. At a recent Mimouna event he said: "It is not by chance that we came to this country. We came back here to build and be built. It is the special destiny of the people of Israel." The Mimouna, originally a traditional holiday of North-African Jews (but especially Moroccan Jews) and since 1966 a national holiday in Israel, marks the end of Pesach and the beginning of Spring has been used by Jewish Israeli politicians for many years as a site for the display of this or that political platform. Indeed, according to The Jerusalem Post, "The number of invitations to Mimouna events has been seen as bellwether of a politician’s popularity in his party." There have been no reports of how many invitations Netanyahu received. But, his oration regarding continued building must have been welcome by the Jewish Israeli right wing, which is reported on Ynet to have used the Mimouna celebrations in various places as a stage for the building agenda and not just the building of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. In accordance, Benny Kashriel, the mayor of Maale Adumim, established in 1976 on territory occupied in 1967 and seen by the Palestinians as highly problematic settlement because it is strategically located outside Jerusalem in such a way that it can disrupt the territorial continuity of a Palestinian state, declared that in the current climate it was particularly important to say that the city will continue developing and growing and said: "We are holding the main Mimouna ceremony in the city and saying to the world – We are here to stay."

Strange exchanges

2010-03-25T14:43:00.001-04:00

In the midst of what has been described as a crisis in the Israel-United States relations, the United States is selling Israel three (3) "super" Hercules military transport aircraft (for description and specifications see ,http://www.lockheedmartin.com/products/c130/) each costing about $70 millions and financed most probably by United States aid to Israel funds (according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, $3 billion for 2010). They will be delivered to Israel between 2013 and 2015. Israel is also negotiating the purchase of F-35s (for description and specifications see http://www.lockheedmartin.com/products/f35/), the cost of which is estimated by at $200 millions per F-35. In 2006, Israel's Air Force procurement office announced an interest in 100 F-35s. But, according to the Defense Industry Daily, the deal faces delays of more than a year.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem's Mayor, Nir Barkat, declared that construction in West and East Jerusalem must continue.

Hatred and viiolence in politics

2010-03-24T18:30:00.000-04:00

The weekend legislative struggle over health care reform exposed racism and homophobia, as well as violent tendencies on the extreme right of the United States. Some of these have already been exposed during the presidential campaign. But, an escalation has been taking place since.

Among the most important rules of democratic politics are those governing political lose. These are the rules that are being violated by racial and homophobic slurs, and threats and acts of violence.

Those annoying settelments and the facts of discrimination

2010-03-24T17:51:00.000-04:00

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's performance at the AIPAC (The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) conference on 22 March 2010 was crisp and clear and included the following statement "New construction in East Jerusalem or the West Bank undermines that mutual trust and endangers the proximity talks that are the first step toward the full negotiations that both sides say want and need." Clinton's line is politically pragmatic.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister talked with United States President Barack Obama on 23 Mrach 2010. There has been no public comments by either side about the talks. I

Today, 24 March 2010, Israel announced the building of twenty (20) apartments in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The announcement was followed by the Prime Minister's office's lying in response to questions about this new development. It stated that "There is no limitation on the right of property in Jerusalem. Jews and Arabs can buy and sell freely private property and homes in all the city, and that is the reality." Discrimination against East Jerusalem's Palestinians is a fact of life. It is consistent with and worse than discrimination against Israeli-Palestinians within the green line, which the most racist of Israel's parliaments since 1948 yet is trying to legalize in various ways.

The flight from politics

2010-03-22T13:27:00.001-04:00

Obviously happy with the passage of the health care reform bill, President Barack Obama described the passage of the bill as a form of Congress rising "above the weight of our politics." Since the bill was passed by a slim majority of an obviously divided congress - 219 (all Democrats) to 212 (178 Republicans and 34 Democrats) - the wording Obama chose is a bit strange, unless, he, of course, means that the people who voted for the bill prioritized the common good over narrow self-interest. That, though is not a rise above politics but rather a show of political integrity by people voted into office with the expectation that they worry about the common good. I am, however, reluctant to give President Obama the benefit of doubt here because he has joined with others in condemning politics in general and the Washington DC version in particular. I do not think that he has joined this condemnation cynically, though he is himself an excellent politician. Rather, I believe that he is confused about the value of politics. Politics is how democratic people govern themselves. There is nothing wrong with it even though there are serious problems with a citizenry that does not understand politics, with some politicians who are corrupt, others who do not understand the enormity of their job and the responsibilities that come with it, and yet others who are simply stupid. There are also problems of design in all democratic institutions.

Between Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, and Washington

2010-03-21T10:52:00.002-04:00

I am not sure what Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, expects from his forthcoming visit to the United States. After all, he continues to insist that building in East Jerusalem is right and has now compared building in East Jerusalem to building in Tel-Aviv, claiming that there is no difference between the two. But of course there are many differences beginning with Tel-Aviv's location, which is within the green line, and everyone is aware of them, including Netanyhu and everyone in the business of Middle East politics.

Since Netanyhu is to attend the AIPAC (The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) Conference and AIPAC is recruiting support against a strong critical stance by United States President Barack Obama's administration with respect to Israel, and Netanyahu is already being portrayed as having bowed to United States pressure with various concessions, what Netanyahu might be after is an assessment of relative strength, which is what is hinted by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who has just stated to the press that the United States is in no position to impose its own peace plan on Israel. Given that, the most interesting speech at the AIPAC conference might be that of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The other speech to wait for is that of Tony Blair, Representative of the Quartet, one member of which, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is furious with Benjamin Netanyahu for misrepresenting the conversation they had in the wake of the political crisis created by the declaration of further Jewish settling in East Jerusalem during United States Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel.

Netanyahu is probably after a new weapon's deal, as well.

The difference between insisting and facts

2010-03-18T15:22:00.000-04:00

It seems that Israel has worked out a message it is offering as if what the message is about is an empirical fact and so today it is Israel's President, Shimon Peres, who claims that Jewish settling in East Jerusalem just cannot be construed as a problem, let alone an obstacle to peace, especially not when the settling is in "Jewish areas." Needless to say, even when a president says something that is factually false, it remains factually false.

The same goes for Israeli criticisms of the "Goldstone Report," which has now been implicated in the latest Qassam shootings from Gaza by Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, who claimed that the "Report" was absurd accusing Israel of violating international law when fighting in Gaza, when Israel merely defended itself, as it will continue doing.

Jerusalem - Al Quds and more pretence

2010-03-17T15:00:00.001-04:00

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, complained to the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherin Ashton, that demands that Jews not build in East Jerusalem (occupied in 1967) is unacceptable. According to Lieberman, Israel is being unjustly attacked.

Obviously not the case.

In March 2009 an official report by the European Union accused Israel of engaging in an illegal annexation of East Jerusalem (see http://euobserver.com/9/27736). B'tselem agrees (see http://www.btselem.org/english/jerusalem/discriminating_policy.asp).

Pretending again

2010-03-16T19:11:00.000-04:00

In response to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's expectation for action that signals Israel's obligation to peace, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has stated that Israel has done its proper share and that it is the Palestinians who are obstructing the peace process. This claim is consistent with Netanyhu's belief that Jewish settling in/of the (still Israeli occupied) West Bank (Palestine) is not an obstacle to peace, which, of course, it is and has been since 1967. Any claim to the contrary is make belief of the worst kind!

United States diplomacy and Jewsih settlements in the (still Israeli occupied) West Bank (Palestine)

2010-03-14T14:17:00.009-04:00

For months I have been just observing and mostly feeling rather dispirited by the news, commentaries about the news, commentaries about the commentaries about the news and the like. Today, though, I liked Thomas Friedman's comparison of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, to a drunk driver in his New York Times' column, a Hebrew translation of which has already been posted on the Haaretz website. The comparison, though, may be too generous to Netanyahu, who might have simply politically miscalculated, as is suggested by Martin Indyk, who two days ago pointed out that Israeli right wing governments have been doing for years exactly what this Netanyahu government has just done - permitting and announcing further building in this or that area outside the 1948/9 "green line." But even Indyk might be too generous. Like Friedman, he assumes that Netanayhu's claim that he was blind-sided by the Ministry for Internal Affairs, which is controlled by ש"ס (Shas), one of Israel's right wing religious parties, is a falsifying excuse. It, of course, could be. But it can also be the case that Netanyahu is not in control of his coalition parties, let alone his own. One must wonder about political control in this case given the conduct of the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman who is presently being investigated for corruption and is issuing threats of violence against everyone in the Middle East and whose actions have been described by his own office as not coordinated with the office of the Prime Minister.

Israeli democracy?

2009-12-03T11:05:00.000-05:00

The Jewish settlers in the still Israeli occupied West Bank (Palestine) have basically but unsurprisingly declared war on the Israeli government. From their point of view "there is no Israel without Zionism and there is no Zionism without settling" and what they mean by "settling" is, of course, the settling of the "Greater Israel," a fictional geopolitical entity that includes the "State of Israel," the existing geopolitical entity whose borders run along the 1948 disengagement lines, and at least the territories that the Palestinian authority claims for Palestine and that peace negotiators have been expecting will become officially the State of Palestine.

The threat is of "civil war" and the Israeli government under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to avoid it with declarations intended to appease the settlers who are not appeased at all and continue to physically resist the government as well as in their attempts to terrorize the Palestinians.

The rules of the democratic game exclude the introduction of violence into politics as a means to force a favorable decision for one's own side. But, a state that puts its trust in its and only its ability to deploy violence when needed and flaunts international politics as much as possible, should not have high democratic expectations from citizens whose violence it has been supporting for so many years.

Religion and (in) politics

2009-11-27T20:07:00.002-05:00

In The Family: The Secret fundamentalism in the Heart of American Power (NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009) Jeff Sharlett exposes a form of Christian fundamentalism that he refers to as "elite fundamentalism" and how it is entwined with United States politics. As he points out that The Family or (Christian) Fellowship is not a conspiracy. Its ability to act unnoticed is a function of liberal secularists inattention to and dismissal of the extent to which the wall separating religion and politics that Thomas Jefferson believed important to the well being of democracy has been extremely permeable for many many years.

Among the successes of "The Family" is the "National Prayer Breakfast," which takes place on the first Tuesday of February and was started in 1953, during the early years of the Cold War. The Breakfast (actually a series of events that begin with breakfast but go on all through the day) is hosted by members of the United States Congress and organized on their behalf by The Family, is attended to by the President of the United States, and about 3,500 guests, mostly political, social and business leaders from around the world.

President Barack Obama spoke at the 05 February2009 National Prayer Breakfast. He is, though, the first president to recognize the secularists of the United states and must have startled some at the Breakfast by repeating a message from his inaugural address which mentioned secularists as part of the complex and rich pluralism of the United States.

President Obama has also publicly distanced himself from the "National Day of Prayer" and unlike President George W. Bush did not hold any services in the White House and moreover made a point through his Press Secretary to call attention to the privacy of religious practices.

Middle East complications

2009-11-05T14:51:00.000-05:00

Just in case things have not been complicated enough when it comes to the Middle East peace process, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), announced that he will not be seeking re-election in January, an announcement immediately followed by a Hamas call for President Abbas to declare his failure to lead the Palestinian people due to his commitment to diplomatic negotiations with occupiers. According to Haaretz, its official sources said that unless Israel changes its settlement policy, President Abbas is not likely to change his mind. No Israeli official has responded yet or even leaked a response. There has been no official response from other any members of the Quartet either.

Diplomatic subtlety

2009-11-02T13:37:00.004-05:00

The subtleties of diplomacy seem to be missed by the Israeli press (and probably by the Israeli government) which is now calling attention to the fact that United State's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, (a) while visiting Morocco today has claimed that just restraining Jewish settlement in the (still Israeli occupied) West Bank (Palestine) is less than what the United States expects from Israel to do toward credible peace negotiations with the Palestinians, when (b) yesterday she called Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's proposal regarding such restrain unprecedented. (a) and (b) can, of course, be true together, which they are, a fact that implies a critical stance toward Israel and the little that it has been willing to do toward peace with the Palestinians since June 1967.

The Palestinians seem to be similarly unable to deal with diplomatic subtleties and have launched their criticisms of Clinton expressing their disappointment at what she said about the settlements. They seem to have not looked at that part of her press briefing in Israel where she mentioned that the United States remains committed to what United States President Barack Obama said in his speech before the United Nations (on 23 September 2009), which is that "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

Blame

2009-11-02T09:59:00.004-05:00

In his 02 November 2009 Haaretz op-ed piece, Akiva Eldar, blames United States Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (and indirectly President Barack Obama) for the still stalled Middle East peace. Pointing out rightly that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his even more right wing coalition partners are responsible for yet again conditioning the peace process on Palestinian conduct while at the same time rejecting any Palestinian attempt to intervene with the expansion of Jewish settlements in the (still Israeli occupied) West Bank (Palestine), Eldar, nonetheless puts the blames for Israel's conduct on the United States. The Israeli liberal-left to which Eldar belongs has been hoping that the United States will do what it has not been able to do and tends to blame the United States when the United States does not accomplish the Israeli liberal-left political goals. The Israeli liberal-left should take responsibility for its electoral failures and failures to actively mobilize a large opposition to the Jewish settlers movement and not expect that the United States will step in to rein in the Israeli right. Israel is not a child and the United States is not its parent.

More education please

2009-10-29T09:55:00.002-04:00

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times op-ed columnist, argues today against increasing United States' troops in Afghanistan and for adding schools instead. As he points out, schools are cheaper. One can create and staff 20 schools for the same price tag as adding just one soldier for one year to the current troops in Afghanistan. Kristof is not naive. He is well aware that schools, especially schools for girls, are the target of violent Taliban attacks both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is also not thinking of education as a panacea for everything that ails Afghanistan (and Pakistan). But education matters a lot and is foundational for a healthy exchange of ideas, without which democracy is diminished.

Study after study and poll after poll show a strong correlation between education and even just getting the facts that are extremely important for any political debate right. And so Kristof should plea not only for more schools in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) but also for better and more education in the United States. Public higher education in the United States could be cheaper for everyone, if less money was spent on war and this level of education has by now become necessary not only for economic success but for being able to make good enough sense of the complexity of any policy including foreign policy and so of decisions regarding Afghanistan. (See http://costofwar.com/ for tradeoffs.)

Political reporting

2009-10-20T13:42:00.001-04:00

Reporters Without Borders released its 2009 "Press Freedom Index." This year a country can occupy a slot from 1 (which is shared by Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden) to 175 (which is occupied by Eritrea). The United States is up a few points and occupies slot 20 (together with Luxembourg and the United Kingdom). The United States also has an extra-territorial score and it puts it in slot 108 , still up from previous years. Israel also has two slots, both quite low and one much worse than the other - 96 within the green line (47 slots under its 2008 ranking) and 150 outside (reflecting the 3 journalists that were killed and 20 journalists that were injured by Israeli forces during "Operation Cast Iron." Since Israel likes claiming for itself the exceptional place of the Middle-Eastern democracy, it is worth noting that while Syria's slot is 165, Saudi Arabia's 163, Egypt's is 143, Jordan's 112, United Arab Emirates' 86, Lebanon's 61, and Kuwait is 60. Turkey's slot is 122 which is lower than in 2008.

The index can be found at http://www.rsf.org/en-classement1003-2009.html.

Another geostartegy

2009-10-19T15:53:00.000-04:00

Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli Foreign Minister took a while to think about and alternative that will give Israel more wiggle room in its negotiations with the Palestinians and improve its position in the Middle East. It was obvious to Lieberman that the United States led by Barack Obama will not have the same relations with Israel that a United States led by George W. Bush had. Lieberman turned to Russia, which has been looking to play a more active role in the Middle East. And then Russia voted to adopt the Goldstone Report at the human Rights Council meeting that took place on Friday 16 October, 2009.

Russia was not alone when it approved the report. The United Nations Human Rights council has 47 members. 25 voted to adopt the report (though of these only Russia is a member of the Quartet on the Middle East). 5 (including the United States, another member of the Quartet and Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, and Slovakia, all members of the European Union, which is a member of the Quartet) voted against. 11 (including Belgium and Slovenia which are members of the European Union) abstained. 5 (including the United Kingdom, which is a member of the Quartet and the European Union and France which is a member of the European Union) did not vote at all.

Israel will have to rethink its geostrategy and might have already done so since Benyamin Netanyau, Israel's Prime Minister has just announced willingness to negotiate with the Palestinians without any preconditions. He did not forget to mention having arrived to an understanding with the United States about Jewish settlements in the (in practice still) Occupied Territories of the West Bank.

It is hard (and wonderfully challenging?) to be Turkey

2009-10-15T14:08:00.002-04:00

Turkey is situated in an extremely complex geo-strategic position. Geographically it is euroasian and therefore transcontinental. Historically it is the successor state of the Ottoman Empire (which went under following WWI) and now borders states that used to be part of the Empire, as well as states that used to be part of the Soviet Union. Most of Turkey's population of just above 71 million people is Muslim but its constitution decrees that it is a democratic and secular constitutional republic. Most of the population is urban, but the rate of literacy for women who live in rural areas is much lower than that of men, in line with traditional rural Muslim practices.

Turkey has a large Kurdish population (about 18% of total population) that it has been trying to control, (sometimes with violence) absorb (sometimes by demanding assimilation and denying minority rights), and does not particularly trust. It has a history of genocide with the Armenians, with whom they just negotiated political and economic accords. It also has a complicated history with the Greeks (for another version of ethnic cleansing, which the Greeks and their diasporic descendants do not easily forget (as exemplified by Admiral James G. Stavridis, current commander of United States European Comman and NATO's Supreme Commander, mention of his family's experience in Turkey in his 2008 memoir Destroyer Captain demonstrates).

Turkey wants to become part of the European Union. The EU wants reforms (there is the unresolved Cyprus conflict and issues about human rights violations, some economic issues but also resistance from France and Germany which seems biased and influenced by fears of a European future that might be quite different if Europe opens its membership to so many Muslims).

Meanwhile, Turkey is not badly situated. It is a member of NATO. But, it has just canceled a NATO military exercise in order to exclude Israel from it, something the United States has not appreciated (but needs to negotiate carefully given its concerns that Turkey will restrict United States military passage into the Black Sea), as well entered strategic relations with Syria (which has just been accused by Israel of supplying Lebanon's Hezbollah). Israel is also concerned about a TV miniseries that has just aired in Turkey and depicts Israeli soldiers massacring women and children during the Gaza "Operation Cast Lead." Turkey, listened and announced today that it apprehended a 32 people Al Qaeda network that had plans to act against Israeli, United States and NATO targets.

What is real

2009-10-14T20:10:00.000-04:00

In her statement before the United Nations' Security Council, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, pointed out that "the month of September witnessed an alarming rise in terrorist activities," accused Iran of supporting of supporting terrorist activities against Israel, and then launched her attack of the Goldstone Report, which she described as "one-sided, biased and therefore wrong" favoring and legitimizing terrorism, and denying "Israel’s right to defend its citizens." she then generalized and said that the Report "falls directly into the pitfall strategically laid down by terrorist organizations around the world. It prevents, and will prevent democratic Member States from defending themselves against terrorism. It permits terrorists to victimize civilians, target the innocent, and use as human shields those it claims to defend."

The Report accuses Israel of exactly what Ambassador Shalev claims it will legitimate for terrorists. But because it is not as biased as Ambassador Shalev claims, it does not fail to mention that Hamas has done the same things. It lists Hamas and other Palestinian rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, their use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, their violations of law by their systematic attacks on their opposition, and more. and it does not forget to accuse Hamas of the kidnapping and long detention of Gilad Shalit.

According to Ambassador Shalev, the Report takes the focus away from the "real issues in the Middle East." The Report, though, seems to bring many of them into focus just not in a way that exempts Israel from accounting for its actions in front of the international community.

----------

Ambassador Shalev's statement can be found at can be found at http://israel-un.mfa.gov.il/statements-at-the-united-nations/security-council/the-situation-in-the-middle-east-including-the-palestinian-question

Iranian news

2009-10-11T17:09:00.000-04:00

Iran is making sure that everyone know that it does not care for freedom of political speech and is about to execute three (or four) dissidents for their role in the post elections protests. 4,000 people were arrested during and after the protests and arrests continue. 140 people have been put on trial since 01 August. Prisoners have been abused and tortured.

Meanwhile, Iran has tested missile that can reach Israel (and all of the Middle East, (but not Egypt) let alone Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey,etc) and continued to play its nuclear games of which the latest move was a threat by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

President Ahmadinejad may be even more bellicose in the near future as he tries to deflect attention from the speculations about his Jewish roots and background (as a Sabourjian hailing from the village of Aradan) that have resurfaced earlier this month.

The politics of impunity continued

2009-09-30T12:58:00.006-04:00

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau is doing his best to stop any meaningful action from following the formal submission of the Unite Nations fact finding report regarding "Operation Cast Lead" by suggesting that the report (a) undermines the legitimate right of a democratic nation to respond to terror, (b) counters all peace efforts in the Middle East since Israel "won't take the risks necessary to achieve peace if it is not assured the right to defend itself," and (c) is somehow implicated with the United Nations,condemnation of Zionism as a form of racism (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which was revoked in 1991 by Resolution 4686).

The report, of course, does none of what Netanyahu claims it does. Still, there seems to be some recognition in Israel that something went quite wrong not only in Gaza but also in 2006 in Lebanon as is suggested by Major General Amos Yadlin, the head of Israeli military intelligence, who is arguing that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) need a new code of ethics that addresses asymmetric warfare among civilian populations. However, if Netanyahu's position is shared by the IDF, this new code may implement the reality on the ground in Lebanon 2006 and Gaza 2008/2009 as policy that may look quite similar to the belief articulated by Professor Asa Kasher when commenting on Gaza that in places where the IDF lacks effective control of the territory, like Gaza, a commander's supreme responsibility is carrying out the mission, and second is safeguarding his soldiers; preventing harm to civilians is only third priority (see http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1062127.html).

Just war and the politics of impunity

2009-09-25T14:19:00.010-04:00

Earlier this month the United Nation released a fact finding report about Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" that both Israel and Hamas have tried to dismiss by accusing the fact finding committee of this or that bias against them.

Hamas's and Israel's shameless defense of their implication of civilians (Palestinian and Israeli) in their war in both old and innovative ways and refusal to take responsibility for such implications (but for via the showcasing of a few incidents that are considered an aberration that can be and should be handled internally in the Israeli military courts or Hamas's non-existing equivalents), contributes to the ongoing demise of the "just war" international legal framework's attempt to protect civilians from war and during a time that such protection would be welcomed by many on every side of today's violent conflicts which, while when justified at all in the international political arena are justified with appeals to some benefit that will accrue to civilians, assume that civilians are fair game.

In addition to undermining the "just war" international legal framework, Israel and Hamas are contributing to an extremely dangerous international culture of impunity.

Lying in politics

2009-09-10T23:54:00.010-04:00

"Lying in Politics" is the title of an essay by Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). She published it in 1971 and it offered her extensive commentary on The Pentagon Papers. Arendt did not believe that certain kinds of truth - those that block the imagination that political actors must rely on - were particularly productive when it comes to politics and without contradiction deplored lying - intentional deception - in politics since lying as distinguished from imagining undermines the very possibility of democratic politics.

The right-wing in the United States has adopted lying in politics as a posture. Not everyone who is a conservative lies. But because right-wing lying has reached dangerous levels, conservatives who do not lie must publicly distance themselves from the lies and the liars.

Democratic politics involves disagreements, some very deep. These disagreements cannot be erased or glossed over. They can be pragmatically bridged, at least enough to accomplish a level of working cooperation that produces a majority vote, and, therefore, winners and losers who, because political majorities change and shift over time, tend to not be permanent winners and losers. If one seriously engages in democratic politics, one needs to accept this at the outset. Acceptance requires a working level of trust. Liars, intentional deceivers, cannot be trusted. This is why they must be distanced from publicly in politics.

The right-wing liars may believe that their lies are extremely important for the safety and flourishing of the United States and that that justifies their lying in politics. This is an undemocratic and even anti-democratic position. It is similar to that of Plato who believed that the born political elite of his fictional ideal polity could lie to everyone else in order to maintain the ideal order that only it understood. It seems to be shared by Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States (2001-2009). And, it should not be confused with Machiavelli's position on lying in politics. Machiavelli (1469-1527) discussed lying in politics, in part exposing the distance between pretensions to Christian virtue and political action by the pretenders and in part endorsing this distance, in the context of an attempt to rethink politics for a budding western modernity. While seeming to advocate lying by a prince under appropriate circumstances in Il Principe (written in 1513), Machiavelli also seems to have not thought too highly of princes and in the Discorsi (written in 1513-1517), he writes that "governments of the people are better than those of princes" and that "let not princes complain of the faults committed by the people subjected to their authority, for they result entirely from their own negligence or bad example," which makes sense given Machiavelli's belief that "if we compare the faults of a people with those of princes, as well as their respective good qualities, we shall find the people vastly superior in all that is good and glorious." Hannah Arendt liked this.

Substituting for politics

2009-09-09T11:13:00.007-04:00

The United States is one of the political innovators that contributed to the formation of and as a result made possible conceptions, practices, and institutions, and more generally, the political imagination, that are needed by and are entwined with modern liberal-democratic politics. At present, though, it seems to be undermining its own claims to being a strong liberal-democracy since its political elites and demos alike are loosing sight of the kind of engagement that constitutes liberal-democratic politics.

Substituting for liberal-democratic politics in the United States today are conflicts between liberal (mostly centrist but after eight years of President George W. Bush's administration and Republican control of Congress (1995-2006), as well as President Ronald Regan (1981-1989) legacy, seeming more to the left than they really are) policy wonks and right-wing (with some, mostly not too courageous, exceptions among Republicans) sloganeers. These are taking place with regard to most of the issues on President Barack Obama's agenda (for a list see http://www.whitehouse.gov/) in different arenas, many though aiming to gain as much media time and net space as possible, hence maximal exposure.

Liberal-democratic politics has a place for both policy wonks and sloganeers but requires much more, for example, thoughtful critique, political theatre (including comedy and street level), public deliberation and negotiations, and a whole lot of civility and toleration.

Teddy Kennedy

2009-08-29T13:00:00.005-04:00

US senator from MA for 47 years (starting in 1962), Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009), should be remembered for learning to become a true statesman. He was not born one. He embraced his role slowly needing to first struggle with a family legacy of presidential ambition (on which he finally gave up only in 1985). He took on the political responsibilities of the Democratic Senator he became when he said in conclusion of his speech at the Democratic Convention in 1980, "For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Kennedy learned to articulate these responsibilities particularly well in opposition to both domestic and foreign policies of President Ronald Regan's administration. He became a committed champion of labor, women, and of gay rights, and fought to preserve and improve the Voting Rights Act and equal funding for women's sports under Title IX, as well as campaigned for funding for AIDS treatment. He visibly opposed U.S. intervention in the Salvadorian Civil War, U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua, the B-1 Bomber, MX missile, and the Strategic Defense Initiative, as well as became the Senate's leading advocate of anti-apartheid and for a nuclear freeze.

In her tribute to Teddy Kennedy, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who ,were she to choose to stay the senator from New York, probably could have become as great a senator as Kennedy, says quite hopefully, "We have lost Ted, but his life’s work will shape our nation for years to come." Only if, though, the Democrats continue to take on President Regan, whose legacy has survived and President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) was unable to limit to its proper rather smaller size.

(For a list of Senator Kennedy's legislative achievements see the downloadable document at http://kennedy.senate.gov/newsroom/press_release.cfm?id=AE8E3C6A-2D87-4445-B556-24664E324B1A.)

A teaching moment

2009-08-20T09:48:00.005-04:00

Voting amidst violence intended to stop the voting is not merely an act of courage but shows how exciting democracy can be. Today's NPR's report about the incredible efforts to bring voting to remote areas of Afghanistan (at http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2009/08/delivering_the_vote_to_rural_a.html) and the enthusiastic responses to the opportunity to vote tell the story of this excitement most clearly.

After weeks and weeks of United States big interests and right-wing attempts to stop democratic debate in a country where too many people have forgotten the excitement of politics (not even the last presidential election got more than 54% of eligible voters out), news of Afghanis going to the polls in Lashkar Gah or the Badakhshan province, as well as of more Afghani women registering to vote in a country that is still quite traditionally patriarchal, offer a glimpse of political hope and possibility.

Talking healthcare reform

2009-08-17T16:25:00.005-04:00

In his most recent New York Times OpEd, Paul Krugman rightly suggests that "At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies."

Krugman should have added that these also stand in the way of political debate about health care reform.

Net speech

2009-08-13T10:21:00.002-04:00

Given the growing importance of the web for political reporting, conversation, debate, and critique, news of growing filtering of social and political material as well as of surveillance (for information see http://opennet.net/), while not necessarily surprising, is, nonetheless, evidence of one of the ways that democratic practices are being intentionally limited.

The net is not a democratic panacea but it is now vital to a healthy democracy.

Truth and/in politics

2009-08-12T11:24:00.006-04:00

Disinformation, no matter who propagates it, is bad for democracy. In the United States, currently, disinformation is being pumped into the public debate about health care reform by some Republicans (e.g. most grievously lately Sara Palin but she is not alone), some media (e.g. Fox news), and most of all the Insurance industry and its business allies (see reports at http://www.prwatch.org/blog/35267).

In Israel, meanwhile, the government is trying to discredit and even stop Shovrim Shtika, an organization of Israeli veterans that collects soldiers' testimonies of misconduct by soldiers (not once under orders) toward Palestinians (see http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp).

In China, as in Iran, foreign sources are accused by the government of inciting anti-government action.

More on freedom of speech

2009-08-10T15:08:00.011-04:00

During Operation Cast Iron, the Israeli military's Chief Rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki, distributed a booklet to Israeli Defense forces (IDF) soldiers fighting in the Gaza conflict containing a rabbinical edict against showing mercy to enemies (a report and pdf file in Hebrew can be found at http://www.yesh-din.org/site/index.php?page=pastupdates&lang=he). A few days ago, speaking in his capacity as Chief Military Rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki said that it is better that women not serve in combat roles in the IDF (see report at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124558. Now, also in his official capacity as Chief Military Rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki said that the military's weekly magazine Bamahane should not be publishing any features on the subject of gay soldiers (see report at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1106488.html).

Chief Military Rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki seems determined to use his IDF office to spread hate of and cruelty toward the Palestinians, sexism, and homophobia.

Political speech and freedom

2009-08-07T07:29:00.012-04:00

The freedom of political speech is under attack in many settings. In the United States it is under attack by fanatics who turn to murder for their anti-abortion cause and astroturf mob attacks on town meetings called to discuss health care reform. In Iran it is under attack by law as protesters of the election results are being tried. In Israel it is under attack by violence, be it that of ultra orthodox Jews who are violently protesting the law that protects their own children or by murderers who choose to kill LGBT youth in order to express their heteronormative opinions. The examples are different but share the narrowing of the space of democratic politics by group, individual and state violence.

More on climate change

2009-08-04T17:27:00.004-04:00

The stakes in staying the course instead of respecting the need for change where global climate is concerned seem so high that someone is sending forged letters to members of the United States Congress suggesting that minority groups are concerned about the "Cap and Trade" bill. Bonner & Associates, a public relations firm hired as a subcontractor by the Hawthorn Group, itself under contract with The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which opposes the bill, claims that the responsible person was a temporary employee who acted alone and was fired upon the discovery of the forgery in late June 2009. Hard to believe given Bonner's specialization in astroturf politics - the creation of apparent grass-root groups that are funded by corporations, and industry trade associations.

Global climate change

2009-08-04T09:31:00.005-04:00

The New York Times reports that few countries are taking seriously the warnings of the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (which it shared with former United States Vice President Al Gore). The United States, under President Barack Obama, has been taking global climate change a bit more seriously again (see http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts). But, both domestically and internationally the opposition to alternatives to current energy use habits is rather strong. The justifications are usually economic. Interestingly, even in the State Department, though under the purview of the Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs (soon, if confirmed, Ms. Maria Otero, who has been working on microfinancing), the effects of staying the course or changing it on democratic politics are not assessed. This might be the case because people believe that democratic politics are possible no matter what the material conditions or because they believe the exact opposite and then they are obvious. Thus, according to public statements by Thomas Fingar, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), accompanying the submission of the still classified but submitted to Congress at the end of June 2009 "The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change Through 2030," climate change will carry with it "significant geopolitical consequences", such as those to "domestic stability in a number of key states."

Israeli fears and frustrations

2009-07-09T09:25:00.009-04:00

It's official and given everything that has been going on since the Israeli elections not at all surprising - the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the key to its policy posture is its perception of the Iranian threat to Israel's security.

What about the Palestinians? It seems that under the current Israeli government, all negotiations regarding the Palestinians, the Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank (Palestine), and more generally peace with other Arab and Muslim countries are stewarded by the Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak.

Netanyahu seems to not know how to deal with the United States Obama administration and has been resorting to accusing Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, and David Axelord, Obama's Senior Advisor, of being self-hating Jews. Meanwhile, Bark's attempts to negotiate compromises with the United States and the Quartet are being obstructed by none else than Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, who claims to have voluntarily remove himself from these negotiations since he is a Jewish settler in the Israeli Occupied West Bank (Palestine) (Lieberamn lives in Nokdim, which was founded in 1982 South-East of Beit Lechem and is outside of the Separation Barrier) and recognizes that he might be perceived as having a conflict of interests.

Biden or Obama or merely Israeli wishful thinking

2009-07-07T10:40:00.012-04:00

In Israel, United States Vice President Joe Biden's carefully worded answer to a question during an interview on Sunday's ABC's This Week regarding whether the United States will stand in Israel's way if Israel decided it needed to take out Iran's nuclear program, was interpreted as "green lighting" the possibility of Israeli military action against Iran, which Israel has been preparing for or suggesting it is preparing for with a variety of military exercises that fuel constant speculations about "impending" Israeli military action. What Biden said was that the United States "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do." This very same assertion was repeated by President Barack Obama today. He affirmed what the United States State Department affirmed when asked about Biden's comments, which is that this is not to be taken as "green lighting" Israeli military action against Iran. He added that the United States is committed to Israel's security and to resolving the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities but through diplomatic channels.

The Obama administration is doing quite a lot in this regard. The trip to Russia and the commitment of the United States to nuclear non-proliferation and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are key diplomatic moves that the Obama administration has undertaken in hope to influence the kind of change that may help bring about a shared international understanding that as Obama said in his speech in Russia "the notion that prestige comes from holding these (nuclear) weapons or that we can protect ourselves by picking and choosing which nations can have these (nuclear) weapons is an illusion."

Israel is not sharing this understanding. Alternatively and perhaps more to the point, it tries to get as much attention focused on Iran as a source of instability in the Middle East and for the world and away from its contributions to this instability via the continued occupation of the West Bank (Palestine), expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the ongoing closure of the Gaza Strip (Palestine) borders.

Endgame in the West Bank (Palestine)?

2009-06-29T09:08:00.008-04:00

Israel is trying to move as quickly as it believes it can to assure and consolidate some gains in the West Bank (Palestine) as the pressure is growing from all sides. It began removing some of the 600 roadblocks and checkpoints it maintains in the Occupied West Bank (Palestine). It has also began easing permit requirements and traffic prohibitions for Palestinians moving among major cities such as Nablus, Hebron, Tulkarm and Ramallah, as well as began withdrawing some of its military out of these cities. In addition, Israel has agreed to stop the destruction of what it calls "illegal" building by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and has "legalized" 80% of the buildings while looking for an orderly way to evacuate the other 20%. All of these activities have been welcomed by the Quartet (European Union, Russia, United Nations, United States), which this far, to its credit, is not being pacified and demands an end to Jewish settling activity.

Israel, though, is not stopping. It continues to claim that the expansion of settlements is negotiable, at least with the United States. And, on the eve of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak's trip to the United States, a leak from the Israeli Defense Ministry suggests that the Ministry approved a plan for the building of 1,450 housing units in Geva Benyamin (which was founded in 1984 by the Jewish settlers movement who call it Adam and is located 5 km northeast of Jerusalem). Geva Benyamin currently has 900 families. The nearby Migron outpost settlers, whose evacuation has been ordered by the Israeli Supreme Court because Migron was built on private Palestinian lands, will be resettled in Geva Benyamin. They will need a fraction of the new housing units, perhaps just the 50 for which permits have actually been issued.

Since Geva Benyamin is located outside of the Separation Barrier (see maps which can be downloaded from B'tselem at http://www.btselem.org/English/Maps/Index.asp) this is an obvious attempt at grabbing more and more Palestinian land by the usual means of establishing facts on the ground

Meanwhile, though, Barak's Media Advisor denies the veracity of the leak and confirms only the Ministry's approval for the building of 50 housing units. At the same time, Haaretz reports that a reserve unit serving in the West Bank (Palestine) has complained that an officer in the unit informed Jewish settlers of upcoming evacuations of outposts encouraging them to get reinforcements, thereby making their job harder when confronting the Jewish settlers.

Who wants a revolution in Iran and would use any means to achieve it?

2009-06-18T14:28:00.005-04:00

In the midst of the enormous internal struggle in Iran, Iran's intelligence services claimed the discovery of a plot to undermine the Iranian government through the use of mass terrorist attacks in Tehran on election day (12 June 2009), planned by Israel, of course.

Settlements, settlements, settlements

2009-06-18T11:13:00.009-04:00

The official Israel would like the settlement problem to go away but it is not. The other day, Dr. Michael B. Oren, new Israeli envoy to the United States and historian (author of among other texts of the 2007 Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (W. W. Norton & Company)) suggested that the settlements are not a real issue and the United States and Israel will come to a clear understanding about them. He might or might not have meant to say what Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, told Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, yesterday, namely, that Israel will not stop building to accommodate the "natural changes" of the Jewish population in the West Bank (Palestine) Jewish settlements (with an unbelievable population growth of 5.8% in comparison to the Israeli rate of about 1.8%). Clinton, according to the news reports ,unsmiling repeated the United State's expectation for an absolute halt to all building activities and the claim that there are no mutual understandings between Israel and the United states that suggest that the George W. Bush administration offered ways to get around this expectation. She added pointedly that she hopes that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will change is mind on the settlements question and that she has personally known Israeli Prime Ministers who change their minds.

The United States is raising the bar further as it seriously negotiates with Israel for the loosening of the border crossings into the Gaza Strip (part of Palestine) and removal of at least some of the 600 or so road blocks that impede Palestinian travel in the West Bank (of Palestine). The United States is not the only country pressuring Israel. The European Union, a member of the "Quartet" behind the "road map" (which also includes the United Nations, the United States, and Russia (with which Lieberman has been cozying up), and the United States) decided against upgrading its trade relations with Israel at this point and asked for concrete steps toward peace including the freezing of all settlement activity, loosening border crossings into the Gaza Strip (part of Palestine) and removal of at least some road blocks that impede Palestinian travel in the West Bank (of Palestine).

Quick developments in the Middle East

2009-06-16T09:54:00.010-04:00

In Iran a recount of the election vote has been ordered (the results of the vote are rather strange) but pro Mir Hossein Musavi demonstrators (mostly young urban people) continue to go to the streets. They are doing so despite governmental warnings and violent (eight people have already been killed) clamping. While not much information is making it out of Iran, both because of the high level of surveillance and the actual control of the media by the government, the demonstrators continue to take to the streets and demand that their vote count as well as find ways to send information out of Iran.

Meanwhile, due to the Iranian unwillingness to engage with Dennis Ross (because, among other things he is Jewish and has complex positions about the middle East and Middle East peace), Ross, who has been serving as special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia and working closely with the Department of State, will be moving to the White House with an expanded portfolio.

Netanyahu speaking

2009-06-15T08:58:00.020-04:00

It is easy to dismiss Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu Sunday's policy speech (in Hebrew at http://www.themarker.com/tmc/article.jhtml?ElementId=skira20090614_45460 and in English at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092810.html) since it seems to have been made primarily for internal consumption (keeping his right-wing coalition going), while offering too little where peace is concerned. This is the reading of the speech by most commentators including the Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, most Israeli pundits, United States President (1977-1983) Jimmy Carter, etc. It is not a wrong reading. Netanyahu is not self-motivated to take on peace. He is being nudged by the United States President Barack Obama toward peace.

At the White House there is approval of the first step that Netanyhu took exhibiting a willingness to recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian aspiration for a Palestinian state (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Statement-from-Press-Secretary-Robert-Gibbs-on-Prime-Minister-Netanyahus-speech/). This is a gaurded statement and may be a bit over optimistic because Netanyahu gave a long list of conditions under which he is willing to accept the implementation of a Palestinian state. As commentators on the speech hve been pointing out, the conditions pose serious obstacles for peace. But, there may be a glimmer of hope there, nonetheless, depending on how far the nudging can indeed work.

1. Netanyahu's conditions call for a demilitarized Palestinian state. One can claim that such a state is not sovereign. But that is the case only if the ability for war making is taken as a sign of sovereignty and in the 21st century perhaps it need not be. For the Palestinians it is not demilitarization that should be the issue but the permeability of the Palestinian boarders to Israeli military incursions. International guarantees should be given to the Palestinians with regard to such permeability (which is a high priority for the Israeli military). The Palestinians, of course, face an internal political problem with respect to demilitarization since Fatah and Hamas have this far not been able to agree on it. It does not mean that they cannot (or that if they do not, that there are no alternatives such as a temporary separation between the West Bank (of Palestine) and Gaza (the non adjacent other part of Palestine) - the current de facto condition - and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank first with the understanding that the Palestinian state's territory includes the Gaza Strip and its actual rule will extend to the Gaza Strip asap).

2. The other of Netanyahu's conditions that is taken as an obstacle to peace is the demand for Palestinian (and other Arab states that at these point do not have peace agreements with Israel recognition of Israel as "the national homeland of the Jewish people" (this is the official English language wording of this part of the text of Netanyahu's speech). This is an unnecessary condition. Neither Egypt nor Jordan who have peace treaties with Israel offered such recognition but did offer a recognition of international treaties and law. The wording, though, is interesting since it recalls the language used in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (made in a letter by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour to to Baron Walter Rothchild and reflecting British policy of the time) and because Israel can be easily recognized as the Jewish national home without that requiring it being a "Jewish state" (despite that connection being made in the Declaration of the Estublishment of the State of Israel (see text at http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Declaration+of+
Establishment+of+State+of+Israel.htm which does not violate UN resolution 181 since it uses the term "Jewish State" see text of resolution at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/un/res181.htm). There are people who want Israel to be a Jewish state. That, however, will turn it into a theocracy, an obvious anachronism in the 21st century (though it is practiced in some places). As to the Palestinian refugees right of return, Netanyahu rejects it. But no one with a realistic enough view of the situation expects the Palestinian right of return to be affirmed as a right of return to Israel and the expectation is that appropriate compensation will become the route to go.

3. The real obstacles to peace that one can find in Netanyahu's speech concern (i) his affirmation of the vision of the "Greater Israel" as rightfully belonging to Jews and (ii) the West Bank (Palestine) Jewish settlements, which Netanyahu declared a non-issue. Since Netanyahu himslef said that because Jews do not want to rule over Palestinians who are the majority population in the West Bank (Palestine) Israel is willing to accept a territorial political compromise, (i) has little political significance. (ii), as it has been all along (since 1967 and the formation of the first settlements as military outposts), remains the real obstacle to peace.

Iranian elections

2009-06-13T15:03:00.008-04:00

The official claim is that current Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was reelected with 63% of the vote. Maybe he was and maybe he was not and his opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is right to call the results a "charade". Unfortunately, it is hard to trust the Iranian election results, though they would have appeared trustworthy were Ahmadinejad to win just 50% of the vote, as Mousavi wished, or even fewer votes.

The results appear even less trustworthy given the clash of opposition protesters and heavily armed troops from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who amassed in Tehran's streets in advance and as of this writing seem to already have killed 3 of the protesters.

The almost total information blackout and the closing of Tehran's universities also does not help create a sense of trust in the election results.

While elections are not a nuanced democratic instrument, they are an important democratic instrument. To function as a democratic instrument, their results need to be trustworthy.

Judge Sotomayor

2009-06-11T09:00:00.008-04:00

Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed as a United States Supreme Court Justice. She is no less deserving of such an honor than many others who are serving now or served before. The review process that Republicans claim they are pushed to pursue much too quickly will not reveal anything unknown. She has been vetted before. In 1998 she was nominated by Democratic President Bill Clinton to the United States Court of Appeals and has been a 2nd Circuit judge since. From 1992 till 1998 she was United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York for which she was nominated by Republican President George h. W. Bush.

Sotomayor will be justice # 111, 3rd woman, and 1st Latina on the United States Supreme Court. She will also be the court's 12th Catholic and 6th in current Court. And, she will be among the poorer of the current justices.

The United States Supreme Court was established by the United States Constitution (Article 3, section 1). It started hearing cases in 1791.

Settling the settellments in many acts

2009-06-08T09:01:00.018-04:00

Haaretz offers a lengthy chronology of Israeli-United States understandings regarding the settling of the settlements starting in

* 1992 when George H. W. Bush (Bush 41), then United States President and Itzhak Shamir, then Israel's Prime Minister (a Likkud hard-liner who served as prime minister from 1986 till 1992) did not resolve their disagreements regarding the settlements with Bush demanding a halt and Shamir refusing resulting in Bush withholding various funds and fund guarantees that Shamir wanted for Israel.

* Itzhak Rabin who succeeded Shamir (and serve as Prime Minister till 04 November 1995 when he was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a young right-wing religious Jewish objector to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians) and Bush 41 agreed on finishing buildings that were started, building for "natural growth" in established settlements (such as Ariel) and developing the infra-structure. Rabin drew a distinction between "security" motivated settlements and "politically" motivated settlements that was accepted by Bill Clinton (United States President from 1993 to 2001) and agreed to take no steps that are not also agreed to by the Palestinians.

* Still by 2000 (so under Rabin, his successor Shimon Peres (Prime minister till 1996,) his successor Benyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister till 1999, and his successor Ehud Barak, Prime Minister till 2001) there was an incredible growth in Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank (Palestine). This led to a United States investigation chaired by George J. Mitchell (currently President Barak Obama's special envoy to the Middle East) that recommended absolute cessation of Jewish settling in the West Bank (Palestine) in addition to calling on the Palestinians to stop violent activities against Israel. Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister when the Mitchell Report (summarized on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website at http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2001/4/Report+of+the+Sharm+el-Sheikh+Fact-Finding+Committ.htm) was completed, committed Israel to it but Israel did not freeze building and said it is building only within existing settlements in order to meet existing needs. The United States , now led by President George W. Bush (Bush 43) did not accept this as a shared understanding. The "Road Map" toward the establishment of a Palestine State requires the cessation of all Jewish settlement activity and the dismantling of all outposts started after 2001. In 2004 Sharon asked and received a letter from Bush 43 that declared that the United States does not expect an Israeli retreat from established settlements. Israel took this to mean that it can go on settling as long as it can show that it is doing so in relation to existing Jewish settlements and the expansion does not involve further appropriation of privately held Palestinian land. The United States did not agree in writing to anything of this sort. The Israeli settlement policy continued under Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (Prime Minister from 2006 to 2009) without United States agreement though objections have not been expressed strongly.

* The United States is now expressing very strong objections. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is about to give a major policy speech which will address among other things the settling of the settlements.

Haaretz did not mention that the United States under President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) insisted on a halt to all settlement activity and sent observers to make sure that Jewish settlers in the Israeli Occupied West Bank (Palestine) are not engaging in building.

How many ways are there to say "no"

2009-06-06T08:18:00.012-04:00

United States Secretary of State Hilary Clinton repeated her assertion that contrary to Israel's claims, there are no documented binding understandings or agreements between Israel and the United States that sanction any form of continued Jewish settling in the West Bank (Palestine).

Efraim Halevi, who in 2004 had no official role (from 1998 till 2002 he was Mossad's director and from 2002 till 2003 he headed the Israeli National Security Council, but since director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the Hebrew University) claims that there is a letter from then President George W. Bush to then Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that states that it is not pragmatic to expect Israel to return to the disengagement lines of 1967 and that this letter suggests an understanding regarding the Jewish settlements.

In the next round of "no" someone should produce this letter.

Obama's speech in Cairo

2009-06-04T09:08:00.017-04:00

United States President Barack Obama delivered a brilliant speech today in Cairo Egypt having chosen the setting for his speech extremely carefully and performing what his administration means by "soft" and "smart" power. The president, respectful of his audience world-wide, obviously moved by the vision of true peace, has set a very high bar for all who are willing to take responsibility and contribute to the effort to actualize peace. In Israel everyone official, whether happy or not with the substance of the speech, acknowledged that the bar is high and the United State's President very serious about the tasks ahead.

While Israeli moderates and compatriots further to the left welcomed the speech as enlightened, Benyamin Netanyahu's official response welcomed the speech and the sincerity of President Obama's commitment to peace, affirmed Israel's commitment to peace but also the fact that Israel has its own interests which it will continue to pursue.

The West Bank (Palestine) Jewish settlers' movement described Obama as naive and out of touch with reality. Neither is, of course, true. Obama is aware that the Jewish settlers in the West Bank (Palestine) want to expand existing settlements, add new settlements, and in general hold that there is a Jewish right to the "Greater Israel." He disagrees not least because the human costs for the Pestinians is too high, as are the costs to peace in the region. But, the more to the right one is in Israel, the less responsibility one takes for one's contributions to the reality on the ground.

Terrorism here and there, a very small sample

2009-06-03T19:21:00.014-04:00

On 31 May 2009, Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the United States specializing in late term abortions, was murdered by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist. Some anti-abortion activists have been hailing him as a hero.

On 01 and 03 June 2009, Jewish settlers in the West Bank (Palestine) stoned Palestinian cars and started fires in Palestinian fields in response to the dismantling of settlers "outposts." According to them, it is now their policy to respond violently to any attempt to dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank (Palestine). They are being hailed as heroes by the Israeli right wing.

On 03 June 2009 in the evening, a bomb exploded in a coffee shop in the Shiite neighborhood of al- Shurta al-Rabia of Baghdad. 9 people were killed. No one has yet to be publicly hailed as a hero. But that will undoubtedly change in the next few hours.

Welcome to rearticulated Israeli new and double speak

2009-05-28T11:41:00.015-04:00

Israel has reiterated yet again its position that the halting of the Jewish settling of the West Bank (namely Palestine) which is being demanded by the United States cannot mean that "normal life" is not allowed to continue.

"Normal life" means the expansion of Jewish settling of the West Bank and President Obama's led United States is not letting that slip through this time. As Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said yesterday "to halt" means "a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, and not ‘natural growth’ exceptions." And just to makes sure that no misunderstandings take place Ms. Clinton said publicly that this position was communicated very clearly to the Israel, government, thereby hinting if not implying that Israel's stated desire to open negotiations and reach an agreement with the United States about "normal life" in the settlements makes no sense.

Of course not. There is nothing "normal" to life in the settlements unless one normalizes the occupation of the West Bank (by say calling it the "West Bank," or "Judeah and Samaria" instead of Palestine") and the dispossession of the Palestinians (by claiming ancestral rights that stretch all the way back to a mythical divine promise). "Normal life" (though one deeply marked by trauma) will start in the West Bank when it becomes Palestine in the context of an internationally recognized and implemented peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.

Nakba

2009-05-25T09:54:00.005-04:00

On Sunday, 24 May 2009, the Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a preliminary proposal which would make it illegal to hold events or ceremonies marking Israel's Independence Day as a "Nakba," or catastrophe, which is how the Palestinians mark the 15th of May. The bill is one of two that Israel Beitenu, the extreme right-wing partner in the Israeli government, is trying to get through before the coalition stumbles enough to fall and new elections are on the horizon. The second bill will criminalize speech that denies Israel's right to exist as a Jewish democratic state.

Goodbye to free speech, minority rights, and the recognition of the extremely problematic origins of the state of Israel. Welcome totalitarian fascism. And just in case this comment seems alarmist (after all bills of a similar kind have been proposed before and failed to garner the needed approval in the Knesset) today (25 May), a left-wing student at Ben-Gurion University was apprehended because she was distributing materials criticizing the proposed new laws.

Dubious leaglities

2009-05-21T09:13:00.013-04:00

Both the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the New York Times (as well as a few other newspapers around the world) report the dismantling of a tiny illegal Jewish outpost (settlement by any other name) in the West Bank (properly speaking Palestine). Haaretz also reports that there is an agreement (seems strange to need one but not in the case of coalition politics that yield complex governments) between the Israeli Prime Minister (Benyamin Netanyahu) and the Israeli Minister of Defense (Ehud Barak) about the dismantling of other illegal outposts. The New York Times also reports that the official response from the settlers movement is that this (the dismantling of Maoz Ester? the agreement between Netanyahu and Barak?) is just a diplomatic move intended to pacify United States President Barack Obama and his administration. Meanwhile the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman claimed that the differences between Israel and the United states are tactical and that the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are not an impediment to peace, a view characterized by his Israeli critics as befitting someone who has no idea of the factual truths on the ground.

The facts on the ground become clearer if (a) one looks at maps or lists of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and (b) asks serious questions about what the distinction between "legal" and "illegal" Jewish settlements in the West Bank might mean given that Israeli law proper does not apply in the West Bank other than to the area of East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel, (though, it is important to note that this annexation is not recognized as legal internationally (a point that the Palestinians are clear about and that the EU emphasized in its report on East Jerusalem which is available at http://euobserver.com/9/27736)) and to Israeli citizens living in the West bank taken as individuals. Jordanian law does apply in the West Bank, as does Israeli military law, and international law and, of course Palestinian law, at least when it comes to Palestinians and Palestinians settlements.

The lack of legal clarity unnerves the Jewish settlers in the West Bank (who in early 2008 (the latest publicly available numbers) reached 282,362 (a 5% growth from 2007) + more than 200,000 in the area of East Jerusalem) who are aware that in the final analysis what is actually legal regarding the West Bank will be determined by internationally recognized agreements (such as peace agreements between Israel and Palestine). What they hope is that settlements and outposts as material "facts on the ground" will determine what those agreements may look like. The dismantling of outposts and settlements does not mean that they are not right about this but only that they are not likely to get everything they want. It is the size of "not likely to get everything they want" that is being negotiated between the settlers movement and the Israeli government which does not really oppose them, and ideally (and in principle), can dismantle all settlements, including those in the area of East Jerusalem, at least as long as the Jewish settlers are Israeli citizens and as individuals subject to Israeli law.

Israeli credibility

2009-05-14T15:46:00.008-04:00

How credible does Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu believe he is when he declares in public to the visiting Pope Bendeict XVI that Israel is interested in peace and has no intention of ruling another people, which it has been doing for 42 years merely for security purposes since it is trying to prevent the rise of a terrorist state as its neighbor?

Does he really believe that he can be taken seriously when during the same public exchange he tells the Pope that it is the Iranian threat alone that is endangering peace in the middle East?

And does he think that no hypocrisy can be detected in his claim to the Pope that Israel, which has been legally and financially facilitating the Jewish return to Israel, cannot support the family unification of Christians for Christians living in Israel because members of other religions (especially Muslims?) might want the same privileges?

Seriously Middle East

2009-05-14T09:05:00.015-04:00

President Barak Obama has been discussing a comprehensive Middle East peace with Jordan's King Abdullah II Ibn Al Hussein Abdullah told Pope Benedict XVI during the Pope's visit with him that a comprehensive peace is not a 2 states (as in Israel and Palestine) solution but a 57 states (including all the members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC, see web page at http://www.oic-oci.org/) solution.

In implicit recognition of Abdullah's new political position (which would have pleased his dead father, King Hussein bin Talal, whose just before death in 1999 move to install his son Abdullah as king of Jordan instead of his brother and heir apparent for many years Hassan was among his most politically smart moves ) Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has paid a surprise (for whom?) visit to King Abdullah to discuss a comprehensive Middle East peace that includes as a precondition a negotiated retreat to the 1948 (and thus pre 1967) disengagement lines where there are yet firm borders (as with Egypt (following the 1979 peace treaty negotiated with the Help of United States President Jimmy Carter) and Jordan (following the 1994 peace treaty negotiated with the Help of United States President Bill Clinton), and the establishment of a recognized Palestinian State that has a peace treaty (and firm negotiated borders) with Israel.

Meanwhile in another surprise (again for whom?) visit, this time to Israel by Leon Panetta, current head of the CIA (assumed office February 2009), who was sent as a special envoy of President Barak Obama, Panetta told Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to not even dream of attacking Iran and was assured that Israel will not surprise the United State's with such an attack.

President Obama is planning a trip to the Middle East in June with a major speech to the Muslim world (the 57 states that form the OIC?) to be delivered from Egypt on 04 June (the day before the start of the 1967 Six Days War 42 years earlier, a day that is referred to in Middle East talks as still offering a picture the right contours for recognized borders).

Cynical observers of and in the Middle East believe that President Obama efforts in the area will come to nothing just as all previous efforts. But, it is not true that all previous United States peace efforts in the Middle East have come to nothing and perhaps President Obama massage of hope will inspire a few more people in the Middle East and he will join the successful Presidents Carter and Clinton (whose successes as peace makers tend to be underestimated).

New ways in the Middle East

2009-05-08T08:58:00.010-04:00

Haaretz reports that senior officials in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs have observed a change in the ways that the United States is dealing with Israel. Specifically, they point at the lowering of the level of political coordination and consultation that started when Barak Obama took office on 20 January 2009 and became even more noticeable when Benyamin Netanyahu took office on 31 march 2009. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs is comparing the present with the eight years of the George W. Bush administration during which a fairly high level of coordination and consultation seems to have taken place.

Among the uncoordinated actions taken by the United States are the mention of Israel as one of the few states to yet sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the sending of envoys to Syria for relatively high level talks, the growing cooperation with Jordan and Egypt among other things with regards to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rather strong critique of Israel's expansion of settlements in the West Bank. And a few days later, General (retired) James Jones, President Obama's National Security Advisor's public connection between the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the reduction of the Iranian threat.

There is something very smart about all these moves. They strengthen additional political players in the Middle East and increase the crediblity of the United States in the Middle East.

Nuclear non-proliferation

2009-05-06T13:08:00.015-04:00

Israel has expressed its surprise for being publicly asked by the United state's to sign the Nuclear Non--Proliferation Treaty (NPT) (see it here: http://www.state.gov/t/isn/trty/16281.htm). Israel's Ministry for Foreign Affairs pointed out that the call was made during a meeting convened in preparation for the 2010 Review Conference that is mandated as part of the Treaty. According to the US Department of State (see http://www.state.gov/t/isn/npt/), among the objectives of the United States for this current review cycle are:

Securing full compliance with Treaty provisions by all Parties;
Dissuading Parties from violating, and then withdrawing from, the Treaty;
Achieving universal adherence to safeguards required by the NPT and to the Additional Protocol;
Implementing effective export controls;
Combating nuclear terrorism;
Encouraging the peaceful use of nuclear energy;
Achieving universal membership of all States; and
Working, both individually and with other Parties, towards global nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.

Given these, Israel, which has yet to acknowledge and report its nuclear capacities officially, has much to do to be in compliance with United State's goals and being publicly asked by the United States to join the NPT signals a United State's change from previous rather protective practices (the last time there was public discussion of Israel's nuclear capacities in a United State's administration was when Bill Clinton initiated the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMT) in 1993) and an expectation that Israel indeed heed the United State's declared desires.

The Barack Obama administration understands the global situation quite clearly. The Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, works hard to help develop and implement the administration's idea of "smart power" diplomacy in the context of a complex foreign affairs situation requiring rethinking the United States as a global power and so its foreign policy agenda. Israel is beginning to experience specific implications of this rethinking and how "smart power" diplomacy works.

The Middle East as usual (maybe?)

2009-05-04T14:59:00.015-04:00

I love the Middle East. How could one not?

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, continues to have nuclear wet dreams, using funds that could otherwise be invested in Iranian social infrastructure (health, education, welfare to the needy of which there are many - according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Iran's 2008 PPP (Purchasing Power Parity of each person in a country) was $11, 250, which landed it in spot 71 trailing after (the primary target of its nuclear investments) Israel whose 2008 PPP was $28, 206 (which landed it in spot # 31)).

The Egyptian president, Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, has accused Hezbollah not only of attempting to smuggle weapons to Gaza (where Hamas is on the loose as usual threatening and attacking its Fatah political rivals), planning attacks on Israelis vacationing in the Sinai and on ships in the Suez Canal, but also of attempting to destabilize the Egyptian regime. Indirectly this is about Iran since Iran supports Hezbollah and Hezbollah's leader, Hasan Nasrallah said that he sent an agent to Egypt to help organize a resistance that will help the Palestinians in their fight against Israel.

Hamas, which has a semblance of control over the Gaza Strip has yet to ask other Gaza Strip militant groups, such as the Islamic Jihad, to refrain from shooting missiles at Israel and Israel retaliates by bombing the smuggling tunnels that connect Gaza and Egypt.

Israel continues to voice its concerns about Iran nuclear plans (with opposition leader, Zippi Livni, telling AIPAC (the American-Israeli Political Action Committee) that about Iran there is a unity of opinion's in Israel (leaving out the small but not insignificant 1/3 of the Jewish-Israeli public opposing military action against Iran). Israel also continues to voice two claims about itself that have reached the status of cliche - that it is ready to enter peace agreements with anyone wishing to live in peace with it (especially if they are willing to accept it as the state of the Jewish people (with a very large Palestinian population?)) and that its military is the most ethical military in the world (whatever the controversy over the occupation that began in 1967 and is sustained by that military and the wars in Lebanon and Gaza might be).

In a different corner of the Middle East, Turkey is engaging in talks with Armenia, which makes Azerbaijan nervous since it wants to control the heavily mined land locked Nagrono-Karabakh that it surrounds geopolitically but for the narrow corridor that connects it to Armenia.

At the same time, Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian health officials have gotten together to coordinate H1N1 flue surveillance and interventions.

And all of this is happening while the United States is reworking its approach to and thus expectations from every country in the Middle East.

(The term "Middle East" is a problematic geopolitical term. But it has stuck and refers to the region that spans Southwestern Asia and Northeastern Africa (a territory that is divided among Armenia (in the Caucasus), Azerbaijan (in the Caucasus), Bahrain (in the Arabian Peninsula), Egypt (in North Africa), Georgia (in the Caucasus), Iran (in the Iranian Plateau), Iraq (in the Eastern Mediterranean), Israel (in the Eastern Mediterranean), Jordan (in the Eastern Mediterranean), Kuwait (in the Arabian Peninsula), Lebanon (in the Eastern Mediterranean), Oman (in the Arabian Peninsula), Palestine (in the Eastern Mediterranean), Qatar (in the Arabian Peninsula), Saudi Arabia (in the Arabian Peninsula), Syria (in the Eastern Mediterranean), Turkey (in Anatolia), Turkmenistan (in North Asia), United Arab Emirates (in the Arabian Peninsula), and Yemen (in the Arabian Peninsula)). To make things more complicated the George W. Bush administration decided that it made sense (to talk about a region called "the Greater Middle East" and added to the mix: Algeria (in North Africa), Afghanistan (in the Iranian Plateau), Cyprus (in the Eastern Mediterranean), Djibouti (in northeast Africa), Eritrea (in Northeast Africa), Kazakhstan (in North Asia), Kyrgyzstan (in North Asia), Libya (in North Africa), Morocco (in North Africa), Mauritania (in North Africa), Pakistan (in the Iranian Plateau), Somalia (in Northeast Africa), Sudan (in Northeast Africa), Tajikistan (in North Asia), Tunisia (in North Africa), Uzbekistan (in North Asia), and Western Sahara (in North Africa). The Barack Obama administration has a different division of the world into regions which deploys the term "Near East" instead of "Middle East" (see http://www.state.gov/p/nea/) and is interesting strategically not only because of what falls under it but also because of what does not and is instead included under "Europe and Euroasia" (see http://www.state.gov/p/eur/)).

Switching

2009-04-30T09:21:00.012-04:00

All analyses point out that Arlen Specter, the senior senator from Pennsylvania (Robert P. Casey, who is a Democrat, though a somewhat conservative one, and was elected to Senate in 2006, is the junior senator from Pennsylvania) who plans to run for reelection to the United States Senate (for his sixth term) move from the Republican to the Democratic Party exhibits keen political acumen. Specter was simply not going to win another election as a Republican,since it seems that he could not even win the Republican primary.

At 79 Specter (a 1951 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a 1956 Yale Law school graduate), who began his elective political career in 1965 with a party switch (Democrat to Republican) when he ran for District Attorney of the City of Philadelphia, could consider retiring. But, he seems to still want to shape and add to his legacy and so is not letting go of politics where his mark is that of a liberal capable of distinguishing (as the liberal philosopher John Rawls advocates) between views that he has because he holds comprehensive doctrines (e.g. he personally opposes abortion) and views that he advances politically in the context of what can be actually deliberated reasonably (and so, to continue with the example, he supports women's right to choose).

Pennsylvania Republicans have responded angrily to Specter's move, feeling cheated out of a Republican Senate seat. But the seat is not theirs. But is the seat Specter's to do with as he wishes? Parties are instrumental. But is this all they are?

Stress position

2009-04-22T09:06:00.010-04:00

"Stress positions," which are also known as "submission positions" are, according to a a 1978 European Court for Human Rights ruling a form of inhuman and degrading treatment and according to a 1999 ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court, a torture technique. "Stress positions" stress the human body as a function of the position in which it is placed, for example, the "shaback position," in which a detainee's hands are tied behind the back of a chair while she/he is hooded, or the "frog crouch," in which a detainee is forced to crouch on her/his toes with her/his hands bound behind her/his back, or standing motionless for a long period of time.

For Dick Cheney, vice President to George W. Bush, all that matters is that they seem to have worked and that justifies their deployment so much so as to recommend them for adoption by any United States president. Barack Obama the United States' presidential candidate, claimed in October 2007 that torture is not part of the answer to terrorism. In January 2009, Barack Obama, the President of the United States, revoked all directives issued by his predecessor regarding torture and limited interrogration techniques to those permitted by the "Army Field Manual 2-22.3" (see the White House Web page at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/EnsuringLawfulInterrogations/). In April 2009, without hesitations, President Obama declassified pertinent memos reopening the political discussion about torture, and with hesitations, opened the way to legal action.

Durban II

2009-04-21T07:03:00.005-04:00

Coincidence (or bad planning?) had Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scheduled to give his speech at Durban II (officially, the Durban Review Conference where an evaluation of the progress towards the goals set by the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, is to take place) on the eve of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day. The UN, the sponsor of Durban II, has chosen 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, for its International Day of Commemoration to Honor the Victims of the Holocaust. In Israel, the Holocaust is remembered 6 days after the end of Passover (פסח) and 8 days before Israel's Independence Day and in the general vicinity of the commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (which started on 19 April 1943 and on the Jewish calendar on the eve of Passover (פסח)). Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier and a dangerous demagogue who mixes falsehoods (that the Holocaust, if it happened at all, is a cover story that exaggerates Jewish suffering and uses it to support Euro-American colonialism in the Middle East spearheaded by the formation of the Zionist Israel) with grains of truth (that Israel mistreats the Palestinians, sometimes grievously, and that there is racism in Israel, including anti-Palestinian racism that gets mobilized to justify injustice against the Palestinians) who occupies a global spotlight because he has chosen to pursue the development of nuclear capabilities and is thus posing a real threat to local and world stability. He presides over one of the worlds most repressive regimes.

First glimpses

2009-04-19T11:26:00.005-04:00

While the United states stands poised to analyze President Obama's first 100 days in office (a strange local ritual), one can begin to gather some glimpses of what the Benjamin Netanyahu led Israeli government has up its sleeves: plans for an attack on Iran, enriching the rich with additional neo-liberal tax-cuts and similar programs, making impossible demands on the Palestinians (maybe similar and maybe different than those made under Netanyahu when he was prime minister before (1996-1999)), trying to again evade United States led peace plans for the Middle-East (by seriously adding the Russians into the game and stirring?). The principle ray of hope that this government offers is its own implosion under the weight of an impossible coalition that produced a 30 ministers + 7 deputy ministers cabinet with only 1 Druz and 5 women in any of these positions.

Pirates

2009-04-15T13:09:00.009-04:00

Pirate (from the Latin pirata and the Greek peirates meaning "brigand"), mostly a villain but sometimes a hero, though not lately (see reports by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) at http://www.icc-ccs.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=16), unless one is an extreme right-wing United States commentator like Rush Limbaugh who thinks that the real pirates are United States Congress liberals (like Nancy Pelosi) who are robbing the American taxpayers.

And just in case Limbaugh has not been doing enough damage, then came yesterdays' tax-day tea-parties.

For more interesting and coherent criticism of of what is happening to taxes see Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard University, chair of COP, the Congressional Oversight Panel that is assessing the Treasury strategy (see the COP website at http://cop.senate.gov/).

Small town news

2009-04-06T15:45:00.006-04:00

The Binghamton local newspaper, the Press and sun Bulletin (which is not very local since it is a Gannett, publisher of USA Today and the largest newspaper group in terms of circulation, newspaper), has been devoted almost exclusively to the tiniest scraps of news about Voong's suicidal violent rampage Friday. While some of these news are important to the Binghamton community, the Press and sun Bulletin did not inform its readers about last night's devastating 6.3 in magnitude earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy (with at least 150 dead, 1,500 injured, and 40,000-50,000 who have been left homeless). Neither did it inform the Binghamton community of the 6 car bombs that exploded today in Iraq, leaving 33 dead and a score of wounded or the 3 attacks that took place in Pakistan in the past 24 hours of which just the one in Islamabad left 26 dead and a score of wounded.

It is extremely important to respect local grief. It is extremely important to situate it and even while grieving pay respectful attention to the grief of others.

Small town violence and the Taliban

2009-04-04T10:19:00.010-04:00

The Pakistani based branch of the Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Binghamton New York American Civic Association. 13 people, among them, a receptionist (Maria "Mimi" K. Zobniw, 60), a teacher (Roberta, Bobbie, King, 72), and 11 of the ACA's students (Lan Ho, 39, Layla Khalil, 57, Dolores Yigal, 53, Parveen Ali, 26, Marc Henry Bernard, 44, Maria Sonia Bernard, Li Guo, 47, Hong Xiu Mao, 35, Hai Hong Zhong, 54, Almir O. Alves, 43, Jiang Ling, 22) were killed in the attack. 4 additional people were wounded. According to the latest report, the attacker, 42-year-old Lin Voong of Johnson City New York (a small municipality adjacent to Binghamton) who was recently laid off from his job at Endicott (another small municipality in the greater Binghamton area) IBM, seems to have killed himself a short time after his rampage. While it is likely to take a while to explain why Lin Voong did what he did, the (already denied by the FBI) probability that a Vietnamese immigrant living in the Binghamton New York area is a Taliban agent is extremely small and it is much more likely that Woong's violence belongs to the strange class of senseless violence inflicted by desperate people who are too afraid of the loneliness of suicide and so kill others so that they do not die alone. Why, then did the Pakistani based branch of the Taliban claim credit for Woong's violence?

I suspect that the claim is a form of bravado (from the Middle French bravade and Old Spanish bravata, from Old Italian bravata, all originating from the Latin brabus) and thus a show off version of a pretense at bravery and a challenge. Since it is too easy to establish the falsehood of the claim and since communication is global, this attempt at bravado is extremely foolish even as it plays on those nagging feelings that terrorism in its current form has very long tentacles and reach. This feeling though supports forms of nativism that are quite dangerous in small and big communities alike.

Israeli politics

2009-04-01T14:12:00.008-04:00

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's incoming Minister of Foreign Affairs, is expected by the Israeli police to serve for only a few months. He is being interrogated for corruption and the police believes that there is enough and convincing evidence against Mr. Lieberman. This did not stop Mr. Lieberman from declaring today, his first day in office, that Israel is not obligated to a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to suggest that Israel has lost respect in the international arena due to its shows of left inspired weakness.

Lieberman, whose proclamations are not surprising, unless one expects diplomatic finesse from a Minister of Foreign Affairs even if he is committed to an extreme right wing ideology, was immediately rebuked by the United States which declared that it is still committed to the two-states solution. The United States is not the international power it used to be but it is still a power to reckon with, especially by an Israel that is dependent on the United States and has been internationally warned of growing isolation if it does not heel.

Afghanistan's new marital rape law

2009-04-01T11:43:00.009-04:00

The British Guardian reported yesterday that Hamid Karazi, the President of Afghanistan, signed into law legislation that the United Nation says legalizes marital rape, bans wives from stepping out of the house without their husbands agreement, and grants custody over children only to fathers or grandfathers. This piece of legislation undermined the good will of many of the countries whose representatives attended Tuesday's Hague Summit, hosted by the United Nations and the Netherlands, where a coordinated international effort to stabilize Afghanistan was being outlined. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, attended to Summit. She is reported by the Australian Sydney Morning Herald to have privately confronted Karazi. The Canadian Globe and Mail reports her to have express public dismay, stating for the record that "This is an area of absolute concern for the United States," she told reporters. "My message is very clear. Women's rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration."

Meanwhile, the growing vulnerability of the women of Afghanistan is not one of the issues raised by the G-20 protesters who claim to give voice to the most vulnerable.

----

P.S. Marital rape is a violation of human rights according to the United Nation's "Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women," which was adopted as a resolution by the General Assembly in 1993 and can be found here http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/21.htm.

Balance of power(s)

2009-03-31T09:27:00.009-04:00

The current economic crisis is underscoring changes that the CIA suggested in its 2008 report, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, available at http://www.dni.gov./nic/NIC/_2025_project/html, are coming the US and the worlds way. According to the report, the whole international system - as constructed following WWII - will change and what that means is that "new players" such as Brazil, China, India, and Russia - will not only demand and get a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules to the "game." As to the "game" in question, it will become more dangerous both as a result of multi-polar power balancing and the growing pressure on the world's resources due to the negative effects of climate change, population growth, and the "usual" local instabilities such as those in the Middle East.

One ought to understand moves by China (and the EU, Germany and France) that have taken place prior to the G-20 meeting in light of this trajectory. Muscles (mostly economic but also those that governments assume they have because they think they can mobilize their populations) are being flexed. Obama, no doubtedly aware of more than just what the CIA has made public in the Global Trends 2025 report (he is briefed daily, he has read Farid Zakaria's The Post American World (WWW Norton, 2008) as well as Mona Stuphen and Nina Huchigian's The Next American Century (Simon and Schuster, 2008) and Stuphen is Deputy White House Chief of Staff) is responding properly by coming to the G-20 meeting in London offering not merely to lead but rather to also listen and listen he must since neither can the US lead in an imperial version (of the kind embodied in various George W. Bush's administration stands) nor can it retreat into a "fortress" version of itself (fantasized by the George W. bush administration).

States, budget deficits, and taxes

2009-03-25T09:57:00.012-04:00

States need money both in order to function as sites of politics and in order to fulfill their administrative-service provision functions. States can work in a deficit mode (assuming there is something to Keynesian or neo-Keynesian economic models) but only if their borrowing can be paid in a foreseeable enough future, hence, if their fiscal policy is sound enough to indeed stimulate the private markets in such a way so as to turn things around and enable the debt that the government incurs with its deficit spending to be paid off.

Among the limited ways states have to reduce their debts include a reduction in their expanses or/and the raising of their revenues from fees or/and taxes. The reduction of expanses means either a reduction in services (a move similar to the contraction of production by companies that close plants) or/and the laying off of state paid workers (a move similar to that of companies that lay off workers to reduce expanses), or/and opening contracts for re-bargaining and passing current state expanses to state employees in the form of higher participation in, for example, outlays for pensions or/and medical coverage. Reduction in expanses necessarily involves an unfair distribution of the burdens of the debt.

Fees may be fair - they are usually applied to users - but can also be unfair - they are usually applied to users. If one raises fees for hunting or fishing licences, for example, recreational hunters and fishers will bear some of the burden (which has its complications yet seems ok) but also those for whom seasonal hunting and fishing helps with food supplies. Taxes can also be either fair or unfair. With taxes "fairness" is judged differently depending on philosophical positions. Mine supports the idea of progressive taxation since it distribute the burden of taxation in such a way that those who have a higher income pay more. As 80 "well-to-do" New Yorkers have said to David Patterson, New York's Governor, it is fair to tax them more heavily in the current economic crisis, indeed fairer than laying off 9,800 state workers or cutting on needed services.

Since these "well-to-do" New Yorkers have been benefiting from New York's regressive taxation, one should take their volunteering for higher taxation with a grain of salt, especially because what they and everyone is talking about is a temporary measure. My last claim is not made in anger or out of resentment. I would like the "well-to-do" to commit to progressive taxation in principle and not only because of philanthropic visions of their responsibilities. The latter is a moral commitment. The former is a political commitment to enhancing the conditions of possibility of democratic politics.