Robert Fisk Perspective

Here's an article by Robert Fisk about the peace talks in Annapolis (the original can be found here):

Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo.

"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time for the cycle of blood... to end"?

Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an Israeli state – and in reality, of course, it is – there can be no "right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled (or whose families fled) what became Israel in 1948.

And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of the joint document: "The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations (sic) teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party." Come again?

We went through all these steering committees before – and they never worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of this so-called "steering committee" and we have the faint hope from Mr Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that we're going to have an agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians have a state without a capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state when their entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war?

Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this – or at least Syrian support to control Hamas – and what do we get? Bush continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it must keep clear of Lebanese elections, or else...

Yes, Hizbollah is a surrogate of Iran and is playing a leading role in the opposition to the government of Lebanon. Do Bush and Condoleezza Rice (or Abbas or Olmert for that matter) really think they're going to have a free ride for a year without the full involvement of every party in the region? More than half of the Palestinians under occupation are under the control of Hamas.

Reading the speeches – especially the joint document – it seems like an exercise in self-delusion. The Middle East is currently a hell disaster and the President of the United States thinks he is going to produce the crown jewels from a cabinet and forget Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran – and Pakistan, for that matter. The worst element of the whole Annapolis shindig is that once again millions of people across the Middle East – Muslims, Jews and Christians – will believe all this and will then turn – after its failure – with fury on their antagonists for breaking these agreements.

For more than two years, the Saudis have been offering Israel security and recognition by Arab states in return for a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories. What was wrong with that? Mr Olmert promised that "negotiations will address all the issues which thus far has been evaded". Yet the phrase "withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories" simply doesn't exist in the text.

Like most people who live in the Middle East, I would like to enjoy these dreams and believe they are true. But they are not. Wait for the end of 2008.

It's That Time Again!

This is the typical presidential chronology: The first term is the time for pushing, ever so softly, your pet initiatives while the populace is still somewhat entranced by the idea of a new president. The last half of the first term is the time to make the electoral rounds, trumpeting triumphs while glossing over mistakes. The second term is the time to set about creating a legacy by pushing the bold initiatives you aren't scared to champion now that the election is behind you. After seven years in office, when all your political capital is long gone, it is at last time to try your luck in the Middle East. It is time to try and facilitate peace between the Israeli's and Palestinian's.

I say facilitate because no American president would actually want to get their hands dirty creating peace. This is especially true with Mr. Bush. Seven years of inadequate attention to one of the most urgent conflicts in the world is about to be made right tomorrow by a little flesh pressing in Annapolis, and it won't do a thing.

While Mr. Bush's cool detachment may seem like another typical example of the Bush administrations unwillingness to confront and deal with the real problems of the world, the legacy of U.S. policy in the region has not been much better. There has been a consistent unwillingness to address the real issues in the region for years now, for reasons having to do with the special U.S.-Israeli relationship. The U.S. prefers Israel over Israeli security (more on that below) and especially over the Palestinians. But the Israel that the U.S. prefers has been downright disgraceful in dealing with the historical inheritors of the land their state is set upon.

Here are the facts. Israel has been unlawfully colonizing the occupied territories since 1967, all in violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions and numerous U.N. resolutions. Israel is holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners, some held without charge, many convicted in unlawful courts (see here). These prisons have been lambasted by human rights organizations the world over. Israel has created a virtual prison of Gaza, and has been unlawfully controlling the flow of people and goods throughout the occupied territories with roadblocks and checkpoints. Israel is building an illegal (recognized as illegal by both international and Israeli courts) wall under the pretenses of security. The wall is in fact a deliberate attempt to cut through Palestinian territory, thereby creating a situation where once contiguous land claims are balkanized, making it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. Countlessly more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli's than the other way around. The Israeli army has tanks and gunships, the palestinians have crude rockets, rocks, and bombs. In The Battle of Algiers, a leader of the FLN (a group fighting for Algerian independence), Mr. Ben M'Hidi, is asked by a reporter at a press conference whether it is cowardly to kill civilians with bombs hidden in baskets. Mr. Ben M'Hidi reminds the reporter of French atrocities against Algerians, and then replies that "of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.” That response is directly analogous to the situation in Palestine.

All of this is according to plan for the historically hawkish Israeli government, who have consistently chosen, with tacit U.S. support, as Noam Chomsky puts it, "expansion over security". The Israeli government is one of the largest recipients of U.S. aid, mostly military, of any country in the world. The U.S. has leverage but the policy has been to not even talk about using it.

There is little hope for the situation to get equitable with a new president, be he/she democrat or republican. The one foreign policy point that every single major candidate agrees on is that Israel ought to be supported, right or wrong.

To convince the public of the validity of such unequivocal support of Israel, most politicians, as well as media outlets, are incredibly good at shifting the debate onto pro-Israel terms. Instead of a dialog based on the presupposition that Israel must adhere to U.N. resolutions 242 - which demands an Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied during the six day war in 1967 - as well as all other U.N. resolutions, the debate is based upon vague demands such as Palestinians must renounce violence and except Israel as a "Jewish state". That sort of debate is what I will call a Security First debate. Nancy Pelosi - liberal democrat, San Francisco - as well as most American politicians, is a firm believer in "security first," a presupposition that is not only fairly impossible to gauge if it has been met, but also one which can shift, change, morph, at the whims of the one defining what "security" means. In other words it's just diplomatic claptrap meant to stall any real peace agreement that might put an end to the suffering felt by the Palestinians.

This brings us back to where we started, with Bush finally getting around to bringing peace upon the Middle East after his Iraq expedition got all fucked up. What Condoleezza is proposing is nothing new. The U.S. still refuses to use leverage to get Israel to meet Palestinians on fair terms. What it seems this will turn into is just one more piece of evidence for the Security Firsters. I can here it now: Israel tried its best to create peace. They came all the way from the Middle East to work things out but the ungrateful Palestinian delegation is just unable to deliver on Israel's modest preconditions for peace talks. All Israel demands is that Abbas makes sure that angry Palestinians won't hurt Israel as it continues to flaunt every U.N. resolution on the books as well as the Geneva Conventions.

I fear it won't be long before presidents give up on the pretenses of trying to bring peace to the Middle East, and instead just bow out early so they can spend more time sprucing up their legacy filled presidential libraries.

Is This Funny?

Mitt Romney has put together a campaign video summing up the vapid and dishonest nature of the Republican party as a whole. Enjoy!

Kindle Me Not

Amazon.com just released a new e-book reader called the Kindle. The name seems to try and invoke emotions of warmth and coziness, but don't let that disarm suspicion. It is a device more tethered to Amazon than any iPod is to Apple, and I don't think that is a good thing.

An electronic e-book reader is a great idea in many ways. Firstly it does not require paper, a good thing for the environment, especially if this little plastic device can last longer than an iPod. Secondly, it could rekindle the flagging newspaper business, offering a new revenue outlet for the struggling newsmen by jiving with the tech savvy sensibilities of the 21st century crowd. Lastly, from what I can tell, the Kindle is damn convenient. It is completely wireless, allowing you to browse the amazon bookstore wherever you are and download a book, magazine, or blog for a reasonable price in about a minute. 

There is a downside to the modern book. People used to go to the theatre, now they sit alone in a home theatre. Music used to be exclusively heard in a social space, now we are walled in by tiny white earbuds. Reading used to involve going to bookstores to touch and feel your way towards your next read. A book used to be shareable; it could be borrowed by friends and enjoyed alike. 

The Kindle is mediated by Amazon.com. The books are proprietary and fleetingly digital. Call me a luddite, but I am somewhat uncomfortable with the specter of Amazons new product. The most unnerving thing about it is its insularity. By being exclusively chained to Amazon to do anything, a Kindle owner is forced to surrender to the will of Amazon, unless he/she would like to see their $400 device sit lifeless. I know there is nothing sinister going on here, Amazon just wants to make money. But do we really want to find ourselves once again as the cash cow, especially when we have no other choice but to buy from one company?

The next part is a rant: 

The Kindle is just one more example of how those who wish to make a buck have successfully gained the upper hand in the battle for our minds. Ok, sure, that sounds a little hyperbolic, but hear me out. 

We are at a point in human history where it has become both exceedingly easy and very difficult to make people internalize ideas, values, and beliefs. At the same time we have both a plethora of information and resources to educate ourselves with as well as giant institutions that work every day to have us think and behave in certain ways so that we will consume their merchandise. A survey of society would probably tell us that the institutions are winning. They win by consolidating what we experience. The mass media has successfully done this. 

The book is one of the last holdouts in this push towards consolidation. Sure, there are retailers like Wal-Mart that have done a great job controlling what books their customers may buy or see. When Wal-Mart is the only store in your community then you have been successfully monopolized and your thoughts and actions are well on their way to being consolidated for profit. But by and large the book is still a free thing. Free to be loaned and borrowed, free to be found or discarded. Amazon is seeking to change this, not with malevolent intentions, but, as I said before, to make money. 

I am not sure how this will turn out. Eventually the e-book will be a reality; it is only a matter of time. The question is how that will happen. Will our reading be mediated, or will we have free reign? Time will tell, but for now I am staying away from the Kindle. 

Fashion Statement

This article is by John Feefer from Foreign Policy in Focus. Worth a read:

If you're going to throw rocks at the government, you'd better dress up for the occasion. That's the take-away point from the media coverage of the protests in Pakistan. Splashed across the front page of newspapers last week was a picture of a Pakistani lawyer in a suit launching a projectile at the police. The photo editors couldn't resist showcasing such a delicious juxtaposition of law and disorder.

The coverage in The Washington Post was particularly revealing, though not in the ways intended. In his attempt to deconstruct the image of the lawyer-protestor, for instance, Philip Kennicott succeeded only in displaying his own class prejudices. "Men in suits don't throw things," he writes. "If they confront police, they do it politely, in letters, in words spoken softly, reasonably, between reasonable men."

Excuse me? Men in suits throw things all the time. The suits in the U.S. government, for instance, throw bombs at other countries. But alas, we have no pictures of these government officials breaking laws by signing orders to wage war, promote regime change, or stoke revolution. The truth is, men in suits are just as unreasonable, impolite, and confrontational as your average anti-war protestor—or more so. They simply don't do it in the streets.

The anti-war and anti-globalization movements should take note. Forget pink. Forget Bread and Puppet. Forget peace signs, catchy slogans, Zapatista ski masks, and sensible protest wear. If we want to get media coverage and strike fear in the heart of Washington, we should come out for the next demonstration, all 500,000 of us, in our best interview suits

Oh Nancy...

A few weeks ago I sent Nancy Pelosi an email regarding her position on upcoming rule changes by the FCC in favor of further media consolidation. I am a constituent of hers, so I am to get special treatment you know. Sure enough on her website it says that she only has to respond to constituents. So I dutifully put my name, address, zip code, and phone number into the appropriate boxes and then wrote out my question. The first three quarters of my email was very nice. The last part not so much. But that is beside the point. What I wanted to know was about her position on FCC rule changes, and so I sent off my email, and waited for a response. And waited. And waited. 

Finally today I got a response; about three weeks after I sent it. Late is better than never I guess. What isn't better than never though is the email I got from Nancy. You'll remember I asked about FCC Rule Changes. Here was the answer to my question: "Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns regarding global warming". 

I hope this flub isn't symptomatic of deeper problems in the Nancy office. 

Maybe the answer to my question got lost in the (e)mail. Oh well. 

Colin Powell, where are you?

This is not to say I want you back Colin. I just want to know where you are, that's all.
It's been about three years since Colin (the reluctant cheerleader was probably his nickname inside the White House) left the corridors of power and returned to civilian life. His career in government, to me, can be characterized as sad. He championed a doctrine - a whole doctrine - bearing his name which was subsequently ignored by the Bush administration while he was in office. If that isn't sad I don't know what is. He also was made into the publicity puppet for the neocons, putting his credibility on the line to present "bullshit" - allegedly Colin's words to describe the script detailing Iraq's WMD's (see here) - to the U.N. Not so much sad as pathetic. After Bush won reelection in 2004 with a "mandate" to rule as he saw fit, he swept Colin out the door, replacing him with the more docile Condoleezza Rice.
After that Colin really went off the radar. He popped up in 2005 to timidly, and in secret telephone conversations, cast concern on Mr. Bush's U.N.-hating U.N. ambassador pick, John R. Bolton. He also "talk[ed] about foreign policy matters and military matters" with Barack Obama. Missing are any tell-all expositions of what went wrong in the lead-up to war in Iraq. I guess the guy's too busy giving interviews with GQ magazine and becoming a "limited" partner at the venture capital firm KPCB. He's actually a "strategic limited partner" so I guess he is only employed strategically (I thought that was funny). Oh, and I forgot one more thing: he's also busy appearing with Joe Montana at a tacky - and I mean tacky, check it out here - motivational speaker seminar where you can "send your entire office for only $19".
All I've got to say is that if you are reading this Colin I would really like to get you a speaking engagement on national television - we can call it motivational if you'd like - where you come out and tell the American people that you are sorry for not standing up and stopping the lies that have cost the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands, if not over a million, Iraqis.

Giant Volcano Unusually Active

"The Independent" reports that a recent study has found that the caldera under Yellowstone National Park is rising at around three inches a year. The implications of this are not totally clear, but what is a little nerve-racking is the fact that this volcano underneath Yellowstone is one of the largest extant volcanos on earth. It being very active is kind of worrying. The last major eruption was 640,000 years ago so the chances of it erupting within our lifetime are pretty slim. But scientists seem to think that this mega-volcano erupts in 640,000 year cycles - what a coincidence - which means that we are due for another world shaking eruption about now. Keep your eyes open for an explosion 2,500 times greater than that of Mt. St. Helens in 1980.

No End in Sight

The documentary No End in Sight by Charles Ferguson will leave you unspeakably angry. It will show you how the United States destroyed a country, destroying the lives of 30 million people. It will also show you a few individuals who knew about, and to varying degrees, participated in the catastrophe, and yet did not say a thing, did not speak up, did not condemn this administration for gross incompetence and war crimes without the prodding of journalists and filmmakers like Mr. Ferguson. 

It will leave you with questions: Why has there been tepid to nonexistent investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the Iraq atrocity? This film is a veritable line-item indictment and yet Ms. Pelosi has taken impeachment "off the table." It will leave you convinced that something is wrong with our federal bureaucracy when the civil service is staffed by pathetic yes men who are incapable of speaking truth to power or even informing the American citizens who pay their salaries. Where were these guys during the 2004 election? They knew what was going on, why didn't they say anything? 

This is not a documentary that lets you know how you can get involved to help. This begs the question of whether anything can be done. Those in Washington have their own agenda, even the ones who say that their constituents agenda and their own is one and the same. They will continue funding the war while they emphatically emphasize to the news media that they are doing all they can to both support the troops and bring them home, while doing neither. And lost in all of this political showmanship are the Iraqis. When it comes down to it, the Iraqis are just contingencies, barely statistics, and never worth more then an eightieth of an American casualty. 

I am sad and I am angry. Justice being served on those responsible for the Iraqi catastrophe is all that is left to infinitesimally soothe the destruction and pain they have caused. If Nancy Pelosi can not give us even that then we cannot support her. We cannot support her and we must do all we can to show her that we will not support her until she at least tries to administer justice. Anything less, like sending an impeachment bill to committee so it wouldn't come to a vote, is an insult to her constituents, to the country, and to the millions of Iraqis who are casualties of this imposed war. 

China and the Euro

The dollar has been declining steadily in recent months. A declining dollar is a sign that the world markets sense problems in the U.S. economy. These problems, rather then being fleeting, are far from over and are more then likely to get worse. That is why the dollar is trading at all time lows. More worrying though is a recent comment by Cheng Siwei, vice chairmen of China's National Peoples Congress, that China might consider switching from the dollar as their reserve currency to stronger currencies like the Euro. At the moment, China's trade with the outside world is conducted in dollars, so if someone wants to buy Chinese products they more often than not must have dollars in hand. In this way China has been sucking up dollars and placing them as reserves in their national banks as a backing for the Chinese Yuan and a bulwark against a currency crisis. But with the U.S. economy teetering, the greenback is looking pretty insecure and so China is considering a switch. 

What does this mean for China? If China were to sell off dollars the dollar would fall even further, hurting the remaining Chinese reserve dollars in the process. But, as the economist Dean Baker pointed out on his website, the Chinese main reason for buying dollars in the first place was to stimulate trade with the U.S. If they can keep their economy chugging - and because of their state run set up they have more leverage to do this- and selling their goods to Europe in the process, their state run banks might loose out in the short-term, but they might not even care so long as everything else is going smoothly. As Dean Baker also points out, another big incentive for China to switch to a stronger currency is to stem inflation caused by a white-hot economy growing at 11% a-year. 

But a major sell-off of U.S. dollars poses a significant problem for the U.S., a country increasingly in debt and reliant on foreign energy. A falling dollar means less oil, and less ability to pay off debt - and sell debt. Conversely, a weak dollar could help stimulate manufacturing, only, of course, if the economy as a whole does not take a real dive. In such a scenario even the most feeble dollar would have a hard time bringing U.S. manufacturing back to life. 

The British ran into a problem quite similar to this back in 1839. China only excepted silver for all trade, limiting Britain's ability to trade British goods for the coveted items produced in China. Britain eventual found an addictive product produced in excess in their Indian colonies which they forced upon the Chinese. The product was opium. Opium is illegal today, but maybe the U.S. might be able to trade Zoloft for a holiday shipment of Tickle Me Elmo's and Celebrex for some Hot Wheels. We're going to need to think of something soon before Santa begins accepting Euros exclusively. €:)

The Story That Got Away

Costa Rica is a small country. In many ways us not hearing about it often can be seen as a sign that things are going relatively well. But every once in a while things happens in even the most obscure countries that are at least marginally newsworthy. Costa Rica just went through a trying fight over their economic future concerning the CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) trade deal and we heard hardly a peep from the mainstream media. Whereas other Central American countries approved CAFTA without the direct input of the populace, Costa Rican's demanded to be consulted and so it was put to the voters as a referendum. What could have been a secret deal turned instead into a divisive struggle, pitting business interests, the government, and the U.S. against labor, with a majority of people left trying to figure out what the possible outcome of either a Yes or No vote would be. This was a struggle for the soul of a country, not just any country but a country where many Americans have visited as eco-tourists or aspiring Spanish speakers. 

All of this conflict and turmoil should seem to have piqued the journalistic appetite of at least one major newspaper editor, but unfortunately this story, like many others before it, fell through the cracks. Here is an example of what the illustrious New York Times ran after it became clear that CAFTA had won by the slimmest of margins:

 Yeah, that's it. When the San Francisco Chronicle ran something about as small on page Z16 I noticed and went looking for more information. What I found was another sordid tale of U.S. bullying, business saber rattling, and a confused and angry general population. Elsa Arismendi wrote a very interesting article for Foreign Policy in Focus titled, "Fear and Voting in Costa Rica" (you can read the article here). To summarize, Elsa found that the the coalitions opposing CAFTA were strong but the coalitions that held the means of production were, as always, stronger. Shameless scare tactics, including a message from President Bush himself, were used to frighten the populace into voting Si. In the end CAFTA passed by around 51.6% of the vote, although a few have called foul. 

Is this the beginning of a dismantling of the public institutions and safety nets in one of the few functioning democracies in Central America? Only time will tell. What is crystal-clear right now is that we've better get glasses, because all the important stories seem to be small. 

Guantanamo

A recent article on Al-Jazeera got me thinking about the forgotten prison in Cuba. Al-Jazeera reports that one of their cameramen, Sami al-Hajj, is near death at Guantanamo Bay. Al-Hajj was picked up by Pakistani authorities in 2001 crossing into Afghanistan and subsequently charged as an "enemy combatant" by the U.S. military and transfered to Guantanamo. As with most detainees, the evidence against this foreign reporter is extremely weak, made plain by the fact that he has still not been formally charged with anything, six years after being taken prisoner. For 247 days he has been on hunger strike in protest of his continued unlawful detention and mistreatment.During the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan many Afghanis were taken captive by the invaders. Some were fighting the Soviet invaders in the same way that insurgents today are fighting the American invaders. Others were simply caught up in the chaos and forced into brutal detention centers with little hope of ever going back to their families. They were held there without charge. But these were totalitarian Soviets holding them, a country lacking the norms of justice and human rights that western democracies took for granted. From the Soviets perspective, they were in Afghanistan to keep the order during a tumultuous period. They wanted nothing more then to create a thriving and functioning, albeit communist, state on their southern border. These "terrorists" were obstacles that had to be overcome. And then there were all the technicalities: If, in all the chaos that marked the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, a few innocents were taken prisoner, tortured and humiliated to determine their status, and then finally found to be innocent, what was to be done? Should the Soviets formally apologize and then release the prisoners back to their families so that they can spread the details of the horrors they experienced while imprisoned? No no, that would not do. So instead the innocents were just placed in legal limbo and indefinitely imprisoned, unable to see the evidence against them, unable to be even charged with a crime, but completely capable of being routinely humiliated and tortured.
Sound familiar? It does to me as well. It seems that perhaps the biggest reason why many of these prisoners in Guantanamo as well as in the sprawling Iraqi prisons administered by Americans - 60,000 prisoners and counting - are not released, even when all evidence against them is lacking, is that it would be: 1. A fucking embarrassment 2. A catalyst creating more anti-American sentiment 3. An acknowledgment of blatant war crimes.
As Americans we are, unfortunately, all culpable for what has happened here. It is completely unacceptable and it needs to stop. The problem is that as long as American citizens - and presidents and presidential candidates - are not bright enough to realize the implications, then we will continue to violate international law, leaving us with no moral superiority and little pity when we get our comeuppance.