Rational Manifesto

Springsteen's "Wrecking Ball" and the Plague of the 99%

2013-01-15T14:31:00.001-05:00

Originally published in Monthly Review

On his most recent album, Wrecking Ball, Bruce Springsteen crafted a powerful statement of support for the working class, the existence of which barely penetrates contemporary art or politics. This is not an accident: the growing power of capital over public discourse has provided it a forceful means through which to shape individual consciousness, and establish an apolitical and at most technocratic understanding of power. Those at the top, we are led to believe, are there because of their technical skills and have risen by meritocratic means—the vast gulfs created by inequalities in wealth, power, and privilege are ignored. In fact, gigantic corporations—controlled by the 1% (or by the 0.1%)—dominate all forms of production. Even in the cultural realm, the art and voices of the working class are sidelined and squelched. Working people thus become invisible. As Occupy has helped make clear, the 99%, though divided in all kinds of ways, share the collective disappointment of being ruledby others, as opposed to ruling themselves;of constantly producing and reproducing the bases of wealth and power at the top of society, rather than fulfilling their own developmental potential…. Power over surplus distribution—and thus nearly everything else—is left to an unelected ownership class. The overwhelming majority of the population is unable to locate itself in the “democratic consensus” or the dominant culture.

In our ad-driven consumer age, it is a monumental struggle to encourage sympathy and solidarity by bringing the stories and views of working people to a mass audience. Indeed, one of the greatest successes of the Occupy movement has been to force the idea into the national discourse that the working class exists as such (we are the 99%), a notion that is usually reserved for the radical fringe. On Wrecking Ball, Springsteen channels and supports the proletarian discourse of the 99%, which overcomes post-political, technocratic ideology and constructs a world sharply divided between exploited and exploiters. He crosses over from his earlier lament for a fallen America and the unfulfilled promise of the American dream to rage at the “robber barons” who “ate the flesh off everything they’ve found” and “whose crimes have gone unpunished,” calling on workers to stand united in seeking social justice. In telling the seldom-heard stories of working people and subjectivizing them as victims of the violence of capital, Wrecking Ball represents an important salvo in the cultural struggle, providing justification for and encouraging solidarity with the cause of the 99%.

In its review of the album, the popular music website Pitchfork chides Springsteen for “rail[ing] against those up on ‘Banker’s Hill’ in the sort of black-and-white terms that continue to plague and cleave his home country.” In suggesting that those who have united as “the 99%” are merely troublemakers, and that Occupy is actually a “plague” on society, Pitchfork—regarded as a hip and liberal publication in the hegemonic discourse—paradoxically adopts a position that would make Newt Gingrich blush. How is this possible? In fact, the Pitchforkreview can be taken as a model to demonstrate the shortcomings of the so-called “hipster” current. This social current, of which Pitchfork is the ultimate expression, is the embodiment of postmodern skepticism and relativism. Artistically, it is concerned solely with exhibiting middle-class angst, while it presents liberation as the styling of an individualized consumerism and pornographic self-expression. Any transformational social project, or genuine contact with the working class, is seen as anachronistic and totalitarian. As Arcade Firedescribed on their 2010 album The Suburbs, what appears as progressive experimentation and “liberation” is really Rococo—trivial but elaborate ornamentation that amounts to little more than an indication of privilege and isolation, like the elaborate dress of the court of Louis XVI.

Naturally, this ideology—which emphasizes consumerism and the liberation of the market while discouraging social and political engagement—poses no threat whatsoever to structures of power and domination, and is therefore ubiquitous. It has served to mask and even defend the marginalization of working-class art while concealing the domination of the cultural terrain by the forces of capital, under the guise of liberation and freedom. As Arcade Fireput it, “they seem wild, but they are so tame.” With Wrecking Ball, Springsteen has produced a record of startling beauty, that unambiguously proclaims solidarity with the 99% and reaffirms the possibility of a better world. It is a powerful statement in support of the Occupiers’ struggle against a ruling class that is waging unmitigated war against workers and the poor. The force of this statement, and the nature of Pitchfork’s response, help to reveal the class bias concealed behind postmodern “common sense” and hipster skepticism.

The Plague of Class Society

Pitchfork’s review seems to advance the peculiar suggestion that class conflict is caused by the troublemaking of workers. This assertion is deeply anti-democratic, disdainful of the poor and working class, and ignorant of history—not to mention current events. The only way that democracy can be practiced in a society divided by its economic system into classes is through the popular organization and activism of the systemically disempowered—the 99%. In the absence of such mobilization, the desires and interests of those empowered by the system—the 1%—have been pursued almost unopposed, as reflected in the platforms of both the corporate-owned political parties. The bipartisan consensus around “free trade” and deregulation has led to the implementation of measures permitting our rulers to endlessly enrich and empower themselves, while reducing their obligations to the rest of society. The vast and growing disparity in power and wealth that has resulted has contributed to the dangerous weakening of already limited democratic institutions, constraining the ability of people to defend the victories of the past.

It is worth noting the level of abstraction at which the review operates: aside from distant allusions to Occupy as a divisive plague (to which the album contributes), history is noticeable only in its absence. In a review of an album dealing almost entirely with working-class issues at an absolutely critical historical juncture, the Pitchfork reviewer makes no note of the radical, bipartisan attack on working people (and their organizations and communities) underway across the country, intensifying in recent years. That the reviewer did not even consider such issues relevant to his critique indicates the degree to which the working class has been rendered invisible, and explains the vital importance of forcing working-class voices into the public arena. With capital’s increasing dominance over cultural production, the appearance of the working class in the world has likewise diminished, its voice silenced. As shown by the Occupy slogan “we are the 99%,” in the current hegemonic ideological constellation, even proclaiming the existence of a single working class is a subversive act. If the historical moment that gave birth to the record were clarified, the meaning of the record as a contribution to a struggle for justice and freedom would be plain.

In the wake of the economic crisis, millions of Americans have been thrown out of their homes and left with nothing, while the banks evicting them are provided with trillions in tax dollars. Across the United States, unions are being attacked and dismantled, and hard-fought gains in living standards and political rights rolled back. The recent “right-to-work” (for less) offensive, direct attacks on public sector unions in Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and elsewhere, and the revelation of the activities of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—a national anti-labor organization in which corporate lawyers hand legislation to the “representatives of the people” to propose in legislative bodies across the country—are only the most recent examples of this battle.

This ruling-class offensive has been justified by deflecting blame for the economic crisis from Wall Street financiers on to working people. In the wake of the 2008 economic catastrophe, a myth was fabricated by the bankers and elite corporate managers. The crisis, they argued, had nothing to do with the immense risk that had accumulated within the financial system, responsibility for which lay with the laissez-faire, deregulatory attitude of the post-Reagan era and the ensuing bonanza on Wall Street. Rather, according to this myth narrative, the causes of the crisis were the remnants of working-class organizations and excessive state spending, which provoked a “debt crisis.” And since, as usual, any reduction in military spending is off the table (with the exception of a few symbolic gestures and accompanying histrionics from the “defense” establishment) these cuts must come from our already pathetic social safety net—which is the laughing stock of the industrial world.

Of course, according to this ruling-class mythology, the crisis has even less to do with stagnating real wage rates over the past thirty years, despite the fact that the average American has worked more hours with dramatically greater rates of productivity. That is, even as Americans produce more—through both working longer hours and greater productivity—their wages stagnate and decline. This means that every penny of this additional wealth has gone into the pockets of the corporate and financial elite, even as they cry poverty and insist that there “just isn’t enough money” to pay for public schools, medicine for the old and sick, and houses for the homeless. Unable to work any more hours, and with real wages stagnant, workers were forced to take on debt to maintain standards of living, which also kept up aggregate demand in the economy.

With workers now unable to carry any more debt and the economy stagnating, the ruling class proposes to turn the screws still further on working people. With its mythology parroted by politicians and the media across the country, the ruling class now imposes its “solution”: cruel austerity measures, which will further damage the economy and needlessly punish workers and their families. The term austerity itself is misleading: this austerity for workers and the poor has meant super-profits and mega-bonuses for the rich. Springsteen presents these contradictions when he sings, “banker man grows fat, working man grows thin / it’s all happened before, it’ll happen again.” There is certainly a “plague” at work here, but not the one Pitchfork envisions. It is the plague of the dictatorship over society by an elite few, who systematically exploit the rest of society.

Wrecking Ball

From beginning to end, Wrecking Ball furiously tears these myths to shreds, while incorporating a surprising array of influences, each linked with the American experience, and weaving them into a brilliant and contemporary pastiche. Attempting, as always, to create anAmerican music (perhaps this time more successfully than ever), Springsteen incorporates gospel, the blues, early rock, modern rock, Irish folk, African rhythms and choruses, country and western, contemporary pop, New Orleans jazz and funk, American folk music, and a seemingly endless array of other textures and flavors in order to create a seamless whole. Though Pitchfork insists that this is really all just an attempt to “cover up some of the album’s lackluster songwriting,” the writing is worthy of comparison with the compositions of America’s finest working-class troubadours (with whom the writers at Pitchfork are no doubt unfamiliar).

The first half of the record, derided by Pitchfork as a “misguided” if “noble gesture,” is a fiery denunciation of the wealthy and powerful from the point of view of those who mow the lawns, pull the leaves out of the drains, repair the roofs, harvest the crops, fix the cars, and who were left behind to die as the levees broke in New Orleans. Springsteen captures these voices and presents these experiences in the song “Jack of All Trades.” By narrating American life from the point of view of the oppressed, exploited, and neglected, Springsteen gives the working class the voice that it is denied in dominant culture. As he sings on “Shackled and Drawn”:

gambling man rolls the dice, working man pays the bills
it’s still fat and easy up on Banker’s Hill
up on Banker’s Hill the party’s goin’ strong
down here below we’re shackled and drawn.

It would be hard to find a more succinct way to summarize the principles that have animated economic developments in the wake of the financial crisis than these few lines.

The opening song, “We Take Care of Our Own,” points out the bitter class and racial divisions in the United States with biting irony. Do we take care of our own? And who are “we”? The patriotic elite are always urging us to unite around the flag in support of another foreign intervention, yet they have abandoned working people to a grim fate. While the revolving door between big finance and politics has ensured that the 1% has taken care of its own, the disgusting neglect for the poor of New Orleans—who were literally left to die—stands out in history as a shocking disgrace. But it is also clear from the song that Springsteen is not merely addressing an isolated, tragic phenomenon in New Orleans. Rather, those in need all across the country have simply been abandoned by the ruling class, left without homes, medicine, education, and food:

from Chicago to New Orleans
from the muscle to the bone
from the shotgun shack to the Superdome
there ain’t no help, the calvary stayed home
ain’t no one hearing the bugle blowin’
we take care of our own
wherever this flag is flown.

The pro-immigrant rights message of “American Land” further deepens this question: If “we” refers to Americans, then what about the large number of Americans who were not born here? “The hands that build the country / we’re always trying to keep out,” he sings.

On “Death to My Hometown,” an incredible composition embracing Irish folk music, American gospel, African rhythms and choruses, and contemporary rock and pop, Springsteen declares war on the “greedy thieves” who “brought death to our hometown.” Though there was no overt war—no bombs fell, no armies invaded, and no shots were fired—“just as sure as the hand of God / they brought death to our hometown” and then left us out to rot:

They destroyed our families, factories,
and they took our homes
They left our bodies on the plains
The vultures picked our bones.

The song then reaches its rousing climax to the sound of a shotgun blast. Similarly, the somber, doubtful consolation the narrator of “Jack of All Trades” provides his beloved masks homicidal fury at the injustice of his situation, which explodes in the song’s final verses: “If I had me a gun,” he groans, “I’d find the bastards and shoot ‘em on sight.”

On songs like “Death to My Hometown,” the object is militant organization to “send the robber barons straight to hell.” But Wrecking Ball is not merely a rabid attack against bankers. Even the narrator of “Jack of All Trades,” despite his homicidal impulses, affirms that “there’s a new world comin’ / I can see the light.” Where Springsteen once shied away from the darkness on the edge of town, here he locates there the possibility for something better, which is largely the focus of much of the album’s latter half. Not surprisingly, Pitchfork views the second half as “something of a rescue mission,” but wildly misinterprets Springsteen’s central point. “Why spew anger when exultance is in your grasp?” asks Pitchfork—in other words, ignore the darkness altogether and focus myopically on the light.

The religious imagery on the second half of the record could lead one to conclude that the liberation and peace Springsteen describes can only be achieved in heaven. But it should be read, rather, as a reaffirmation of the utopian project—the realization of a better world on the other side of the wrecking ball of capitalist crisis. On “Land of Hope and Dreams,” we discover the sheer beauty of total liberation in a world in which “dreams will not be thwarted” and “faith will be rewarded.” After “forty days and nights of rain have washed this land,” “a new day’s comin’,” Springsteen sings on “Rocky Ground,” but in the future paradise “Jesus said money-changers in this temple will not stand.” Throughout the album, Springsteen deliberately plays on this ambiguity between a heaven on earth and the realization of a divine afterlife.

“We Are Alive” presents a view of eternity definitely out of sync with the Christian notion of the afterlife. Referred to by Pitchfork as a “dry history lesson,” the song reminds us that those who dedicate their lives to change live on in their victories, reaching out from the grave to stand with us today and continue the fight:

we are alive
and though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
our souls and spirits rise
to carry the flame and light the spark
to fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.

We hear the voice of a man who was killed in the Great Railroad Strike in 1877, which lasted for forty-five days and spread to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Missouri before being brutally suppressed by the U.S. military. The voices of many other people are heard: one was killed in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights movement, and another describes trying to cross the U.S. border from Mexico. “Tonight all the dead are here,” Springsteen sings on “Wrecking Ball.”

Far from being “divisive,” Springsteen unites these seemingly disparate struggles, illustrating the universality of the emancipatory movement to which he aspires. This inclusiveness is mirrored in the incredible range of influences he exhibits on the album, which could be seen as the musical expression of the unifying discourse of “the 99%.” It is here that the greatness of Wrecking Ball lies, and it is what makes Pitchfork’stake on the second half of the record particularly troubling. The reviewer sees a music that “welcomes all Americans regardless of class, race, creed,” and expresses the wish that the rest of album could be equally “ambiguous.” But what he misses is that while Springsteen (like Occupy) welcomes everyone to what he sees as a universal struggle for justice, it is not Springsteen’s music that divides America into classes—capitalism does. Class difference is not merely articulated, but rather is ontologically prior to discourse. Rather than running away from this reality, Springsteen seeks to use his music as a way of overcoming it—not by constructing some ideal paradise to which we can escape, but by alerting us to the real injustices in the present preventing the realization of such noble ideals.

The Invisible Cage

George Orwell once remarked, “all art is propaganda.” Indeed, culture is the site of a giant battlefield, and music is a weapon deployed by both sides. Antonio Gramsci applied the notion of a “war of position” to the political struggle as well as to the terrain of culture. Rather than seeing culture as a self-identical and coherent whole, Gramsci saw it as a contradictory set of appropriations and deployments. From Gramsci’s point of view, hegemonic uses of culture—that is, cultural deployments articulated within the dominant order—unfold in accordance with a “logic of domination,” while counter-hegemonic practices move according to a “logic of resistance.” Thus in order to decode the meaning of a cultural activity, Gramsci argued, one must identify the political processes that work either to maintain or transform cultural patterns.

Today, the large-scale production of music is dominated by concentrated capital, much like the rest of the media in the United States. In their landmark work Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky documented the effects of private control over the media, and “free market” pressures, on news content. Their results were startlingly consistent: views outside of the elite consensus are marginalized and essentially silenced. But these tendencies—exacerbated alongside continuous deregulation and concentration—are also present in other areas of cultural production.

Here lies the moment of truth of the ideology of individual self-expression, to which everyone supposedly has an equal right: it is not what is said that matters so much as what is heard. As the ruling class accumulates wealth and power, its control over culture grows, increasingly reflecting bourgeois views of the world and its problems. Working-class art is marginalized and reduced in proportion with its spending power and political voice. What at first appeared as the freedom of all to express themselves equally becomes the means through which capital dominates our conceptions of the world, amplifying those voices it finds palatable and silencing those it does not. Che Guevara, in his “Man and Socialism” speech, perhaps best described the result: “Meaningless anguish or vulgar amusement…become convenient safety valves for human anxiety. The idea of using art as a weapon of protest is combated. Those who play by the rules of the game are showered with honors—such honors as a monkey might get for performing pirouettes. The condition is that one does not try to escape from the invisible cage.”

Music critics are key components of this cage. Employed by the same giant corporations which not just produce the albums but own the radio stations and concert venues, their job is not to conduct a serious analysis of the social-historical meaning of a given artistic development, but rather to sell advertisements in their magazines. Since serious, critical social analysis is prohibited, these critics are forced to consider music solely in the abstract, without taking into consideration its real historical foundation. As such, they become champions of Rococo (the obsession with “meaningless anguish or vulgar amusement”), a key characteristic of the “modern man” so brilliantly lampooned by Arcade Fire. The critical skepticism of Pitchforkand those of like mind is thus merely a mask for the unrestrained domination of culture by capital. Rather than urging that cultural elements and apparatuses be appropriated as conduits for the voices of working people, and art used as a way of protesting injustice, the working class, they suggest, would do best to keep its filthy hands out.

The point of Springsteen’s work has always been the exact opposite: to bring the plight of the forgotten into public consciousness. He sketches the exact contours of the “invisible cage,” rendering it visible. Exploring Springsteen’s most brilliant canvases can be a wrenching experience, awakening the listener to the emptiness and despair swept under the carpet of the American dream. Even the positivity of his most exuberant songs (“Thunder Road”) is driven by the extreme fragility of the possibility of escape from a dark and disappointing world to a vaguely conceived promised land. As he put it in a recent interview, “my work has always been about measuring the distance between the American reality and the American dream.” In Springsteen’s art, this distance manifests itself as a tension between content and form, meaning and aesthetic. Aesthetically, the foundation of much of Springsteen’s music is the early rock-and-roll of artists like Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. But clearly, Springsteen’s music is not just a kitschy throwback to the golden age of rock. Rather, its originality and power reside in his application of this pure form, the saccharine sound of the American dream, to the harsh realities of working-class life. This is the counter-hegemonic gesture par excellence: Springsteen appropriates and turns to the ends of the working-class forces alien to it, redeploying these elements in accordance with a logic of resistance.

This tension between content and form is a sonic representation of class struggle, the very sound of the hollowness of ruling-class idols. Far from the heroic and liberating depiction of the automobile that was as ubiquitous in the early rock songs as it is prominent in American dream ideology, to Springsteen, cars are objects of tragedy. They illustrate the paradox of capitalist “liberation”: one can drive as fast or as far as one wants, but it is impossible that the destination will be a “new life” or a “new world.” The promise of the automobile, such a central part of American dream ideology, is empty. Just as abstract ideals of democracy and equality are circumscribed in their concrete application in a class society, Springsteen lays the technicolor world of the town green beside the unthinkable, barely concealed darkness on its outskirts.

The Occupy movement demands that we stare into that darkness and imagine another world that might be constructed there. “Wrecking Ball,” the song from which the record takes its name, is a moving testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit, that infinite element that surpasses any given situation. This is the place from which all resistance—and reconstruction—must come. A wrecking ball destroys, but it also creates, and the wreckage it leaves behind must contain the tattered germ from which the future will blossom. Even the U.S. military, a white lynch mob, and the guns of the U.S. Border Patrol cannot prevent those who have gone before from joining us today. With them at our side, we must pick up the pieces and join the fight for a new world. And in so doing, we will stand with them in eternity.

Returning to the Cave: Dialectic and the State in Plato and Aristotle

2012-10-21T22:35:00.002-04:00

In The Republic, Plato condemns Socrates for, after having attained a privileged knowledge of the forms, not returning the cave where the slavish masses were chained to the bowels of the earth, toiling in the illusion that mere shadows on a cave wall constituted the full extent of reality and being. For Plato, philosophy could not remain aloof in the face of the decline of the polis, as long-held traditions and values were beginning to be transformed by powerful new socio-economic forces (merchant capital, commodity production and exchange, growing synonymy between money and power). Plato insisted that philosophy must dirty its hands with politics to rejuvenate the aristocracy, decoupling political power from money and property and returning it to its previously sound footing in virtue, wisdom, and familial blood ties. The quintessential Platonic gesture, “turning away” from the world of change and becoming and gazing instead toward the deeper and more meaningful realm of being, is directly linked to this crisis. For where should the philosopher look to discover the Good in a world of generalized impiety and decadence, in which all commonly-held notions of virtue and justice are contaminated? In Plato, that world is renounced altogether, relegated to the status of mere “appearance,” and a transcendent realm of timeless, immortal truths, of pure abstraction and the Idea must intervene. Universal decay must be combated with a universality of unchanging perfection, a timeless realm of being beyond sense perception, and outside the unstable, corruptible world of flux.

This is why Plato breaks with the Socratic elenchus after Book II of The Republic. By arguing that all contemporary ethical beliefs are contaminated, Thrasymachus undermined that Socratic procedure itself—or, rather, revealed its inadequacy. For the elenchus is trapped within the world in which it is deployed: if that world is devoid of truth, then so too is the elenchus destined to come up empty-handed. It may show individual arguments to be baseless or contradictory, but it cannot become a positive assertion or declaration—precisely the operation Plato saw to be necessary. Socrates’ inability to adequately respond to Thrasymachus forces Plato to move from elenchus to dialectic in order to advance the positive theory that static truths pre-exist in a separate, intelligible place, from which they descend to the earthly world of appearances. Knowledge of this realm enables the trained philosophic mind to determine the character of artistic, political, or other goods. It is then the obligation of the philosopher to descend back into the darkness of the cave, and, rubbing his eyes, to seize state power and govern in accordance with the wisdom that renders him superior to the deluded masses. Though, like Socrates, the philosopher may balk at this imperative, the only thing worse is the alternative: to allow himself to be ruled by his inferior, and bear silent witness to the decline of society. Socrates refused to take up this responsibility, and was killed.

Whereas Plato’s absolute truth descends from the heavenly realm of the Forms, for Aristotle, truth issues from the dirt and grime of the sensory material world, from whose grubby matter it rises dialectically to universality and wholeness. Aristotle does not merely wish to show that existing beliefs are vacuous and contradictory, as Socrates did, nor does he turn away from them altogether by constructing a transcendent, absolute constancy as did Plato. In fact, Aristotle does not at all wish to discard common views. Quite the contrary: Aristotle’s dialectic is the process through which the truth contained in mundane facts and opinions is gradually elevated to attain ever-higher principles. To some extent, he has turned Plato’s idealist dialectic on its head.

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle attempts to harmonize as much of common opinion as possible into a coherent, holistic notion of eudemonia: the “Good Life” that constitutes the ends of all virtuous human activity. Through dialectical examination and critique of commonly held views, he negates what in them is false and preserves what is true, which is then raised up to the next level: thus he preserves, negates, and raises up simultaneously. He clearly describes his method in Chapter 1 of Book 7:

…we must set out the appearances, and first of all go through the puzzles. In this way we must prove the common beliefs… ideally, all the common beliefs, but if not all, most of them, and the most important. For if the objections are solved, and the common beliefs are left, it will be an adequate proof.[1]

In this way, he is able to “distinguish how far and in what ways [the arguments] on each side are true.”[2] Clearly, despite the language of “defense,” critique and negation are central components of Aristotle’s method. The false component of appearance is negated, and whatever can be preserved is raised up and incorporated in the higher principle, thus revealing the essence that governs the appearance. Like Marx or Hegel, Aristotle’s elimination of the transcendent is intended to liberate us through the discovery of the “laws of motion” of this world, which once understood can be re-arranged in accordance with correct knowledge of human beings and their happiness. This prevents him from appealing to a higher law or principle beyond the closed system of material reality, which means that Aristotle must fashion his result from the raw, unpolished stone of the sensory world and nothing else. Courageously, this includes apparently ceding ground to the sophists, those arch-nemeses of true philosophy. Since he cannot simply declare on the basis of timeless truths that the sophists are bad, he must analyze their arguments and incorporate their moment of truth within the higher principle. Thus Aristotle refuses to declare that all pleasure is wrong, soberly stating his fidelity to the truth. Pleasure, as he shows, has an important role to play in eudemonia.

As he quotes Hesiod, “No rumor is altogether lost which many peoples spread.”[3] But this cuts both ways: even in cases where an argument must be thrown out completely, it cannot be ignored. On the contrary, as Aristotle writes:

We must, however, not only state the true view, but also explain the false view; for an explanation of that promotes confidence. For when we have an apparently reasonable explanation of why a false view appears true, that makes us more confident of the true view.[4]

This is a critically important passage in which Aristotle clearly articulates one of the primary principles of his dialectic. What is false is not simply refuted and dismissed, but rather falsity must be grounded in an understanding of the broader interrelation of concepts. Once the basis of the false view is understood, and the reasons for its true appearance are explained, the false view itself has been preserved within the whole via its negation: through its very negation, it has been preserved and raised up. The similarities to Marx’s critique of political economy, or his critique in The German Ideology of Max Stirner’s radical egoist nominalism, among other works, are clear.

In the Ethics, Aristotle strives to construct the “excellent person” whose life would be the most complete embodiment of the Good. Aristotle begins by explaining that if there is to be a universal principle of Goodness, it must be derived from nothing other than the unity of the ends pursued in concrete human activity. This must be an end, he argues, that is unconditioned; one that is pursued in itself, without any higher determination, which he argues is eudemonia. Beginning at the most elementary concepts, he proceeds higher and higher until he arrives at what is unconditioned or absolute. He determines the nature of the virtues, and the human characteristics that are preconditions for acquiring or possessing them. Subsequently, he moves through the individual virtues of character, beginning with those of the body and building up to the more divine virtues of the soul, higher than those of the body since proper reason is necessary to accomplish the mean that constitutes any of the other virtues.

Here too lies an interesting illustration of the clash between Aristotle and Plato’s philosophic method: whereas Plato begins with ideas in their absolute and pure form, Aristotle gets through five books before rising to the level of thought. Then, within the category of thought, he proceeds from scientific knowledge (the bare empirical facts of the world), to craft knowledge (which is instrumentally concerned with production, not free action, and is not a virtue), to prudence (which is concerned with deliberation and action, and is a virtue), to understanding (which pertains to principles and universals). He then moves beyond these narrower individual traits to broader social goods, such as justice and friendship, before again returning to the particular social role of wisdom. As Aristotle says at the outset, the ultimate aim of ethical inquiry is to constitute political science, or the science of the polis, the total community whose eudemonia is the responsibility of the legislators. This science then addresses itself to the world in order to discover the ultimate ends toward which the community must devote its energies.

Aristotle’s project, however, ends in failure: the man who is apparently most virtuous, and most deserving of the honors of the polis—the “magnanimous man”—is inadequate to his calling as determined by the dialectic. The magnanimous man, we are told, possesses “greatness in each virtue” and is therefore “the best person,” and “worthy of the greatest things.”[5] The problem is that so perfect a being—practically a god descended from the heavens, in caricaturesque Platonic fashion—has no need for others. Aristotle tells us that he “seems arrogant”[6] and “is justified when he thinks less of others, since his beliefs are true.”[7] The magnanimous man “thinks he is worthy of great things, and is worthy of them, especially of the greatest things,” and so “has one concern above all,” namely the worship of his multitudinous inferiors.[8] Similarly, “when he meets people with good fortune or a reputation for worth, he displays his greatness, since superiority over them is difficult and impressive.”[9] But in Book 8, Chapter 1, section 4, Aristotle writes, “friendship would seem to hold cities together…”[10] and later writes that “equality and similarity, and above all the similarity of those who are similar in being virtuous, is friendship.”[11] Further,

Equality, however, does not appear to be the same in friendship as in justice. For in justice equality is primarily in worth and secondarily in quantity; but in friendship it is equality primarily and secondarily in worth.

This is clear if friends come to be separated by some wide gap in virtue, vice, wealth, or something else; for then they are friends no more, and do not even expect to be. This is most evident with gods, since they have the greatest superiority in all goods. But it is also clear with kings, since far inferior people do not expect to be their friends…[12]

Though there is no exact definition of how long people can remain friends, “if one is widely separated [from the other], as a god is [from a human being], it no longer endures.”[13] The critical paradox is that if one “becomes a god he will no longer have friends, and hence no longer have goods, since friends are goods.”[14] So, by the logic of Aristotle’s dialectic, the very virtuousness of the magnanimous man means he cannot take part in a complete friendship, which is also a condition for virtuousness. Thus he is an impossibility.

Aristotle’s use of the word “seems,” as when he writes “Greatness in each virtue also seems proper to the magnanimous person,” (my emphasis) could lead one to conclude that magnanimity is intended to be one virtue among many, an illustration of but a single facet of the ideal aristocratic personality.[15] However, in my view this is not what Aristotle had in mind. Aristotle makes this clear when he says (my emphasis) “Those who lack virtue but have these [external] goods are not justified in thinking themselves magnanimous; that is impossible without complete virtue.”[16] Similarly, he writes:

Magnanimity, then, would seem to be a sort of adornment of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it does not arise without them. That is why it is difficult to be truly magnanimous, since it is not possible without being fine and good.[17]

Magnanimity seems to be an adornment, because true magnanimity is nothing other than the appearance proper to the summation of all the virtues, their combination enhancing and intensifying each. Similarly, Aristotle writes (my emphasis), “the magnanimous person, then, seems to be the one who thinks himself worthy of great things and is really worthy of them.”[18] Those who, despite their lack of complete virtue, attempt to behave with magnanimity “are imitating the magnanimous person though they are not really like him.”[19] This suggests that the use of “seem” is not intended to mean that magnanimity is a sort of act or illusion, but rather that the magnanimous person, possessing all the virtues, must also know he possesses them; he cannot merely be worthy but must also judge his worth correctly. Total virtuousness cannot be a private matter experienced in solitude, but must be self-consciously displayed and practiced. To believe one is magnanimous while not really being so would be “foolish;” likewise, underestimating one’s greatness is “pusillanimous.”[20] Aristotle concludes that:

The magnanimous person, then, is at the extreme insofar as he makes great claims. But insofar as he makes them rightly, he is intermediate; for what he thinks he is worthy of accords with his real worth, whereas the others are excessive or deficient. The pusillanimous person is deficient both in relation to himself [i.e., his worth] and in relation to the magnanimous person’s estimate of his own worth. The vain person makes claims that are excessive for himself, but not for the magnanimous person.[21]

To achieve the mean, that balance between vices that is the core of Aristotle’s conception of virtue, the magnanimous person’s claims to greatness must match his actual condition.

Since “worth is said to [make one worthy of] external goods; and we would suppose that the greatest of these is the one we award to the gods,”[22] the magnanimous man is “concerned especially with honors and dishonors” (brackets in original).[23] Still, Aristotle says, “there can be no honor worthy of complete virtue.”[24] Therefore, though he “will accept honors [from excellent people], since they have nothing greater to award him” (my emphasis, brackets in original), in his perfection he “does not even regard honor as the greatest good.”[25] This contradiction is also an indication of the magnanimous man’s impossibility: on the one hand, we are told that he is “concerned especially with honors and dishonors,”[26] but, on the other hand, that he would have to “count honor for little”[27] since there can be no honor worthy of his “complete virtue.”[28]

In short, Aristotle’s Ethics is anti-Platonic to its core (though it does not fully succeed in wiping out every trace of Platonism). Ideal forms, such as they may be, are purely derived from the actual sensory world through dialectical analysis. Once apprehended, they are nice to think about, but always impossible to actually achieve. Instead, we must settle for the imperfection that is the real world, and the mere approximation of truth “roughly and in outline.”[29] In other words, a Platonic world of being may be constructible based on sense experience and analysis, but it cannot exist outside of or beyond this basis. While the learned strive toward the ever-greater completeness of knowledge, they must apply what they have learned, constantly adjusting based on observation, in pursuit of eudemonia and social harmony. And so the only choice we are left with at the end of the text is to move “from ethics to politics”: however reluctantly, the political scientist must turn to state power, formulating laws that will coerce the society into goodness in line with his ever-developing scientific understanding. This is because:

the aim of studies about action… is surely not to study and know about a given thing, but rather to act on our knowledge…

Now if arguments were sufficient by themselves to make people decent, the rewards they would command would justifiably have been many and large… and rightly bestowed. In fact, however, arguments seem to have enough influence to stimulate and encourage the civilized ones among the young people, and perhaps to make virtue take possession of a well-born character that truly loves what is fine; but they seem unable to turn many toward being fine and good.

For the many naturally obey fear, not shame; they avoid what is base because of the penalties, not because it is disgraceful. For since they live by their feelings, they pursue their proper pleasures and the sources of them, and avoid the opposed pains, and have not even a notion of what is fine and hence truly pleasant, since they have had no taste of it.

What argument, then, could reform people like these? For it is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed as a result of one’s habits.[30]

He must, in other words, descend back into the cave. Though pursuing the polar opposite path of Plato, Aristotle ends up precisely meeting him.

[1] Book 8, Chapter 1, section 5 (pg. 100)

[2] Book 9, Chapter 8, section 3 (pg. 146)

[3] Book 7, Chapter 13, section 5 (pg. 117)

[4] Book 7, Chapter 14, section 3 (pg. 118)

[5] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 14 (pg. 57)

[6] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 18 (pg. 57)

[7] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 22 (pg. 58)

[8] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 9 (pg. 56)

[9] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 26 (pg. 58)

[10] Book 8, Chapter 1, section 4 (pg. 119)

[11] Book 8, Chapter 8, section 5 (pg. 128)

[12] Book 8, Chapter 7, section 3-5 (pg. 127)

[13] Book 8, Chapter 7, section 5 (pg. 127)

[14] Book 8, Chapter 7, section 6 (pg. 127)

[15] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 14 (pg. 57)

[16] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 20 (pg. 58)

[17] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 16 (pg. 57)

[18] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 2 (pg. 56)

[19] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 21 (pg. 58)

[20] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 3-7 (pg. 56)

[21] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 8 (pg. 56)

[22] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 10 (pg. 57)

[23] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 17 (pg. 57)

[24] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 17 (pg. 57)

[25] Book 4, Chapter 3, sections 17-18 (pg. 57)

[26] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 17 (pg. 57)

[27] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 18 (pg. 57)

[28] Book 4, Chapter 3, section 20 (pg. 58)

[29] Book I, Chapter 3, section 4 (pg. 2)

[30] Book 10, Chapter 9, sections 3-5 (pg. 168)

The Ubermensch Rises: Justice, Truth and Necessary Evil in "The Dark Knight Rises"

2012-08-01T09:29:00.000-04:00

Originally published by Truthout

Nietzsche's declaration that "God is dead" is quoted nearly as often as it is misunderstood. Nietzsche did not simply intend to express that there is no God. Rather, he meant that the notion of God had ceased to play its value-generating role as an organizing principle, maintaining order and social harmony. Since God is what gives the world structure for the plebian masses, the death of God opens a space in which meaning can be reshaped and ideals redefined. For Nietzsche, God would have to be replaced by an ubermensch, a higher sort of human being who would "revalue all values," assuming the role of imposing meaning and purpose for the weaker class of followers.

Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" takes place at a rather similar moment. In the film, the system and those who lead it ("the 1%" of Occupy's imagery) have failed: we are shown images of economic decline, unemployment and hardship. This fall corresponds with the disappearance of Batman, the patriarchal guardian of order in Gotham City. This absence of "God" brings imbalance in the form of a mass uprising led by arch-villain Bane, which threatens dominant values and relationships. It is not often that superhero villains explain their goals in terms of social justice and democracy, yet that is precisely what Bane does - but he seeks to redefine these terms in a manner contrary to that of the existing establishment. The clash between Batman and Bane is, on one level, a clash of values between value-creating ubermenschen, two contradictory notions of social order and harmony. In the film, concepts like democracy justice, and equality are deformed and manipulated by the "bad guy" as a means of leading the masses astray, into what is ultimately a murderous plan to destroy the entire city. Then, in true Bonapartiste fashion, Batman the ubermensch joins the cops in reimposing the rule of the social elite, restoring law and order.

As with God in Nietzsche's age of scientific discovery, and in Gotham in "The Dark Knight Rises," for us today the system has lost its self-evidence, the automatic legitimacy that usually renders its role in underwriting social order invisible. But in this moment of liminality, no ubermensch, but the Occupy movement, has risen to challenge fundamental ideas and structures, striving to re-articulate the very principles on which the prevailing ideology claims a monopoly. This struggle has contributed to the crisis of ruling-class power, and has accordingly been met by a level of state violence that has shocked the nation and contributed to a growing awareness of the tenuous, limited nature of our democracy. In this context, "The Dark Knight Rises" has been interpreted by several critics as a shameless, reactionary attack on the efforts of Occupiers to endure police beatings and brave the winter cold to propel us toward a more just and democratic future. This is worth paying attention to, because it is not just fictional characters Batman battles, but real-life ideas that are of great importance to our future.

Justice, Class and Power

The tremendous inequality in Gotham city is obvious from the very beginning. While Bruce Wayne drives around in a sports car with a six-digit price tag and attends glamorous balls, a black child on a playground talks to a cop about the precariousness of his family's economic situation. "How long do you think all this can last?" Selina Kyle, a jewel thief cum social justice crusader whispers to Bruce Wayne amidst an extravagant charity gala. "There's a storm coming ... when it hits, you're all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us." Against this background comes Bane's pseudo-anti-capitalist uprising, which includes the dramatic seizure of Gotham's Stock Exchange, in which bankers and traders are attacked. "There's nothing here for you to steal," one of them protests during the trade floor hijacking. "Oh yeah? Then what are you people doing here?" Bane replies. It turns out that stealing or damaging the financial sector is not the true purpose of the attack, but it's still hard not to chuckle in agreement.

Relying on a pseudo-Jacobin discourse of class struggle and popular justice, Bane promises "the good people of Gotham" that the wealthy will soon be forced to surrender their riches to improve the lives of everyone. How, then, is the audience to know whom to see as the "good guy"? After all, most people would have a difficult time identifying with Gotham's billionaire class. The answer is simple: rhetoric aside, Bane and his supposedly "revolutionary" cohort do not actually seek the social transformation they claim, but rather are intent upon destroying the entire city and killing everyone in it by turning a fusion reactor developed by Bruce Wayne (for the purpose of saving the world with "green technology") into a powerful atomic bomb. Thus Bane's movement is more a pathologically homicidal attack on the people of Gotham - from which they need to be protected by existing state institutions - than a struggle to emancipate them. In the presence of a nuclear bomb that threatens to kill everyone, the interests of the majority are suddenly brought into total alignment with those of Gotham's 1% - and the organs of state that sustain them - whom they may otherwise have desired to usurp.

But if the cheap device of the nuclear bomb isn't enough to illustrate the evil of Bane and his followers, their uprising itself is depicted as dangerous and frightening: dramatic scenes of unruly crowds filling the streets, destroying property and committing acts of violence against the wealthy serve as the backdrop for Bane's grandiose rhetoric. It's never made clear whether any of this supposedly popular revolt is carried out by Gotham's civilian population as opposed to hired goons: in the battle between ubermenschen, the people themselves have no agency whatsoever. They are merely Nietzschean "herding animals," doomed to mindlessly follow one idol or the other: good or evil, Batman or Bane. This is the precise inverse of the situation in the French Revolution, whose imagery Nolan so freely employs. Rather, that revolution was propelled by spontaneous mass insurrection bursting through one representative-institutional arrangement after another.

The film is at pains to show that Bane's vision of justice - in conflict with that of the state and Gotham's elite - is false, a siren song in hard times. While persuasive, such re-articulation is incredibly dangerous - in this case serving as a faÃ§ade for nihilistic slaughter. When the rich and powerful are forced to appear in show trials before a revolutionary tribunal, a corrupted Commissioner Gordon bemoans the lack of due process because there were no witnesses to testify or evidence against him. The conservative lens is obvious: Justice cannot be administered by the people (or those claiming to represent them) as it results in chaos and death; only the system, with its established procedures of due process, can legitimately mete out justice. But we should remember that our current president insists on the right to maintain a secret list of individuals to be targeted for death without charge or trial - including American citizens - designated solely by him.

Harvey Dent, the Ubermensch and the Violence of Capital

The ultimate message is that we should trust those in power, who can handle things maturely. Rather than a ruling class drunk with greed amidst an out-of-control bonanza on Wall Street that eventually wrecked the economy and destroyed countless lives, the wealthy as represented by Bruce Wayne and the majority of the Wayne Enterprises board are depicted as a responsible group who spend much of their time engaging in charity or otherwise trying to improve the condition of humanity.

The very nuclear weapon that Bane attempts to use to destroy the city is a converted fusion reactor designed and built by Wayne - a philanthropic billionaire in the mold of Bill Gates - to save the world from global warming by providing a green alternative energy source. But after he discovered it was possible to build a bomb out of the reactor, Wayne responsibly decided to shut it down and conceal it from the world, losing his investment and practically bankrupting his company. In the name of transparency, Miranda Tate reveals its existence to the board of directors after taking over Wayne Enterprises, but Bane shows up at the meeting and the reactor falls into his hands (it is later revealed that the two were in league all along). Wayne, who was just trying to spare the world from global warming, would have acted responsibly in secrecy, but once his secrets were revealed, evil was able to take advantage of the information, and strike.

In this vein, the film also takes what appears to be a not-so-oblique shot at WikiLeaks. At a public rally, Bane reads the private meditations of Commissioner Gordon, intended only to be made public at some never-specified, endlessly deferred "right time." Gordon has been concealing the fact that the beloved Harvey Dent, the district attorney who gained a reputation for cleaning up the streets and defeating organized crime, committed murder. In a further sacrifice, Batman allowed himself to be blamed for Dent's killings and death, in order to preserve the illusion of the DA's immaculate image and secure the passage of the Dent Act that expanded the powers of law enforcement to pursue dangerous criminals. Now, years later, Dent's broad smile and blonde hair are omnipresent on posters throughout Gotham, the symbol of the happiness and social harmony which the public is supposed to believe constitute the status quo. In the name of "the truth," Bane defiles the omnipresent, two-dimensional image of Dent, holding a poster of his face before the crowd and declaring his corruption. We are shown frightening images of prisoners, many of them Hispanic or African-American, being broken out of jail.

Though the public believes he was killed by Batman, following the murder, Dent is transformed into "Two Face": though his blonde hair and broad smile persist on one half of his face, the other has been horrifically burned and disfigured. This duality is central to the film: in the public world of appearances, Bruce Wayne is a businessman and respected socialite; in the private world of shadows, he is Batman, a masked caped crusader who engages in violent struggle in the darkness. Concealed behind every smiling photograph of Harvey Dent is a hidden world of violence necessary to sustain the myth of the peaceful, orderly status quo. Likewise, though Batman and Bane are clearly the good guy and the bad guy, respectively, Batman's very status as the ultimate Ubermensch is signaled by a non-dialectical moment in his relation to Bane. Whereas Bane needs his mask to survive, Batman/Bruce Wayne is free to move in and out of the "shadow world" that lies behind the tranquil exterior marked by Dent's placid smile. "So, you think the darkness is your ally?" Bane asks, reminding Batman that while Batman inhabits both worlds, entering each at his will, Bane "was born in darkness" from which he is unable to escape. Batman/Wayne must master both worlds in order to gain supremacy in either - preserving Dent's immaculate image requires forceful exertion in the dark underworld, behind the mask.

Like Batman's self-sacrifice for the sake of appearances, the principal struggle of the film is to keep the mask on, to preserve The Lie and keep up appearances of social harmony. As responsible, enlightened leaders understand, preserving order (and keeping nihilistic evildoers such as Bane from infecting the masses with their poisonous doctrines) requires the deception of the public, concealing manifestations of social collapse behind two-dimensional, placid illusions of social harmony and the system's smooth functioning. As with the disclosure of Wayne's fusion reactor, Bane's reading of Gordon's secret personal letter serves only to tear off masks that are best left on, undermining public faith in the established order, which functions in the best interests of all.

"Structures Become Shackles": Reform and Necessary Evil

When explaining his decision to deceive the public to a shocked and demoralized subordinate, Commissioner Gordon explains that "structures become shackles," forcing the corruption of good individuals who are trapped by faltering institutions. The fall of Gordon, an ordinary police commissioner trying to do good, mirrors the fall of the system as a whole; likewise, his rejuvenation marks the restoration of the system and the suppression of Bane's revolt. The implication is clear: the system has failed, requiring a strong individual - an ubermensch - capable of acting violently outside of formal institutional structures to restore balance.

As it turns out, this is also Bane's ideology. The irony here is that it is Bane's attempt to destroy the system that made possible its revitalization. As Bane tells Batman at one point in the movie, "I may be evil, but I am a necessary evil." It was Bane's struggle which brought Batman to the rescue, to shake the accumulated corruption and decadence out of the system and restore its smooth, orderly functioning. Bruce Wayne had to fall, become one of the people, and then rebuild himself in order to bring this salvation and, ultimately, stabilize the status quo.

This is the paradox which Occupy faces: in struggling for social change, it is attempting to avoid becoming the system's necessary evil, resulting merely in some paltry reductions in student loan interest rates or a few Keynesian programs to increase aggregate demand that could restore a precarious order to a fundamentally unjust capitalism. As Marx understood, struggles such as Occupy's are essential if the system is to run smoothly - otherwise, it would collapse in on itself by the force of its contradictions. The cure, therefore, becomes itself part of the disease. Escape from this paradox is not easy, but falling into the trap is not inevitable, as "The Dark Knight Rises" might have you believe.

As George Orwell was fond of remarking, "All art is propaganda." Indeed, "The Dark Knight Rises" contains so many reactionary themes, it is virtually impossible to deconstruct them all in one brief critique. Advancing the struggle to redefine the rotten values that have produced such misery and hardship for so many requires that we dispute the purported "innocence" of such ideology-laden spectacles in our relentless attack on the supports that legitimize the status quo. We cannot rely on an ubermensch to save us, nor count on a system based fundamentally on injustice and inequality to miraculously transform itself. Rather, we must tear off the mask, take matters into our own hands, and struggle together to create a better world no matter what justifications the 1% concocts to preserve its power and privilege. With the implosion of capitalism in the West, the evisceration of democracy and intensifying ecological catastrophe, there is little choice but to begin right now if there is to be any future worth living in.

The Corporate Media's Attempt to Kill the Occupy Movement

2012-05-09T12:13:00.004-04:00

By Michael Corcoran and Stephen Maher

Originally published by Truthout

"It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen." George Orwell, 1984

This May Day brought the explosive global resurgence of Occupy, one of the most significant social movement in decades. In New York City, the heart of global capitalism and center of the movement, the New York Civil Liberties Union estimated that 30,000 demonstrators took part in a massive rally and march down Broadway, led by a score of city taxicabs. As has become alarmingly common for a country that constantly proclaims its zealous devotion to democracy, the day ended with brutal police violence and arrests.

The visible success of Occupy in creating a space for the voice of the people impelled uncontrolled thousands to pour onto the streets of New York City, Oakland, and elsewhere around the country and across the world on May Day, in the start of what US organizers have called an "American Spring." Touting its message of class solidarity--"we are the 99 percent" - Occupy has revealed the profoundly undemocratic nature of a democratic consensus expressed by corporate-sponsored political representatives, demanding direct popular involvement in areas of social and political life normally dominated by ruling class power.

The powerful rejuvenation of the Occupy movement, however, was used by the US media - owned by the very same interests that Occupy directly threatens - as an opportunity to finally kill the Occupy movement and marginalize the voices of its participants. Since September, the mainstream press in the US has systematically ignored and demonized the Occupy movement. The nakedness of the class bias in this case, however, was especially jarring: the size and significance of the protests were downplayed, reports of police brutality were largely ignored, and the movement was portrayed as violent and dangerous. Many of the most prominent US news outlets, such as The New York Times, practically ignored the protests altogether. These shameful distortions by the corporate press display the function of the media as an organ of the rule of "the 1 percent," and reveal how threatened elites are by organized, direct action and democratic participation.

While tens of thousands of activists took to the streets on May Day, the only prominent mention of economic inequality on the homepage of The New York Times web site was titled "A Wealthy Guy's Case for Inequality," written by a former associate of Mitt Romney at Bain Capital. The Times, in fact, did not even cover the protests as a national story, instead merely producing a brief and dismissive 400-word article buried in the "Paper of Record's" Metro section. Predictably, the article focused mostly on the wickedness of the demonstrators, who "snarled traffic and smashed windows." The Times did see fit to cover May Day protests in Europe in its international section, but here, too, no connection was made to protests of a nearly identical nature and size at home. In other words, since "the march was too big to allow Occupy Wall Street to continue to be reduced to a dog-and-pony show," as Occupy Handbook editor Janet Byrne said, the Times simply chose to ignore it altogether.

The Washington Post adopted a similar approach, producing just one short story, also exiled to the local section, which likewise took great pains to amplify claims of "reports of violent clashes on the West Coast." It is telling that while these major national papers were outraged by some broken windows, they ignored the thuggish attacks by the police on both coasts on peacefully assembled human beings.

The Tea Party, a movement which serves rather than threatens corporate interests, has received front-page coverage in virtually all of the nation's national newspapers for events that were smaller and less significant than this week's May Day protests. Yet, a truly substantial social movement with genuine emancipatory potential and a broad base of support among Americans is largely considered un-newsworthy by the corporate press. When the demonstrations were covered, crude caricatures masquerading as objective news ruled the day.

Those outlets that bothered to note the nationwide outpouring at all did so mostly to exaggerate reports of vandalism in Seattle (described as acts of "violence" in the mainstream press), portraying a peaceful movement as chaotic and violent. Other examples of May Day coverage had stories gleefully predicting the demise of the Occupy movement. "Occupy Resurgence is a Dud," announced a Reuters video report that came out early on Tuesday. Occupy, the report declared, "did not have any movement left," and "lacks one clear message everyday Americans can rally behind." Interestingly, a tweet from Reuters would later discredit their own report, reporting, "Occupy Wall Street resurgence far from being a dud." CNN.com, likewise, published an article that labored to explain "Why Occupy May Day fizzled." The article proclaimed, "Occupy Wall Street movement, with its fuzzy messages and vague goals, is not going to leave a major mark." The author did not bother to explain how "We are the 99 percent" is a "fuzzy message."

May Day has long been known in the United States as the working-class holiday which the state refuses to recognize. This May Day, too, President Obama issued a pro forma injunction that we honor "Loyalty Day" by hanging the flag or pledging allegiance to the republic for which it stands. But what might be unexpected by those who take the professed values of that republic seriously is the degree to which our "free press" has followed suit - not to mention the state's brutally violent response to a genuinely democratic, popular movement seeking to build a more egalitarian, participatory society.

Occupy is arguably at its most critical juncture since the eviction of Zuccotti Park and the effort by the media to portray Occupy as a toothless shell of its former self is not without potential consequences. It is vital that it be understood that the media are not any more neutral in the war being fought on the streets of our cities than are the corporations that own it. Occupiers can expect no favors from the American media, which will continue to serve their corporate owners and not the public at large. This means that the occupiers must expect to struggle mightily for their view of the world - and even their very presence - to break into mainstream political discourse. The narrative that "Occupy is dead" is merely the latest salvo by the 1 percent. We must not let them get away with it.

Radio Interview with "Alert" on Egyptian Elections

2011-12-02T11:19:00.001-05:00

Canadian Dimension's "Alert" radio program interviewed me this week on the Egyptian elections and the ongoing uprising in that country. Listen here (the interview begins at about 10:26).

Unmasking Gershom Gorenberg, historian and apologist for ethnic cleansing

2011-12-01T10:58:00.000-05:00

Originally published by Electronic Intifada

The popular internet magazine Slate recently published an excerpt from The Unmaking of Israel, a new book by the historian Gershom Gorenberg. The title of the excerpt asked “Did Israel actually plan to expel most of its Arabs in 1948? Or not?” (“The Mystery of 1948,” 7 November 2011).

As most critical scholars of Palestinian history and the Zionist-Palestinian conflict would likely agree, this is an odd question to ask. Since Israel’s “new historians” began publishing revised histories that undermined the long-held official Zionist ideological narrative of the creation of Israel (in which the Arabs left Palestine voluntarily, or in response to urgings from the Arab states) it has become increasingly clear that Ilan Pappe was correct in suggesting a paradigm shift in historical analysis of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe). Instead of viewing the violent, bloody events of 1948 through the lens of “war,” Pappe proposed a framework of “ethnic cleansing” — which, as he demonstrated, is well supported by the available evidence. But despite such growing clarity and consensus, Gorenberg implicitly rejects Pappe’s framework.

Since the early Zionist leadership formed a planning body (the Situation Committee) to determine how the Palestinian minority who remained within the borders of the future Jewish state would be managed, Gorenberg concludes that David Ben-Gurion and his affiliates had no firm plans to cleanse the territory on the eve of the 1948 conflict. Of course, these leaders had contemplated “transfer,” but this was an understandable manifestation of demographic unease and only one possible option among others. Though Ben-Gurion and the liberal Zionists likely had the best of intentions toward the Arabs, the right-wing spoiled the hopes of the more progressive and committed violent atrocities.

Gorenberg thus presents an image of a powerless Zionist left, which was presented with a fait accompli by the radical right and the unpredictability of the “chaos of war,” then attacked head-on by the confused natives and forced to defend itself.

By relentlessly placing the blame on a few “crazed” right-wing groups and the whims of fate, Gorenberg exculpates Zionism as such from responsibility for its brutal colonial history and leaves room for some “good Zionists,” who can doubtless count him among their number. In Gorenberg’s version of events one can detect the revenge of the “old historians,” mediated through several decades of the revisionists: the discredited fictions proffered by the Israeli state and allied ideologues are revitalized while simultaneously acknowledging the now-undeniable crimes of Zionism’s past. Though some misguided right-wing Zionists committed or caused horrendous injustices against the Palestinians, fuelling the conflict, there is a “pure” left-wing Zionism that stands apart from these acts and which was dragged against its will into a situation from which there was no easy escape. It was all an accident.

The myth of “accidental” ethnic cleansing

Gorenberg’s central conclusion requires a considerable jump in logic: as the historical record shows, though the Zionist leadership meticulously planned and executed the expulsion of the indigenous Arab population, even the most radical never imagined they would be able to completely eliminate the Palestinians. The plan was to conquer as much land and reduce the native population as much as possible. Indeed, the problem of how to establish a state with at least a large Jewish majority on territory inhabited overwhelmingly by Arabs had haunted Zionist leaders from the very beginning.

Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, wrote in his diary in 1895 that “we shall endeavor to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed.” These sentiments were also reflected in the enthusiastic embrace by Ben-Gurion and other prominent Zionist leaders of the British government’s 1937 Peel Commission report calling for the forced expulsion of the Arab population, which was referred to by Ben-Gurion as an “unparalleled achievement.” The plans of the “Situation Committee” Gorenberg points to, insisting that their existence is proof that there was no plan for the systematic cleansing of the locals, was no more than Ben-Gurion and the rest of the pre-state leadership determining what the Jews would do with the Arabs that remained after the expulsion.

That 1948 constituted a consciously planned ethnic cleansing on the part of the Zionist leadership is hardly in doubt. Though not mentioned by Gorenberg, Plan Dalet, devised by Ben-Gurion and the security and political leaders who joined him in a body known as the Consultancy, called for the Palestinians’ “systematic and total expulsion from their homeland” (Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2008).

Ilan Pappe has demonstrated how, after several revisions, the final plan included a detailed description of the methods to be used in driving the population out of their lands that included “large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centers; setting fire to homes, properties, and goods; expulsion; demolition; and, finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning.” In short, Dalet was “an initiative to ethnically cleanse the country as a whole.” With the order to begin the operation, “each brigade commander received a list of the villages or neighborhoods that had to be occupied, destroyed, and their inhabitants expelled,” Pappe wrote. Accidental, indeed.

Though Gorenberg presents a picture of “two [presumably equal] national groups claiming the same territory,” the 1947 UN Partition Plan actually handed a mostly European colonial population owning just 12 percent of the land in Palestine fully 60 percent of the territory, including some of its most valuable regions. The demand that the indigenous Palestinian population accept partition was unprecedented: no colonized population had ever assented to the division of its national lands with a foreign colonizer. Even within the territory allotted the Jewish state, Palestinian Arabs made up 40 percent of the population, a troublesome fact for the Zionist leadership.

As Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders had made clear in the period prior to the founding of the state, not only did they consider the UN Partition Plan as simply the launching pad from which they would dramatically expand the borders of the Jewish state (as they did), but they also had no intention of tolerating such a large Arab minority in their midst afterwards. “Recently declassified Zionist documents,” historian Benny Morris has written, “demonstrate that a virtual consensus emerged among Zionist leadership … in favor of the transfer of at least several hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs — if not all of them — out of the areas of the Jewish state-to-be.” (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001, 2001). All one needed to do was to wait for an opportune moment to carry out such an operation, such as a war.

Arguments don’t hold water

As those familiar with Gorenberg’s work will recognize, this thesis has become his regular modus operandi. His 2006 book The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements 1967-1977 argues that the Israeli occupation and colonization of the remaining Palestinian territories after 1967 was an “accident,” echoing the “quagmire” argument thoughtlessly repeated in relation to supposedly failed US imperial adventures.

Though Israel went into the enterprise with the noblest of intentions, it was quickly dragged into a complex situation from which it could not extricate itself. Apart from the sophisticated arrangements needed to ensure Israeli security, the argument goes, a fringe settler lobby hijacked and corrupted Israeli policy. The vast colonial settlement enterprise that sprung up across the West Bank and Gaza after 1967 was thus the “accidental” product of a directionless but well-intentioned Zionism manipulated by a radical minority.

But like Gorenberg’s take on the Nakba, these arguments simply don’t hold water.

In the precise inverse of the relationship between the state and Jewish religious fanaticism portrayed by Gorenberg, the post-1967 settlement enterprise was characterized not by the haphazard eruption of housing construction maniacally driven by a small gang of religious fanatics. Rather, the Israeli state consciously executed a carefully planned settlement program directed to meet specific objectives. “What is now plain with hindsight,” Donald Neff, a journalist specializing in the Middle East, has written, “is that Israel operated on a premeditated and pragmatic plan of settlement” in the period after the 1967 war (Donald Neff, “Settlements in US Policy,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1994).

This “premeditated and pragmatic plan” was unveiled in 1968 by staunch Labor politician Yigal Allon, the goal of which was “to have as much land as possible with as small a number of Arabs as possible” (Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, 2006). The Allon Plan proposed “annexation of 35 to 40 percent of the territories to Israel, and either Jordanian rule, or some form of self-rule for the rest of the land on which the Palestinians actually lived,” as Israeli scholar Tanya Reinhart put it (Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948, 2005). “For all practical purposes,” Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, wrote, the Allon Plan became “the accepted map of Israel’s security, and of her settlement priorities in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].”

Yitzak Rabin, mythic leader of the pathetic Zionist left, harnessed the messianic religious fervor of Jewish fundamentalists in order to finally realize the Allon Plan, and to lay the infrastructure for the apartheid system that was formalized in the occupied territories following the signing of the Oslo accords.

While intensifying restrictions on Palestinian movement and sealing off the West Bank and Gaza in a brutal closure regime (implementing checkpoints and a pass system similar to that used in South Africa), Rabin initiated a distinction between “good” and “bad” settlements. That is, he favored settling in areas deemed important to the overall colonial plan (such as those built atop vital water resources, or in a region considered to be of strategic importance), while criticizing those “ideological” settlements that did not fit the contours of the broader plan for territorial annexation. As former Jerusalem mayor Meron Benvenisti wrote of Rabin’s settlement scheme, “the geographic boundaries on Rabin’s map [left] Israel in control of … the same areas included in the infamous Allon Plan of 1968-70, except that Rabin [had] added large areas of [the northern West Bank]” (Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies: Jews and Arabs in a Shared Land, 1995).

With the first intifada, which began in 1987, leading Jordan to renounce all claims to the West Bank the following year for fear the uprising would spread to the kingdom, and Israel desperately desiring an end to the uprising, it was the Palestinian variant of the Allon Plan that was realized with the signing of Oslo and Rabin’s settlement initiative. Though wanting to retain Israeli control over the entirety of historic Palestine, Rabin realized that the survival of the Jewish state depended on minimizing its Palestinian population, lest Israel be forced to abandon even the semblance of formal democracy and equal rights. Accordingly, the “ideological” settlements he condemned lay in densely populated Arab areas, which were to be disowned but encircled by Israeli-annexed and Jewish-settled areas.

Meanwhile, Israel would be absolved of responsibility for the welfare of the suffering Arab population. After the inauguration of the post-Oslo era, such expenses were pushed onto international donors and the occupied themselves, circumventing the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention stipulating that these sizable costs fall upon the occupying power. Clearly, none of this was an accident.

Good guys and bad guys

I raised some of these issues with Gorenberg after a talk of his I attended in Jerusalem in June 2008. “You’re not doing history right,” he informed me, “it is never the case that one side is always in the wrong, always the bad guy.” In fact, it is Gorenberg that misses the meaning of history. Good and bad aside, there are colonizers, and there are colonized; oppressors and oppressed. Unfortunately for Gorenberg, as the evidence shows, Israeli leaders from the left to the right have been unanimously in agreement over the continuance of a colonial policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza (fighting tooth and nail to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state), as well as on the nearly constant waves of violence unleashed on Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Indeed, as Norman Finkelstein has pointed out, “the record of Labor has been much worse on human rights violations than the record of Likud,” noting how “Mr. Rabin used to boast that he had demolished many more homes than any Likud government” (“Former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami debates outspoken professor Norman Finkelstein on Israel, the Palestinians and the peace process,” Democracy Now!, 14 February 2006).

And indeed, though disowning the strategically problematic “ideological” settlements, Rabin’s record on settlement construction was worse than the record of his obstinate right-wing predecessor Yitzak Shamir.

It was Ehud Olmert, then prime minister and leader of the supposedly center-left Kadima, who was responsible for the destruction of much of southern Lebanon in 2006, including littering the countryside with cluster bombs that have rendered vast tracts of agricultural land inaccessible. His successor Tzipi Livni oversaw the slaughter of over 1,000 impoverished, defenseless Palestinians in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, including the deliberate targeting of hospitals, schools, medical personnel and aid workers, UN facilities, and the few remaining organs of economic production. Were these “accidents” too?

An essential part of the “peace process” for the Zionists — in particular the left — has always been washing away responsibility for the colonialism inherent in the notion of Zionism. From the humiliating White House ceremony in which Yasser Arafat presented himself to the world as its repentant assailant, to today, when Zionism demands the Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state” on which the indigenous Palestinian community was merely a temporary historical aberration, it is clear that Zionism seeks to erase and rewrite history. It does so in order to avoid accepting its ugly colonial legacy.

But if the Palestinians are merely trespassing in the “Jewish state,” the occupation, the wall, the settlements, are all legitimate: the Jews are simply “defending” what is theirs. Part of the struggle, then, takes place in the realm of the past.

Labor Radicalism and Popular Emancipation: The Egyptian Uprising Continues

2011-11-18T09:28:00.002-05:00

Originally published by Dollars & Sense

In mid-August, the eminent Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek wrote, “Unfortunately, the Egyptian summer of 2011 will be remembered as marking the end of revolution, a time when its emancipatory potential was suffocated.” Indeed, the forcible clearing of protestors from Tahrir Square, the outlawing of labor strikes, and the imprisonment of thousands by the military that was taking place as Žižek wrote did not bode well for the revolution. In the months since his words were published, things have not gotten much better: the military has reinstated Mubarak’s Emergency Law, the International Monetary Fund has issued grim predictions for Egypt’s economic performance as interest rates soar, and Moody’s has again downgraded Egypt’s bond rating and that of several of its major banks. Meanwhile, the Islamists, marginalized in the earlier days of the revolutionary uprising, have returned, well organized and poised to play a significant part in the constitution-writing process that will commence following the upcoming elections.

Yet since the overthrow of Mubarak, industrial actions against low wages and poor working conditions have persisted, and a multitude of new, independent labor unions have been formed. In recent weeks, a new wave of labor strikes has exploded across the country on a scale “not seen since the earliest weeks of the revolution,” as the Washington Post put it. But in view of the monumental challenges they face, what can these ongoing labor and leftist popular political movements still hope to accomplish? Is the revolution doomed, as Žižek suggests, or is a brighter future, and a truly radical social transformation, away from the domination of Egyptian society by capital, still within reach for Egypt?

Rise to Rebellion

The years leading up to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak saw the development of a democratic social movement unprecedented in the history of the modern Middle East. This movement developed partly in resistance to the neoliberal policies imposed after a 1991 debt restructuring by the Egyptian state in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The “reforms” consisted of the familiar neoliberal package: liberalized capital flows, deregulation and privatization of industries, and the gutting of the national health care and education systems along with the retreat of the state from other areas of social provision. As Marxist theorist David Harvey has argued, “the evidence strongly suggests that the neoliberal turn is in some way and in some degree associated with the restoration or reconstruction of the power of economic elites.” Egypt’s neoliberal transformation was no exception, with the breakdown of the powerful nationalist solidarity that held sway during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser, followed by the ascendance of a powerful bourgeoisie linked to global capitalism. Despite increased production and strong GDP growth—between 4% and 7% per year—much of the new wealth was concentrated into the hands of Egypt’s ruling class, while workers were left with barely enough to eat and social services for the poor were degraded or eliminated outright.

These programs were accelerated after 2004 with the inauguration of the “reform cabinet” of Ahmad Nazif. But alongside this push grew fierce resistance: between 2004 and 2010, there were more than 3,000 labor actions in Egypt, as workers exercised leverage from within the labor process against the ruling class and an authoritarian, unresponsive state apparatus. A sudden spike in inflation (which doubled in 2009), partly spurred by the liquidity that flooded the market as a result of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s $2 trillion Quantitative Easing program, exacerbated the social crisis as the pitifully low wages paid out to Egyptian workers proved inadequate to meet basic needs. Egyptian society—beginning with the workers in the factories—was increasingly pushed toward revolutionary social transformation. The spread of high technology linked together workers in the industrial towns and an urban youth movement chafing under the authoritarian state apparatus, expanding conceptions of the revolutionary potential for the future. An 18-day popular uprising, which eventually saw millions gather in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, led on February 11 to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, the suspension of the constitution, the repeal of the dreaded Emergency Law (which effectively circumvented all constitutional protections) and the transfer of power to the Egyptian army under the auspices of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

Reaction and Normalization

Despite Mubarak’s resignation, large-scale protests and labor actions continued across Egypt. Such ongoing actions have made clear that the uprising is fundamentally social: it seeks to challenge not just the leadership of one individual, but rather an entire social-institutional order. Concern that the movement could turn explicitly anti-capitalist and lead to a more radical transformation of Egyptian society led the IMF to cloak its proposed post-revolution loan programs—negotiated in secret with Mubarak-appointed finance minister Samir Radwan—behind claims of “social justice” and an “orderly transition” to democratic rule. Meanwhile, after supporting Mubarak until his final days in office, the United States hurriedly expressed its support for the revolutionary movement, which it claimed had achieved its goals and urged the activists to return home and get back to work.

But soon after Mubarak’s resignation, 5,000 employees from the Tawhid wa-Nur department store chain descended on Cairo, winning a 12-hour workday and a significant pay increase. Then, on March 3, planned protests against newly appointed Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq, widely viewed to be a member of Mubarak’s old guard, caused him to resign, replaced by Essam Sharaf. Ongoing industrial actions also forced the army to permit the organization of independent labor unions. But by the end of March, ongoing mass demonstrations across the country led the Egyptian cabinet to order a law criminalizing all strikes and protests, which were made punishable by huge fines or imprisonment.

Still, the revolutionaries were not deterred. On April 1, “Save the Revolution Day,” tens of thousands again filled Tahrir in defiance of the new measures. Massive protests continued on May 27 in opposition to the repression of SCAF, in particular the practice of subjecting civilians to military trials. The ongoing demonstrations forced SCAF to hastily announce on June 30 that it would reject all loans from the IMF and World Bank, which had been negotiated by Finance Minister Awat just three weeks previously. This powerful mass movement was able to retain its momentum throughout July, before the military forcibly cleared Tahrir in early August. After arresting thousands of demonstrators, by September SCAF had reinstated the despised Emergency Law, one of the primary targets of the revolution.

Slowly but surely, the U.S.-backed Egyptian military and the ruling elite to which it is intimately connected seemed to consolidate their grip on power, ensuring that Egypt would remain closely linked to global capitalism and stay within the U.S. imperial system. Harsh repression, aimed at stifling a democratic social transformation and solidifying the hegemony of the army and the bourgeoisie, proceeded even as the show trial of Mubarak and a few of his closest associates got underway. Designed to demobilize the population and create the impression that justice has been achieved and “the system is working,” the trial of Mubarak is perhaps the most effective measure the SCAF has taken so far toward the goal of preserving the existing social order.

Dark Clouds

An IMF report on the Egyptian economy issued in late September further clarified the dark clouds on Egypt’s horizon, projecting just 1.5% growth in 2011, mildly recovering to 2.5% in 2012. Gaping budget deficits, as the state seeks to buy off dissent and agitation for a more radical transformation by increasing the wages of public sector workers, are meeting with soaring interest rates that led the Cairo Central Bank to halt the sale of two- and three-year bonds on September 19. On September 22, Egypt gained $1.3 billion through the sale of six-month and one-year bonds, but at an average interest rate of 13.9%. Even at this astronomical interest rate, government borrowing risked crowding out private investment, according to the IMF report, which suggested that Egypt might have to return to the IMF after all in order to meet its budgetary shortfall.

Moody’s and S&P’s successive downgrades of Egyptian government bond ratings as well as those of several of its major banks likewise bodes ill for Egypt’s ability to borrow on international markets. These concerns have led the new Egyptian finance minister, Hazem el Beblawi, to suggest that Egypt would again consider returning to the IMF for a loan, regardless of the popular outrage sparked by the deal made by his predecessor. Beblawi has already concluded a deal for $400 million from the World Bank to finance various public works projects, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have sought to preserve the hegemony of Egypt’s capitalist class by lending Egypt $5 billion in budget support, and to finance new infrastructure projects. By soaking up unemployment through the implementation of Keynesian programs and making financing available for capitalistic activities, these loans seek to stabilize an Egyptian capitalism whose future—in the face of a massive new labor uprising—seems uncertain at best.

A New Explosion

During Mubarak’s rule, the only labor organization permitted to operate was the regime-dominated General Federation of Trade Unions, which supported the neoliberal agenda and worked to keep labor in line with state and ruling-class objectives. Before the uprising, labor organizers risked arrest, imprisonment, and torture to organize workers underground, but since the resignation of Mubarak labor organization has exploded: 130 new unions have been formed in the past seven months. In recent weeks, laborers from a broad swath of Egyptian society have taken advantage of the gains of the revolution, with a tidal wave of strikes engulfing the country on an unprecedented scale. While Mubarak never hesitated to obstruct labor action by deploying brute force, today’s empowered strikers confront the state and the bourgeoisie with demands to reverse many of the neoliberal measures and redistribute the vast wealth that was concentrated in the hands of the upper classes in the neoliberal era.

Doctors staging sit-ins at hospitals are demanding better pay and insisting on a trebling of health spending in order to reverse the neoliberal gutting of what was once a strong public-health system. Striking teachers demanding the restructuring of the educational system to include classes on democracy and human rights, pay increases, and the firing of the education minister have forced the total or partial shutdown of 85% of Egyptian schools. Transit workers, demanding better pay, have brought the Cairo metro system to a screeching halt. Dockworkers at the port of Ain Al Sokhna are also refusing to work, disrupting trade with the Far East. This growing class consciousness, and willingness to confront the authorities, is taking hold of ever-wider segments of Egyptian society, and now, according to a Washington Post report, “appears to be spreading to private factories and farms, fueled by the breaking of a barrier of fear that served to curb union activity here for decades.” As Abdel Aziz El Bialy, deputy director of the Independent Teachers’ Union, put it: “This is a social revolution to complete the political revolution.”

The Road Ahead

Given the organizational head start of the Islamists, the upcoming parliamentary elections are likely to bring victories to such conservative social forces, which will give them a tremendous hand in the constitution-writing process that will follow. The Islamists, who were an integral component of social stability during the Mubarak regime, are likely to accept continued dominance of the army and the ruling class in exchange for increased ideological dominance. But as this tremendous labor uprising makes clear, the Egyptian people do not want the restoration of economic growth based on the gross exploitation of poorly paid workers by the owners of capital. Egypt has already been through that, with much of the vast wealth produced by workers in the neoliberal period simply concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Indeed, the IMF and World Bank issued one glowing assessment after another on Egypt’s economic performance during the period of its neoliberal transformation (including one issued just days before the beginning of the uprising), which saw social inequalities grow to unprecedented heights amid severe state repression of labor and other dissent.

The purpose of the revolution was not to preserve market stability and assuage global capitalism; on the contrary, capitalist exploitation of labor in factory towns like Mahalla was the target of the uprising in the first place. This is the very essence of what it means to seize the reins of society from the clutches of capital: refusing its dictates and pursuing a course plotted not by the mad speculative dance of capital, but rather by the people themselves. In other words, the revolution must seek a true social transformation: one that puts an end to the exploitation of the workers and the violent deprivation of the poor and brings about genuine democratic management of social and political life. Such a radical social transformation, freeing Egyptian society from the icy, impersonal dictatorship of capital, will not be looked upon kindly by global capitalism and those at its head. But, again in the words of Slavoj Žižek, “liberation hurts.”

SOURCES: Slavoj Žižek. “Shoplifters of the World Unite,” London Review of Books, August 19, 2011; Slavoj Zizek and Eric Dean Rasmussen, “Liberation Hurts: An Interview with Slavoj Zizek,” Electronic Book Review, July 1, 2004; Anthony Faiola, “Egypt’s Labor Movement Blooms in Arab Spring,” Washington Post, September 25, 2009; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, 2005; Ismail Arslan, World Bank Independent Evaluation Group, Egypt, Positive Results From Knowledge Sharing and Modest Lending: An IEG Country Assistance Evaluation, 1999-2007, World Bank Publications, 2009; Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani “Economists Blame ‘Neo-liberalism’ for Region’s Woes,” Inter Press Service, January 18, 2010; Walter Armbrust, “A Revolution Against Neoliberalism?” Al-Jazeera English, February 24, 2011; “The Struggle For Worker Rights in Egypt,” The Solidarity Center, February, 2010 (www.solidaritycenter.org/files/pubs_egypt_wr.pdf); “IMF agrees to $3bn Egypt loan for post-Mubarak transition,” Bloomberg, June 5, 2011; Anand Gopal, “Egypt’s Cauldron of Revolt,” Foreign Policy, February 16, 2011; Steve Hendrix and William Wan, “Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafiq resigns ahead of protests,” Washington Post, March 3, 2011; Yassin Gaber, “Egypt workers lay down demands at new trade union conference,” Al-Ahram, March 3, 2011; Klaus Enders, “Egypt: Reforms Trigger Economic Growth,” IMF Middle East and Central Asia Department, February 13, 2008; Abigail Hauslohner, “Has the Revolution Left Egypt’s Workers Behind?” Time Magazine, June 23, 2011; “Tens of Thousands attend ‘Save the Revolution’ Day,” Al-Ahram, April 1, 2011; “Tens of thousands of Tahrir protesters demans swift justice in ‘Second Friday of Anger’,” The Daily News Egypt, May 27, 2011; Edmund Blair, “Egypt says will not need IMF, World Bank funds,” Reuters, June 25, 2011; Malika Bilal, “Egypt: An incomplete revolution,” Al-Jazeera English, August 19, 2011; Shahira Amin, “Activists fight revival of emergency law,” CNN, September 19, 2011; “IMF: Egypt economy to grow just 1.5 per cent in 2011,” Al Ahram, September 21, 2011; Alaa Shahine, “Arabs May Buy Egypt Debt to Cut Highest Yield Since 2008,” Bloomberg Businessweek, September 23, 2011; Tim Falconer, “Moody’s Downgrades Egypt’s Ratings,” Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2011; “Standard & Poor’s Downgrades Egypt Debt Rating,” CBS/AP, February 1, 2011; Tarek El-Tablawy, “Moody’s downgrades five Egyptian banks,” The Daily News Egypt, February 3, 2011; Sharif Abdel Kouddous, “Hot Teachers,” Foreign Policy, September 21, 2011; Michael Robbins and Mark Tessler, “What Egyptians mean by democracy,” Foreign Policy, September 20, 2011; International Monetary Fund, “Arab Republic of Egypt—2010 Article IV Consultation Mission, Concluding Statement,” Cairo, February 16, 2010

The Political Economy of the Egyptian Uprising

2011-11-11T09:12:00.000-05:00

Originally published by Monthly Review

Not long after Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Hosni Mubarak would resign his post as President, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Egypt to congratulate the Egyptian people on a job well done. The revolutionaries had accomplished their goal, she said. Everyone could go home and feel proud of their historic achievement and leave the cleaning up to the responsible adults—the United States and the closely allied Egyptian military, which has ruled Egypt since 1952. To prove that there were no hard feelings against the Egyptians for overthrowing one of the closest and most important U.S. allies in the Arab world, the IMF, World Bank, the G8, and the United States itself—the very entities responsible for supporting Mubarak’s thirty-year rule and imposing draconian neoliberal programs on Egypt—have extended as much as $15 billion in aid and credit to Egypt and Tunisia to assist in their transitions to democracy. This generosity begs the question: why are Western governments, and the international financial institutions (IFIs) that are closely linked to them, falling over one another to show their generosity to the revolutionaries and to display their support for progress in the Middle East?

Western ideological systems and establishment propaganda in Egypt have largely reproduced Clinton’s implicit message of “bad” versus “good” capitalism: Mubarak and his gang of “corrupt” associates have been driven out, and now the system’s benevolent equilibrium can be restored by replacing the bad guys with good guys chosen through elections overseen by the U.S.-backed Egyptian army. Accordingly, as recent events make clear, the commitment of IFIs and Western governments to “social justice” comes predicated on continuing the neoliberal transformation of Egyptian society that has been underway for decades. But is the problem the Egyptians face merely a long series of corrupt anomalies, or the system as such? Is a liberal capitalist democracy adequate to meet the demands of the revolution? And is there the potential for something more? Here we cannot avoid the essential question: how does the Egyptian uprising and the new reality it is helping create relate to global capitalism?

The Egyptian revolutionaries are directly confronting the rule of capital, consciously or not. Afraid of the consequences if the movement turns explicitly anti-capitalist, Western governments and IFIs have worked to ensure Egypt remains integrated into the global capitalist system. The “generosity” of the West serves as a means to establish powerful leverage over Egypt’s future. By keeping it indebted, the power to shut off the credit spigot can be used to keep Egypt closely linked to foreign capital and strengthen the rule of the Egyptian Army and allied bourgeoisie in the face of popular upheaval. These measures are being carried out under the veil of an orderly transition from Mubarak’s rule, economic assistance for the poor, and free and fair parliamentary elections. In enacting them, the West and its allies within Egypt are attempting to demobilize the popular uprising and limit the potential of the revolution to reshape Egyptian society.

Egypt’s Neoliberal Transformation

Since the death of nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser thirty years ago, Egypt has embarked on a process of neoliberalization, largely at Western instigation. In bringing Egypt out of colonialism and feudalism, Nasser created an authoritarian and highly centralized economy. After Egypt’s crushing defeat by Israel in 1967, his successor, Anwar Sadat, signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1978 with Washington’s sponsorship, opening the door to Egypt’s inclusion within the U.S. imperial system. U.S. aid to the Egyptian regime grew rapidly, while Sadat commenced a policy of infitah (or openness) that set in motion Egypt’s neoliberal transformation and tied its economy to international capital, a process accelerated by Mubarak after Sadat’s assassination in 1981. When the Egyptian debt crisis of 1982–90 forced it to go to the multinational Paris Club to restructure its debt, the IMF imposed a neoliberal structural adjustment program as a condition for continuing the flow of credit. The IMF conditions forced the government to cut spending on social services, relax price controls, cut subsidies, deregulate and privatize industries, target inflation, and liberalize capital flows. This program would break the powerful Arab Nationalist regional solidarity of the Nasser years and consolidate the power of a ruling class linked to global capital, with whatever disastrous consequences that entailed for the lower classes.

This transformation had wide-ranging implications for social relations in Egypt, including growing inequality, poverty, and social insecurity for the lower classes, as well as the violent exclusion of the millions who were condemned to abject misery. The neoliberal state dismantled social protections, gutting and privatizing Egypt’s health care system and other social services along with many of the state-owned industries. During Mubarak’s rule alone, food subsidies were reduced by more than 50 percent, while privatization frequently meant “less job stability, longer hours, and a lower standard of social services for workers,” as a recent report by the Solidarity Center indicates; this was a rather effective means for disciplining the labor force.1 Indeed, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), Egypt ranks as one of the twenty-five worst violators of labor rights worldwide. By contrast, political allies of the regime benefitted tremendously from such privatization schemes. State assets were handed over to a domestic oligarchy that included many members of the Army’s officer class, forming a new capitalist class closely linked to the state apparatus. The establishment of both a debt cycle through which Western financiers extracted vast wealth from Egypt and growing Foreign Direct Investment meant that vast new surpluses extracted from Egypt’s laborers were divided between the new Egyptian ruling class and their Western backers.

There was considerable economic growth in Egypt under Mubarak. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita rose about fourfold between 1981 and 2006 (in purchasing power parity terms, which is a method of comparing economic activity among countries by keeping the current currency exchange rates among the countries constant). However, this growth was accompanied by rising inequality that “reached levels not before seen in Egypt’s modern history” by the time of Mubarak’s resignation.2 Despite increases in production and wealth, real wages did not rise in tandem, and in many cases actually declined. Egypt’s minimum wage, for instance, has remained unchanged for twenty-six years in the face of increased productivity and significant inflation, particularly in the price of wage goods. Most workers work long hours (according to the ILO, the average Egyptian works forty-eight hours per week) and earn a wage that will not pay for basic necessities. It is not uncommon for employers to simply not pay their employees at all. In short, the neoliberal programs served to consolidate the power of Egypt’s ruling class and concentrate the country’s vast new wealth in the hands of the richest, who gained an increasing portion of a rapidly growing pie while the lower classes saw their share decline (see Charts 1 and 2 for details).

Chart 1. Incomes Shares, Egypt—Top 20 Percent and Bottom 10 Percent, 1996–2005

Source: World Bank4

Chart 2. Poverty, Unemployment, and Malnutrition in Egypt, 2000–2008

Source: World Bank5

Nor did existing institutional arrangements provide the workers with a means to redress their grievances. Apart from the undemocratic nature of the state apparatus, the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), though ostensibly the representative of the workers, was dominated by the regime and had supported the neoliberal privatization schemes that were so disastrous for labor and the poor. After Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif and his reform cabinet took office in 2004 and began imposing the neoliberal program with renewed vigor, growing inequality and exploitative social relations increasingly drove workers to exercise leverage against the ruling class from within their workplaces.

An unprecedented wave of strikes and pickets—opposed by the ETUF—began to affect production: between 2004 and 2010, there were more than 3,000 labor actions in Egypt. The clothing and textile sectors were the first to be hit by strikes, but building workers, transport workers, food processing workers, and even the workers on the Cairo metro system soon followed. Anger at existing social conditions grew when food prices jumped 24 percent during the 2007 world food crisis, triggering massive bread riots. With 55 million people—roughly 75 percent of the population—spending the majority of their income on food, working-class consciousness began to shift dramatically: fear of the dreaded internal security forces was overcome by hunger and desperation. Contrary to the neoliberal principles adopted by the regime, the state was forced to implement an expanded subsidy program in order to stabilize prices.

Meanwhile, a remarkable labor movement began to take shape in Egyptian industrial towns like Mahalla. In 2006, the 25,000 workers employed by Misr Spinning and Weaving struck, in the largest labor action before Mubarak’s ouster. Again, on April 6, 2008, a demonstration in Mahalla grew to thousands within hours, an action that “riveted the country” and “shook the regime to its core,” in the words of former regime officials.6 Protestors marched through the streets chanting anti-Mubarak slogans, clashed with police, torched vehicles, and triumphantly pulled down a picture of Mubarak. The action was a tremendous success, winning bonuses and pay hikes. Perhaps more importantly, the protest spawned what became known as the April 6th Movement, which attracted a large number of youth supporters on Facebook, the genesis of the powerful alliance that would bring revolution to Egypt and topple a dictatorship a few years later. The movement continued to build steam in late 2009, as municipal tax collectors staged a 10,000 strong, three-day long sit-in in the streets of Cairo, winning a 325 percent wage increase and the right to form an independent labor union, the first in Egypt’s modern history. In 2010, workers from over a dozen workplaces established “a permanent presence of working-class dissent in downtown Cairo,” undertaking a several-month long sit-in across the street from the Parliament.7

Predictably, neoliberal financial institutions showed little sympathy for the victims of their policy prescriptions. Despite the ruinous consequences of these measures for the lower classes, the IMF and World Bank consistently held up Egypt as a model for neoliberal reform. Mubarak’s Finance Minister, Youssef Boutros-Ghali, was named in 2008 to be the Chairman of the IMF and Financial Committee. In September 2009, the World Bank proudly named Egypt one of “the world’s 10 most active reformers” for the fourth time. In February 2010, just days prior to the revolutionary uprising, the IMF issued a glowing report on the Egyptian economy, declaring that “economic performance was better than expected” and praising the government’s “careful fiscal management.”8

Not mentioned in the World Bank’s “ease of doing business rankings” or the IMF evaluation was the fierce state repression of opposition to the neoliberal project. Despite rhetoric about individual freedoms, the imposition of neoliberalism required state coercion to discipline labor and subdue the poor, while also containing dissent among the educated middle class. Since the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Egypt has been under a continuous State of Emergency, which has permitted the Egyptian state apparatus to “engage in massive and often systemic labor rights violations,” while torturing and even murdering regime critics.9 The legal restrictions placed on NGOs have also permitted the government to target labor organizations, often shutting them down by force.

But despite such repression, the growing social movement, unparalleled in the modern history of the Middle East, was reinforced and broadened as the growing availability of new technologies linked together factories and forged bonds between socialists, internet activists, and workers. Though internet and cellular phone technologies were practically nonexistent in Egypt in 2000, by 2009 20 percent of Egyptians had internet access and 70 percent of the population had cellular phones. Ever-wider swaths of Egyptian society became aware of the gathering momentum of the movement, and expanding mental conceptions of the revolutionary potential for the future began to take hold. A young, educated, urban middle class, whose desire for free individual self-expression was enhanced by the proliferation of a blog culture that was largely beyond state control, was exposed to the growing worker resistance movement both online and physically in the streets of Cairo, Mahalla, and elsewhere. Changing consciousness and technologies interacted and made possible the movement’s radically democratic organizational form, as the liberating potential of the technological base was increasingly realized. The decentralized, unregulated social linkages promoted by the explosion of new technologies clashed directly with the existing structure of social relations. The alliance between the nascent urban youth movement and the workers began to take shape.

Thus emerged the critical antagonisms that drove the revolutionary social transformation. The state apparatus forcibly imposed neoliberal policies that exacerbated class conflict and created a social crisis as real wages fell below subsistence levels. Meanwhile, new technologies linked together the disaffected, exploited, and marginalized, expanding conceptions of the bounds of the possible. This new consciousness and the non-hierarchical character of the technologies employed were reflected in the growth of a movement with a horizontal and decentralized organizational form. Simultaneously, disruptions erupted within the production process as increasingly empowered workers sought to apply pressure to the ruling class and an unresponsive, authoritarian state apparatus through strikes and demonstrations. Likewise, a young, educated, urban middle class chafed under the authoritarian institutional configuration of the state apparatus. And with each victory of the new democratic social movement, the terror used by the state coercive apparatus to maintain order began to crumble and the sense of popular empowerment grew.

The Revolution: Tensions and Antagonisms

In the year leading up to the revolutionary uprising, food prices in Egypt jumped another 30 percent, despite increased government subsidies put in place after the 2008 riots.10 This rapid rise in prices was at least partially driven by the decision of the United States Federal Reserve to undertake a nearly $2 trillion Quantitative Easing program, flooding the market with liquidity and inflating the prices of assets valued in dollars. This meant a sharp rise in commodity prices, which hit poorer countries the hardest. As David Harvey argues, capital cannot solve its crisis tendencies but merely moves them around. In The Enigma of Capital, Harvey emphasizes that it is important “to recognize this perpetual repositioning of one barrier at the expense of another and so to recognize the multiple ways in which crises can form in different historical and geographical situations.”11 Seeking to stabilize the system in the midst of the 2009 crisis, Western financial institutions simply relocated it: the uprisings that spread across the Middle East were partly fueled by this spike in inflation (the inflation rate in Egypt doubled in 2009).

The success of the nonviolent revolution in Tunisia led to further radicalization of Egyptians, particularly among the urban middle class, encouraging them to join the workers in their growing opposition to the regime. The tens of thousands who protested in Cairo on January 25 would soon grow into a semi-permanent mass gathering of hundreds of thousands in Cairo’s Tahrir Square as word and images of the popular explosion spread via technologies such as Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook. In Tahrir, protestors effectively suspended the power of the state, as an organizational form adequate to the new technological base emerged.

The non-hierarchical character of these technologies was reflected in the horizontal, leaderless organizational form the uprising took on that challenged the authoritarian structure of state institutions both explicitly, through the act of nonviolent civil disobedience, and implicitly, by putting into practice an alternative model of social organization that was genuinely anarchistic and radically democratic. Seeking to inhibit the movement by gaining control of its technological supports, on January 26 the Mubarak regime shut down much of Egypt’s internet, followed shortly by the cutoff of cellular communications. Meanwhile, in an attempt to prove the inadequacy of the revolutionary model to maintain social harmony in the absence of authoritarian state institutions, the regime pulled the police off the streets, many of whom were then paid to loot shops and cause mayhem and violence.

Yet such efforts proved unsuccessful. The technologies employed by the movement were in their very essence antithetical to such rigid authoritarian control. In a desperate effort to stop the spread of the movement, the state unleashed a wave of violence on the demonstrators, both from the baltagiya (civilian thugs paid by the regime) and from paramilitary sniper units linked to the Ministry of the Interior. According to a subsequent judicial inquiry, nearly 900 people were killed, mostly shot through the chest and head by police snipers, while 6,400 were injured by the baltagiya.12 In the face of this onslaught, community defense units spontaneously sprang up, protecting the public from such attacks by implementing a network of checkpoints. Since all Egyptians are required to carry an ID card on which is printed one’s occupation, it was easy for those manning the checkpoints to discern who were with the police and take appropriate measures to protect their fellow citizens. The protestors had proven that the authoritarian state institutional apparatus was not only unnecessary and unwanted, but also inferior. They proved a better world was possible.

The protests in Tahrir Square were supported by disruptions in production that brought the Egyptian economy to a halt. Apart from the evaporation of tourism revenues (6 percent of GDP), many shops and factories closed, along with Egypt’s banking sector, for much of the three weeks of protests that led Mubarak to step down. The freezing of production and the accompanying devaluation of assets made the uprising a costly endeavor for the ruling class. Despite the urgings of the army that people “get back to work and to get paid, and life to get back to normal,” for the most part production remained at a standstill, at a cost of at least $310 million per day according to the Credit Agricole Bank.13 Mahalla workers, for instance, joined a huge nationwide general strike that began on February 9, crucially reinforcing the popular demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere and hastening Mubarak’s fall. Work stoppages also erupted in government banks, the oil and gas ministry, the transportation sector, the telecommunications ministry, the health ministry, and elsewhere in cities across Egypt.

On February 11, after several attempts to quell the uprising by making cosmetic changes to the regime, Omar Suleiman (who was the head of the dreaded internal security forces but made Vice President by Mubarak as a concession to the protestors) announced Mubarak would step down. But immediately after Mubarak’s fall, workers made it clear in strikes engulfing Egypt that they did not consider the revolution complete, alarming capital both within Egypt and internationally. Most dramatically, soon after Mubarak’s resignation 5,000 employees from the Tawfiq al-Nour department store chain marched on Cairo from across Egypt, winning a twelve-hour workday and a significant pay increase. “This is the time to act,” said one labor organizer, “we want an overthrow of this whole system, not just the removal of one person.”14

The Future: Promise and Pitfalls

The continuing labor actions and the frantic, fearful response of capital make clear that in the uprising, the demonstrators challenged more than just the Egyptian regime: they also confronted an imperial United States and global capitalism itself. Since the Second World War, U.S. policy has aimed to maintain control of regional energy supplies, the largest in the world. Local leaders like Mubarak are supported and allowed to accumulate significant wealth and power for themselves. In return, they agree to operate within a global framework dominated by the United States and serving its strategic and economic interests. The critical U.S. objective in Egypt is to prevent the emergence of a regime that would challenge the hegemony of the United States in the Middle East or implement an alternative, non-capitalist social model that could become an example for others. In Egypt, an important center of Arab cultural life, the prospect of the emergence of a socialist or anti-imperialist regime surely frightens power centers in the West.

As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, the IMF, World Bank, and other IFIs often take advantage of crises (as in the Egyptian debt crisis of 1982–90) to impose anti-democratic neoliberalization schemes on “shocked” and unsuspecting populations. The purpose of the proposed loans and other aid to Egypt—totaling as much as $15 billion—is to consolidate the power of the capitalist class and the army under the guise of an orderly transition. These “responsible” leaders are determined to continue the neoliberal drive, albeit behind a façade of free elections and a more restrained state that accommodates individual self-expression and allows the right to form political parties. Indeed, an assumed precondition for the release of the loans is the continued privatization and liberalization of Egypt’s economy. As the IMF said in a report to the G8 summit of May 26–27, Egyptian “government policies should support an enabling environment in which the private sector flourishes.”15

Despite the long struggle laid out above, according to the Western ideological narrative the Egyptian uprising was largely directed against a handful of corrupt individuals who prevented capitalism from functioning properly, and therefore demanded the imposition of “normal,” “democratic” capitalism. From this perspective, the Egyptian revolution was pro-market! Keeping to this carefully constructed narrative, President Obama announced a $1 billion debt swap (widely misreported as debt forgiveness), in which the United States agreed to reduce Egypt’s debt burden so long as Egypt agrees to use the money in accordance with Washington’s wishes. And Obama made it crystal clear just what those wishes are:

…the goal must be a model in which protectionism gives way to openness, the reigns of commerce pass from the few to the many, and the economy generates jobs for the young. America’s support for democracy will therefore be based on ensuring financial stability, promoting reform, and integrating competitive markets with each other and the global economy.16

Chart 3: Egypt’s Total Longer-Term External Debt and Debt Service, 2000-2009

Source: World Bank17

The debt cycle is another mechanism through which international lenders chain Egypt to global capitalism and compel its government to proceed with neoliberal reforms. By perpetuating the cycle of debt, whereby Egypt needs constant access to new credit in order to service its long-term debts, Egypt will have to do whatever is necessary to keep new loans coming in. This debt cycle results in an outflow of capital from Egypt to international lenders. Between 2000 and 2009, net transfers on Egypt’s long-term debt (the difference between received loans and debt payments) reached $3.4 billion. In the same period, Egypt’s debt grew by 15 percent, despite the fact that it repaid a total of $24.6 billion in loans (Chart 3). This self-reinforcing cycle of dependency, which redistributes billions from Egypt’s poor to Western financiers, gives these institutions tremendous leverage over Egypt’s government. This, despite the fact that much of this debt is what is referred to as odious debt, contracted by an unelected dictatorship with the encouragement of the IMF, World Bank, and others. Mubarak’s inner circle and the capitalist class were enriched to the tune of billions of dollars, while millions of Egyptians were kept in desperate poverty.

Keeping the economy open to foreign investment by eliminating trade barriers and capital controls is another way to keep Egypt on a short leash, establishing what is often referred to as a “virtual parliament.” If the Egyptian government does not serve the interests of capital, Western investors can defund the country by rapidly withdrawing capital, thereby driving up interest rates and destroying the Egyptian currency. Not surprisingly, the maintenance of liberalized capital flows is a key demand made on the new Egyptian government, likewise tied to the continued extension of aid and credit, as the Egyptian business class warns the ongoing revolutionary movement of the dangers of capital flight. Ominously, Moody’s Investor Service downgraded its rating for five major Egyptian banks, a move certain to provoke a reaction in international markets. Further liberalization and privatization, on the other hand, would almost certainly improve such ratings.

It is for these reasons that, with Egypt in danger of bankruptcy, members of the transitional government have gone before one set of international bankers after another, pleading for credit and reassuring them that those in power remain committed to neoliberal policies. As a representative of the current government said at the May 20–21 meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (which was designed at the end of the Cold War to restructure the economies of Eastern Europe in accordance with free-market principles, with disastrous results), “the current transition government remains committed to the open market approach, which Egypt will further pursue at an accelerated rate following upcoming election.”19 The World Bank, IMF, G8, and the Gulf Cooperation Council states have attached similar declarations to pledges of aid and support.

The military-appointed Egyptian leadership has made it clear that these are not just empty promises. In order to ensure the continuation of such financial flows and consolidate domestic class power, the transitional government has outlawed all labor strikes (punishable by prison time or a fine of up to $84,000) and forcibly cracked down on protests.20 Such efforts to demobilize labor have been complemented by a coordinated attempt to split the coalition between the workers and the urban youth movement. As labor actions persist, with many workers pushing to establish more independent labor unions with a larger say in production and political processes, state television and radio stations, while praising the protesters in Tahrir, have continuously denounced the striking workers as selfish and intent on destroying the economy. Even Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who was viewed as a leader of sorts within the urban movement, recently tweeted, “Dear Egyptians, go back to your work on Sunday. Work like never before and help Egypt become a developed country.”21 The Egyptian capitalist class and its international allies hope that by enacting mild political reforms, such as the freedom to organize political parties and speak more freely, the urban movement can be appeased and more radical social transformation and democratization forestalled.

Fears that the Egyptian uprising will turn explicitly anti-capitalist were also likely behind the declarations of support for “social justice” by the head of the IMF’s Egypt mission after the conclusion of a deal negotiated in secret with Mubarak-appointed Egyptian Finance Minister Samir Awat for $3 billion in loans.22 By supporting minor changes, such as slight increases in the minimum wage, the IMF also hopes to appease the urban movement and separate it from the workers, preserving the hegemony of the capitalist class and U.S.-aligned Army. Indeed, as the ILO pointed out, since the majority of Egyptians work in the so-called “informal sector,” such changes are merely cosmetic and are unlikely to substantially improve the lives of workers.23 So far, however, such efforts to divide the workers and the urban youth movement have not been successful: under tremendous pressure from ongoing demonstrations in Cairo and continual labor disruptions, the regime abruptly announced that it would reject all loans from the IMF and World Bank.

The struggle, however, goes on. As protests and labor actions continue across Egypt, the government announced that it would focus on deficit reduction in lieu of the IMF and World Bank loans in order to satisfy international markets. Nonetheless, ongoing strikes across the country have forced the ruling military junta to increase the minimum wage sixfold, while a plethora of new, independent unions have sprung up across Egypt. Ongoing dissatisfaction has also forced interim Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to promise a cabinet reshuffle. But the appointment of Hazem Beblawi, a seventy-four year old economics professor who has been associated with the widely despised neoliberal reforms, to the post of finance minister has again provoked outrage. Indeed, Beblawi has declared that he would consider accepting loans from the IMF, while refusing to rework the widely criticized budget produced by his predecessor, Mubarak-appointed Finance Minister Samir Radwan. The revolutionaries in Tahrir and those in the factories have together denounced Radwan’s budget as blind to the demands of the revolution for social justice.24

As huge amounts of aid from the United States and its allies to the military rulers of Egypt continue to flow unabated, Egypt is at a crossroads: it can continue to serve as an appendage of the global U.S. empire and transnational capital, or chart a more independent course. People across Latin America and Asia have already made significant strides toward taking matters into their own hands, defying the will of the United States and embarking upon social transformations that have improved millions of lives. Whether Egypt will be the first Middle Eastern state to follow them in their new course, or remain an imperial vassal under the thumb of global capitalism, remains to be seen.

Notes:

1. ↩ Joel Beinin, “Egyptian workers demand a living wage,” Middle East Channel, May 12, 2010, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com.

2. ↩ Yasser El-Shimy, “Egypt’s Struggle for Freedom,” Foreign Policy, January 27, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com. For the data on the growth of per capita GDP, see “World Economic and Financial Surveys, World Economic Outlook Database, April 2006,” http://imf.org.

3. ↩ “World Development Indicators, 1960-2008,” data file retrieved from ProQuest Statistical Datasets, 2011, https://web.lexis-nexis.com/statuniv.

4. ↩ Ibid.

5. ↩ Ibid.

6. ↩ Anand Gopal, “Egypt’s Cauldron of Revolt,” Foreign Policy, February 16, 2011, http://foreignpolicy.com.

6. ↩ Beinin, “Egyptian workers demand a living wage.”

7. ↩ International Monetary Fund, “Arab Republic of Egypt—2010 Article IV Consultation Mission, Concluding Statement,” Cairo, February 16, 2010, http://imf.org.

8. ↩ Joel Beinin, et al, “Labor Protest Politics and Worker Rights in Egypt,” Carnegie Middle East Center, February 17, 2010, http://carnegie-mec.org.

9. ↩ David Biello, “Are High Food Prices Fueling Revolution in Egypt?” Scientific American blogs, February 1, 2011, http://scientificamerican.com.

10. ↩ David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 117.

11. ↩ Maggie Michael, “Egypt: At least 846 were killed in protests,” Washington Times, April 19, 2011, http://washingtontimes.com.

12. ↩ “Egypt unrest: Banks reopen after week of closure,” BBC News, February 6, 2011, http://bbc.co.uk.

13. ↩ Gopal, “Egypt’s Cauldron of Revolt.”

14. ↩ Adam Hanieh, “Egypt’s Orderly Transition? International Aid and the Rush to Structural Adjustment,” Jadaliyya, May 29, 2011, http://jadaliyya.com.

15. ↩ “Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, May 19, 2011, http://whitehouse.gov.

16. ↩ “World Development Indicators, 1960-2008.”

17. ↩ Ibid.

18. ↩ “Statement on the occasion of EBRD Annual Governors’ Meeting, Astana—Kazakhstan,” May 20–21, 2011, http://ebrd.com.

19. ↩ Abigail Hauslohner, “Has the Revolution Left Egypt’s Workers Behind?” Time Magazine, June 23, 2011, http://time.com.

20. ↩ CNN Wire Staff, “New normal: Egyptians return to work,” CNNWorld, February 12, 2011, http://articles.cnn.com.

21. ↩ Mariam Fam, “IMF agrees to $3bn Egypt loan for post-Mubarak transition,” Bloomberg, June 5, 2011, http://bloomberg.com.

22. ↩ Ahmed Feteha, “Minimum wage in Egypt is irrelevant for poverty: ILO expert,” Ahramonline, June 14, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg.

23. ↩ Dave Enders, “New Egyptian finance minister Hazem Beblawi draws flak over past policies,” The National, July 27, 2011, http://thenational.ae.

MSNBC's Flawed Coverage of Libya, Economy

2011-06-05T18:16:00.002-04:00

Stephen Maher and Michael Corcoran

The channel, viewed by far as the most progressive on cable television, keeps its critiques well within the narrow framework of "acceptable" discourse in the corporate media.

When US bombs began to drop on Libya last month, representing the start of the third simultaneous US war (not including covert wars being waged by US Special Forces and the CIA in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere), it was not surprising to see the media jump into a pro-war frenzy, as it so often does. One might hope, however, that perhaps MSNBC - on the liberal side of acceptable discourse in US cable media - would at least offer significant skepticism toward another expensive and bloody US war. This is especially true given that 74 percent of the US population opposed US intervention.

A close look, however, reveals the opposite is true. MSNBC, whose hosts align themselves closely with Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, has been perhaps the most hawkish station on cable news. Literally every single one of the channel's nighttime hosts (Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews,Lawrence O'Donnell and Cenk Uygur) has failed to oppose the war (the morning hours are hosted by Joe Scarborough, a reliable conservative). In many instances, they have vigorously supported the war, or at the least, have deflected criticism away from Obama and the Democrats. In fact, MSNBC has arguably defended President Obama's war policies with nearly the same vigor as their Fox News competitors did with President George W. Bush, when he pushed the US into Iraq in 2003. MSNBC's coverage of the intervention in Libya shows one of the great flaws of even the most critical corporate media in the United States. Such limitations do a great disservice to the prospects of a much-needed class-based movement. And given that a recent poll done byAlternet showed how influential MSNBC is - Maddow was overwhelmingly voted as the most influential progressive, and a number of other current or former MSNBC hosts were in the top 20 - it is important that the limits of MSNBC's independence and criticism be well understood.

A Pro-War Agenda

"The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC, probably viewed as the most liberal show on television, provided arguably the most disappointing example of MSNBC's support for the war and used the war in Libya as a chance to provide further praise to Obama. Maddow observed that Obama, like Bush, was invading a Middle Eastern nation. But by initiating the attack without so much as a press conference to the American people, she argued, he was avoiding the "chest thumping" of previous administrations in an effort to "change the narrative" of US foreign policy. Obama's decision, she said in a March 21 broadcast, "to forego the chest-thumping commander-in-chief theater that goes with military intervention of any kind, that in itself is a fascinating and rather blunt demonstration of just how much this presidency is not like that of George W. Bush." This was a rather absurd position: Maddow is literally celebrating Obama's brand of US imperialism because it is hidden from the public and carried out in a way that makes state violence more palatable to the world.

At least Maddow tried to make a point beyond platitudes, which cannot be said for Ed Schultz. In an interview with Jeremy Scahill, Schultz literally uttered phrases such as "Gadaffi is a terrorist ... Obama said he has killed US troops - that that is all I need to hear." In fact, Schultz refused to directly engage in any of the points Scahill made and simply responded each time with hyperbolic platitudes about "freedom"' and "trusting the president." Despite Schultz's claims that this "is not Bush talk," it clearly is very similar to the "debates" pro-war advocates were having in the media in 2002-03 leading up to Iraq.

As noted above, the rest of MSNBC's liberal hosts have been doing almost anything besides criticizing the war, or the president. Chris Matthews criticized Obama for not being hawkish enough at the outset of the unrest in Libya. Lawrence O'Donnell, host of "The Last Word," did find some moral outrage within him, but it was all targeted at the Republicans, when he, wrongly, argued that a March 1 resolution calling for Qaddafi to step down negated the need for Congressional approval. (Of course, the extent to which it is accurate or fair to call O'Donnell or Matthews "liberal," even within the typical corporate media framework, is very much up for debate.) This example shows the primary function of the channel; it is not to challenge power, but rather to defend one arm of power: the Democratic Party. In this case, O'Donnell did not bother to seriously examine Obama's decision to lead the nation into an expensive military campaign without vital national debate or a Congressional vote, but simply deflected the issue on to the GOP.

This was also evident in the channel's coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the case of Iraq, MSNBC was one of the chief culprits that celebrated the "end" of the war in Iraq, failing to recognize that more than 100,000 contractors, tens of thousands of US troops and permanent military bases remain. And when Maddow went to Afghanistan, she painted the US counterinsurgency strategy as a noble, if tactically difficult, endeavor. She made no major critique of the morality of the war, which has now been going on a decade, calling the mission "constructive, not destructive." In short, MSNBC has arguably been as pro-war as any channel in US cable since Obama was elected president.

Giving Obama a Pass on the Economy

MSNBC's emphasis on defending the policies of one of the ruling, corporate-backed political parties in the US political system is the rule, not the exception. Many examples of such coverage exist beyond foreign policy. In the case of Obama's economic policies and specifically his negotiations with Republicans, the channel has shown a remarkable ability to pretend Obama has not played a role in extending tax cuts for the rich - breaking a key campaign promise - or in contributing to the fetishization of budget cuts that now permeates Washington, DC.

Consider Obama's recent speech about budget priorities. While Obama did indeed engage in some glowing rhetoric about the importance of social programs, the real policy he proposed was to cut $2 in spending for government services, for every $1 in tax increases (while, as Jon Stewart pointed out, in true Orwellian fashion. Obama called tax increases "spending reductions in the tax code"). Bear in mind, this is his starting position; he is sure to concede more when he actually negotiates with the GOP. And yet, MSNBC acted as if Obama had finally found his progressive soul.

Maddow said the president's speech confirmed Obama's progressive values and ought to keep his base happy. Ed Shultz said the speech "could be a real game changer." "President Obama's full-throated defense of liberalism was in full steam today," Shultz said. "The president gave new life to the progressive values that I think made this country great. And instead of being on the defensive, the president went on offense today and described the Republican vision of America for what it is."

This is remarkably naive. Despite Obama's pledge to protect the social safety net, he has made it clear his plan is really about austerity measures. He concedes that Social Security and Medicare are on the table. Further, he is not making the case for any kind of Keynesian stimulus package or jobs program (as he did in early 2009), the traditional social democratic approach to financial crises, and is actually advancing the conservative economic solutions, such as austerity measures. As the Nation magazine said in an editorial, "The president's vision of 'shared sacrifice,' ... hits the poor and the middle class hardest," while "wealthy Americans and the military are asked to sacrifice less, even though it was unfunded tax cuts and wars that got us a deficit in the first place."

Purportedly Liberal Media Serving Dominant Ideology

The famous French philosopher Louis Althusser once described the way private entities - schools, the church, labor unions and, of course, the media - serve as "Ideological State Apparatuses" reinforcing state ideology. In the US, such ideology includes the idea that capitalism is the natural order of things, and that US intentions abroad are noble and selfless. MSNBC, despite its reputation as a critical, "liberal" voice of dissent, actually serves this function precisely. MSNBC hosts are indeed rightly critical of GOP failings and the excesses of the Tea Party, to give two examples. But they fail to challenge any of the major tenets of US ideology and, thus, serve to reinforce these tenets. The class war that is waged on workers by elites - who own MSNBC - is never mentioned. There is also virtually no discussion of the inherent flaws of having a two-party system dominated by corporate money represent the full spectrum of political choice in a "democracy." In fact, the channel in many cases serves to perpetuate the narrow debate inherent in the two-party system, ignoring class issues and effectively acting as a communications arm for one elite political party.

In some ways, the limits of MSNBC reflect an even further problem: the limits of contemporary liberalism as a whole, Chris Hedges most recent book, "Death of the Liberal Class," argues liberalism as a force for change and justice is dying. Liberal institutions, he argues, have become "useless and despised appendage[s] of corporate power." The "greatest sin" of the liberal class is "its enthusiastic collusion with the power elite" in silencing, banning and blacklisting "rebels, iconoclasts, communists, socialists, anarchists, radical union leaders and pacifists." Hope, argues Hedges, can only be found in a "return to the language of class conflict and rebellion."

Hedges' analysis is fitting in the context of MSNBC. A recent interview between Maddow and Dean Baker over local budget cuts was telling. When Baker was sharply critical of Obama ("Republicans are playing against no opposition"), Maddow quickly came to the president's defense, arguing that there was little the president could do, since many cuts were coming from the state level. This is a common refrain among MSNBC's "liberals," who often argue that Obama wants so badly to have progressive change, but is shackled by Congress, the system, and so on. At the end of the interview, she added that Democrats on the state level might fight the good fight on the issue, rather than Obama. This, in a nutshell, sums up the tragic limits of the corporate-owned "liberal" media. The solution is always to see what the Democratic Party can do. There is never any talk of movement building; it is always about why all change must come from above, through a corrupted political party.

While there is no doubt that MSNBC hosts do engage in some quality work and that Maddow is preferable to the likes of Tucker Carlson, who used to occupy her 9 PM time slot. But the channel is, at its root, a profit-seeking enterprise for corporate America, and beyond that, is tightly connected to a major power center, the Democratic Party, which needs to be challenged. The left should look more to the likes of Amy Goodman, the Real News Network, and other independent left-wing outlets, which do indeed challenge these power centers, for analyses of society that rightly seek out the root causes of problems and recognize the need for class consciousness, not merely partisan cheerleading. Such outlets provide voices to the voiceless and seriously examine the problems inherent within capitalism and within our broken democracy, which is corrupted by corporate power. It is also vital that more activists, journalists and editors create more independent media outlets, which serve as the main defense against the all-too-narrow presentations of reality created by corporate-owned media, such as MSNBC.

MSNBC's recent coverage of Libya and the economy show clear-cut examples of the failure of corporate-owned so-called "progressive" media. It also further demonstrates the need for those concerned with social justice to look beyond liberalism and the Democratic Party and fight - as a united working class - for change outside of these corrupted institutions, including MSNBC.

The Myth of U.S. Humanitarian Intervention in Libya

2011-05-26T17:53:00.002-04:00

Stephen Maher and Michael Corcoran

Originally published by the ISR

THE MYTH of humanitarian intervention has once again surfaced as the key justification for Western imperial adventurism. This time, Libya has been targeted by the United States and France for a bombing campaign that is alleged to be primarily about “protecting” the people of Libya, who joined others in the “Arab Spring” in demanding freedom from a ruthless dictator.

As this so-called humanitarian intervention takes place, the United States continues its support for the brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrations in states allied with the United States, such as Bahrain and Yemen. This clearly demonstrates the brazen level of hypocrisy of the U.S. position and illustrates just how concerned U.S. state managers are with human rights. Clear geopolitical motives for the intervention in Libya, as well as the suppression in Yemen and Bahrain, show the true purpose of the U.S. policy: to maximize its control of a vital, resource-rich region while hiding its true intentions, as always, behind the veil of benevolent intentions. This has been made possible, in part, because the media has worked to spread the party line of U.S. humanitarian intervention and benevolent intentions, serving as what the neo-Marxist writer Louis Althusser referred to as an “Ideological State Apparatus” (ISA).1

This article seeks to dismantle the arguments made by apologists for U.S. imperialism in Libya by examining the true nature of U.S. foreign policy and its concern (or lack thereof) for human rights, the illegality of the Libyan invasion through the lens of both domestic and international law, and by demonstrating how corporate media complicity has helped to sell this narrative, serving, as always, as an arm of official ideology.

Humanitarian intervention as imperial ideology

The ideological nature of much of the debate over the intervention is painfully clear, even among critics. “At the end of the day,” writes Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass, who sits at the dovish extreme of the permitted spectrum, “the Libyan intervention is more than anything about the role of the United States in the world,” and “the United States cannot and should not intervene in every internal dispute where bad or even evil is on display.”2 On the surface, Haass is correct, of course; no one would suggest the United States intervene in every country in which it saw “bad or even evil.” Yet his statement is actually a manifestation of state ideology: the United States either acts in the name of good (to stop “bad or even evil”) or it does not act at all. The idea of the United States itself committing “evil” is not a possible category, it is outside the bounds of “thinkable thought” to borrow Noam Chomsky’s phrase.3 Haass’s evaluation reveals his uncritical acceptance of this principle, and thus his fitness to serve at the head of a respectable and important ideological institution. Yet the full support the United States has lent to the violent crackdown on protests in Yemen, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia—not to mention Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians—reveals that U.S. policy lacks the moral quality Haass and others inherently ascribe to it.

This is not the first time that a U.S. president has justified intervention on the basis of supposed humanitarian imperatives. The most noted example in U.S. history is President Clinton’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. Though he claimed at the time—much like Obama—that such an intervention was necessary to prevent the massacre of civilians, “uncontroversially, the vast crimes took place after the bombing began: they were not a cause but—it is hard to deny—a consequence.”4 In a book strongly endorsed by Clinton’s deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott (who worked closely on the intervention), John Norris writes, “It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform—not the plight of Kosovar Albanians—that best explains NATO’s war.”5 When one takes notice of simultaneous U.S. support for Indonesia’s genocidal occupation of East Timor,6 as well as its support for Turkey’s horrific ethnic cleansing of its Kurdish population,7 this conclusion becomes even harder to avoid.

Those who wish to understand the world around them must shrug off the yoke of ideology and examine matters for what they are. What is most striking about the demands of the recent revolutionary uprisings across the Middle East is that they are overwhelmingly secular, universal demands for freedom, human rights, and economic justice; not fanatical cries to impose a supreme leader, nor fundamentalist calls to holy warfare. Despite official rhetoric of humanitarian intervention and “promoting freedom,” the United States is struggling to repress the revolutionary awakening. Though the popular uprisings have largely been free of anti-imperialist slogans, the challenge they pose to U.S. client regimes through which imperial power is projected into the Middle East, the chief oil producing and most strategically important region of the world, is very real.

The independence that would result from the liberation from dictatorship and oppression demanded by the region’s people is the dialectical opposite of U.S. control: more power for the masses means less control for the United States. This explains the management of the region through a network of client dictatorships, overseen and stabilized by Israeli nuclear hegemony. It is a system enforced by an expansive disciplinary apparatus of interlocking state coercion, which relies on terror to maintain order; if it does not respond when tested, it loses all effectiveness. In recent months, we have seen masses of people across the Middle East challenging that coercive mechanism, which is none other than empire itself—and it has responded. It should go without saying that such a system of raw power and domination does not take account of “humanitarian concerns.”

In reality, this imperial system was constructed to ensure continued U.S. control of the Middle East’s energy resources, particularly the vast Saudi reserves, deemed “the greatest material prize in history” by the U.S. State Department.8 In pursuing this objective, the United States strengthens the regimes it controls—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, and so on—while threatening and attacking those that oppose its objectives—Iran, Syria, and Libya. Human beings only matter insofar as they get in the way. This poses a simple rejoinder to Mr. Haass: the easiest way for the United States to put an end to “bad or even evil” in the world (in Haass’s sense of “infringements on human rights”) is to stop carrying it out.

Expanding empire, repressing opposition

As the brutal repression of recent uprisings makes clear, the main purpose of growing U.S. military assistance programs to Yemen and Bahrain (Obama increased military assistance to Yemen from $67 million in 2009 to $150 million in 2010) is to repress “their people,” and maintain the U.S.-prescribed regional order.9 The violent crackdown against protesters in Bahrain has included tactics such as a 3:00 a.m. attack by hundreds of riot police on unarmed sleeping protesters, “including families and children,” supported by tear gas and live ammunition fired from U.S.-manufactured Apache helicopters.10 Doctors trying to help the hundreds of wounded and dying were savagely beaten, one example of what Human Rights Watch has called “a troubling pattern of security forces preventing medical staff from providing urgent care to wounded protesters and assaulting doctors and paramedics dispatched to provide treatment to the injured.”11 Though the U.S. government has issued muted public statements deploring the violence, full American support for the repression has continued.12

Bahrain is an important and close U.S. ally, housing the Fifth Fleet of the U.S. Navy, and is located adjacent to Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, which contains the majority of Saudi oil reserves.13 Ominously for Washington, there are some signs of rebellion spreading to the Saudi Kingdom, including protests in the Eastern Province.14 Such a threat is not likely to be taken lightly.

While the United States intervenes directly in Libya on behalf of armed rebels, it authorized Saudi Arabia’s deployment of its U.S.-supplied military to Bahrain to support the brutal crackdown on nonviolent demonstrations there, which arrived just days after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had visited the island.15 Far from being faced with sanctions and bombardment for its repressive role not just within its own borders, but elsewhere in the region, Saudi Arabia has received substantial American support for its longstanding imperial service, including the largest arms sale in U.S. history—$60 billion—in October 2010.16

Massive protests in Yemen, another strategically located U.S. client, have likewise been suppressed with ferocious violence. U.S.-armed paramilitaries attacked students staging a sit-in at Sanaa University, and, backed by U.S.-made tanks, have gunned down unarmed demonstrators in the streets.17 One such attack recently killed fifty-two people and wounded hundreds, and was followed by the enactment of an emergency law that “effectively suspends the constitution.”18 The government crackdown reached such levels of brutality that several military leaders defected and joined the protesters, yet Obama has not announced his support for their cause nor called on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, and “U.S. special forces continue to operate across the country in support of the government.”19 Hollow, tepid condemnations of the wave of violence Saleh has released on the demonstrators by the White House Press Secretary20 have been carefully balanced by Robert Gates’s reminders that the United States has vital interests in Yemen,21 and have so far not been followed by action. Despite support for such crimes by allied regimes, the Washington establishment is still able to push the narrative that it is acting primarily, and selflessly, in the interest of human rights in Libya.

U.S. backing of Israel’s barbaric, monthlong slaughter of half-starved, defenseless Palestinians in Gaza in 2009, including widespread use of U.S.-manufactured white phosphorous against civilians likewise reveals the true role played by “humanitarian concerns” in U.S. foreign policy.22 Rather than sanction Israel or intervene militarily to safeguard the rights of Palestinians, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution at the height of the massacre expressing its support for the attack, while the Bush administration blocked international efforts to reach a cease-fire. The Obama administration has worked tirelessly to discredit those documenting the crimes,23 and remains the chief supporter of Israeli strangulation of Gaza, causing a severe humanitarian crisis, including a “complete economic collapse” and “a substantial drop in the availability of necessities” such as food, clean water, and medicine.24

Through intervention in Libya, the United States reifies the illusion that it is siding with the popular rebellions throughout the region, even as it is the most powerful force working to crush them. While it arms the despots the masses seek to overthrow, it focuses attention on its supposedly noble humanitarian defense of Libyans from the brutal dictatorship of Muammar Qaddafi.25 No doubt the decision to intervene was helped by the Benghazi shadow government’s indication that if in power, it would adopt positions favorable to Western interests, which has already won it French recognition.26 Further, many of the Benghazi opposition leaders are former prominent Qaddafi regime officials27 (in addition to a possible CIA operative),28 who it is difficult to believe have suddenly become pro-democracy activists. Apart from public statements, there is little reason to think that empowering the Benghazi regime will lead to any substantial change in Libya whatsoever—aside from the country’s geopolitical alignment, as it would then be under U.S. control. What is clear is that the U.S. establishment knows little about the opposition (it has even been suggested that it includes members of “al-Qaeda”),29 and probably does not care; it simply wants to empower those who support its interests and enhance its geopolitical dominance.

With the region in a state of unprecedented revolutionary upheaval, including ongoing uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt—both of which border Libya—intervention against Qaddafi was designed to capitalize on the circumstances and enhance U.S. dominance. As ongoing military catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan strengthen the perception of the United States as an overstretched empire in decline, by attacking Libya the United States also seeks to reestablish the “credibility” of its “military deterrent”—in other words, ensure that the world is still too terrified of the response to risk challenging U.S. dictates. Obama’s bellicose rhetoric is intended to send a clear message and reinforce the cardinal principle of U.S. foreign policy: as George H. W. Bush put it in 1991, “What we say goes.”30 Retribution is swift and total for those who refuse to comply.

There is also a dangerous message that will greatly weaken future international nonproliferation efforts: had Libya kept its nuclear and chemical arsenal instead of “voluntarily” renouncing all WMDs in 2003, the regime would have been able to deter the attack, as would have Iraq in the case of the 2003 U.S. invasion.31 North Korea, on the other hand, appears safe from such intervention.

Protecting civilians: “A non-negotiable ultimatum”

Whatever complex geopolitical motivations exist for yet another Western bombing campaign in the Middle East, what is perfectly clear is that by engaging in this undeclared war, President Barack Obama has violated domestic law and has engaged in a radical expansion of executive power.

While Obama did attempt to justify the war by using the 1973 War Powers Act, the action clearly goes beyond the scope of the law.32 The War Powers Act does indeed allow for the president to use military force for sixty days (with a possible thirty-day extension) in the case of a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” This was clearly not the case with the conflict in Libya, which posed no threat to the United States or its neighbors, and essentially constituted a civil war. While there is clearly no doubt that Qaddafi has lost the support of much of the population of Libya due to his many abuses, this in no way enables a U.S. president to start a war without approval from Congress.

“In taking the country into a war with Libya, Barack Obama’s administration is breaking new ground in its construction of an imperial presidency—an executive who increasingly acts independently of Congress at home and abroad,” wrote Bruce Ackerman in Foreign Policy magazine, a journal run by the Carnegie Institute. “He was elected in reaction to the unilateralist assertions of John Yoo and other apologists for George W. Bush-era illegalities. Yet he is now moving onto ground that even Bush did not occupy…putting Bush-era talk into action in Libya—without congressional authorization.”33

That an elite publication would voice such a view is telling (although in the mainstream media, only Representative Dennis Kucinich has been allowed to articulate this argument, calling Obama’s action without congressional authorization an “impeachable offense”)34 and illustrates how unambiguously illegal Obama’s war in Libya is. This did not stop Obama from laying out an incredibly flawed justification for the endeavor, perhaps most ludicrously declaring in a February 25 letter to House Speaker John Boehner that Libya constituted “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”35 With few exceptions, members of Congress seemed to uncritically accept that an imperial president had effectively usurped the war-making powers of the legislature. Even Speaker Boehner, one of Obama’s chief political opponents, would only encourage Obama to “do a better job of briefing members of Congress,” but made no mention of a vote of authorization.36

The intervention violates international law as well. The United Nations Security Council did authorize all necessary actions “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” But, as former head of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohn noted, the attack “exceeds the bounds” of this authorization.” All necessary measures “should first have been peaceful measures to settle the conflict. But peaceful means were not exhausted before Obama began bombing Libya,” Cohn wrote.37

Indeed, Chapter I of the UN Charter forbids the “threat or use of force” in international relations.38 Though the resolution was passed under Chapter VII, which allows the Security Council to take action that “may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security,” provisions demanding a determination that all measures short of force are exhausted before resorting to intervention were clearly not satisfied.39 Moreover, even if we leave aside the language in the resolution calling for a peaceful settlement and assume the intervention is authorized by the Security Council, a UNSC resolution is not a blank check to violate these fundamental principles of the UN Charter: article 24 mandates that the Security Council “shall act in accordance with the Principles and Purposes of the United Nations.”40

Neither the Security Council resolution nor the UN Charter could be interpreted to authorize regime change, yet Obama boldly announced, “It is U.S. policy that Qaddafi needs to go.”41 Obama seemed to hedge a bit when he added that, “when it comes to our military action, we are doing so in support of United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 that specifically talks about humanitarian efforts, and we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate.”42 This argument also forms the basis for the White House legal strategy to work around the need for congressional authorization by claiming, as White House Middle East advisor Dennis Ross did, that the attack constitutes a “limited humanitarian intervention, not war.”43

But clearly, the United States is looking to oust Qaddafi through one lawless method or another. “When the mission was launched, it was largely seen as having a limited, humanitarian agenda: to keep Colonel Qaddafi from attacking his own people,” claimed a New York Times article from March 29. “But the White House, the Pentagon and their European allies have given it the most expansive possible interpretation, amounting to an all-out assault on Libya’s military.” The article notes that while the “Obama administration has been reluctant to call the operation an actual war,” American involvement “is far deeper than discussed in public and more instrumental to the fight than was previously known.”44 There are also new reports of CIA agents on the ground in Libya, despite Obama’s proclamations that there would be no ground troops in the country, and the UN resolution’s express prohibition on such a presence.45

Likewise, reasonable alternatives to intervention that fall short of regime change have been ignored, revealing the true motivation for the attack. A political “Roadmap” passed by the African Union on March 25 calling for an end to the bombing and immediate negotiations between the opposition and the government was agreed to by the Qaddafi regime, but has been ignored by Washington.46 And Congress, with limited exceptions, has expressed support for this policy. The always hawkish Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut also vigorously promoted illegal regime change, telling CNN that “Once the president of the United States says, as President [Barack] Obama did, that Qaddafi must go, if we don’t work with our allies to make sure Qaddafi does go, America’s credibility and prestige suffers all over the world.”47 Despite the fact that Al Jazeera and others reported before the bombing that the Libyan leader “was looking for an agreement allowing him to step down,” the bombing was initiated anyway, showing that the West was not even considering a peaceful resolution to the situation.48 The United States never even acknowledged such reports, and Obama defiantly declared that the dictator faced a “non-negotiable ultimatum.”49

Corporate media as “Ideological State Apparatus”

The U.S. mainstream media has predictably served to advance the U.S. narrative, accepting the war as a just act of benevolence by the United States, which is selflessly working to save the lives of Libyan civilians. This is predictable: the media in a capitalist country largely serves as what Louis Althusser called an “Ideological State Apparatus,” accepting and spreading the ideological doctrines of the state.

Perhaps The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, largely viewed to be the extreme left of the editorial shows on cable television, provided the most glaring example of the way state ideology pervades the media. Maddow observed that Obama, like Bush, was invading a Middle Eastern nation. But by initiating the attack without so much as a press conference to the American people, she argued, he was avoiding the “chest-thumping” of previous administrations in an effort to “change the narrative” of U.S. foreign policy.

Obama’s decision, she said in a March 21 broadcast, “to forego the chest-thumping commander-in-chief theater that goes with military intervention of any kind, that in itself is a fascinating and rather blunt demonstration of just how much this presidency is not like that of George W. Bush.”50

This pathetic display reveals precisely the way the media function as an ISA. As the media’s best known “liberals” celebrate U.S. imperialism because it is hidden from the public, and carried out in a way that makes state violence more palatable, we see the extremely narrow parameters of debate. Liberal journals, such as the Nation, followed suit. The magazine published a piece by Professor Juan Cole, titled “An open letter to the left on Libya,” in which he argued that “If we just don’t care if the people of Benghazi are subjected to murder and repression on a vast scale, we aren’t people of the Left”—implying that the only reason one could oppose the intervention is “not caring” about the Libyan people.51 It is simply assumed by “serious” mainstream outlets that the war is noble. Debate is encouraged within these narrow boundaries, which gives official propaganda a system-reinforcing character.52

Obama’s role in starting a third U.S. war in the Middle East also seems to indicate the extent of his commitment to militarism, and shows a major similarity with President George W. Bush. Yet, the media has scrambled to portray this as a different kind of war, a “liberal war,” as Russ Douthat described it in a New York Times op-ed. “In its month-long crab walk toward a military confrontation with Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, the Obama administration has delivered a clinic in the liberal way of war,” he wrote. The rebranding of imperialism and militarism under Obama has indeed proven to be effective.

Indeed, the Times op-ed page serves as an especially effective ideological tool for the state. In fourteen op-eds and two editorials written about Libya from March 14 to 28, only two could be described as offering anything resembling opposition to the war. One was a piece by Bob Herbert, who condemned “pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war…while simultaneously demolishing school budgets.”53 The other was by Thomas Friedman, who expressed his desire to support what he considers a noble mission in Libya, but admits, “Sadly, we cannot afford it.”54 Clearly, even these criticisms are within the “bounds of the expressible” laid out by the ideological system—assuming that our motives in Libya are virtuous, but arguing that our commitment to justice must be tempered by other pressing needs.55 The more typical op-eds run by the paper of record were similar to that of Nicholas Kristof, whose “Hugs from Libyans” told stories of Libyan “Thank you rallies” in honor of the U.S. war.56

Few corporate outlets dared mention the heights of U.S. hypocrisy or the excessive cost of the operation—estimated at $2 billion a day, according to Forbes—just as the government seeks to make cuts to vital programs like Medicare and Social Security.57 These costs may explain why, despite the near unanimity of the media in favor of the intervention, 63 percent of those polled by the Pew Research Center did not think the United States had a responsibility to act with violence in Libya.58

Business as usual for the American Empire

The Libyan war is yet another clear example of the imperial nature of U.S. foreign policy and the effectiveness of state ideology in blinding the public to the true nature of violence carried out abroad. Piercing the veneer of official propaganda, we discover that the United States is again engaged in a war of choice, using the military as a weapon, not as a last resort to defend itself, but rather to display and entrench Western power and shape the world in its interest during a time of massive change. The media—most shamelessly liberal apologists for Obama—perpetuate this lie in near-monolithic fashion, while allowing for “debates” merely over tactics, and ignoring geopolitics and the brute reality of U.S. Empire.

Michael Corcoran (michaelcorcoran.blogspot.com) is a journalist and media critic from Boston who has written for the Boston Globe, the Nation, the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, NACLA Report on the Americas, Extra!, and other publications. He is a master’s candidate at the John McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Stephen Maher (rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com) is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C., and a master’s candidate at American University School of International Service. His work, covering a wide range of issues, has appeared in the Guardian, on the Electronic Intifada, Truthout, Extra!, and elsewhere.

1 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” La Pensée, 1970, www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm.
2 Richard Haass, “Too much, too late,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 21, 2011, www.cfr.org/libya/libya-too-much-too-late/p24444.

3 Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (Boston: South End Press, 1999), 33.

4 Noam Chomsky, A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor, and the Standards of the West (New York: Verso Books, 2000), 96.

5 John Norris, Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo (New York: Praeger, 2005), xxiii.

6 Chomsky, A New Generation Draws the Line, 76–78.

7 Ibid., 11.

8 The United States Department of State Foreign Relations of the United States: diplomatic papers, 1945. The Near East and Africa: vol. VIII, 45, University of Wisconsin digital collection, http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1945v08.

9 Nir Rosen, “How it started in Yemen: From Tahrir to Taghyir,” New Statesman, March 21, 2011.

10 “Bahrain: End deadly attacks on peaceful protesters,” Human Rights Watch, February 17, 2011; See also: Scheherezade Faramarz, “Bahrain crackdown routs protesters; clashes kill 5,” ?McClatchy Newspapers, March 16, 2011, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014516840_bahrain17.html.

11 Faramarz , “Bahrain crackdown routs protesters”; “Bahrain: End deadly attacks on peaceful protesters”; and “Bahrain: Injured people denied medical care,” Human Rights Watch, March 17, 2011.

12 Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement from the Press Secretary on violence in Yemen and Bahrain,” March 13, 2011, www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/13/statement-press-secretary-violence-yemen-and-bahrain.

13 Brad Knickerbocker, “U.S. faces difficult situation in Bahrain, home to US Fifth Fleet,” Christian Science Monitor, February 19, 2011.

14 Ulf Laessing and Cynthia Johnston, “Saudi police fire in air to disperse protest,” Reuters, March 10, 2011; See also Frank Langfitt and Renee Montagne, “Saudi forces out in force to stop ‘Day of Rage,’” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, March 11, 2011.

15 Though the Pentagon initially claimed it did not know of the Saudi moves in advance, reports later surfaced that the United States had in fact been informed. See “Saudi told US of Bahrain intervention: US official,” Agence France-Presse, March 14, 2011.

16 Anthony Cordesman, “The New Saudi arms deal: Serving vital U.S. security interests,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 24, 2010.

17 Rosen, “How it started in Yemen” ; See also Ahmed Al-Haj, “Yemeni soldiers attack students,” Associated Press, March 8, 2011.

18 “Yemen: Emergency law does not trump basic rights,” Human Rights Watch, March 23, 2011.

19 Seumas Milne, “There’s nothing moral about Nato’s intervention in Libya,” Guardian, March 23, 2011.

20 Andrew Malcolm “Yemen president gets stern warning from Obama press secretary.” Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2011.

21 “US says post-Saleh Yemen would pose ‘real problem,’” Agence-France Presse, March 27, 2011.

22 Jonathan Weber, “Goldstone report slams IDF warfare in Gaza,” YNet News, September 16, 2009.

23 Stephen Zunes, “The Gaza war, Congress, and International Humanitarian Law,” Middle East Policy Council, http://www.mepc.org; Edith Lederer, “U.S. blocks UN Security Council action on Gaza,” Associated Press, January 3, 2009; Jack Khouri, “Goldstone tells Obama: Show me flaws in Gaza report,” Ha’aretz, October 22, 2009.

24 “The Gaza Strip—Background,” B’Tselem–The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, www.btselem.org/english/Gaza_Strip.

25 Eben Kaplan, “How Libya got off the list,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 16, 2007.

26 “France recognizes Libya rebels, to surprise of EU,” Associated Press, March 10, 2011.

27 David Wood, “Gaddafi’s army, Libyan rebels square off for showdown,” Huffington Post, March 29, 2011.

28 Chris Adams, “Libyan rebel leader spent much of past 20 years in suburban Virginia,” McClatchy Newspapers, March 26, 2011.

29 Greg Miller, “Libyan opposition includes a small number of al-Qaeda fighters, U.S. officials say,” Washington Post, March 29, 2011.

30 Mitchel Cohen, “What we say, goes! How Bush Sr. sold the bombing of Iraq,” CounterPunch, December 28, 2002.

31 Paul A. DeSutter, “Libya renounces weapons of mass destruction.” eJournal USA, America.gov.

32 Lauren Rozen, “Averting ‘Srebrenica on steroids’: White House defends Libya operations,” Yahoo! News, March 23, 2011.

33 Bruce Ackerman, “Obama’s unconstitutional war,” Foreign Policy, March 25, 2011.

34 Quoted in Jennifer Epstein, “Kucinich: Libya action ‘impeachable,’” The Politico, March 21, 2011.

35 Quoted in Josh Rogin, “Obama Declares National State of Emergency over Libya,” Foreign Policy, February 25, 2011.

36 Stephanie Condon, “Boehner, GOP want Obama to consult with Congress on Libya,” CBS News, March 21, 2011.

37 Marjorie Cohn, “Stop bombing Libya,” Huffington Post, March 21, 2011.

38 Charter of the United Nations, www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter1.shtml.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Aprille Muscara, “Obama leaves door open to regime change in Libya,” InterPress Service, March 21, 2011.

42 Ibid.

43 Rozen, “Averting ‘Srebrenica on steroids.’”

44 Eric Schmidt, “U.S. gives its air power expansive role in Libya,” New York Times, March 28, 2011.

45 National Public Radio, “CIA operatives gathering intelligence in Libya,” March 31, 2011, www.npr.org/2011/03/31/135005728/cia-operatives-gathering-intelligence-in-libya.

46 Luc Van Kemenede, “Libya says it’s ready to implement a ‘road map,’” Yahoo! News, March 25, 2011.

47 As quoted in Josh Rogin, “Obama declares national state of emergency over Libya,” Foreign Policy, February 25, 2011.

48 “Libyan rebels reject potential Gaddafi offer to step down: Reports,” Reuters, March 7, 2011.

49 Quoted in “Q&A: The Libyan ceasefire, the UN resolution and military tactics,” Guardian, March 18, 2011.

50 For transcript, see The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC.com, March 21, 2011, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42214552/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/.

51 Juan Cole, “An open letter to the left on Libya,” Nation, March 26, 2011.

52 Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 48.

53 Bob Herbert, “Losing our way,” New York Times, March 25, 2011.

54 Thomas Friedman, “Tribes with flags,” New York Times, March 22, 2011.

55 Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, 45–73.

56 Nicholas Kristof, “Hugs from Libyans,” New York Times, March 23, 2011.

57 Linda Thompson, “The real cost of U.S. in Libya? 2 billion dollars per day,” Forbes, March 28, 2011, http://blogs.forbes.com/
beltway/2011/03/28/the-real-cost-of-u-s-in-libya-two-billion-?dollars-per-day/.

58 For poll results, see: www.usnewsweekly.info/americans-?appear-wary-over-u-s-role-in-libya-reuters/.

Al-Jazeera, as endorsed by Hillary Clinton

2011-03-10T19:01:00.006-05:00

With its Arab Spring coverage, al-Jazeera won new fans. Isn't it time to end the channel's virtual blackout on US cable networks?

Originally published by the Guardian newspaper

Stephen Maher and Michael Corcoran

Al-Jazeera's esteem in the United States has reached unprecedented heights in the aftermath of its coverage of the revolutionary uprising in Egypt, which clearly displayed how embarrassingly inadequate US cable news outlets are by comparison. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was compelled recently to concede that al-Jazeera English (AJE) provides "real news" coverage and actual on-the-ground journalism, unlike its American counterparts, which, she said, rely too heavily on cheap punditry.

Despite the US's unique position of power and influence, cable providers in America do not offer a single world news channel. Not even CNN International, the grownup sister channel of CNN, is available in the US; American audiences are forced to endure the entertainment-centric, domestic version of the channel – as Clinton described it, "a million commercials … and arguments between talking heads."

Al-Jazeera's impressive coverage of the uprising in Egypt has reopened a debate over whether cable providers should offer AJE as an option for US viewers. The channel is pressing the issue as never before, devoting a page on its site to encourage Americans to "Demand al-Jazeera", and using Twitter and Facebook to build a national movement for cable companies to offer the channel. With recent reports that Comcast is in negotiations with the Qatar-based network, now is the time for the effective blackout of al-Jazeera English in the US to end.

The evolution of AJE's reputation in the United States is remarkable. For years, the channel was demonised by a hysterical and largely successful campaign that labelled it "terrorist-promoting". As if this rhetorical hostility was not enough, the US bombed al-Jazeera's offices in Kabul in 2001 andBaghdad in 2003, and Donald Rumsfeld called the network's reports "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable", when, in 2004, it aired pictures of dead Iraqis in Fallujah. Rumsfeld's Pentagon also attempted to arrange a spying operation to monitor the activities of AJE staff.

And al-Jazeera still has its detractors today. In response to Clinton's concession that al-Jazeera runs an effective news operation, Glenn Beck responded with predictable hysterics, asserting that the secretary of state was defending the "propaganda arm of the Middle East and Islamic extremists". Such hyperbolic rightwing attacks are utterly without merit. Al-Jazeera's only offence is to offer critical coverage and include perspectives not heard in mainstream US media. While US shows largely consist of political strategists rehashing partisan talking points in superficial "debates" that last only minutes between commercials breaks, al-Jazeera programmes, like Marwan Bishara's "Empire", feature much longer, in-depth conversations, without excessive commercial breaks, that are far more informative than anything seen on US cable news.

Likewise, the channel's hard news segments put US media to shame. Al-Jazeera had on-location, nuanced reports from the very start of the Egyptian uprising, virtually every US news channel was reduced to broadcasting images from al-Jazeera, having no footage of their own. Notably, the Drudge Report regularly linked to AJE's coverage of the Arab Spring.

As a result, the American public is showing an increasingly openminded attitude towards the station. Online viewership of al-Jazeera jumped 2,500% during the Egyptian uprising, and 50% of the website's 22m monthly visitors are North American. Clearly, an audience exists for the channel, especially since US cable companies carry channels specifically for niche activities such as golf, tennis, cycling and hunting.

But, as of now, AJE is only available to residents of Burlington, Vermont, Washington, DC and Toledo, Ohio – and even in those cities, the hostings of al-Jazeera has not been without controversy. In 2008, opponents pressured city-owned Burlington Telecom to pull the channel from its lineup. Residents of the town, however, responded angrily, and convinced the channel's board at a public hearing to keep the channel.

As subjects of a government with vast global interests and a considerable international military presence, it is absurd that American citizens do not have the option of an international cable news channel. Even as the US fights two massive wars in the Middle East, and is deeply involved in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe, the lack of critical, international news leaves the American people largely isolated. Given the many flaws with US world news coverage and a lack of diverse perspectives, increasing the availability of al-Jazeera could only help US citizens be more informed about the effects of US policies abroad.

Media Don't Bite the Ruling that Feeds Them

2011-01-08T18:57:00.000-05:00

Citizen United fills airwaves—and corporate coffers

Originally published by Extra!, the journal of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

By Michael Corcoran and Stephen Maher

The 2010 midterm elections were the first since the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision allowed unlimited corporate funding of political broadcasts in elections. As was widely predicted at the time, spending hit unprecedented highs this election cycle, including record sums on television ads. In the words of the Associated Press (10/29/10), Citizens essentially constituted a “stimulus package” for broadcast and cable media corporations, which saw major increases in revenue, thus benefiting from the ever-deepening relationship between money and politics.

In fact, media corporations raked in a record $3 billion this midterm election cycle, not only breaking the previous midterm spending record of $2.4 billion in 2006, but also surpassing the $2.7 billion spent in the 2008 presidential election cycle (AP, 10/29/10). Much of this windfall can be attributed directly to the Citizens decision, according to a report from the media tracking group SNL Kagan, which described the 2010 election climate as “a political ad revenue treasure trove for broadcasters” (Hill, 9/22/10).

CBS, according to AP (11/4/10), “pounced on an advertising revival in the broadcast media to produce a 53 percent increase in its third-quarter net income”; other media companies likewise “reported robust ad gains.” Media giantTime Warner—owner of cable channels like CNN, TNT and TBS—saw profits rise by more than one-third in the quarter, in part due to a 23 percent increase in ad revenue (CNET, 11/4/10).

Local stations likewise have their snouts in the trough. Political ads are expected to account for 11 percent of the total revenue for local broadcasters this year, up from 7 percent in 2006 (AP, 10/29/10). In Boston, where a 30-second election spot costs about $25,000, demand for ads was so high that local channels were actually turning them down. “There are not enough commercial breaks and too many advertisers. It’s been absolutely crazy,” said Andy Hoffman, a sales manager for Channel 5 in Boston (Boston Globe, 10/30/10). The informational benefits for the public of swimming in partisan political ads, it goes without saying, are dubious (USA Today, 10/25/10).

Media companies not only benefit from ads, but also now have the ability to donate as much money as they want to politicians’ campaigns. This new leverage will enable media corporations to fight for issues that impact their bottom line, such as relaxing telecommunications regulations and fighting against net neutrality to ensure them a competitive advantage over smaller, independent news sites.

This election cycle News Corporation made a massive $1 million contribution to the Republican Governors Association (New York Times, 8/18/10), while General Electric, which owns NBC, made more than $2 million in donations to both parties. (See sidebar.) Time Warner andDisney, which own CNN and ABC respectively, also donated money to both political parties (CNN.com, 8/17/2010), ensuring that politicians from both sides of the aisle will be considering big media interests when legislating.

As major participants in and beneficiaries of the influence-buying orgy, it’s hardly surprising that television outlets did not seriously examine the impact of the Citizens United decision. In the month leading up to the election, NBC Nightly News didn’t mention the decision a single time; on each of its two broadcast competitors, the issue came up only once (CBS Evening News, 10/11/10; ABC World News, 10/11/10). CBS Evening News’ sole mention came in an interview with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who accused the GOP of accepting illegal foreign contributions from the Chamber of Commerce. In ABC’s segment, correspondent Jake Tapper did a “factcheck” of that Democratic Party talking point. (Tapper’s verdict? There’s no “proof”—which, of course, is one of the problems of the Supreme Court’s OK of unlimited, undisclosed contributions.)

Importantly, the media narrative ignored the large sway corporations have over both parties, reducing a serious threat to democracy to just another partisan back-and-forth. For example, on MSNBC NewsNation (11/4/10),NBC’s Michael Isikoff discussed the issue in terms of how “a number of other groups on the Republican side...[took] advantage of that big Supreme Court decision back in July which allowed unlimited contributions from corporations [and] labor unions.”

By contrast, the independent TV/radio program Democracy Now! (10/28/10) deeply probed the connection between money, politics and the media. This included interviewing Common Cause executive director Robert Edgar, a former congressmember, who said the new spending will result in “a Congress made up of those supporting the energy companies, the healthcare industry and foreign corporations more than public citizens.” AsDemocracy Now! host Amy Goodman wrote in her syndicated column (Truthdig, 11/3/10): “We hear no debate about this, because the media corporations are making such a killing by selling campaign ads. Yet the broadcasters are using public airwaves.”

Other stations beyond the control of U.S. corporations, such as foreign outlets, also provided more critical analysis on the effects corporate money would play in the electoral process. Russia Today (10/21/10) ran a segment titled “America, Inc.,” which addressed in depth the potential implications for American democracy. Likewise, the BritishGuardian (6/8/10) raised “questions about the link between politics and special interests seeking influence,” and the “close links between politics and big corporations.”

The lack of U.S. corporate media interest included the print media, which covered the election in much the same way as broadcast outlets. “Don’t follow the money,” urged New York Times columnist David Brooks (10/18/10), arguing that money is not a crucial factor in elections, since candidates who spend more money on campaigns often lose. Of course, both corporations and candidates believe money makes a difference—otherwise corporations wouldn’t spend so much and politicians wouldn’t put so much energy into courting donors. Which means that the vastly increased flow of corporate money gives politicians of both parties even more incentive to legislate in favor of potential donors—providing the wealthiest contributors still greater leverage in dictating policy.

Brooks also used misleading and inaccurate numbers, as Glenn Greenwald noted (Salon, 10/19/10). For example, Brooks wrote that the Chamber of Commerce only spent $22 million, while Greenwald pointed out that the Chamber itself claimed it would “spend at least three-and-a-half times that amount,”and that “the Chamber is proudly announcing that it ‘will ramp up its political activity in the three weeks remaining before the November 2 Congressional elections.’”

When Newsweek (10/13/10) covered the impact of money on the 2010 election, it quickly became obvious that their emphasis was not on what it would mean for democracy or the public: “Being an anonymous political donor is completely legal. But is it good for business?”

Another distortion echoed throughout the print and broadcast media was the implication that labor unions benefited as much from the Citizens decision as corporations. “Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business,” the New York Times(1/22/10) reported in its initial coverage of the Supreme Court decision. This false equivalency persisted into the election coverage as well. In an article about the increased outside money in U.S. elections, the AP (11/8/10) described Citizens United as a decision “that gave unions and corporations a greater voice in politics” and “will push the boundaries further.”

Employment-oriented nonprofits, a category that includes most labor unions, reported total revenues of $18 billion in their latest filings, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Meanwhile, U.S. corporations are currently making profits—not revenues—at an annual rate of $1.7 trillion (New York Times, 11/27/10). With that kind of disparity in resources, it’s clear that big business will be by far the biggest beneficiary of unlimited political spending—along with big media.

Michael Corcoran (MichaelCorcoran.blogspot.com) is a freelance journalist based in Boston. He has written for such outlets as the Nation and the Boston Globe.

Stephen Maher (RationalManifesto.blogspot.com) is an MA candidate at the School of International Service at American University. His work has appeared in the Electronic Intifada, Truthout and other publications.

Shunning progressive critics while hailing success of TARP: Media Continue Bank Bailout Advocacy

2010-10-07T11:50:00.012-04:00

Originally published by Extra!, the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

by Michael Corcoran and Stephen Maher

For corporate media, the verdict is already in: The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the unpopular program that redistributed some $700 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds upwards, to the very financial institutions that contributed to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, is an unabashed success.

It is hardly stunning that corporate media would react favorably to one of the biggest boons for big corporations in U.S. history. When the bailout initially failed to make it through Congress in 2008 due to House opposition, journalists quickly accepted and reinforced the narrative that the unpopular legislation--which gave unprecedented power to the Treasury Department with virtually no mechanism for oversight or review--needed to be passed so urgently that a serious national debate was not even possible (Extra!, 1/09).

"In the Congress of the United States, the insane are now running the asylum," wrote Dana Milbank in the Washington Post (9/30/08). The Post editorial page produced three editorials in three days (9/30/08=10/2/08) in support of the policy. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (10/1/08) claimed, "We have House members, many of whom I suspect can't balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don't understand, swamped them with phone calls."

As Dean Baker and Kris Warner of the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted (Extra!, 1/09), despite claims echoed throughout the media that the bill was too urgent to even be subject to reasonable scrutiny, the Treasury Department "took no action for 10 days after the bill had been passed."

Now that the program is coming to an end, media--with a few notable exceptions like Gretchen Morgenson at the New York Times (4/18/10)--are claiming the corporate bailout they so fervently supported has been a monumental success. Two primary claims have been pervasive: that TARP was a good idea that’s “working,” and that it was a “great deal for taxpayers” (Washington Post, 4/1/10). Progressive critiques challenging the official narrative have been almost entirely ignored by the corporate press, despite the fact that such challenges have appeared throughout alternative media (Pew Research Center, 4/28/10; FireDogLake, 7/15/10).

In the words of the Post editorial board (7/5/10), even though "pretty much everyone hated" the "$700 billion bailout fund," it has "arguably saved the U.S. economy.... Any member of Congress who supported TARP, Republican or Democrat, took a sensible risk that has been vindicated by the program's result."

Similarly, Reuters (8/19/10) reported that TARP's success would "dilute the previously potent political attack that lawmakers who voted for the bailout were rewarding Wall Street greed while putting taxpayers at risk." Former George W. Bush administration official James K. Glassman declared in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (8/26/10), "It has to be said that the TARP and the other financial rescues were necessary and efficient."

Prominent progressive critics contend TARP is a program that is doomed to failure. Even if it succeeds in temporarily rescuing the financial sector, the failure to enact broad systemic changes only increases the risk of future, more expensive bailouts. Dean Baker, for instance, suggested (CEPR, 7/5/10) that the "financial Armageddon" averted by TARP

would have meant the demise of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and most of the other Wall Street titans, but probably would not have led to a qualitatively worse economic situation for the rest of us than what we actually saw. In fact, there would have been a great benefit from this financial Armageddon in that it would let the market wipe out the fast-dealing, high-flying Wall Street gang in a single blow.

This would eliminate the culture of synthetic CDOs and naked credit default swaps that provide ever more sophisticated and expensive ways to gamble. It would also eliminate many of the huge multi-million dollar paychecks that the Wall Street boys take home every year (or week). In other words, this is not obviously a bad story.

Financial blogger Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism, 6/23/10) likewise criticized the Obama administration’s choice to “patch the system up with duct tape and baling wire, and if it looks even remotely operational, tout it as tremendous success,” rather than enacting serious reform. The choice, she continued, reflects the administration’s "decision to reconstitute, as much as possible, the banking industry that had just driven itself and the global economy off the cliff” and “to cast its lot with an unreformed banking industry."

Yet these important ideas were rarely presented to the American people by the corporate-owned press, thus limiting their impact and damaging citizens’ ability to come to informed conclusions. "I have almost never had my criticisms of the TARP in the media," said Baker in an e-mail to Extra!.

Indeed, media adhered to their time-honored practice of framing the debate between centrist Democrats and far-right conservatives (Extra!, 9=10/04)--in this case, restricting the “debate” to pro-TARP voices on one side and militant free-market absolutists on the other, who oppose the program as a violation of laissez-faire principles. That was the form the debate took on Fox Business Channel (12/22/09), TARP supporter Lawrence Ausubel, economics professor at University of Maryland, faced off against Cody Willard, a right-wing libertarian critic.

A New York Times article (7/1/10) looking back on TARP included critiques of the plan from conservatives like Sen. Richard Shelby (“blatant accounting fraud”) and Rep. Spencer Bachus (“a ridiculous scheme”), but ignored progressive critics in Congress, such as Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The claim that the taxpayers are being fully reimbursed by beneficiaries of TARP is likewise being vigorously advanced by the corporate press. The New York Times has been ebullient regarding the program's outcome for some time now (8/30/09): "Nearly a year after the federal rescue of the nation’s biggest banks, taxpayers have begun seeing profits from the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid.... So far, that experiment [TARP] is more than paying off."

More recently, the Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin asked (4/12/10), "What if, after all that panting over Washington’s bailout of the financial system, we learned that it actually worked?" He continued:

Some officials [are] suggesting that if the economic recovery continues apace, the bailout program could eventually turn from red to black. That may seem far-fetched to anyone who remembers the dire predictions about banks like Citigroup, but the numbers tell a different story. The government’s $45 billion investment in Citigroup alone is on track to make a profit of nearly $11 billion, plus $8 billion or so in interest and other fees. People inside the administration no longer refer to Citigroup as the "Death Star"; now it is a "profit center.”

Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 7/5/10) wondered whether the assertion that TARP did not cost the taxpayers anything is “based on ungodly stupidity or is just plain dishonest”:

The TARP money was a form of insurance. The vast majority of insurance policies are never paid off, but that does not mean they have no value. The point here is that the banks were on the edge of going bankrupt. The government, through the TARP and the Fed, gave the banks the loans and the guarantees that assured the markets that the banks would survive.... This is all a gift from the taxpayers to some of the richest people in the country.

In a rare instance where a progressive critic was quoted by the mainstream press on the issue--albeit buried in an otherwise upbeat TARP story by Sorkin (New York Times, 4/13/10)--Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz said widespread efforts to glorify TARP's success are "disingenuous and a real attempt to distract people," as they don't factor in lost interest on the money spent. "Did we get back anything commensurate with the risk?... Clearly the answer is no," he said. Sorkin dismissively reminded readers that Stiglitz "has made a career of seeing every glass as half-empty."

Even Elizabeth Warren, who has been featured in the news as a potential leader for the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, has been largely ignored by the press when she reported on TARP’s flaws. As the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring the use of TARP funds, she issued a strong critique of TARP's impact on small banks in the panel's July report (Congressional Oversight Panel, 7/14/10), saying TARP "served Wall Street much better than anyone else." Neither the Post nor the Times published a single article citing Warren's findings. The panel’s May report (Congressional Oversight Panel, 5/12/10), also quite critical of aspects of TARP, was mostly ignored as well, getting only two small mentions in the Post (5/19/10, 8/4/10).

When TARP was pushed through with no sizable programs attached to help the average American (Economic Policy Institute, 9/29/08), the priority for policy makers became clear. As Baker observed in CounterPunch (6/2/10), the same people who praise TARP are now saying we must “act aggressively now to reduce the budget deficit” and “accept large cuts in Social Security and other important programs.”

"Why on earth," Baker asks, "should anyone trust what the bankers' economist accomplices are telling us?"

Michael Corcoran (MichaelCorcoran.blogspot.com) is a freelance journalist based in Boston. He has written for such outlets as the Nation and the Boston Globe.

Stephen Maher (RationalManifesto.blogspot.com) is an MA candidate at the School of International Service at American University. His work has appeared in the Electronic Intifada, Truthout and other publications.

Ignoring Evidence that Counters Israeli Claims: The Flotilla Story the US Media Won't Report

2010-08-11T20:31:00.001-04:00

By Michael Corcoran and Steve Maher

Originally published in Extra!, the monthly magazine for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

At a June 10 press conference (Cultures of Resistance, 6/10/10), passengers from the Mavi Marmara released new footage of the Israel Defense Forces’ deadly May 31 raid on the ship, which killed nine activists attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli blockade. Days earlier, another video was released allegedly showing the IDF beating and then executing a U.S. citizen, although the identity of the passenger in the video has not been confirmed (Informed Comment, 6/10/10; Tikun, 6/10/10).

Obviously, two videos alone could not possibly tell the whole story of what happened that night, but they did offer some of the only images of the tragic event that had not been hand-picked for release by Israel, which confiscated virtually all of the photo and video footage taken on the ship and released only heavily edited snippets (Lede, 6/2/10). This new footage offered revealing glimpses into the bloody raid on the ship that countered the narrative Israel had been successfully spinning in the U.S. (FAIR Media Advisory, 6/1/10).

In addition to possibly showing the execution of a U.S. citizen by the IDF, the footage included images of the IDF shooting either rubber-coated steel bullets or live ammunition from a helicopter, seemingly before commandos boarded (Democracy Now, 6/10/10), and firing indiscriminately at crowds (Ali Abunimah, 6/13/10). Separate photos from Turkish papers and survivors’ testimony also revealed that flotilla passengers were treating injured IDF soldiers (Democracy Now!, 6/10/10; Ali Abunimah, 6/6/10), contradicting Israeli claims that soldiers had been taken hostage, as well as its insistence that the passengers of this "hate boat," as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it (Reuters, 6/2/10), were not humanitarian activists but violent extremists.

While independent media (Democracy Now, 6/10/10) and the foreign press (Guardian, 6/11/2010) covered the new evidence, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today all failed to even mention it in their newspapers--although Times blogger Robert Mackey did post the footage (Lede, 6/11/10), arguing that it gave "a better sense of the timeline of the raid," and making the video's absence in the Paper of the Record's print edition all the more troublesome.

The U.S. corporate press similarly ignored other important evidence that contradicted Israeli claims. This included detailed testimonies of the activists and journalists onboard the vessel, as well as GPS coordinates showing the flotilla accelerating and turning away from Gaza and deeper into international waters at the time of the attack (Ali Abunimah, 6/7/10). This blackout of evidence continues the long-held practice in the U.S. media of ignoring stories that reflect poorly on Israel and other U.S. allies (Extra!, 1/10).

After the attack, U.S. media wasted no time enabling Israel's aggressive public relations campaign (Extra!, 7/10). TV outlets uncritically replayed dubious video clips that were heavily edited, out of context and lacking timestamps (e.g., Hardball, 6/1/10). These clips showed passengers fighting off commandos with kitchen knives and whatever else they could find, but did not show the moments preceding the raid, leaving crucial questions unanswered. Despite there being no way to know the whole story, publications such as the Washington Post (6/6/10) offered no caution in reporting that "Israeli commandos were violently beaten by passengers as they boarded the Mavi Marmara," and then "opened fire in self-defense, killing nine activists."

Many Israeli claims reported unflinchingly by the U.S. media quickly turned out to be egregious lies or distortions. For instance, as journalist Max Blumenthal noted (Max Blumenthal, 6/22/10), a press release Israel issued claiming that associates of Al-Qaeda were on the boat would later be "corrected" by the IDF when it was unable to provide any evidence. The Washington Post editorial page, (6/1/10) which suggested that the activists--"a motley collection that included European sympathizers with the Palestinian cause, Israeli Arab leaders and Turkish Islamic activists"--had "ties to Hamas and Al-Qaeda," failed to issue its own correction.

Israel also released an audio tape it claimed to be of passengers on the Mavi Marmara making antisemitic slurs ("go back to Auschwitz") and warning the IDF to "remember 9/11." The tapes contradicted others the IDF itself released earlier depicting the same exchange between the Israeli navy and the activists on the flotilla that did not contain the bizarre comments (Max Blumenthal, 6/4/10).

Israel soon admitted that these tapes were doctored, though it said they were merely condensed for length, and released a longer version that still contained the slurs (Max Blumenthal, 6/22/10). However, this subsequent release was also problematic. On the new version, the IDF is again heard calling a different boat in the flotilla, the Defne Y, not the Mavi Marmara. Similarly, Huwaida Arraf, the activist who is heard responding to the IDF, saying, "we have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter," was not on the Mavi Marmara, but the Challenger One, another flotilla boat (Ma'an, 6/5/10). But the U.S. media again failed to report on this manipulation, and some outlets (e.g., Washington Post, 6/5/10) reported on the audio clips without hinting that there were doubts about their authenticity.

The op-ed pages were also predictably one-sided. The New York Times, for example, published an op-ed by Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren (6/03/10), who alleged the activists were "religious extremists" committing an "assault, cloaked in peace," and claimed, without a shred of evidence, that the activists had made propaganda videos before the assault showing "passengers 'injured' by Israeli forces" (Max Blumenthal, 6/26/10). The Times, it seems, did not bother to ask for copy of this alleged video before publishing such an extraordinary claim.

Given the large amount of time and space devoted to excusing and justifying Israeli actions, the lack of attention provided to the activists’ stories and evidence has given the public an incomplete and one-sided portrayal of events.

"Sadly, the U.S. press just decided to pretend we really don't exist,” said Iara Lee, the activist that smuggled out the hour-long video of the scene, in an interview with Extra!. “The media there is very controlled and almost all of the coverage [about the videos] came from the foreign press and the independent media."

Michael Corcoran (MichaelCorcoran.blogspot.com) is a freelance journalist based in Boston. He has written for such outlets as the Nation and the Boston Globe.

Stephen Maher (rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com) is an MA candidate at the School of International Service at American University.

Human Rights Watch flotilla stance mirrors that of US, Israel

2010-07-24T16:22:00.002-04:00

By Michael Corcoran and Stephen Maher

Originally published in The Electronic Intifada, 23 July 2010

Supporters of Israel often accuse Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the most prominent human rights organizations in the world, of having an anti-Israel bias or even being anti-Semitic. For instance, a recent lengthy article in The New Republicaccused the group of paying "disproportionate attention to Israeli misdeeds." Similarly, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz has said that HRW exhibits a "willful blindness when it comes to Israel, and its enemies have completely undermined the credibility of a once important human rights organization." Indeed, there is no shortage of other similar critiques of the organization by supporters of Israel.

Given such strong condemnations, one might have anticipated that HRW would have been especially vocal in its criticism of Israel's 31 May attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was attempting to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza and break Israel's three-year old siege of the territory.

Yet despite the alarms sounded by its most staunch critics, HRW has been mostly silent on the horrific attack. When they have spoken out, they have been notably timid, essentially sharing the same positions as the US government, Israel's closest ally. According to a search of the group's website, the flotilla attack has only been addressed four times. By contrast, Amnesty International (the organization's closest peer) has tackled the issue 17 times, issuing much stronger statements of condemnation than those released by HRW. The jarring difference in how these two human rights organizations have responded to the flotilla attack raises important questions about the functioning of the largest and most reputed human rights organization in the United States.

During the course of the raid on the civilian convoy, the Israeli military killed nine activists, many of whom were shot in the head from close range, according to subsequent autopsies. In response, with millions taking to the streets worldwide, one government after the next, the UN and other nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups and activists condemned the raid and called for an immediate international investigation and an end to the blockade of Gaza. Even Turkey, a close ally of both the US and Israel, responded furiously to the attack, calling it an act of "state terrorism" that threatened to damage relations between the two states. Ankara also demanded that Israel lift the siege on Gaza. Indeed, in previous statements HRW said that the siege "constitutes a form of collective punishment" ("Letter to Olmert: Stop the Blockade of Gaza, 20 November 2008 ).

In the face of this international pressure, the US and Israel stood virtually alone in rejecting an international investigation. Israel not only objected to an independent investigation, but also refused to release all of the footage and photographs it confiscated from activists and journalists onboard the ship, only releasing small fragments that were heavily edited and otherwise tampered with. Instead, Washington urged Israel to conduct an investigation of its own, in the hopes that such a probe would assuage the rising chorus of international outrage without subjecting Israeli actions to independent scrutiny. Shockingly, HRW -- an organization which claims to stand up to state violence and protect human rights -- essentially supported the US-Israeli position by calling for an Israeli investigation.

HRW's support for an Israeli investigation contradicted previous findings by the organization on the likelihood that such an inquiry would be successful. "Given Israel's poor track record of investigating unlawful killings by its armed forces," the group acknowledges in its 31 May statement on the flotilla, "the international community should closely monitor any inquiry to ensure it meets basic international standards and that any wrongdoers are brought to justice" ("Israel: Full, Impartial Investigation of Flotilla Killings Essential"). This statement again stands in stark contrast to the position of Amnesty International, which insisted on an international investigation, along with the rest of the world, demanding in a 1 June statement "an international inquiry into the deaths caused by the raid on the aid flotilla in international waters outside Gaza" ("Israeli Authorities Urged To Commission International Inquiry," 1 June 2010).

In a further attempt to limit the damage caused to its image in the wake of its nighttime commando assault on the unarmed civilian convoy, Israel announced an "easing" of the blockade. However, in reality these cosmetic changes were intended not to end the siege but to make it more palatable to the so-called international community. The most significant difference was the shift from a positive list of what is allowed to a negative list of what is not. Though the changes might allow a few more kinds of goods in, the new measures would hardly be enough to lift Palestinians in Gaza out of the desperate poverty into which they have been thrust by Israeli cruelty, let alone develop a viable and independent economy.

Since the attack, the Israeli military spokesperson has proudly declaring the number of trucks entering Gaza each day over the social networking site Twitter. Yet these tweets only serve to prove how inadequate the "easing" of the blockade is, as the announced number of trucks permitted to enter Gaza is well below the 400 that the UN says is needed to provide residents of Gaza with even a minimal standard of living.

Amnesty International responded to the shift in policy by stating that Israel "must now comply with its obligations as the occupying power under international law and immediately lift the blockade," adding that as "the occupying power, Israel bears the foremost responsibility for ensuring the welfare of the inhabitants of Gaza" ("Israel Gaza Blockade Must Be Completely Lifted," 17 June 2010). By contrast, HRW offered a statement that tepidly praised Israel, calling it a productive "first step" in a 21 June release (Israel/Gaza: Easing Blockade of Imports a First Step"). This response was also dramatically different from that of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which in the wake of the flotilla massacre called the siege "a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law," and demanded Israel to "put an end to this closure" ("Gaza closure: not another year," 14 June 2010). Likewise, Oxfam International called the flotilla incident "a direct result of the Israeli blockade on Gaza" ("Monday's tragedy is a direct result of the Israeli blockade on Gaza," 2 June 2010).

Though HRW rightly pointed out that there was little chance of Palestinians in Gaza developing an independent, sustainable economy with the continued total blockade of exports, and amorphously called on Israel to end any "unnecessary restrictions" on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, it failed to clearly and unequivocally call for a full lifting of the illegal siege. As with its failure to call for an international investigation, HRW was once again essentially echoing the position taken by Tony Blair, the current envoy of the Quartet (the US, UK, Russia and UN), who said in a 5 July statement that the move was a "big first step."

In its 21 June release, HRW states that some restrictions are permitted under international law provided that they are "limited to what is necessary." In the same release, the organization balanced its criticism of Israel by vigorously calling on Hamas to release its Israeli prisoner -- virtually echoing the Israeli government's justification for the siege of Gaza.

Similarly, on 27 June, Bill Van Esveld, a Middle East researcher for [[HRW]], penned an editorial in the Los Angeles Times which attempts to shift the blame for Gaza's suffering from the merciless siege to the strip's elected Hamas government. "The people of Gaza are now prisoners twice over," he writes, "from the outside, Israel and Egypt have locked down Gaza's borders," while "within Gaza, Hamas is forcing people to live within the confines of a harsh moral code, and punishing those who try to exercise their few remaining rights and liberties" ("Danger of an Islamized Gaza").

Though the offenses against personal freedoms committed by Hamas are well-documented and certainly noteworthy, Van Esveld ignores that it is the desperation created by far more serious Israeli violence and suffocation, and the collaborationist nature of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, that is the ultimate source of Hamas' empowerment. Thus, he is essentially employing the classic tactic of blaming the victims, and echoing Israeli justifications for maintaining the siege by waving the spectre of "the danger of an Islamized Gaza." "The world is rightly focused on Gaza's Israeli prison guards," he concludes, "but it shouldn't forget the confinement imposed by Gaza's own Hamas." Such assertions closely mirror the disingenuous claims of Israeli officials, particularly Israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, who declared in a 2 June New York Times op-ed, that "We, too, want a free Gaza -- a Gaza liberated from brutal Hamas rule" ("An Assault, Cloaked in Peace").

Thus, on two major issues related to the siege of Gaza and the raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, HRW has largely taken the same position as Israel and its supporters. In the aftermath of the flotilla attack, Israel, Tony Blair, the United States and HRW stood on one side, and virtually the entire rest of the world stood on the other.

Not all of HRW's reports are so flawed, and the organization has produced some valuable material. However, they serve as a sharp contrast to its statements on the flotilla raid. In a 2006 report on Israel's invasion of Lebanon, HRW calls on the UN Secretary General to create an "an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law, including possible war crimes" ("Why They Died," 5 September 2007). Similarly, in a 13 August 2009 statement on Israel's 2008-09 winter invasion of Gaza HRW calls for "an international investigation into alleged laws-of-war violations by both sides," citing "the past failure of Israel, as well as Hamas, to investigate their own forces " ("Israel: Investigate 'White Flag' Shootings of Gaza Civilians," 12 August 2009).

The organization's pathetic display in the wake of the flotilla attack, however, does a great disservice to the cause of human rights. Unfortunately, HRW's failures reflect a disturbing and well-documented pattern, especially regarding its work on the Middle East and the United States (the chief enabler of Israeli aggression). In 2006, journalist Jonathan Cook noticed a "shameful imbalance" in Human Rights Watch's reportage on Israeli and Palestinian violations, "both in the number of reports being issued against each party and in terms of the failure to hold accountable the side committing the far greater abuses of human rights." Cook concluded that such an "imbalance" had "become the HRW's standard procedure in Israel-Palestine" ("Human Rights Watch denying Palestinians the right to nonviolent resistance," The Electronic Intifada, 30 November 2006).

In fact, Cook's conclusion applies more broadly to US policy and allies elsewhere around the world as well. Edward Herman, David Peterson and George Szamuely observed in a well-researched report on HRW in 2007 that "at critical times and in critical theaters [the group has] thrown its support behind the US government's agenda, sometimes even serving as a virtual public relations arm of the foreign policy establishment." The authors note that HRW exhibits "crude apologetics," maintaining a steadfast "denial that the United States commits war crimes" ("Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party ...," Zmag, 25 February 2007).

Properly educating the public about Israeli crimes, and American culpability in them, is essential if Israeli policy is to be changed and a just peace established. As the only large, international human rights organization based in the United States, HRW's weak response to these attacks, for which the US has lent strong support in the face of massive criticism from around the world, is even more outrageous. It is time for advocates for human rights to push HRW to be a more consistent and responsible voice on behalf of Palestinian human rights.

Michael Corcoran is a journalist who has written for the Boston Globe, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere. He is also a master's candidate at the John McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, where he majors in international relations.

Stephen Maher is an MA candidate at American University School of International Service. His work has appeared in Extra!, Truthout, ZNet and other publications. His blog is http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com.

Third World Diplomatic Cooperation and the Future of US Empire in the Middle East

2010-06-05T14:36:00.001-04:00

Originally published at Truthout

Last week, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Erdogan announced a breakthrough agreement on the Iranian nuclear impasse that they claimed would make further sanctions on Iran "unnecessary." The agreement, accepted by Iran, was immediately rejected by the US and its European allies, who chose instead to continue the three-decade long US effort to strangle and isolate Iran by all means available. In what Graham Fuller, a top-ranking former intel official, called "a stunningly insulting response," Hillary Clinton proudly announced consensus for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran days later, which she called "as convincing an answer to the efforts undertaken in Iran in the past few days as any we could provide."

With multiple aircraft carrier battlegroups right off Iran's coast and threats of attack emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv on a regular basis, the US is literally demanding at gunpoint that Iran surrender a large portion of its enriched uranium in exchange for delivery of nuclear fuel for its reactors to be supplied by Europe or Russia and cease all enrichment activities at once. Meanwhile, Iran has insisted that it cannot trust the West after decades of aggressive and hostile US policies - including the overthrow of Iran's democratically-elected government in 1953 - and that, consequently, the uranium should be exchanged on Iranian territory and only after it receives the nuclear fuel. Under the Lula-Erdogan agreement, the swap would take place on Turkish soil under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Though barely mentioned in the US press, the Lula-Erdogan agreement is a truly remarkable and historic event that may have "changed the Middle East forever" as David Rothkopf wrote in Foreign Policy. It has "seemingly ushered in a new era of diplomacy," he continued, and "could well signal a change in how international diplomacy works." In direct defiance of US orders, these two lesser, "third world" countries, which were once treated as mere vassals, have challenged a key US regional objective. Should China, Russia and/or the IAEA get behind the deal, US efforts to build international support for sanctions would suffer an even graver setback.

American strategists have struggled mightily against independent nationalism for decades as they constructed and maintained a worldwide system of indirect empire. This has meant propping up corrupt and self-interested local rulers who reliably carry out US orders, maintain regional systems favorable to US power and enrich themselves while diverting much-needed resources from domestic needs to serve the interests of wealthy, Western investors. To put down resistance both domestically and among potential regional rivals, these client regimes are given military and diplomatic assistance from the US that allows them to use any means available to maintain a favorable balance of power.

It is this threat the US was combating in 1953, for instance, when it intervened to overthrow the democratically-elected Iranian national hero, Mohammed Mossadegh, replacing him with the shah, a vicious torturer and murder who had been driven out of the country. Mossadegh was a danger not just because he insisted on nationalizing Iran's oil resources, denying the west control of them, but also because he was an "intolerable symbol of anti-British sentiment in the world," as New York Times journalist Stephen Kinzer wrote in his book "All The Shah's Men." He represented "the wretched of the earth against the rich and powerful" and was becoming "the preeminent spokesman for the nationalist passion that was surging through the colonial world," a serious threat to any empire. The United States has been punishing the people of Iran to the fullest extent of its abilities since 1979, when, again, the shah was again overthrown by the Iranian people. After backing Iraq's barbaric invasion, including the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against population centers, the US has sought to strangle the Iranian economy and prolong the damage of war as long as possible.

As planners have acknowledged, such an approach leaves the US and its allied regimes "militarily strong but politically weak." It is natural that a power in such a position would not be willing to entrust its hegemony with the whims of the natives and its power of persuasion and would instead prefer violence. In the Middle East, the US relationship with Israel has served just this purpose. As elsewhere in the world, the danger has always been that an independent, nationalist movement would take root, challenging US dominance and emboldening others to follow suit, a threat that has not been taken lightly in Washington. As they constantly puzzle over the inability of the United States to secure support for its objectives among the locals, planners and strategists have inevitably reverted to the use of brutal, overwhelming violence instead - a solution easily supplied by Israel.

The Lula-Erdogan agreement represents an important and major defeat for these longstanding efforts to suppress democracy and freedom in the third world. It was fear of these threats to US dominance that led to strong US backing for the overthrow of the democratically-elected Brazilian leader Joao Goulart by Castelo Branco in 1964. President Johnson ordered that the US take "every step that we can" to aid in the overthrow of Goulart, while large multinational corporations and international financial institutions bankrolled the cruel, right-wing dictatorship as it dismantled the Congress, banned all political parties, eliminated press freedoms and savagely repressed the population for 20 years. In exchange, military rulers ensured Brazil was a reliable US vassal in the effort to thwart independence and self-determination in Latin America, a glimpse of the grim fate millions of people in Brazil and elsewhere in the region would suffer over the subsequent decades.

Similar motivations have led successive American governments to attempt to isolate and suffocate Iran and force it to comply with US orders or to destroy the independent government that emerged after the overthrow of the shah in 1979. After supporting Saddam's barbaric invasion of Iran in 1980, the US has stopped at nothing to block Iran's access to international credit, while pressuring Europe and Asia to cooperate in preventing its shattered economy from rebuilding. Despite the decades-long, herculean effort it has expended, the US has been unable to secure support for a military attack on Iran nor for sanctions as harsh as those it has desired. The effort to isolate Iran has itself been a remarkable illustration of the limits of US power. In order to secure the backing of Russia and China, sanctions have been weakened and watered down practically beyond recognition. Should Russia and China, possibly with the backing of the IAEA, choose to throw their weight behind the Lula-Erdogan proposal, the sanctions effort would be completely undermined.

The difficulties of the Clinton administration in getting Europe and even American corporations to cooperate with US sanctions were reversed somewhat by the Bush administration, which managed to get the UN Security Council to sanction Iran and demand it surrender its right to peacefully enrich uranium. By engaging in "dialogue" with the Islamic Republic, the Obama administration has been able to claim key diplomatic successes in getting other powers on board with a new round of sanctions and, thus, increase Iran's isolation. That two third world countries came together in direct defiance of US orders and undercut such a longstanding, key diplomatic effort is without precedent in this strategically crucial region, both revealing and contributing to the decline of US power.

The evolving tripolar world order, in which Asia and Europe are integrating and forming independent poles of influence that rival the US, serves to amplify the leverage of many states which are often derisively labeled as "third world" and summarily dismissed. The formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) is illustrative in this regard. The SCO is an independent, regional organization that denied the US application for observer status, while accepting that of Iran, and seeks to act as a counterbalance to NATO's influence and the US economic agenda. Simultaneously, growing European integration and independence and the re-emergence of Russia are also serious challenges to US rule. As Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his book "The Grand Chessboard," for instance, "European unity" will require the US "to adjust to the new reality of an alliance based on two more or less equal partners, instead of an alliance that ... involves essentially a hegemony and its vassals."

To challenge near-complete US dominance of the Middle East, Russia has reached out to those who stand in opposition to US objectives and empowered a broader degree of resistance to US commands. While the Obama administration renewed sanctions on Syria for another year, and the US and Israel continue to insist that Syria has transferred Scud missiles to Hezbollah despite UN observer mission's finding that there is "no evidence" to support this claim, Medvedev traveled to Damascus on the first-ever visit to Syria by a Russian head of state since the Bolshevik Revolution. As he arrived last week, it was reported that Russia is "supplying Syria with warplanes, armoured vehicles and air defence systems." Medvedev also said that nuclear cooperation between the two countries "may get a second wind," and suggested that Russia could build Syria a reactor. Such a move could threaten the position of Israel as the region's sole nuclear power and, thus, "prompted concern from Washington." While in Syria, Medvedev also met with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

Before heading back to Moscow, Medvedev visited Turkey, an important US ally since World War II. Turkey has cooperated openly with Israel, prompting US policymakers to hold the relationship up as a "model for how a Muslim country can pursue a ... cooperative relationship with the Jewish state." In return, Israel and the US have long supplied Turkey with sophisticated military equipment. Yet, as Medvedev arrived, the typically pro-Western Turkish military announced that it had installed anti-aircraft batteries on the Syrian border as "a message" to deter Israel or the US from entering Turkish airspace during a potential attack on Syria or Iran.

While in Ankara, Medvedev and Erdogan signed agreements for Russia to construct Turkey's first-ever nuclear power plant and for the development of an oil pipeline project to carry Russian oil to the Black Sea. While Erdogan proclaimed "solidarity with Russia" and Medvedev stressed their "strategic partnership," both states agreed to ease entry visa restrictions while talks proceed for Russia to supply Turkey with helicopters and air defense systems. Such efforts to improve ties should not be surprising, given that Russia's gas exports have now made it Turkey's second-largest trading partner.

Turkey's response to the nighttime Israeli commando assault on the Gaza aid flotilla, killing at least nine civilians, reveals further the growing unwillingness of Turkey to be a US collaborator in its regional project. It publicly invoked the NATO Charter, thus requiring a response from other NATO countries, and promised to send another aid convoy to Gaza with Turkish Naval escort. As massive protests broke out throughout the world to condemn the atrocity, Erdogan called the attack a "bloody massacre." "Today is a turning point in history," he said, "nothing will ever be the same again." The sentiment was echoed by Tel Aviv when a "senior official" told Yediot Aharonot that "the alliance is dead." "The Turks are right about one thing," he continued, "irreversible harm has been caused to the relations. In the situation that has been created, Turkey will no longer be a strategic ally of Israel."

In fact, the Lula-Erdogan deal and Turkey's response to the flotilla attack are just the latest in a recent sign that increasingly-violent US/Israeli rule over the Middle East may actually be alienating an important US regional ally. As many observers have noted, Turkey has become increasingly independent, and recent events "may suggest that Turkey's continued cooperation with the West is far from guaranteed," as Soner Cagaptay wrote in Foreign Affairs. This shift was highlighted in October 2009, when Turkey canceled Israel's participation in an annual Turkish air force exercise that it has held with Israel, Europe and the US since the mid-1990s, likely a result of public outrage over Israel's barbaric slaughter of Palestinians in Operation Cast Lead. One day after barring Israel from participation, Turkey invited Syria to conduct joint exercises instead. In the wake of the flotilla attack, Turkey has again canceled planned war games with Israel. Meanwhile, Turkey has strengthened ties with Libya and Syria.

The rise of China will also have far-reaching regional consequences and the day is not far off when its power will surpass that of Russia. In the meantime, China is beginning to establish its foothold in the highly strategic, energy-rich region by forging strong ties with regional powers and gradually challenging US\Israeli regional dominance. As its share of oil purchases from large regional producers like Saudi Arabia increases along with investments and other ties, the Saudis' traditional dependence on the United States is reduced and the space for dissension from US commands is increased - even if only by a few degrees at this stage. China's response to the Lula-Erdogan proposal is in sharp contrast to that of the US. Despite China's apparent agreement to another round of sanctions, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said, "we value and welcome the agreement reached between Brazil, Turkey and Iran on Tehran's research reactor."

And so the longstanding rule in the Middle East that "what we say goes" is beginning to change, with resistance to US dictates increasing as its global power declines. Syrian President Bashar Assad recognized this fact over the weekend during the visit of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to Syria as the Israel Defense Forces declared a massive military drill and Hezbollah expressed its readiness for war in response. He urged the US and Europe to accept the Lula-Erdogan deal and "pleaded with the West to restrain the Jewish state," saying, "the West must understand that the region has changed," and that the use of Israel as an attack dog to terrorize and beat the region into submission is "no longer acceptable."

Dog Wags Tail: A Response to Charles Freeman

2010-05-08T13:54:00.005-04:00

Also appeared on Mondoweiss

Mondoweiss recently posted an email exchange with Ambassador Charles Freeman in which he insists that the argument I made in a recent article published by The Electronic Intifada failed in its attempt to demonstrate that the "Israel Lobby" is not the primary driver of US policy toward the Middle East.

In that article, I show that the Lobby thesis of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer is inadequate to explain US policy in the region by relying on two lines of argumentation: a) US policy in the Middle East fits with its imperial policies elsewhere in the world, in regions free of the proclaimed distortions of the lobby, and b) Israel has served the strategic interests of the US very well, and has been a crucial part of making its Middle East policy a profitable, strategic success.

In addressing a), Freeman curiously asserts that "Washington has never had to exercise a veto or pay a similar political price to protect any of [it's other allies] from condemnation or sanctions by the international community," despite the facts I presented showing the exact opposite. I showed how the US systematically shields its allies from international condemnation, citing the examples of Saddam Hussein's genocide against the Kurds and the brutal Indonesian invasion and thirty-year occupation of East Timor, both of which the US worked vehemently in international forums to shield from condemnation.

It is true that a review of US vetoes in the UN reveals that Israel is the leading beneficiary of their use. But it hardly stops there. Another frequent beneficiary of such shielding was the South African apartheid regime, on whose behalf the US vetoed numerous resolutions condemning the government for attacks and violence, or criticizing its Apartheid nature. One could also look at US efforts to block the UN from criticizing Iraqi use of chemical and conventional weapons against Iranian population centers after his invasion in 1980, or the protection of Turkey's slaughter of the Kurds as examples of diplomatic shielding of crimes of allied states, and the list does not stop there.

As with other proponents of the Lobby thesis, Freeman points to the tremendous level of support provided by the US to Israel as evidence of the Lobby's nefarious influence. As I addressed in my article, and briefly explore below, the exceptional level of support Israel receives is a rational response to the particular strategic importance of the Middle East, and the reliability of Israel in advancing US interests. One of the most important sources of US global power is its control of energy resources; a loss of this control would result in significant damage to US hegemony. Thus what happens in the Middle East has global implications for the US empire. The overwhelming firepower provided to Israel, which is aggressively used against any who challenge the established order, has played a central role in maintaining US control of the region, providing security for US-backed oil dictatorships as well as keeping a check on them.

Though the interests of the two states are not identical, when they do diverge Israel is forced into line and US interests prevail. This was evident in the severe military sanctions applied to Israel by the Bush administration in 2004/5, as well as successful pressure from the Clinton administration to call off an arms deal with the Chinese in 2000, just to pick two.

Just recently, despite Obama's unwillingness to move beyond mere words in his condemnations of Israel, Haaretz reports that "the fear of the diplomatic crisis with the United States caused the [Israeli Jerusalem Planning] system to act 'hysterically,' and even plans with no potential to cause national harm were postponed." The chairman of the planning committee stopped "even signing off on orders that have already been approved," and "upcoming meetings have been cancelled." "When they ask about the reason for the freeze on committee activity," architects and contractors are "told it is because of U.S. President Barack Obama." All this, without even the hint of sanctions.

As I mentioned, if one wants to claim that the influence of the Lobby causes the US to uniquely act against its interests in the Middle East, this uniqueness must be demonstrated. Unless this is done, the Lobby thesis cannot be seriously considered. This need is particularly acute once one considers the immensely greater power of such interests as the defense establishment and state-linked multinational corporations, whose contributions to political campaigns, not to mention institutionalized power within the executive branch, dwarfs that of the Lobby. The vast political influence of these groups could shut the Israel lobby down easily if they so chose, but they permit it to exist and often even amplify its voice. Do they fail to understand their interests, or are they, too, part of the Israel lobby?

The most explosive and eye-catching of Freeman's claims is his statement that "Israel is useless for the purposes of strategic logistics or power projection." To support this assertion, he writes that "none of Israel's neighbors will facilitate overflight for military aircraft transiting Israeli territory, let alone taking off from there." Yet he does not engage (or mention) the evidence I presented, which explored in detail the vital role Israel has played in maintaining American hegemony in the region, terrorizing the Middle East into compliance with the imperial will through its overwhelming military strength (including nuclear weapons).

Israel's overwhelming military dominance ensures devastating punishment for those who refuse to accept that "what we say goes," in the words of George H. W. Bush. For instance, Israel did not ask permission to overfly Lebanon before its savage attacks in 1978, 1982, 1996, or 2006, nor for its numerous attacks against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Nor do such logistical concerns have any effect on the threat Israel poses to Iran, a confrontation which has the US imperial desire to control energy resources at its heart, as I explained in EI.

Freeman's claim that Israel is "worse than irrelevant" for controlling Middle Eastern energy supplies rings somewhat hollow when we take a careful look at the facts. Apart from crushing opposition movements and threats to the established order (as in its confrontation of Arab Nationalism and Iran), Israel is and has been a constant threat to US foes in the region, and is both a source of security for and a check on America's large, oil-producing clients. It thus serves an important role in projecting US power throughout the heart of the Middle East, the most strategically vital region on Earth. Having a reliable client that is the dominant military hegemon, and the only nuclear power in the region, overseeing the "greatest material prize in history" is, I would say, very relevant.

The example Freeman briefly points to in support of his claim that the US relationship with Israel has "frequently jeopardized [US control of oil] supplies, not contributed to securing them" is the 1973 oil shock. Indeed, it was more intense than the 1967 oil embargo, because it was accompanied by production cuts (since oil is a fungible commodity, an embargo is meaningless without cuts in production as well). In truth, the Saudi monarchy collaborated with the US on the embargo to the fullest extent possible, even secretly continuing to ensure supplies of oil to the US Navy in the Mediterranean and its forces in Vietnam.

There can be no doubt that one reason for such compliance on the part of the Saud - the most important US ally in the world - was the overwhelming power of the Israeli military. Not only does such military power pose an implicit threat to the Saudi regime, but it is also an essential provider of security for the regime against potential rivals – both internalluy and externally - who may seek to take greater advantage of widespread public anger.

Had the Saudis not used the "oil weapon" against the US in '67 and '73 (widely seen even at the time as Israel's patron), widespread anger would have put the continued rule of the monarchy at risk. As in 1967, faced with little alternative, the Saudis enacted an embargo while doing their best to manage and minimize its effects in constant coordination with US officials. Subsequently, the oil wealth that was accumulated from the increased oil prices was used like an executive branch discretionary fund, which financed imperial activities all over the world.

The pressure that the population of Saudi Arabia was able to put on the regime in the case of the oil embargoes also helps explain another of Israel's values as an ally -- its reliability. Unlike in the Arab states, there is no chance of a coup or revolution there that would produce a government that would resist US objectives, as happened in Iran in 1979. The US can safely transfer the most advanced weaponry to Israel, without fear of it falling into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists or independent nationalists.   

Freeman's assertions that "the US has no bases or troop presence in Israel," and that "Israeli bases are not for US use" can be dismissed as irrelevant, since the main purpose of maintaining Israel as a client is precisely to avoid the need to use US forces directly. Instead, planes provided by the US "gratis," as Freeman says, are flown by Israeli pilots, dropping US bombs and enforcing regional order and "stability" -- in other words, US control. Thus, contrary to the view of Freeman and other proponents of the Lobby thesis, the armaments, material support, and economic benefits supplied Israel by the United States guarantee it this regional primacy, and are a central part of its regional strategy.

Unfortunately, not all the criticism published has been as civilized or honest as that offered by Charles Freeman. The intellectually vacant rant that Idrees Ahmad posted both here and on Pulse is one example which caught my eye. In his piece, he refuses to engage the arguments I advance, but says I "purloined" the work of others, "misused sources," and "constructed a slipshod argument." Since he offers no challenge to my argument, the third of these charges can be dismissed immediately. If I have indeed constructed a "slipshod argument," it is up to Mr. Ahmad to demonstrate it. Instead, in the true fashion of great heroes of rhetorical debate like Allan Dershowitz, he proceeds instead to smear me, making one baseless accusation after the next and grossly distorting what I wrote.

Since I don't want to dignify such a cheap smear by elevating it to the same level as Mr. Freeman's respectful critique, I will keep my response to Mr. Ahmad brief. His accusation that I misused sources is based on the charges that a) Ahmad claims both Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Kennan oppose the Iraq war and b) in the same Brzezinski article I used a quote from ("Hegemonic Quicksand," The National Interest, Winter 2003/4), Brzezinski expresses that US and Israeli interests are not always congruent.

Obviously, the reason I cite Kennan's term "veto power" and Brzezinski's phrase "critical leverage" is to show that there is a consensus among strategic planners, including the most liberal, that the control of Middle Eastern energy resources is strategically beneficial. Whether or not those particular individuals support military action in Iraq as a strategy for securing long-term US strategic control of oil, or wish to use other, more indirect means is not in any way relevant. The important point is that there is broad acknowledgment that control of oil gives the US huge strategic leverage, a point not contradicted at all by Brzezinski's article nor by anything Kennan ever wrote.

Ahmad's second point is even more absurd, since a central component of my argument is that we can measure the effects of the Lobby by the outcome of instances when the interests of the US and Israel diverge. I argue that in such cases Israel (which Brzezinski refers to in the same article as "America's favorite client") is brought to heel by the US, thus negating the notion that the "tail wags the dog," that is, that the Israel lobby forces the US government to be a slave to Israeli interests at the expense of its own.

As if Ahmad's outrageous and totally unsupported smears against me weren't enough, he also attacks The Electronic Intifada for even publishing my article, which he labels an "attack on Walt and Mearsheimer." Anyone who has read my article, I would hope, would find it to be a respectful critique, not an "attack." The whole purpose of intellectual engagement should be to discuss and debate competing hypotheses, and promote the healthy discussion and debate that are surely a healthy part of any democracy. It is this that makes Ahmad's insistence that EI should not even present the sensible and well-researched argument I am making, and that I should be silenced, particularly shocking and dangerous. It is my hope that if Ahmed cannot refrain from smearing me, that he at least will refrain from doing so to the dedicated editors of the Electronic Intifada, who work tirelessly in the fight for Palestinian rights and provide an invaluable service to us all.

US hegemony, not "the lobby," behind complicity with Israel

2010-04-27T21:07:00.008-04:00

Originally published by The Electronic Intifada on April 27, 2010

Many of Israel's critics blame an "Israel lobby" for the near-total complicity of the US in Israeli annexation, colonization and cleansing programs in the occupied West Bank. This complicity continues to the present, despite the "row" that erupted after the Israeli government humiliated US Vice President Joe Biden by announcing the construction of 1,600 settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem while he was visiting the country. Indeed, despite the apparent outrage expressed by top White House officials, the administration has made clear that its criticism of Israel will remain purely symbolic. However, as we shall see, the lobby thesis does little to explain US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Years after Noam Chomsky, Stephen Zunes, Walter Russell Mead and many others published their critiques of the Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer "Israel lobby" thesis, many of the sharpest critics of Israel continue to attribute US foreign policy in the Middle East to the influence of the lobby. Given the prevalence of the Israel lobby argument, and the latest diplomatic confrontation between the US and Israel, it is important to revisit the flaws in the thesis, and properly attribute US behavior to the large concentrations of domestic political and economic power that truly drive US policy.

US foreign policy in the Middle East is similar to that which is carried out elsewhere in the world, in regions free of "the lobby's" proclaimed corrupting effects. The inflated level of support that the US lends Israel is a rational response to the particular strategic importance of the Middle East, the chief energy-producing region of the world. By building Israel into what Noam Chomsky refers to as an "offshore US military base," it is able to protect its dominance over much of the world's remaining energy resources, a major lever of global power. As we shall see, those blaming the lobby for US policy once again misunderstand US's strategic interests in the Middle East, and Israel's central role in advancing them.

Geopolitics and the US-Israeli relationship

A central claim of the "Israel lobby" thesis is that the "lobby," however defined, overwhelmingly shapes US policy towards the Middle East. Thus, if the argument were true, its proponents would have to demonstrate that there is something qualitatively unique about US policy towards the Middle East compared with that in other regions of the world. Yet upon careful analysis, we find little difference between the purported distortions caused by the lobby and what is frequently referred to as the "national interest," governed by the same concentrations of domestic power that drive US foreign policy elsewhere.

There are states all around the world that perform similar services to Washington as Israel, projecting US power in their respective regions, whose crimes in advancing Washington's goals are overtly supported and shielded from international condemnation. Take for instance the 30 years of US support for the horrors of the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor. In addition to the use of rape and starvation as weapons, and a gruesome torture regime, Indonesian president Suharto slaughtered 150,000 persons out of a population of 650,000. These atrocities were fully supported by the US, including supplying the napalm and chemical weapons indiscriminately used by the Indonesian army, which was fully armed and trained by the US. As Bill Clinton said, Suharto was "our kind of guy."

Daniel Patrick Moynahan, US ambassador to the UN at the time of the Indonesian invasion, later wrote that "the Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" to end the butchering of the East Timorese, a goal he carried out with "no inconsiderable success." Yet this support was not due to the influence of an "Indonesia lobby." Rather, planners had identified Indonesia as one of the three most strategically important regions in the world in 1958, as a result of its oil wealth and important role as a link between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

In some regions, as in Latin America where US clients like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and terrorist armies like the Nicaraguan contras spent years murdering defenseless peasants demanding basic human rights, the threat is mostly one of "successful defiance;" that is, a country defying US orders and getting away with it. Should the US tolerate one such case, the logic goes, it will embolden resistance to its dictates elsewhere. The danger underlying such defiance -- referred to as "the threat of a good example" by Oxfam -- is that a country will implement a successful model for independent development, refusing US dictates and seeking to direct much-needed resources to serve the needs of the domestic population instead of wealthy foreign investors.

Such thinking is deeply institutionalized and exhibited by US policy worldwide, going back to the very beginnings of the modern imperial era after World War II. It was clear from early in the war that the US would emerge as the dominant world power in its aftermath, and so the State Department and Council on Foreign Relations began planning to create a post-war international order in which the US would "hold unquestioned power." One way it planned to do so was gaining control of global energy resources, primarily those of Saudi Arabia, which were referred to at the time as "the greatest material prize in history" by the US State Department.

As Franklin Roosevelt's "oil czar" Harold Ickes advised, control of oil was the "key to postwar political arrangements" since a large supply of cheap energy is essential to fuel the world's industrial capitalist economies. This meant that with control of Middle Eastern oil, particularly the vast Saudi reserves, the US could keep its hand on the spigot that would fuel the economies of Europe, Japan and much of the rest of the world. As US planner George Kennan put it, this would give the United States "veto power" over the actions of others. Zbigniew Brzezinski has also more recently discussed the "critical leverage" the US enjoys as a result of its stranglehold on energy supplies.

Thus in the Middle East it is not simply "successful defiance" that the US fears, nor merely independent development. These worries are present as well, but there is an added dimension: should opposition threaten US control of oil resources, a major source of US global power is placed at risk. Under the Nixon Administration, with the US military tied down in Vietnam and direct intervention in the Middle East to defend vital strategic interests unlikely, military aid to pre-revolution Iran (acting as an American regional enforcer) skyrocketed. Amnesty International's conclusion in 1976 that "no country has a worse human rights record than Iran" was ignored, and US support increased, not because of an "Iran lobby" in the US, but rather because such support was advancing US interests.

Strategic concerns also led the US to support other oppressive, reactionary regimes, including Saddam Hussein's worst atrocities. During the Anfal genocide against the Kurds, Iraqi forces used chemical weapons provided by the US against Kurdish civilians, killed perhaps 100,000 persons, and destroyed roughly 80 percent of the villages in Iraqi Kurdistan, while the US moved to block international condemnation of these atrocities. Again, supporting crimes that serve the "national interest" set by large corporations and ruling elites, and shielding them from international criticism is the rule, not the exception.

It is no coincidence that the US-Israel relationship crystallized after Israel destroyed the independent nationalist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser in a preemptive attack in 1967, permanently ending the role of Egypt as a center of opposition to US imperialism. Since before World War II, Saudi Arabia had happily served as an "Arab facade," veiling the hand of the true ruling power on the Arabian peninsula, to borrow British colonial terminology. With Nasser's Arab nationalist rhetoric "turning the whole region against the House of Saud," the threat he posed to US power was serious. In response, the State Department concluded that the "logical corollary" to US opposition to Arab nationalism was "support for Israel" as the only reliable pro-US force in the region. Israel's destruction and humiliation of Nasser's regime was thus a major boon for the US, and proved to Washington the value of a strong alliance with a powerful Israel.

This unique regional importance is one reason for the tremendous level of aid Israel receives, including more advanced weaponry than that provided to other US clients. Providing Israel with the ability to use overwhelming force against any adversary to the established order has been a pivotal aspect of US regional strategy. Importantly, Israel is also a reliable ally -- there is little chance that the Israeli government will be overthrown, and the weapons end up in the hands of anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists or independent nationalists as happened in Iran in 1979.

Today, with the increased independence of Europe, and the hungry economies of India and China growing at breakneck speed along with their demand for dwindling energy resources, control over what is left is more crucial than ever. In the September 2009 issue of the Asia-Africa Review, China's former Special Envoy to the Middle East Sun Bigan wrote that "the US has always sought to control the faucet of global oil supplies," and suggested that since Washington would doubtless work to ensure that Iraqi oil remained under its control, China should look elsewhere in the region for an independent energy source. "Iran has bountiful energy resources," Bigan wrote, "and its oil gas reserves are the second biggest in the world, and all are basically under its own control" (emphasis added).

It is partially as a result of this independence that Israel's strategic importance to the US has increased significantly in recent times, particularly since the Shah's cruel, US-supported dictatorship in Iran was overthrown in 1979. With the Shah gone, Israel alone had to terrorize the region into complying with US orders, and ensure that Saudi Arabia's vast oil resources remain under US control. The increased importance of Israel to US policy was illustrated clearly as its regional strategy shifted to "dual containment" during the Clinton years, with Israel countering both Iraq and Iran.

With Iran developing technology that could eventually allow it to produce what are referred to in the February 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review as "anti-access weapons," or weapons of mass destruction that prevent the US from being able to freely use force in any region of the world, this is a crucial moment in Washington's struggle to seize control of Iran. This confrontation, stemming from the desire of the US to control its oil and destroy a base of independent nationalism, makes US support for Israel strategically crucial.

The "Israel lobby" and US Pressure

If we adopt "the lobby" hypothesis, we would predict that the US would bend to Israel's will when the interests of the two states diverge, acting against its "national interest." Yet if US policies in the Middle East were damaging its "national interest," as proponents of the lobby argument claim, that must mean that such policies have been a failure. This leads one to ask: a failure for whom? Not for US elites, who have secured control of the major global energy resources while successfully crushing opposition movements, nor for the defense establishment, and most certainly not for the energy corporations. In fact, not only is US policy towards the Middle East similar to that towards other regions of the world, but it has been a profitable, strategic success.

Indeed, the US's policy towards Israel and the Palestinians is not to achieve an end to the occupation, nor to bring about respect for Palestinian rights -- in fact, it is the actor primarily responsible for preventing these outcomes. To the US, Israel's "Operation Defensive Shield" in 2002 had sufficiently punished the Palestinians and their compliant US-backed leadership for their intransigence at Camp David. While the Palestinian Authority was already acting as Israel's "subcontractor" and "collaborator" in suppressing resistance to Israeli occupation, in the paraphrased words of former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's deliberate destruction of Palestinian institutions provided the opportunity to rebuild them, and ensure an even greater degree of US control.

The settlement and annexation programs help guarantee Israeli control over the most valuable Palestinian land and water resources, ensuring Israel will remain a dominant society not easily pressured by its neighbors. To help achieve these goals, the US shields Israeli expansion behind a "peace process" in hopes that given enough time the Palestinians will concede more and more of what was once theirs. The primary concern is to present the appearance that the US and Israel are ardently crusading for peace, battling against those who oppose this noble objective. Though it is true that people across the region are appalled and outraged by Israeli crimes, such anger is a small consideration next to the strategic gain of maintaining a strong, dependent ally in the heart of the Middle East.

The reconstitution of an even more tightly-controlled Palestinian Authority, with General Keith Dayton directly supervising the Palestinian security forces, enabled the US to meet these goals while more effectively suppressing resistance to the occupation. Likewise, redeploying Israeli soldiers outside of Gaza allowed Sharon a free hand to continue the annexation of the West Bank while being heralded internationally as a "great man of peace."

The treatment of Israel by the mainstream US media is also standard for all US allies. Coverage in the corporate press is predictably skewed in favor of official US allies and against official enemies, a well-documented phenomenon. Thus, proponents of the lobby thesis are missing the forest for the trees. What they see as the special treatment of Israel by the mainstream press is actually just the normal functioning of the US media and intellectual establishment, apologizing for and defending crimes of official allies while demonizing official enemies.

Of course, this is not to argue that there are not organizations in the US, like the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC, that seek to marginalize dissent from Israeli policy in every forum possible. Rather, I am pointing out that the power of these groups pales in comparison to other, far more powerful, interests and concerns. While the AJC or ADL may mobilize for the firing of a professor critical of Israel, for example, that argument is amplified by the elite-owned and controlled press because doing so serves their interests. Likewise, AIPAC can urge unwavering support for Israel on the part of the US government, but without the assent of other far more powerful interests, like the energy corporations and defense establishment, AIPAC's efforts would amount to little. US policy, like that of other states, is rationally planned to serve the interests of the ruling class.

Israel could not sustain its aggressive, expansionist policies without US military aid and diplomatic support. If the Obama Administration wanted to, it could pressure Israel to comply with international law and resolutions, join the international consensus, and enact a two-state solution. While the "Israel lobby" thesis conveniently explains his failure to do so and absolves US policy-makers of responsibility for their ongoing support of Israeli apartheid, violence and annexation, it simply does not stand up under closer scrutiny.

Israel's manufactured outrage over a presidential palace

2010-04-26T15:58:00.016-04:00

This article originally appeared in The Electronic Intifada on April 15, 2010

The headlines were ablaze last week after the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced that it would build the new presidential compound on a street named after Yahya Ayyash. Ayyash, whose nickname was "The Engineer," was a Hamas military commander who orchestrated several attacks against Israeli civilian targets in the mid-1990s in response to the 1994 massacre of Palestinian worshipers at Hebron's Ibrahimi mosque by an Israeli-American settler named Baruch Goldstein. In 1996, Ayyash was assassinated by Israel in Gaza City.

"This is a shocking incitement to terrorism by the Palestinian Authority," boomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement. "Arch-terrorist Ayyash," as Netanyahu called him, had "murdered hundreds of innocent Israeli men, women and children," and so building the presidential compound on this street was an act of "wild incitement by the Palestinians for terror and against peace." The United States reacted with strong support for the Israeli position. "Honoring terrorists who have murdered innocent civilians, either by official statements or by the dedication of public places, hurts peace efforts and must end," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

The hysterical reaction of the Israeli government, and US support for it, is hardly surprising. Of note however is the double-standard exhibited by Israel and its patron, the US. The assumption throughout is that Israel's actions are just, defensive and in pursuit of peace for all. Conversely, Palestinian actions are aggressive and evil, and worthy of worldwide condemnation. The strength of this narrative allows the US and Israeli governments to make the construction of a new government building on a street whose name Israel disproves of into a major incident, worthy of outrage and international condemnation, while grotesque Israeli crimes and far more flagrant provocations go unquestioned.

A Jerusalem Post editorial headlined "Glorifying Terrorism" exemplifies this point. The "inescapable message is that such crimes are the PA's ideal," the editorial stated, since it "acclaims malevolence instead of denouncing it." The Jerusalem Post declared that the act was "an affront to the very notion of coexistence," and yet another example of the PA's "consistent policy" of "deception" and "insincerity" which has undermined "the Oslo promise." "Our misfortune," The Jerusalem Post lamented, "is that the world's outrage is very selective and very misplaced."

That such manufactured outrage could be delivered without a hint of irony is startling in light of recent events. This includes a series of internationally-condemned deliberate Israeli provocations -- supported by Washington -- in reaction to the UN-commissioned Goldstone report.

Investigated and published in the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza last winter, the Goldstone report documents the deliberate targeting of civilians, including the "systematically reckless" use of white phosphorous, showering densely-populated and impoverished refugee camps with the burning chemical, resulting in horrific burns and death. It also describes deliberate Israeli attacks on mosques, hospitals, schools, ambulances, UN facilities and indiscriminate bombardment of crowded slums. "You feel like an infantile little kid with a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them," one Israeli soldier said of the attack, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and left thousands more injured, mutilated and homeless.

In a shocking example of "acclaiming malevolence instead of denouncing it," the US and Israel have attacked the report relentlessly and attempted to marginalize it, and Israel has refused to even conduct a credible investigation into its findings. While concerned citizens in cities around the world took to the streets to express their anger at the horrific atrocities documented in the report, the US called it "unbalanced" and "flawed" and moved to block its consideration at the UN, promising to veto any action in the Security Council if necessary. Likewise, Israeli President Shimon Peres referred to the report as "a mockery." The US and Israel then pressured PA President Mahmoud Abbas to defer action on the report in the General Assembly (though overwhelming popular pressure later forced him to reverse that position).

Israel has gone out of its way in recent months to goad the Palestinians into confrontation, including naming two places deep in the West Bank "Israeli Heritage Sites," sparking days of protests. Israel has also escalated its provocations around the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. Along with the Dome of the Rock, the mosque sits inside the Haram al-Sharif, which is known as the Temple Mount to Jews. In addition to repeatedly deploying soldiers around the compound, Israel has announced that it will expand the Jewish prayer area at the Western Wall, despite a Jerusalem court's decision that such a move would violate the status quo agreement that has governed Jerusalem's holy sites since Israel seized the Old City in the June 1967 War.

A further escalation was the reopening of the "Hurva," a Jewish synagogue just a few hundred meters from the al-Aqsa Mosque. With growing numbers of Jewish fundamentalists insisting that they be allowed to pray inside the Haram al-Sharif, many of whom advocate demolishing the al-Aqsa Mosque and building a third Jewish temple in its place, the reopening was universally condemned in the Muslim and Arab world. It was also reported in the Israeli press that according to a 300-year-old rabbinical prophecy, the reopening of the synagogue foretold the construction of the third temple in the place now occupied by the al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet when Palestinian leaders called for a "day of rage" in response to these provocations, the US sharply criticized them for overreacting. Yet only weeks later, Israel opened another synagogue in East Jerusalem 100 meters closer to the Haram, and Washington was silent.

Despite all this, the Israeli and American governments jointly denounce the Palestinians' choice of which street on which to construct a new presidential palace as "wild incitement." Are the Palestinians allowed to be outraged when Israel names streets, every inch of which lie on land that was taken from them, after the commanders that masterminded and executed the cleansing of 70 percent of Palestinian Arabs in 1948? What would the consequences be if Mahmoud Abbas started referring to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who presided over a campaign that "punished and terrorized" the 1.5 million residents of Gaza last winter as an "arch-terrorist"?

Given recent Israeli provocations, and the American response to them, the operative principle is clear: the Israelis are justly defending their democracy, while the Palestinians are savage, uncompromising terrorists. Those fighting for justice and peace in the Middle East must relentlessly confront this narrative, spreading truth and awareness, the only basis on which the conflict can finally come to an end.

The US' Choreographed "Outrage" at Israel

2010-03-28T12:35:00.005-04:00

Originally published at The Electronic Intifada on March 23, 2010.

The speeches at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, on Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu's subsequent meeting with US President Barack Obama are widely seen as drawing to a close what Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren called the "most severe crisis in US-Israel relations" in decades. This rapprochement comes on the heels of a series of seemingly angry statements top members of the Obama Administration released, after Israel announced construction of 1,600 new illegal housing units in occupied East Jerusalem while US Vice President Joe Biden was in the country.

In fact, the basis for the Obama Administration's criticisms of the settlement announcement -- as well as the significance of the crisis itself -- has been widely misconstrued by both supporters and critics of Israel. AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) were "shocked and stunned" that Biden and Clinton called the Israeli announcement "insulting." AIPAC urged the administration to "take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish state" and "move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel." Meanwhile, the ADL mused, "One can only wonder how far the US is prepared go in distancing itself from Israel."

Voices more critical of Israel, such as Richard Dreyfuss of The Nation, suggested that "this is not just the reaction to an insulting announcement during the visit of Vice President Biden," but rather "the Obama Administration is beginning to realize that Israeli intransigence ... is a major obstacle to US policy in the region." Dreyfuss predicted that this "might turn into the most significant confrontation between the United States and Israel" since the 1956 Suez War.

Contrary to both of these positions, the Obama Administration merely reacted to a diplomatic affront it was dealt by the Israeli government. Israel's announcement came on the same day that Biden had arrived in the country to proudly confirm the US' "absolute, total and unvarnished" commitment to its ally, and commence indirect talks with the Palestinians. Following the announcement, protests and violent clashes broke out in Jerusalem and elsewhere throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Responding to this pressure, the Arab League threatened to cancel its endorsement of the indirect negotiations, with Secretary Amr Moussa even announcing that the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had decided not to participate in the talks. As the endorsement was the only political cover Abbas had to re-enter negotiations, the US administration took careful notice of these events as pressure on Abbas to abandon talks from within the territories mounted. With the Arab world outraged and Biden humiliated due to the degree of US complicity that the timing of the announcement revealed, the Obama Administration was forced to react.

Clinton said the timing of the announcement was "insulting," while top aide David Axelrod called it an "affront" that "seemed calculated" to undermine the peace talks. The Obama Administration hopes that this PR display will allow the US to fortify its farcical claim to be an "honest broker" in the peace process, provide Abbas the political cover to re-enter negotiations, and send a message to the Israeli government that American leaders are to be treated with respect. As CNN reported, Netanyahu has now set up a team to investigate why the settlement construction announcement was made during Biden's visit.

Netanyahu may well have been telling the truth when he claimed to be "surprised" by the public criticisms by the US government. The day before, one day after US envoy George Mitchell arrived to broker newly-announced "proximity talks," the State Department explicitly approved Israel's construction of 112 new apartments in an illegal settlement outside Bethlehem. The assent came despite Netanyahu's declaration of a "moratorium" on settlement building, which he has insisted cannot include such illegal construction in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, a position the US has accepted.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also chastised Israel for its "provocative actions," including record-high rates of stripping Palestinians from Jerusalem their residency rights and infringements on Palestinian religious sites that are clearly designed to incite a Palestinian response or otherwise make it impossible for Abbas to return to the negotiating table. Yet even when the administration was at its most critical of Israel, following Obama's speech in Cairo last year, Israel was reassured that the actions taken by the US would be "largely symbolic." Indeed, Obama unconditionally re-authorized the loan guarantees program and massive US aid -- conservatively estimated at $7 million per day -- has continued without threat of reduction.

Obviously, the Obama Administration is hardly concerned about Israeli violations of international law, previous agreements it has signed, or the human rights of the Palestinians. The implication throughout is that had the announcement come a week before Biden visited (or even a day before, as the Bethlehem announcement did) there would have been no problem. Indeed, just one week later, after the Israeli government announced construction on an additional 426 East Jerusalem settlement homes, Clinton "bolstered her support for the Jewish state," according to The Washington Post. The Israeli army then opened fire on peaceful protestors in Gaza twice in two days, and carried out air strikes on targets in Gaza, while Clinton issued another statement saying that the steps offered by the Israeli government to resolve the dispute were "useful and productive."

The escalating repression continued Sunday, when the Israeli army shot and killed four Palestinian youths in 24 hours in the West Bank, two aged 18 and two 16. Simultaneously, Netanyahu issued a statement proclaiming that Israel would never cease building illegally in East Jerusalem as Ban Ki-moon arrived in Israel. Clearly, recent condemnations of these projects as "illegal" by Ban and the European Union did not stop Obama from welcoming Netanyahu to Washington on Monday with a private meeting, nor Clinton from proudly sharing the stage with him at the AIPAC conference to reaffirm the US commitment to support Israel's rejection of the international consensus for resolving the conflict. Though she did say the settlements "undermine mutual trust," she did not acknowledge their illegality and mostly stressed the threat that US support for them poses to its "credibility" as an "honest broker," thus urging Israel to refrain from such flagrantly provocative behavior while reinforcing that the US-Israel relationship is "rock solid."

The US hopes that this pretended outrage will lend its role as "honest broker" enough credibility to keep the "peace process" moving, itself merely a PR facade that shields Israeli crimes from public scrutiny. If it does not, the US will undoubtedly pay little mind to the harsh words spoken this week and do as it has done before: blame the Palestinians for its failure and support Israeli repression.

NYT's Double Standard on Nuclear Proliferation: Hyping Iranian threat while ignoring Israeli defiance

2010-01-07T12:20:00.008-05:00

Originally published by Extra!, the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

By Michael Corcoran and Stephen Maher

The New York Times' treatment of Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs in recent months is a clear example of the systematic double standard the "paper of record" displays in international coverage (Extra!, 8/09).

The Times has devoted tremendous space and resources to covering Iran's nuclear program. Even though, as the Times itself explained (9/26/09), there is "no evidence" that Iran is building a bomb, and despite Iran's cooperation with international inspectors, the paper has continued to wave the specter of the "Iranian threat"--calling to mind the paper's warmongering coverage leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (Extra!, 12/09). Meanwhile, Israel's longstanding refusal to cooperate in any way with international institutions seeking to monitor its actually existing nuclear weapons is absent from the pages of the New York Times. The contrast once again demonstrates how the Times systematically applies different standards to official allies and enemies of the U.S.--a long-standing and well-documented pattern at the paper (Extra!, 2/09; NACLA, 12/19/08).

On August 28, a long-awaited International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran's nuclear activities was released. While the report was critical of Iran at times, saying "it does not consider that Iran has adequately addressed the substance of the issues," it also noted that Iran and the IAEA "agreed on improvements regarding the provision of accounting and operating records" and on the "requirements for timely access for unannounced inspections." Importantly, the report also concluded that "Iran has cooperated with the Agency in improving safeguards measures."

But the Times' (8/29/09) hysterical coverage virtually ignored Iran's acceptance of additional safeguards. Instead, journalists William Broad and David Sanger wrote that the report described how Iran "continues to expand its nuclear program and deny the IAEA most forms of cooperation." Days later, Sanger warned in a front-page article (9/10/09) that Iran has "created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid, if risky, sprint for a nuclear weapon."

One would think from the Times' coverage of Iran that its editors view nuclear proliferation and the IAEA as newsworthy subjects--and that the nuclear programs of other powerful nations in the Middle East would likewise be subject to intense scrutiny. For instance Israel, one of four rogue states that have refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and which is known to have secretly developed a large stockpile nuclear weapons (Arms Control Association, 2009). Iran is immeasurably more cooperative with the IAEA than Israel and has no nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, Israel has never permitted international inspections of its nuclear sites, and has consistently refused efforts to place its activities under international supervision. Israel is also the most aggressive state in the region, having conducted military attacks on other countries at least four times since 2006. Iran, by comparison, has never attacked another country in modern history. Yet when it comes to U.S. allies such as Israel, the paper's coverage takes on a decidedly different character.

This was exhibited on September 18, when the IAEA Board of Governors voted for the first time to request that Israel's nuclear program be placed under international oversight (IAEA,9/18/09). Israeli leaders immediately rejected the call, saying Israel would "not cooperate in any matter with this resolution" (Foreign Policy, 9/18/09). Without a hint of irony, Western diplomats insisted that it was "unfair and counterproductive to isolate one member state" (Reuters, 9/18/09). But the vote, deemed a "major shift" by Foreign Policy magazine (9/18/09), went entirely unreported by the Times, as did the response by Israeli and Western diplomats.

A week after the IAEA vote on Israel, as world leaders congregated in Pittsburgh for the G-20 conference, Barack Obama and other Western leaders "revealed" a "secret" Iranian nuclear facility located on property owned by the Revolutionary Guard in Qom.(New York Times, 9/26/09; Extra!, 12/09). The Times promptly erupted with mountains of coverage--five articles on September 26 alone. In total, according to a Nexis search of the week following the "revelation," the Times published a total of 32 pieces on what it said "may well be the first peek at...a planned, or even partly completed, hidden nuclear archipelago stretching across the country" (9/29/09), including 25 news or news analysis articles (eight of which appeared on the front page), as well as two scathing editorials, three op-eds, one series of statements from world leaders and more than a thousand words of letters to the editor--all this directly on the heels of devoting exactly zero articles to the IAEA resolution on Israel.

Times coverage of the Iranian issue has relied almost entirely on sources with clear U.S. or Western biases, many of them anonymous. Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review (9/30/09) found one article (9/26/09) crafted exclusively from no less than 20 anonymous White House sources. "There was not a single alternative perspective offered from Europe, the IAEA or Mideast specialists," Massing wrote. In another instance, the paper (9/26/09) printed in full separate statements condemning the facility from Obama, French President Sarkozy and Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted, he was described as being "all bluster" as he "mocked" and "made light of the Western accusations" and their "dramatic revelation" (9/26/09) of the Qom facility.

As a result, Iranian acquiescence to inspections of the Qom facility, as well as ElBaradei's finding that there was "nothing to be worried about" at the plant, were barely mentioned by the Times (Reuters 11/05/09). Equally important to the story, yet also downplayed, was Iran's voluntary disclosure of the facility--prior to its "revelation" by Obama and other Western leaders. (Iran notified the IAEA more than six months prior to the commencement of enrichment operations at the Qom facility, as required by its original agreement with the IAEA, though the agency recently criticized Iran for not recognizing a supplementary agreement that would have required notification as soon as construction commenced--Jerusalem Post, 11/28/09; FAS, 8/28/09; Reuters, 11/17/09.)

Instead, the Times focused solely on the story of Western determination to confront the implacable Iranian menace and to counter its "clandestine efforts to design a nuclear warhead" (9/29/09). The possibility of an aggressive strike against Iran loomed in the coverage, with the Times reminding readers that a military attack was "on the table" (9/26/09) and suggesting that "Israel might carry out a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons" (9/29/09). Obama was quoted warning Iran not to "continue down a path that is going to lead to confrontation" (9/26/09).The opinion pages also contributed to this confrontational tone. One op-ed, written by Times U.N. bureau chief Neil MacFarquhar (9/30/09), warned that "the plant could fuel a five-bomb arsenal in less than a year" and called for "protection against what we now know is Iran's determination to build the bomb." Times editorial writers (9/26/09) pushed for sanctions and called "faithless" Iran a "big cheat" that "has a long history of lying and cheating about its nuclear program."

Notably, the Times didn't publish any editorials or op-eds urging the United States or Iran to launch a preventive attack against Israel, or to apply crippling sanctions on that state. There was no suggestion that the U.S. curtail its ongoing efforts to bolster Israeli defiance with U.N. vetoes and massive military and economic aid--totaling more than $7 million per day, according to the Congressional Research Service (5/20/09). As for condemning Israel's long history of lying and cheating about its nuclear program, well, we're still waiting.

Michael Corcoran (MichaelCorcoran.blogspot.com) is a freelance journalist based in Boston. He has written for such outlets as the Nation and the Boston Globe. Stephen Maher (RationalManifesto.blogspot.com) is an MA candidate at the School of International Service at American University.

Health Care Outrage

2009-12-18T12:21:00.006-05:00

What an outrageous bill we have from the Senate, actually worsening the status quo, if that can even be conceived of. It is almost criminal. How can one maintain faith in American democracy anymore; why even bother voting if it does not matter who wins? Not only does voting for Democrats not have any effect whatsoever on our posture of indefinite warfare, expansions of executive power, violations of human rights, and so on, but now this.

The Senate version of the bill has been stripped of everything: no public option, no cap on annual limits, no limits on premiums, no medicare expansion - all of which are massively popular provisions. In contrast, the legal mandate that everyone purchase a private insurance plan (pushed for by the insurance industry) remains in the bill (not to mention Obama's proposed cuts to Medicare, which, combined with the mandates, pave the way for the privatization of Medicare). In other words, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, or Cigna, or whoever, can say "Hey Steve - We alrady paid for $100,000 of healthcare, since your car accident. We have an annual limit, so now you are on your own. Welcome to financial ruin, or maybe death. Oh, and by the way, it is illegal not to buy this product from us." What am utter outrage, made worse by the fact that insurance stocks skyrocketed in the wake of the news.

This is not even "conservative." Rather it is a sick form of corporatism, where we are all forced to subsidize the profits of private companies, who were just handed millions of new customers now legally obligated to purchase their overpriced, shitty product BY LAW - or else face fines (but since they already cannot afford health insurance, one can imagine the impact of such a fine - especially since these measures will hit those without high-paying jobs that provide insurance benefits the hardest, forcing them to buy a plan on their own). Meanwhile, the insurance companies are announcing that they will raise rates. Likewise, the Health and Human Services Dept announced that "the nation's $2.5 trillion annual health-care tab would not shrink under the Democratic blueprint but would grow somewhat more rapidly than if Congress did nothing." And lets not forget Obama's proposed $493 billion in Medicare cuts, which HHS says "could lead to cuts in services" (services which, thanks to the mandate to purchase private insurance products, will now be delivered by private insurers, beginning a sort of creeping privatization of the Medicare system). Despicable.

Thanks Obama, thanks Democrats. Obama and his sycophantic underling Rahm Emmanuel (not the mention the rest of the pathetic Democratic party) have laid naked the fact that they have totally sold out to corporate interests, regardless of public opinion or the interests of the increasing numbers of suffering poor ("a majority of U.S. residents say that they or a member of their household has delayed or gone without health care services in the past year") in this, the most unequal developed country in the world. As the White House has admitted, Obama conducted secret deals with pharmaceutical industry lobbyists at which the administration "agreed to oppose congressional efforts to use government leverage to bargain for lower drug prices" and "not to shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D, which would have cost the industry billions in reduced reimbursements... in exchange for $80 billion over ten years to help push for reform" (despite Obama's promise to conduct all negotiations on C-SPAN). Obama and Emmanuel, in a manner typical of their offensively overt pro-corporate, anti-democratic attitude, have used this as an opportunity to ensure that industry funds continue to flow to the democratic party, and do not stand in opposition to "Ted Kennedy's dream." What a sad, sorry day this is.

Even more sickeningly, as Senator Russ Feingold pointed out, it is Obama - not just Lieberman - who should be blamed for this outcome:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.

"This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth," said Feingold. "I think they could have been higher. I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect."

I strongly recommend reading this article for more information - if you can handle it.

[Thanks to Mike Corcoran for helping here]

Iran v. Honduras: The New York Times Selective Promotion of Democracy

2009-11-19T21:16:00.005-05:00

Published at EXTRA!, the monthly magazine for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

By Michael Corcoran and Stephen Maher

When the results of the June 13 Iranian elections were decried as fraudulent (charges that were later backed up by a detailed study by Chatham House–6/21/09), U.S. media instantly became the champions of the oppressed Iranians who took to the streets in protest. Cries of righteous solidarity echoed from virtually all mainstream editorial outlets, and the large demonstrations were front-page news on every newspaper in the country each day.

The Islamic regime’s harsh suppression of demonstrations was rightfully the focus of prolific news coverage and vigorous editorial discussion. As the pages of the New York Times informed Americans, a “genuine democratic movement…including women, young people, intellectuals and members of the moderate clerical establishment,” had “united” in “resistance” against Iran’s clerics (6/14/09), who used “overwhelming force to crush the demonstrations” (6/16/09), and against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (6/14/09), “an intensely divisive figure here and abroad.”

“Death to the dictator,” the protesters were quoted as crying, after Ahmadinejad’s victory “provoked deep suspicion” given Iran’s tendency towards “vote-rigging” which had “often been raised.” Indeed, the Times (6/15/09) editorialized , “given the government’s even more than usually thuggish reaction, it certainly looks like fraud.”

By contrast, about two weeks later, demonstrators in Honduras who took to the streets to demand the reinstatement of the democratically elected president who had been violently abducted by soldiers that were armed, trained and advised by the United States received no such media support or attention. Hardly a mention that hundreds of protesters–two of whom were killed and 60 injured, according to the Chinese press agency Xinhua (6/30/09)–were confronting tanks and droves of armed forces in the Honduran capital could be found in mainstream news outlets or editorial pages.

The New York Times (6/29/09) framed its reporting on events in Honduras much differently: President Manuel Zelaya, “a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela,”was ousted by the U.S.-backed Honduran military, which was “acting to defend the law” after “months of tensions over [Zelaya's] efforts to lift presidential term limits”–efforts that “critics said [were] part of an illegal attempt by Mr. Zelaya to defy the constitution’s limit of a single four-year term for the president.”

This portrait of events laid out by Times reporters and opinion writers has been wildly inaccurate and misleading. In reality, Zelaya had called for a non-binding referendum that would have asked whether Hondurans would support the formation of a convention to rewrite Honduras’ constitution (possibly including a change in term-limit laws); that convention would not have been convened until after the general elections in November 2009, in which Zelaya was not a candidate because his term was expiring (Miami Herald, 7/3/09; Rebel Reports, 7/1/09).

The comparison of Zelaya to Chavez, whose name in the Times has always been a pejorative (Extra!, 11/12/06), is telling. To the Times, Chavez has been a “populist demagogue” and an “authoritarian man on horseback” (12/20/98) who “has militarized the government, emasculated the country’s courts, intimidated the media, eroded confidence in the economy and hollowed out Venezuela’s once-democratic institutions” (book review, 9/17/06). The Times celebrated the unsuccessful coup against him, rejoicing that “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator ” (4/13/02; Extra! Update, 6/02).

The disparity in the amount of attention given to the protesters in each country is striking, as demonstrated by a Nexis search of the first 10 days following both the Iran elections and the Honduran coup. The Times' first article on the Iran elections (6/14/09) quoted “green revolution” protesters at length, including reformist clerics and students. Op-ed columnist Tom Friedman (6/14/09) that very same day wrote: “But for the first time in a long time, the forces for decency, democracy and pluralism have a little wind at their backs. Good for them.” Two days later (6/16/09), in the online edition, columnist Ross Douthat praised the Iranian upheaval as a happy consequence of the global recession (failing to mention the role played by crippling U.S. sanctions). Likewise, a Times editorial (6/15/09) quickly condemned the shaky election results and Iran’s tepid democracy.

In the days following the military takeover in Honduras, on the other hand, the Times did not condemn the coup in an editorial, nor publish a single op-ed praising the Honduran protesters. In its original report on the coup (6/29/09), the Times acknowledged that “several thousand protesters supporting the president faced off against soldiers outside the presidential palace, burning tires,” but unlike in its Iran stories, the paper failed to quote a single demonstrator rallying to salvage the country’s hijacked democracy. The Times did follow with an article reporting on world leaders’ condemnations of the coup (6/28/09), but the voices of the brave Hondurans, who like the Iranians are fighting for their freedom despite enormous risk, have been conspicuously absent.

The first op-ed in the Times about the coup in Honduras (6/30/09) argued that Zelaya “set a trap for the military” by “pushing the limits of democracy,” and claimed the coup, while not legitimate, “has popular support in Honduras”–citing no evidence and ignoring the thousands who have taken to the street, the election results that put Zelaya in power in 2005, and international law on the matter. Astonishingly, the op-ed–headlined “The Winner in Honduras: Chavez”–linked the whole affair to the Venezuelan president’s “incessant exploitation.”

In the only other op-ed written on the topic as of this writing (”Who Cares About Zelaya?,” 7/7/09), Roger Maran Neda, a columnist for an anti-Zelaya newspaper in Honduras, argued that the ousted leader was “a typical Honduran politician” with a “lust for power,” whose “goal seemed to be a change from our democratic system into a kind of 21st-century socialism…a Hugo Chavez-type of government.” After dismissing those “abroad [who] are obsessing over the question of whether Mr. Zelaya’s ouster was legal or a classic military coup,” Neda casually discarded the right of Hondurans to choose their own leaders: “Mr. Zelaya may or may not return to serve the remaining months of his term. But for the future of Honduras, does it really even matter?”

Equally revealing as the Times’ framing of the news was the volume of coverage of the events in Iran and Honduras respectively. In the 10 days following the Honduran coup, the Times devoted 13 news articles to the events unfolding there–only two of which appeared on Page 1–totaling less that 14,000 words. They ran two op-eds, one news analysis piece, no editorials and no letters to the editor. In the 10 days following the Iranian elections, by contrast, the Times ran 37 news articles on the issue–more than 38,000 words in total–including 15 front-page articles. The paper also published 12 op-eds, six news analysis pieces, two editorials and more than 2,600 words in letters to the editor.

The double standard here is clear. Those protesting a regime that is an official state enemy are brave freedom fighters who merit attention and praise, and the official suppression of these protests is amplified. Meanwhile, those protesting a military coup against a leader who had increasingly supported alternatives to the U.S.-dominated economic world order are either ignored, or their cause distorted practically beyond recognition.

Michael Corcoran (www.michaelcorcoran.blogspot.com) is a freelance journalist based in Boston. He has written for outlets including the Nation and the Boston Globe. Stephen Maher (http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com/) is an MA candidate at the School of International Service at American University.

To Keep Us Safe: Examining the Case for War and Occupation in Afghanistan

2009-10-26T09:46:00.007-04:00

Proponents of continuing or increasing the US military presence in Afghanistan often argue that such policies are essential to Keep Us Safe from Terrorists, who are just waiting to attack Americans and would more easily be able to do so if we retreat from the challenge that lays before us. As Monica Crowley writes in the Washington Times, “America's enemies are watching this indecision and calculating that the president doesn't have the stomach for a protracted fight …. Stalling on a troop request for Afghanistan while Americans are dying is a sure way to signal to our enemies that they can win, if only they hang in long enough.” To Crowley, echoing the conventional wisdom among petty propagandists advocating escalation of the war in Afghanistan, the only way “keep us safe from attack” is “American strength,” which is the “best deterrent to violence and chaos.”^¹ As President Obama himself said on CBS's “Face the Nation,” the “top priority” in Afghanistan is to “protect the United States against attacks from Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.”^²

In fact, in the national debate over the Afghan war strategy (as opposed to the war itself), now almost entirely focused around how many more troops should be deployed (not if more troops should be sent, or whether the war should be continued at all), the fundamental premise that fighting the war in Afghanistan somehow Keeps Us Safe from Terrorism is routinely touted as an all-encompassing justification for escalating violence being carried out abroad. In the pages that follow, I will address this claim by analyzing who and what it is the US is actually fighting in Afghanistan, as well as how it is doing so. In transcending the superficial and narrow debate occurring in the national media over the Afghanistan war, we should be able to gain some insight into the best course of action for the future while uncovering important but hidden truths about the present.

As I mentioned, in order to ascertain whether or not fighting (or escalating) the war in Afghanistan will actually Keep Us Safe from Terrorism, it is important to understand who and what we are fighting in the first place. Media reports and analysis commonly paint “our enemies” in Afghanistan and elsewhere simply as “Al Qaeda” or the “Taliban.” Liberal think tanks and news periodicals have taken to insisting that these two ominous foes have formed an unholy alliance, more threatening to American lives than ever before and thus a development which necessitates the escalation of the war effort. Writing in The New Republic, Peter Bergen describes how “in recent years, Taliban leaders have drawn especially close to Al Qaeda,” today functioning “more or less as a single entity.”^³ “The signs of this” near-total collusion “are everywhere,” Bergen writes, noting how “the Taliban, like Al Qaeda, has tried to attack the West.”^⁴ He begins his analysis by describing the “sobering” case of Najibullah Zazi, “the first Al Qaeda recruit discovered in the United States in the past few years,” who was planning “what could have been the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since September 11.”^⁵ Since Zazi is alleged to have “traveled to Pakistan's tribal regions and studied with Al Qaeda members,” it is clear to Bergen that “we cannot defeat Al Qaeda without securing Afghanistan.”^⁶ After all, “nearly every major jihadist plot against Western targets in the last two decades somehow leads back to Afghanistan or Pakistan.”^⁷ Thus, failing to “win the war” in Afghanistan – essential to which is the escalation for which he advocates – would mean that armies of Terrorists (like Zazi) will soon be washing over the United States, leaving us with nowhere to run or hide from the onslaught.

In fact, this analysis is reflective of the woefully uninformed view of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and radical Islam in general that permeates the national discussion on the Afghanistan war as well as US Foreign Policy in the Middle East more broadly. Not only is the Taliban something wholly separate and distinct from “Al Qaeda,” but the latter does not even exist as the singular, monolithic entity that it is imagined to by propagandists cheerleading for war. “Even when at its most organized in late 2001,” writes Jason Burke, a journalist who spent years living in Afghanistan and Pakistan covering radical Islam, “it is important to avoid seeing 'al-Qaeda' as a coherent and structured terrorist organization with cells everywhere... this would be to profoundly misconceive its nature and the nature of modern Islamic militancy.”^⁸ John McLaughlin, the former acting CIA director, echoes this assessment, saying “in the sense that Al Qaeda is decentralized, its much harder to get your hands around.”^⁹ This, of course, is in direct contradiction to the well-organized monolith portrayed by Bergen and others, consisting of a vast “membership,” and a “leadership council” with the capacity to coordinate the actions of subordinate cells all around the world – and, for that matter, to partner with other organizations, such as the Taliban.^¹⁰ Rather, as Burke describes in great detail, “a careful examination of the situation shows that it is wrong to imagine that there was any kind of network of international groups obedient to Bin Laden or created by him.”^¹¹ “It is not about being part of a group,” continues Burke, “it is a way of thinking about the world, a way of understanding events, of interpreting or behaving.”^¹²

Indeed, Bin Laden and a small cadre of close associates, whom Burke refers to as “the hardcore,” were able to access vast networks they had accumulated during the US-sponsored Afghan jihad run out of camps on the Afghan-Pakistani border, and divert their vast supply of funds to various groups. The now-infamous training camps were a concentrated epicenter of Islamic radicals, who contacted one another to fulfill various needs – Bin Laden was able to bring the money, in a big way. As a result, what influence Bin Laden did have over this disparate array of groups “depended on the resources he could offer,” yet “with the loss of his bases in Afghanistan in late 2001 and the continued attention of American, Pakistani, and other security forces... those resources largely disappeared” and “much of his power with it.”^¹³ “The “systematic elimination” of the camps and infrastructure which housed the various radical Islamist networks and protected this “hardcore” began “within weeks of the 9/11 attacks,” largely because “going into Afghanistan in 2001, the CIA had a fair understanding of Al Qaeda's strength, organization, and location” writes Robert Dreyfuss, citing top officials in the intelligence community.^¹⁴ “According to U.S. Intelligence officials,” Drefuss continues, “many – perhaps most – of the group's members were killed in the bombing raids unleashed by the US military.”^¹⁵ Gary Bernstein, a “longtime CIA operations officer and former CIA station chief” who “led the CIA team in the field that was assigned the task of hunting down Al Qaeda,” also described in detail how the majority of those in the camps in Afghanistan were killed or driven away very early on: “before Tora Bora, some did slip out, a dozen here, a dozen there... in Tora Bora, we estimated there were about a thousand who fell back, and many of those broke into two groups, finally. One group, of about 130, was captured in Pakistan. Another group, about 180, got away.”^¹⁶ After the destruction of the camps, “the few who managed to get out – including bin Laden and... Zawahiri – were barely able to scramble to safety.”^¹⁷ Subsequently, the CIA “reaped an intelligence bonanza,” including “computers, files, and organizational records,” from which “our knowledge expanded exponentially” in the words of a retired CIA station chief, allowing us to facilitate the further destruction of what remained of the extant terror infrastructure.^¹⁸

It seems fairly clear after careful analysis that “the organization that attacked the United States on 9/11 has been virtually wiped out.”^¹⁹ After the initial assault on the massive camp infrastructure, the “hardcore was scattered,” and “Al Qaeda” as it once existed was destroyed.^²⁰ Wayne White, a top intelligence official in the State Department, put it quite clearly: “I personally don't believe Al Qaeda exists as a robust organization anymore.”^²¹ As a result, the modern phenomenon of the same name is of an even more decentralized character. “Most activism” nowadays, writes Burke, is by “individuals who look up to bin Laden as a symbolic leader... but are not controlled in any meaningful way by 'Al-Qaeda.'”^²² White agrees that bin Laden is “not much more than a standard-bearer... like a regimental flag-carrier, holding up the flag and trying to inspire people.”^²³ Now, all that is left is “the idea of Al-Qaeda – the precept, the maxim, the formula, not 'the base',” and it “is more powerful than ever.”^²⁴ As Afghan-based journalist Anand Gopal put it, Al Qaeda is “mostly an autonomous homegrown or regional affair in the various countries in which it exists,” and “[t]here's very little evidence of ties between those groups...”^²⁵ In other words, modern-day “Al Qaeda” is little more than a franchise, a name that is adopted by various groups which arise spontaneously around the world who believe themselves to share a common ideology, but which do not coordinate with one another in any significant way.

Perhaps more importantly, “the efforts of Western governments, local regimes and security agencies around the world have been unable” to do much about this remaining element.^²⁶ In the study mentioned above, Dreyfuss spoke with top-ranking members of the US intelligence community, including current assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan, who went even farther, concluding that US policy in the so-called “Global War on Terror” had actually “made the threat worse.”^²⁷ In other words, despite its initial success in destroying al Qaeda, the aggressive actions of the United States have actually placed Americans at greater risk of international Islamist terrorism, according to leaders in the foreign policy community. While this may seem puzzling at first, an honest evaluation of the tremendous cost, in terms human lives and suffering, at which this “victory” has come, inevitably leads to this conclusion. In the Afghan context, when one takes into account how US elites were willing to subject millions of Afghans to starvation, bombardment, and massive oppression, angry and often violent responses – from the “localized insurgency,” not some massive imagined underground radical Islamic movement – no longer seem unreasonable. If we are truly seeking to a policy that will Keep Us Safe, we need to ask some hard questions, which have equally unpleasant answers: where did “al Qaeda” come from, and what still leads Muslims to “look up to bin Laden as a symbolic leader”? Why do they hate us?

The origins of this question – and the obvious conclusions – go back many years, as we can learn from reading the declassified internal record. In 1958, President Eisenhower discussed with his staff the origins of what he called “the campaign of hatred against us” in the Middle East, “not by the governments but by the people.” The National Security Council clearly outlined the source of this curious “campaign” soon thereafter: “in the eyes of the majority of the Arabs the United States is opposed to the realization of the goals of Arab nationalism. They believe that the United States is seeking to protect its interest in Near East Oil by supporting the status quo and opposing political or economic progress.” That the perception that the US stands opposed to independence and self-determination in the Third World, in particular the strategically crucial Middle East, is so widespread should not be surprising, the NSC continued, because “our economic and cultural interests in the area have led not unnaturally to close US relations with elements in the Arab world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of relations with the West and the status quo in their countries,” blocking progress and development.^²⁸

These conclusions were reiterated in 2004, when Donald Rumsfeld directed the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication to review the impact that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were having on Terrorism and Islamic Radicalism. According to the DSB charter, it is composed of 35 civilian members handpicked by the Defense Department.^²⁹ “Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,'” the report concluded, “but rather, they hate our policies.”^³⁰ The “overwhelming majority” of Muslims are angry over “the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq,” which “in the eyes of Muslims... have not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering.” The massive fury over these wars built on anger which already existed throughout the Muslim world, the report continues, as a result of “one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan Pakistan, and the Gulf States,” closely mirroring the reasoning of the NSC as cited above.^³¹ Accordingly, “there is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies – except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends” [emphasis in original].^³² So, “when American public diplomacy [propaganda] talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”^³³

There is no shortage of examples to support these assessments. According to “new US intelligence reports,” “nearly all the insurgents battling US and NATO troops in Afghanistan are not religiously motivated Taliban and Al Qaeda warriors,” but rather “ninety percent is a tribal, localized insurgency.”^³⁴ Despite the fact that “US commanders and politicians” present the image of fighting “holy warriors seeking to spread a fundamentalist form of Islam,” in reality these fighters “see themselves as opposing the United States because it is an occupying power” according to US intelligence agencies.^³⁵ Mohammed Atta, the “ringleader” of the 9/11 attacks, was also motivated to devote himself to a suicide attack by these very same factors. As Lawrence Wright wrote in his book The Looming Tower, “on April 11, 1996, when Atta was twenty-seven years old, he signed a standardized will he got from the al-Quds mosque. It was the day Israel attacked Lebanon in Operation Grapes of Wrath. According to one of his friends, Atta was enraged, and by filling out his last testament during the attack he was offering his life in response.”^³⁶ These conclusions were also confirmed by the account of New York Times journalist David Rohde of the seven months he spent as a prisoner of the Taliban. “Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi, and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes,” he writes, “as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charged.”^³⁷ He further describes how his captors were furious about the “large numbers of civilians” who “had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings.”^³⁸ Echoing these sentiments, a Kabul resident, speaking about the air raids that were crippling the country, told the BBC “they call themselves a civilized nation and are proud of acting like Hollywood cowboys... They are vultures.”^³⁹

It is quite understandable that the victims of US violence in Afghanistan should feel this way, especially when one considers the human rights record of the occupation and invasion. As Noam Chomsky wrote, “the threat of bombing, and then the bombing, were among the most disgraceful acts of modern history, as was known instantly... [t]hat starvation could cause the deaths of millions was the clear, explicit, unmistakable message of just about every international aid agency and those who cared about the people of Afghanistan.”^⁴⁰ Indeed, the humanitarian crisis that was a predicted consequence of the bombing of Afghanistan is horrifying almost beyond words. On the eve of the bombing, a UNHCR spokesman said that “the population is barely managing to survive,” with nearly one-quarter of the population relying on handouts from international aid groups.^⁴¹ Despite this widespread desperation, on September 16, 2001, it was reported by the New York Times that the US had issued several demands to Pakistan, one of which was “the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population,” a request was predicted at the time to induce “massive starvation.”^⁴²

Once the threat of US bombardment became imminent, this situation drastically worsened. The New York Times described how “the threat of military strikes forced the removal of international aid workers, crippling assistance programs;” refugees reaching Pakistan “after arduous journeys from Afghanistan are describing scenes of desperation and fear at home as the threat of American-led military attacks turns their long-running misery into a potential catastrophe.”^⁴³ “The country was on a lifeline,” one aid worker said, “and we just cut the line.”^⁴⁴ “It’s as if a mass grave has been dug behind millions of people,” in the words of a Christian Aid worker, “we can drag them back from it or push them in. We could be looking at millions of deaths.” On September 20, the UN Food and Agriculture Agency warned that 6 million people, “nearly one-quarter of the population,” were “facing starvation” if the threatened bombing were initiated.^⁴⁵

The bombing and subsequent invasion did indeed have terrible consequences, thought just how awful will perhaps never be known, since the suffering caused by the crimes of the powerful are rarely if ever investigated. The BBC reported in October that “most agencies have stopped deliveries into the country because of security concerns since US-led air strikes began,” placing “millions” at “enormous risk.”^⁴⁶ Meanwhile, US “food drops” were widely acknowledged to be little more than a “propaganda exercise” in the words of the charity Doctors without Borders, as they delivered merely “a fraction of what the population will need to survive winter.”^⁴⁷ The direct consequences of the bombing were also significant. In April 2008, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said “I am not happy with civilian casualties coming down; I want an end to civilian casualties... As much as one may argue it's difficult, I don't accept that argument... It seriously undermines our efforts to have an effective campaign against terrorism.”^⁴⁸ Reviewing the record, his concerns seem well-founded. Human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) have reported that civilian casualties from US bombing in Afghanistan have “been increasing since 2001,” including a 30% jump between 2007 and 2008, “the bloodiest year yet.”^⁴⁹

There are “serious concerns about the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of air strikes” Amnesty writes in its recent report on Afghanistan, “following several grave incidents” which involved large numbers of civilian casualties.^⁵⁰ Furthermore, the use of the chemical agent white phosphorous, which causes “horrendous burns” to all who come into contact with it, has not been denied by the US military, and there is evidence it has been used in civilian areas.^⁵¹ “To fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda,” Human Rights Watch recently wrote in an open letter to Barack Obama, “many warlords were placed in positions of authority, relied on for military support, and provided weapons and funds by the US... [which] has shown little appetite for sidelining senior warlords when the opportunity has arisen.”^⁵² When the US or its warlord militia allies arrest Afghans, such as during infamous “night raids” in Afghan houses carried out by the US military, they are “hand[ed] over to the NDS, Afghanistan's intelligence service, which perpetuates human rights violations including torture and arbitrary detention with impunity,” or perhaps sent to one of the torture chambers which the US runs directly.^⁵³

Thus, it is US imperialism – the maintenance of brutally repressive regimes all around the world, direct and indirect military invasions and bombings (invariably and inevitably with “large numbers of civilian casualties”^⁵⁴), and other such actions carried out in the interests of US elites – which engenders this anger and frustration among Muslims. Given the large number of Muslim countries which the US has routinely bombed, crippled, and otherwise oppressed, destroyed, and enslaved it should not come as a surprise that such feelings run high among the victims. When these victims see the world in religious terms, these conflicts are perceived and understood through that lens, meriting a response which is in line with a religious interpretation of global conflict and resistance to the US empire. The same can be said of US society. After 9/11, many Americans (with the help of the media and the intellectual establishment) adopted a similar view. Not all of those who saw things this way even rose to the low level of famed Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington, who presented the conflict as an inherent “clash of civilizations” in his book of the same name. Others adopted a more messianic posture, such as Blackwater owner Eric Prince, who “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” a view which led him to “encourage and reward the destruction of Iraqi life” after the invasion of that country according to the sworn testimony of a former Blackwater employee.^⁵⁵

There can be no other word for “encouraging and rewarding” the murder of innocent people in the name of a grand religious “crusade” – let alone the other massive crimes discussed here – besides terrorism, a tactic practiced by the US and its agents on a far grander scale than “al Qaeda” or Osama bin Laden could ever dream. The quest to secure and enhance the global domination of US elites has not come peacefully or easily. Where Eric Prince sees himself as a “crusader” for god, our elite leaders destroy and cripple societies, slaughtering and maiming civilians if they deem it neccesary, to secure their reign of terror over the planet and its largely poor, uneducated inhabitants. Unsurprisingly, these actions generate responses, one of which was the attack on September the 11^th. As state managers readily understand, if stopping terrorism and Keeping Us Safe is truly the most important goal as Barack Obama and George Bush tell us it is (to say nothing of keeping Afghans or Iraqis safe), US policy must radically change. That necessary change will almost certainly not come from the top down. We must act to force our leaders to embrace democracy, freedom, and self-determination as values that can bring humanity to construct a more positive future, not threats which need to be suppressed and destroyed, both at home and abroad.

1Crowley, Monica. “McChrystal goes rogue,” Washington Times, October 7, 2009.

2Schmitt, Eric and Tom Shanker. “General Calls for More U.S. Troops to Avoid Afghan Failure,” New York Times, September 20, 2009.

3Bergen, Peter. “The Front,” The New Republic, October 19, 2009.

4Bergen

5Bergen

6Bergen

7Bergen

8Burke, Jason. Al -Qaeda. 2003: Taurus Books, New York, pg 6

9Dreyfuss, Robert. “The Phony War,” Rolling Stone, September 2006.

10Bergen

11Burke, 10

12Burke, 14

13Burke, 14

14Dreyfuss

15Dreyfuss

16Dreyfuss

17Dreyfuss

18Dreyfuss

19Dreyfuss

20Burke, 14

21Dreyfuss

22Burke, 14

23Dreyfuss

24Burke, 14

25Hynd, Steve. “Anand Gopal Interview: 'The Taliban Don't Need Al Qaeda Like They Did Eight Years Ago.” Newshoggers, October 19, 2009. Available at http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/10/anand-gopal-interview-the-taliban-dont-need-al-qaeda-like-they-did-eight-years-ago.html

26Burke, 14

27Dreyfuss

28Quoted in Chomsky, Noam. “Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.” 2006, Metropolitan Books: New York, 202

29Charter, Defense Science Board. Available at http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/charter.htm Accessed on 10/24/09.

30Report of the Defense Science Board (DSB) Task Force on Strategic Communication. United States Department of Defense. September 2004, pg. 40

31DSB 40

32DSB 36

33DSB 40

34Bender, Bryan. “Taliban not main Afghan enemy.” Boston Globe. 2009 October 9.

35Bender, Bryan. “Taliban not main Afghan enemy.” Boston Globe. 2009 October 9.

36Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower. 2006: Knopf, pg. 307

37Rohde, David. “7 Months, 10 Days in Captivity,” New York Times, 17 October 2009

38Rohde, David. “Inside the Emirate.” New York Times, 18 October 2009

39“Fears of Afghan food crisis.” BBC, 9 October 2001.

40Chomsky, Noam. “The Afghanistan Food Crisis,” Z Magazine. 4 September 2005.

41“Afghans flee cities.” UNHCR Press Release, 17 September 2001.

42Burns, John F. “AFTER THE ATTACKS: IN ISLAMABAD; Pakistan Antiterror Support Avoids Vow of Military Aid,” New York Times 16 September 2001.

43Frantz, Douglas. “A NATION CHALLENGED: REFUGEES; Refugees From Afghanistan Flee Out of Fear and Find Despair,” New York Times 30 September 2001.

44Sifton, John. “A Last Road Trip Through Premodern, Postmodern Afghanistan,” New York Times. 30 September 2001

45“Grave Food Crisis in Afghanistan Could Deepen if Current Situation Deteriorates.” UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Special Alert No. 318. 20 September 2001.

46“Fears of Afghan food crisis.” BBC, 9 October 2001.

47“Fears of Afghan food crisis.” BBC, 9 October 2001; “Taleban 'demand tax' on aid convoy.” BBC, 11 October 2001.

48Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch. 8 September 2008.

49Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch. 8 September 2008. Amnesty International Report 2009. Amnesty International.

50Amnesty International Report 2009. Amnesty International.

51“Afghanistan: NATO Should 'Come Clean' on White Phosphorous.” Human Rights Watch, Press Release. 8 May 2009

52“Afghanistan: New US Policy Should Stress Human Rights.” Human Rights Watch, Press Release. 26 March, 2009

53Amnesty International Report 2009. Amnesty International.

54Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch. 8 September 2008.

55Scahill, Jeremy. “Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder,” The Nation, 4 August 2009

Obama and the Peace Process: Quick Reactions

2009-06-09T13:24:00.004-04:00

I woke up this morning, got into my office, and was confronted by an email from Haaretz (the Israeli news daily) urging me to "stand with President Obama" after his "historic address" where he "made clear" that he is committed to a "leadership" role in reaching a two-state solution. While the "usual suspects" will likely rush to characterize the President's bold "insistence" that Israel meet its international obligations as the latest example of his unjust criticism of Israel, the email warns, Obama's "vigorous efforts," bravely and heroically forcing Israel to comply with its responsibilities, is actually "the single most pro-Israel thing an American President can do." Given that this characterization of the debate, based entirely on faulty assumptions about both Obama's and Bush's actions, has been echoed by a large portion of the world's major media outlets, I feel it is important to comment.

The important thing is the issues that are at stake here, and Obama's positions on them, not rhetoric and public relations bluster. We must remember that all that Obama has asked for is a settlement freeze. Right now, the dispute between Obama and Netanyahu is essentially over whether Israel has a right to build within the existing settlement blocks - Netanyahu has already put a freeze in place on building outside the blocks, much to the dismay of the Shas party.

Importantly, Obama says nothing about the settlements that already exist, and has thus implicitly recognized the legitimacy of the existence of blocks in the first place in accordance with US policy. As opposed to viewing the settlements as individual entities, each to be linked individually to Israel if they are to remain Israeli under a final settlement, they are combined into impermeable "blocks," or strips of land which are de facto annexed to Israel. These settlement blocks, including the dense network of bypass roads and system of electric fence, ALREADY divide the Palestinian West Bank into four totally isolated and non-contiguous cantons. Thus, simply freezing building within the blocks that are already acknowleged to exist will do little, if anything, to help the chances of a Palestinian state being created, or of Palestinian rights being recognized and respected.

Building outside the blocks was once an idea harbored and espoused only by the hard Israeli right, with the Labor Party's Allon Plan (formulated after the 1967 war and occupation of Palestinian territory) essentially resembling the current "settlement block" approach, carving the West Bank into isolated cantons; all that Netanyahu has frozen are settlements being constructed within these Palestinian cantons. These "non-block" settlements further divide the four large West Bank cantons into 23 separated islands of Palestinian territory, each fully controlled from the outside by Israel. Obama has not said a word about uprooting any portion of this infrastructure.

It's wonderful that Obama supports the two-state solution, but given the above it should be no surprise that he has declined to say where, when, or how. On what part of the West Bank and Gaza will this state be proclaimed? This question is especially pressing given that during the campaign Obama expressed his support for an "undivided" and Israeli-annexed Jerusalem, despite the fact that the World Court has ruled that Israel does not have one inch of sovereignty in Jerusalem (July 2004 ruling). This, of course, leaving aside the fact that the Israeli occupation has not relented in even the slightest way, with arrests and detentions as well as Israeli incursions and violence in Palestinian villages spiking in the West Bank and the usual routine of checkpoints and roadblocks continuing to make daily life unbearable for the 5 million people imprisoned in the West Bank and Gaza. This also without mentioning the increasingly-violent attacks by Israel's "subcontractor"(former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace), the Palestinian Authority (lead by the US stooge Mahmoud Abbas) against elected representatives, spiritual leaders, and any other Palestinians who might dare to resist the occupation, or speak too loudly about the daily outrages against human dignity committed by the Israelis in the occupied territories.

To top it all off, even on this minor little point (freezing settlements), the tiniest and most insignificant of changes, Obama has refused to exert US pressure on Israel to comply. It's important to compare Obama to his predecessor here. While the George W. Bush administration went a bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects, namely, by withholding U.S. economic support for them, Obama administration officials have stated that such measures are "not under discussion," and that any pressures on Israel will be "largely symbolic," the New York Times reported (Helene Cooper, June 1). In fact, on each major element of policy towards Israel, from Hamas' inclusion in a democratically-representative unity government to the settlements, Obama has reiterated the Bush position essentially verbatim (see here if you don't believe me). The only detectable "change" is one of tone and rhetoric - in other words, marketing. Obama is indeed proving to be a better spokesman for the Bush policies than his predecessor.

In short, those of us who want peace had better stop passively and mindlessly "standing with Obama" as the euphoric, almost hysterical liberal American and Israeli press have and demand that the longstanding international consensus - endorsed by the entire world, including the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Court, the Palestinian leadership (both Hamas and Fatah), but rejected unilaterally by the US and Israel.
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UPDATE:

I found this map (.pdf), from the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which reveals plainly how the West Bank is divided in isolated cantons, separated from one another by the settlements, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, the wall, the Jewish-only bypass roads, and Israeli "security zones." This is probably the best map out there of the circumstances on the ground today, as it reveals the cumulative effects of Israeli policy on the West Bank, including the impact of the "non-block" settlements and the so-called "illegal outposts," essentially settlements built without the official approval of the Israeli government (but which are mostly protected by the Israeli Army, and often if not usually given approval to become official settlements eventually). Definitely worth a look - I'll try to figure out how to make it into an image which I can post here.

Also worth looking at, below, is an approximation of what the Israelis were offering for a Palestinian "state" at Camp David in 2000. As you can plainly see, the lands on which this "state" would exist (the pink areas) are separated from one another by the large settlement blocks, which, like Obama, Clinton and Barak did not propose removing, but rather sought a Palestinian signature to legitimize their permanent annexation to Israel. As I mentioned, accepting the idea of settlement blocs means the complete dismemberment of the Palestinian West Bank, with or without Obama's "courageous" freeze on further building within the blocks. Believe it or not, this map actually paints an excessively rosy picture, since the outlying settlements (outside the blocs) and the roads which join them are depicted as being in Palestinian-controlled territory; today (as the above UN map shows) these areas are under full Israeli control, and subdivide the four main cantons (the four large pink areas) into much smaller fragments (click to enlarge).