No Empires

Well-Made World 38

2009-01-22T22:55:00.005-05:00

In another piece for the LRB, Henry Siegman sets things straight in terms of Israel/Palestine, discussing the truce (rather than ease restrictions in Gaza during the truce, he explains, Israel tightened its hold on the city, while Hamas was acknowledged to be quite effective in preventing rocketfire, including from groups like Islamic Jihad); Hamas on the terrorist list (Siegman reminds us that when it became a political party, Hamas publicly ended its suicide bombings and kassam fire, until the blockade); and the conception that Israel is acting as part of a widespread "war on terror" (as he writes, "It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions").

In other news, the NYT reports today that layoffs are expanding to sectors of the economy such as manufacturing, retailing and information technology. To this end, we have a piece from NE favorite Paul Craig Roberts on the next real estate crisis, which, he argues, will hit commercial real estate. His answer to the question of the hour--who will finance the next wave of debt in the US, once Obama brings the deficit to the $3 trillion mark?--is Americans, via inflation.

Tariq Ali on Gaza, Boycotts, and the One-state Solution in the LRB

2009-01-22T18:21:00.003-05:00

Below you can find the full text of Tariq Ali's recent comments on Gaza for the LRB--one point of interest in particular is his mention of the US Army's recently published document on "Hamas and Israel" (Ali links to it as well), which notes that Hamas seemed ready to alter their position on Israel's 'right to exist' even before the blockade. Ali also refers to a recent call by 500 Israelis to Western Embassies in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions:

A few weeks before the assault on Gaza, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army published a levelheaded document on ‘Hamas and Israel’, which argued that ‘Israel’s stance towards the democratically-elected Palestinian government headed by Hamas in 2006, and towards Palestinian national coherence – legal, territorial, political and economic – has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking.’ Whatever their reservations about the organisation, the authors of the paper detected signs that Hamas was considering a shift of position even before the blockade:

It is frequently stated that Israel or the United States cannot ‘meet’ with Hamas (although meeting is not illegal; materially aiding terrorism is, if proven) because the latter will not ‘recognise Israel’. In contrast, the PLO has ‘recognised’ Israel’s right to exist and agreed in principle to bargain for significantly less land than the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it is not clear that Israel has ever agreed to accept a Palestinian state. The recognition of Israel did not bring an end to violence, as wings of various factions of the PLO did fight Israelis, especially at the height of the Second (al- Aqsa) Intifada. Recognition of Israel by Hamas, in the way that it is described in the Western media, cannot serve as a formula for peace. Hamas moderates have, however, signaled that it implicitly recognises Israel, and that even a tahdiya (calming, minor truce) or a hudna, a longer-term truce, obviously implies recognition. Khalid Mish’al states: ‘We are realists,’ and there is ‘an entity called Israel,’ but ‘realism does not mean that you have to recognise the legitimacy of the occupation.’

The war on Gaza has killed the two-state solution by making it clear to Palestinians that the only acceptable Palestine would have fewer rights than the Bantustans created by apartheid South Africa. The alternative, clearly, is a single state for Jews and Palestinians with equal rights for all. Certainly it seems utopian at the moment with the two Palestinian parties in Israel – Balad and the United Arab List – both barred from contesting the February elections. Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu, has breathed a sigh of satisfaction: ‘Now that it has been decided that the Balad terrorist organisation will not be able to run, the first battle is over.’ But even victory has its drawbacks. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Isaac Deutscher warned his one-time friend Ben Gurion: ‘The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase “Mann kann sich totseigen!” — you can triumph yourself to death. This is what the Israelis have been doing. They have bitten off much more than they can swallow.’

Five hundred courageous Israelis have sent a letter to Western embassies calling for sanctions and other measures to be applied against their country, echoing the 2005 call by numerous Palestinian organisations for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the South African model. This will not happen overnight but it is the only non-violent way to help the struggle for freedom and equality in Israel-Palestine.

Inauguration Day News

2009-01-20T21:36:00.000-05:00

Watching TV in a hotel room in Chicago this weekend, No Empires learned from a scroll on CNN that "History Will Happen in 48 Hours." Ok. But now that it's happened (and yes, Michelle Obama donned a yellow Isabel Toledo number, while Aretha wore a sort of fantastic hat), we can point you to Kevin Alexander Gray's piece on Obama, black American national heros, and the US, the country that Martin Luther King Jr once called the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world." Reminding us of King's rising unpopularity towards the end of his life due in part to his outspoken opposition to the war in Vietnam, Gray suggests that we remember King for something more than "I have a dream", particularly in light of the Gaza massacres. Certainly something to keep in mind while dancing to Beyonce and U2/reading Maureen Dowd.

And speaking of Gaza: Israel's High Court of Justice lifted the ban on Arab parties in the Knesset today; Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN, as well as about 300 other human rights groups, are claiming that Israel used white phosphorous in its attacks on Gaza and are calling for war crimes investigations.

Despite all of the "victory" talk by supporters of the Gaza massacres, Joseph Massad questions Israel's "right to defend itself", just as Khalid Mish'al and Bashir Abu-Manneh explain that the massacres will not weaken Hamas.

Gaza Massacres

2009-01-14T23:11:00.002-05:00

As Western media outlets talk about hopes for a cease-fire in Gaza, we at No Empires thought we'd direct your attention to something that's been getting a bit less attention in Western media: Israel's surprising decision to bar Arab political parties from the Knesset this week, citing their support of a "terrorist organization" as well as violations of a 2002 law that would require them to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Here's Jonathan Cook on the issue for Electronic Intifada.

Well-made world 37

2008-12-29T17:38:00.005-05:00

Thanks to our friend John and Jewish Peace News for another couple of links on Gaza:

First, Gush Shalom tells us about a 1000-person spontaneous demonstration outside of the defense ministry in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Next, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) take the Israeli government at their word that the attack is an immediate response to Quassam attacks, but also discuss the ways in which Israel is unwilling to address the root of such problems--the fact that they are fight "a besieged and starving Gaza" after "41 years of increasingly oppressive Israeli Occupation without a hint that a sovereign and viable Palestinian state will ever emerge."

Next, Ravid Barak focuses on the planning of Operation "Cast Lead," a plan that dates back more than 6 months, but started coming to fruition over a month ago after dozens of Qassam rockets exploded in Israel.

Finally, we'll leave you with an excerpt from Zvi Barel's latest for Haaretz. Here, Barel delves a bit into the relationship between Israel's attack on a tunnel between Gaza and Egypt on November 6, killing at least six and violating the ceasefire. Increased rocket attacks after that date, Barel notes, were a result of this Israeli breach. According to Barel, Israel:

unilaterally violated [the cease-fire] when it blew up a tunnel, while still asking Egypt to get the Islamic group to hold its fire. Are conditions enabling the return of a ceasefire no longer available? Hamas has clear conditions for its extension: The opening of the border crossings for goods and cessation of IDF attacks in Gaza, as outlined in the original agreement. Later, Hamas wants the cease-fire to be extended to the West Bank. Israel, for its part, is justifiably demanding a real calm in Gaza; that no Qassam or mortar shell be fired by either Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other group.

Essentially, Israel is telling Hamas it is willing to recognize its control of Gaza on the condition that it assumes responsibility for the security of the territory, like Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon. It is likely that this will be the outcome of a wide-scale operation in the Gaza Strip if Israel decides it does not want to rule Gaza directly. Why, then, not forgo the war and agree to these conditions now?

On the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time

2008-12-29T14:38:00.007-05:00

By now, we've all heard about the recent attacks on Gaza, but just to re-cap: on Saturday at about 11:20am (when children were at school, employees were in offices, and aspiring police officers were in the middle of training), 60 Israeli F-16 fighter jets bombed 50 different sites in Gaza. This first bombardment took 3 minutes and 40 seconds, killed over 200 Palestinians, and injured nearly an additional 1,000. By Monday morning, several buildings at the Islamic University in Gaza had been leveled, tunnels between Gaza and Egypt were no longer functional, and more than 325 Palestinians were dead (as well as 2 Israelis since Saturday). At this point, as Gaza hospitals are running out of supplies and room for corpses (which they are forced to pile up on morgue floors right now), Israel is poised to embark on a ground invasion: tanks are lined up near the Gaza border and journalists have been forced to leave the area.

The US government has voiced near-unequivocal support of Israel's actions (actions which the UN called "disproportionate" in a frustratingly weak call for a cease-fire). In a statement on the situation in Gaza, Nancy Pelosi wrote: "When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally." And on Meet the Press, Barack Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, avoided anything like condemnation of the Israeli attacks as well, telling viewers: “There’s only one president at a time...The president speaks for the United States of America. We will honor that.”

On December 27, Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, issued a statement outlining Israel's war crimes in Gaza on Saturday, which include collective punshment, targeting civilians, and disproportionate military response.

Israel has called this an all-out war against Hamas because of quassam attacks that have killed about 18 people in 8 years, but as Neve Gordon writes in the Guardian, this attack has nothing to do with rocket attacks, which Israel could have prevented long ago. Instead, it has to do with a) the destruction of Hamas as a political entity (which, Gordon notes, is not going to happen, at least not through military means); b) to help Kadima and Labour defeat Likud and the abominable Netanyahu; c) to re-establish the Israeli military in the eyes of the world after its performance two summers ago; and d) to keep Abbas in power for a bit longer after his term ends on January 9. In Syria, the exiled political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, is calling for a 3rd intifada, a call which the Fatah leader clearly has no mind to heed. Meshaal said on Al Jazeera that Hamas had tried "all the peaceful options, but without results;" he is now pushing for more rocket attacks and considering the reinstitution of suicide bombings in Israel (which would be the first since 2005).

For more information on whats going on in Gaza, please see this article by Jennifer Loewenstein in Counterpunch, Hassan Haidar's piece for Dar Al Hayat on the timing and pre-meditation of the attacks, this first person account of the bombing on Saturday by Dr Eyad Al Serraj, a psychologist in Gaza City, this episode of Democracy Now, which features NE favorite Gideon Levy as well as an phenomenal discussion with one-state solution advocate Ali Abunimah. We'll leave you with an excerpt:

We have to go back to the Warsaw Ghetto or Guernica to find crimes in the modern era of the scale of the viciousness and of the deliberateness of what Israel is committing with the full support of the United States, not just the Bush administration, but apparently as well the incoming Obama administration. We have to recognize the complicity not just of the so-called international community, but also of the Arab regimes, Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, the Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt. Tzipi Livni, when she issued her threats against Gaza, was in Cairo in the biggest Arab capital, and Aboul Gheit stood next to her silently.

Mahmoud Abbas is not a bystander, the so-called president of the Palestinian Authority. For two years since the elections, which Hamas won, he and his coterie have been collaborating with Israel and the United States, first to overthrow the election result and then to besiege Gaza. We have talked before of the Palestinian Contras, funded and armed by the United States, which sought to overthrow Hamas in June 2007 and had the tables turned on them. And now this. The complicity of Mahmoud Abbas is very clear and must be clearly stated. He does not have the authority, moral or otherwise, to call together the Palestinian people for anything. He has gone over to the other side. He has joined the Israeli war against the Palestinian people, and I choose my words very carefully.

And let me say this, as well, Amy, that Israel is trying to produce and promote the fiction that it is engaged in a war with a so-called enemy entity. What Israel is doing is massacring a captive population. You heard—you said in the headlines how Nancy Pelosi, our so-called progressive, liberal, antiwar Speaker of the House, gave her full support to these crimes. Obama has done the same through a spokesman. And that will not change. The United Nations issued a weak statement aimed at covering the backsides, let me say, of those who issued it, not aimed at changing the situation.

What are Palestinians calling for today? Yesterday, the Palestinian National Committee for the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions reissued and reaffirmed its call on all international civil society in the United States, in North America, in Europe, everywhere, to redouble the efforts for boycott, divestment and sanctions modeled on the anti-apartheid movement. This is necessary. This is moral. This is the nonviolent resistance we can all participate in. And it is more urgent than ever. Let’s not look back at these crimes like we look at the Warsaw Ghetto and like we look at Guernica and we look at the other atrocities of the twentieth century and say, “We had the chance to act, but we chose silence and complicity.” The time to stop this is now.

And we also have to be clear that those who are accountable—Ehud Barak, his orders over the past few months to withhold insulin, chemotherapy drugs, dialysis supplies, all forms of medicine from the people of Gaza, were just as lethal and just as murderous as the orders to send in the bombers and warplanes to attack mosques, to attack universities. The Islamic University in Gaza is not a military site. It is a university with 18,000 students, 60 percent of them women. Last night, Israeli warplanes attacked a female dormitory in the Islamic University. This is what Israel is attacking. They attacked the fishing port. No food gets into Gaza. People can barely fish enough to sustain them, and Israel has attacked the fishing boats that sustains them. These are historic crimes, and we cannot be silent about them.

Gone so long

2008-12-29T14:26:00.003-05:00

As you may have noticed, early this fall No Empires went into retirement. But now, faced with the devastation of Gaza, we've decided to decided to start writing again. So stay tuned for a long piece on the Gaza massacre as well as a round-up of some of the best news and opinion pieces on the subject.

But for now--for all New Yorkers, please head out to Herald Square this evening to protest Israel's actions in Gaza.

PAKISTAN

2008-09-12T09:59:00.004-04:00

Today, as the American campaign in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province continues despite continued protests in Pakistan (protests which started after last Wednesday’s first publicly-acknowledged ground raid by American forces on Pakistani soil), a few notes on the current political situation in that country:

After some under-the-table dealings with the always-intrigue-inclined US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has been sworn in as president of Pakistan. As Tariq Ali noted recently in an article for Comment is free, Zardari is poised to be a particularly pliant leader, the Pakistani equivalent of neocon favorite Hamid Karzai. Zardari is indebted, after all, to American neoconservatives (most notably, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad) not just for his new position as president but also for reversing the freeze on his Swiss bank accounts (the second richest person in Pakistan, Zardari’s accounts had been frozen due to pending corruption charges).

To be fair, as Graham Usher points out in this week’s Al-Ahram, none of the charges leveled against Zardari by Pakistani intelligence agencies (for which the new president spent eleven years in jail) have managed to stick in court, and moreover, following Benazir’s death last winter, Zardari did managed to form the largest coalition in the history of Pakistan, unseating a military ruler in the process. But Zardari’s shady financial dealings, not to mention his disdain for Pakistani lawyers and his reluctance to restore the country’s judiciary—his fear of the rule of law, as Usher calls it—still leave him one of the most loathed figures in Pakistan, particularly among intellectuals and the urban middle class.

***

At a talk given on 11 September at the London Review Bookshop--coinciding with the release of his latest book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Simon & Schuster, 2008), Tariq Ali offered a brief political history of Pakistan, as well as an analysis of the most recent developments--some, according to Ali, quite unprecedented--in Pakistani politics: last year's "forced arranged marriage" between Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf; Bhutto's assassination; the election of her widower (and current head of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party), Asif Ali Zardari, as Pakistan's president; and the raids carried out in recent weeks by US Special Ops in the border regions of Pakistan, unsanctioned by the Pakistani government. Pakistan's dependence on the United States (coming mostly in the form of military aid) and the US's "partial dependence" on Pakistan as a regional ally dates back, Ali says, to the early 1950s, when the US was appealed to by Pakistani political elites to fill the vacuum left by the British on the eve of the creation of the Pakistani state. The US's interest in the region lay primarily in India, according to Ali, until India become a major player in the non-Aligned movement and the US, fearing a Vietnam-style "domino effect" in the region, began assembling a network of security pacts, including the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Central Asian Trade Organization, and the Baghdad pact, all of which were buttressed by the United States and Great Britain. The years 1958-1969 saw a military dictatorship (that of Ayub), backed by Washington, until mass mobilizations in October 1968--calling for Pakistan's withdrawal from all security pacts with the West--toppled the regime, and eventually led to the secessionist movement in East Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Ali was quick to point out that the 1968 insurrection in Pakistan was the only one of the fabled mass movements of '68 that actually succeeded. The dictatorship of Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, from 1977-1988 was, according to Ali, the darkest period of Pakistan's history to date; it "brutalized" the political culture of Pakistan, and brought religion to the forefront of Pakistani politics in a way that was unprecedented in the history of the state. During the Zia dictatorship, the state poured money into Islamic organizations, giving them control of education and communication ministries, which facilitated the spread of their anti-secularist and anti-radical messages. Mass purges of these elements in the country's political establishments ensued. As in Afghanistan, the money Washington gave to Pakistan's leadership during this time went toward funding those who are now denounced as terrorists, and Pakistan during this period (particuarly during the Afghan-Soviet war) was conceived of in Washington as a frontline in the war not on terror, but on communism.

As far as recent developments go, Ali finds that the mobilizations in favor of the embattled judiciary that consumed Pakistan during the last 18 or so months of Musharraf's rule as the most pivotal, and heartening, events in recent memory in Pakistan--though notes that these were so little reported on in the Western press because of Pakistan (and Musharraf's) perceived status as allies of Washington and Britain. He laments the ease with which the PPP accepted that Benazir's son should inherit leadership of the party, with her widower at the helm until her son comes of age. Calling Asif Ali Zardari "the most corrupt politician even in Pakistan's chequered history", he notes that if it comes out that Zardari had prior knowledge of Bush's secret order authorizing raids into Pakistan, his time as President will surely be cut short. Ali also remarked on the unpredecented warning the head of Pakistan's military gave to Washington, saying that if American forces do mount an invasion into the sovereign territory of Pakistan, they will be resisted. And though he is loath of conspiracy theorizing, Ali did wonder whether or not the recent raids, aimed at creating a "mini-war" situation in Pakistan, were designed to bolster the campaign of John McCain. Ali ultimately finds an "incredibly grim situation" in Pakistan at the current moment, with little to no alternative for a population caught between the military and political corruption that have been part and parcel of Pakistan virtually from its founding. With the war in Afghanistan going horribly (and with the vast majority of the Pakistani population being fundamentally opposed to NATO actions in the region), Ali says that the next weeks and months in Pakistan are critical; yet he admits that more innocent people can be expected to die as Washington toys with the idea of opening a new front in its sorrowful "war on terror". The solutions for Pakistan are land reforms, to modernize the countryside and bring the poor peasantry of Pakistan into a national political dialogue, as well as a regional solution involving India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia (because NATO and the West are so completely mistrusted), aimed at bringing about at least twenty years of peace so that the Pakistani population might have time to psychologically recover, and so that social reconstruction might be given a chance.

Works Consulted #12

2008-09-05T10:33:00.004-04:00

Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language (University of California Press, 1989)

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Penguin, 1985)

Michael Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (Palgrave, 2008)

Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, 1996)

Check back soon for a long overdue follow-up post on PAKISTAN.

G-E-O-R-G-I-A

2008-08-13T00:38:00.006-04:00

This has been an especially tough situation to get a hold of for those of us (read: most of the American media, as well as the authors of this blog) who have not spent the last twenty years studying the former Eastern Bloc, the Balkans, the National Endowment for Democracy, post-Soviet Russian politics, etc. A few simple facts: In 2003, the US and the National Endowment for Democracy backed the so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia, ousting Eduard Shevardnadze and installing current Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili committed 2,000 Georgian troops to Iraq, wants in on NATO and the US design for a missile defense shield over Eastern Europe, along with Poland and the Czech Republic. Georgia hosts a stretch of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, which runs (as its name suggests) through Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, connecting the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas--which is co-owned by BP, Chevron, and others (though no Russian oil companies), and is a concentrated attempt to subvert Russian influence in the region by having a major pipeline that lies in no Russian soil and over which the Russians have no control. Georgia is, in short, of great 'strategic interest' to the United States, with the added bonus of being a former Soviet satellite, so that a cozy political relationship that benefits largely only the US can be presented as the triumph of "democracy" over authoritarianism.

A November 2006 referendum in South Ossetia, with 91% of the population participating, voted in a 99% majority for union with North Ossetia and Russia. The US and Russia ignore the results of the referendum. In July of this year (July 15-31), Georgia and the US hold the "Georgian-US Immediate Response 2008" military exercises in Georgia. During the first week of August, Saakashvili moves into the South Ossetian capital, Tshinkavali, killing several Russian peacekeepers (there under international agreements) and displacing upwards of 35,000 civilians, who flee across the border into North Ossetia, where they are welcomed by the Russian government. Russia sees the Georgian military move as a deliberate provocation.

We in no way wish to even appear to condone the deliberate use of violence against civilians, and it would be difficult to argue that the Russian response has not been disconcertingly aggressive. But the hypocrisy of American politicians and media has been in full swing. It's almost laughable to hear John McCain say that "in the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations." It's similarly ridiculous for Zbigniew Brzezinski to compare Putin to Hitler--the same Brzezinski who, as Jimmy Carter's National Security advisor, helped the CIA develop its Afghanistan policy and fund Osama bin Laden's jihadis against the Russians in Afghanistan in 1979. A Cold War mentality still infects the US media's perception of Russia's every move, as Seamus Milne shows in today's Guardian.

Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out a few facts that would be germane to any nuanced understanding of an immensely complicated situation. And, as Foreign Policy in Focus's Michael Klare points out, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylan oil pipeline that runs through Georgia (owned and operated by, among others, Texaco and Chevron) is a crucial "fact on the ground".

Stay tuned...

Works Consulted #11

2008-07-27T23:00:00.001-04:00

rosemary ashton- george eliot: a life. london: penguin, 1998.

samuel beckett - the unnamable. new york: grove press, 1958; l'innomable. paris: les editions de minuit, 1953; disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment. london: john calder, 1983

lauren berlant - the anatomy of national fantasy: hawthorne, utopia, and everyday life. chicago: u chicago press, 1991.

robin blackburn - the overthrow of colonial slavery. london: verso, 1988.

maurice blanchot - the infinite conversation (trans. susan hanson) minneapolis: univ of minnesota press, 1993.

pascale casanova - samuel beckett: anatomy of a literary revolution. london: verso 2006.

anthony cronin - samuel beckett: the last modernist. london: harper collins, 1996.

charles dickens- our mutual friend. new york: penguin, 1997.

frederick engels- socialism: utopian and scientific. new york: international publishers, 1989.

fredric jameson - a singular modernity: essay on the ontology of the present. london: verso 2002.

james knowlson - damned to fame: the authorized biography of samuel beckett. london: bloomsbury, 1996.

jenny uglow- george eliot. london: virago, 2008.

raymond williams- marxism and literature. new york: oxford university press, 1977.

Obama in Jerusalem

2008-07-24T05:38:00.011-04:00

On the occasion of Senator Barack Obama's recent world travels (which brought him to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied West Bank, and Germany, and will soon see him in Britain and France), we point you to an editorial written for the Guardian by the Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah. Pressure from the Israel lobby (in the form, as always, of Alan Fucking Dershowitz) has caused Obama to distance himself even from someone as "establishment" as Zbigniew Brzezinski--do we detect the long arm of a rejuvenated (and sadly ignored) Jimmy Carter and his calls for a "new role" in the world for America? On his visit to Israel--which included the better part of one hour spent with Mahmoud Abbas in occupied Ramallah--Obama sought to reassure Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres and the Israeli public that his commitment to the safety, security, and right to "self-defense" (that old reality-twisting litany) of the State of Israel ought not to be doubted. The obligatory references to the dangers of a nuclear Iran (despite a recent "slap in the face" of Israel delivered by America) were also made. Nothing, as Abunimah points out, about a freeze on settlements, dialogue with Hamas, or negotiation of the refugee problem.

In a separate editorial, the Guardian points out that while Obama's visit may have done some good for his shaky reputation as "friend of Israel," it did nothing nothing for peace in Israel/Palestine. And, as the New York Times reports, not many people in the Arab World expect this to change.

Late add: Nicholas Kristof offers this uncharacteristically lucid, accurate, and politically practical editorial in today's New York Times, saying that what Israel needs from Obama is "tough love."

2008

2008-07-09T21:07:00.004-04:00

As the Senate passes George Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, 2+ years after it was introduced, and with the new-found support of Senator Barack Obama--who had once claimed he fully intended to vote against it, rejecting the false dualities of the "strong on terror" discourse--we'd like to take a minute to reiterate something we've found that the ultra-left in America has failed repeatedly to understand. We do understand ("appreciate" is not the best word) that, in running a national campaign, Obama ought to be expected to hover somewhere around the center. Any policy statement that radically breaks from the mainstream would torpedo his candidacy months before the general election. And Obama does represent a yearning among the bulk of American voters for radical change. That he will inevitably disappoint those blindly expecting a radical transformation is also something that must be accepted. However, in supporting an unprecedented expansion in the Executive's spying capabilities, as in, for example, calling for East Jerusalem to remain the undivided capital of the State of Israel (to take examples from Obama's recent domestic and foreign policy stances), Obama seems to go above and beyond the call of a mediocre "centrist" politics. And his going out of his way yesterday to remind his supporters--who are increasingly uneasy with his recent moves--that he is "no doubt" a "progressive"--is simply no consolation whatsoever.

Aijaz Ahmad: What Would a Rational U.S. Foreign Policy Look Like?

2008-07-09T17:08:00.002-04:00

In a two-part analysis for The Real News, Aijaz Ahmad considers the working assumptions behind U.S. foreign policy decisions, assumptions that can often seem intractable, the unchangeable "way of the world." Starting with "the most basic assumption of U.S. foreign policy...that the United States is, and must remain, the world's most powerful, preeminent country," and moving to the question of why the U.S. finds it unquestionable that it have military bases around the world, Aijaz offers a concise and coherent projection for what a "rational" American foreign policy just might look like.

Part I

Part II

Well-Made World 36

2008-06-30T12:00:00.002-04:00

al-Ahram's Khaled Amayreh reports on the impending reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah, preparations for which have seen the previously-unlikely release of a number of Hamas supporters from Palestinian jails or the custody of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority. Most significant in this attempted rapprochement is the likelihood that any joint statement of agreement issued by the two factions will be based on the so-called Prisoners' Statement of 2006, which originally called for a release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and Israel's full retreat from lands occupied in 1967.

Ilan Pappe, now at Exeter, offers to the Inter-Press service some general thoughts on the current state of Israeli-Palestinian affairs, the 2008 election in the US, and the prospective role of Islam in the daily lives of Palestinians.

Patrick Cockburn fills in some details of a new Iraqi-American security agreement. George Bush wants it signed by 31 July; Moqtada al-Sadr sees in it a ploy to put "an American in every house."

As reported earlier this week, John McCain and Barack Obama find themselves both supporting the FISA amendment, which would not only legalize the Bush administrations warrantless wiretaps but would obscure entirely the breadth and scope of the program since it was instituted after 11 September. This constitutes a stark reversal of position for both men. Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, speaks to The Real News's Zaa Nkweta.

'The presumptive Democratic candidate for President, Barack Obama'

2008-06-07T06:14:00.009-04:00

More than the disingenuousness of his previous foreign policy statements, Barack Obama's speech at this year's AIPAC conference the day after securing the Democratic nomination for President highlights the inevitable rightward shift that his campaign, at least in tone, will continue to make as November approaches. Below, in two parts, Aijaz Ahmad unpacks Obama's statements to the Israel lobby.

No one ought to be surprised by Obama's unequivocal stance; as even Jon Stewart points out, "you can't say anything remotely critical of Israel and still be elected president." Of particular interest for us is the reaction of the Palestinian leadership to Obama's speech, notably that of Fatah negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat has the audacity to say that Obama's speech was "the worst thing to happen to Palestinians" since the Six Day War, thus completely obscuring his own Fatah party's comprador role in the years since Oslo, not to the deepening political and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Moreoever, as Aijaz notes, Gaza is likely to be conveniently forgotten when the borders of the putative "cohesive and contiguous" Palestinian state are drawn.

In the second video below, Aijaz further analyzes Obama's language at the AIPAC conference, which includes the suggestion that Iran, not Iraq, would have been the 'right war,' and a call for greater unilateral action, 'outside of the United Nations,' on the part of the United States. As Aijaz tells us, 'with liberalism like this, no one needs the neo-cons.' Videos are below.

AS the transformation of Barack Obama nears its completion, Uri Avnery finds that last week's AIPAC spectacle confirms in full even the most "extreme" conclusions drawn by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their seminal The Israel Lobby, published late last year--a book that Obama had already denounced for its critique of the increasingly "special" relationship between the State of Israel and the US.
Part I

Part II

Return of the Rat

2008-05-10T05:54:00.002-04:00

The weather's getting warmer and it's made us inattentive! At least that's the official excuse we'll give.

Gilbert Achcar has voiced his recent thoughts on the longer history/effectiveness of the 'surge' in US troops in Iraq over the last eighteen months. Achcar not only locates a great deal of support for the surge in the Baker-Hamilton report, but finds that the US's greatest success has not been a reduction in violence, but a classic colonial power play that has torn the fabric of Iraqi Sunni society.

Franklin Lamb offers a street-level report from West Beirut, currently under Hezbollah and Amal control. What the next move might be for Lebanon's deeply besieged government is unclear; what is clear is the necessity of Hezbollah's involvement in any dialogue meant to bring an end to the crisis of leadership in Lebanon.

Over at Supervalent Thought, her very own 'research blog,' the University of Chicago's Lauren Berlant is putting up some really interesting short pieces on love, queerness, detachment, and (in)fidelity to the political in America. A recent two-parter--"Other People's Optimism" and "Looking For Mr. (W)Right)--laments the unbridled cynicism and fear of the political as evidenced by the 'noise' surrounding the 2008 Elections.

Close to home

2008-04-28T22:04:00.003-04:00

Counterpunch's lead article today concerns protests in Queens after Friday's verdict in the Sean Bell killing reached New Yorkers. Interspersed with chants from Friday's march, JoAnn Wypijewski's piece touches on the horror of the incident and other racially-motivated killings by police officers, noting that no matter who is running for president in this country, racism and the oppression like this is as prevalent and dangerous as ever.

Carter in Israel/Palestine

2008-04-25T11:32:00.003-04:00

A brief post about recent happenings in Israel/Palestine. Carter's trip to Palestine continues to make headlines as Israel's ambassador to the UN calls Carter a "bigot" for meeting with Khaled Meshal in Syria. Also an editorial from Haaretz from two weeks ago on Israel's "debt" to Carter.

And finally, just to keep things in perspective, is an article by Khaled Amayreh for Al-Ahram detailing once again the continued suffering on the part of Palestinians in the West Bank under blockade, just in time for Israel's dismissal of Hamas's proposed 6-month truce in Gaza. Israel's reasoning? A truce, the Israeli government claims, would do "nothing more" than allow Hamas to recover from recent Israeli attacks.

Well-Made World 35

2008-04-09T06:34:00.003-04:00

As you may have noticed, we've decided to embed daily video updates from the Real News Network. The RNN has an intrinsic value as a serious non-corporate journalism service, their editorializing is top-notch, and they generate a ceaseless amount of new multimedia content. (They'd insert their pitch for monetary contributions here). We go to their video updates with such frequency that we thought to just cut out the middle man. The video updates are always good. Watch them!

***
As you can see, to the right, Jimmy Carter is in the Middle East and scheduled to meet with Hamas's Khaled Meshal. Ignoring displeased voices in Washington and Tel Aviv, Carter aims to facilitate negotiation between the Hamas leadership and both Israel and Fatah.
This concludes Azmi Bishara's three-part analysis of the present conjuncture of Israeli statehood and the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Uri Avnery sees no small amount of hypocrisy in recent flame-centric conflagrations over Tibet--no matter how justified Tibetan grievances are--and this year's Olympics in Beijing. Once you get past his assertion that the CIA is without a doubt coordinating anti-torch protests, Avnery points out how appeals to freedom in Tibet shows up the highly selective nature of Western governments' support for national liberation struggles.

Ryan Crocker and the New York Times continue to fuel the Bush administration's eagerness to go to war with Iran.

Well-Made World 34

2008-04-01T04:54:00.003-04:00

In the first two (ONE TWO)of a three-part editorial installment on the historical trajectory of the project of Palestinian national liberation, Azmi Bishara cites a 'contrived complexity' that has been built up around the Palestinian cause that not only decisively limits public discourse on the topic but serves Israeli interests perfectly. Lamenting the fact that the so-called Palestinian question has lost its pan-Arab quality, Bishara aims to take account of the historical forces that have allowed Israel to pursue what was as of late an unpredicted course; not that of the one- or two-state solution, but of Israel as 'crusader state'.

Paul Craig Roberts finds something ominous in Dick Cheney's recent schedule, as it suggests a strong possibility of an attack on Iran. The culprits responsible for enabling such an attack, says Roberts, would primarily be the American media, the electorate in the US, and the Democratic Party.

Gettin' fancy with the Real News

2008-03-24T16:24:00.001-04:00

You like?

Barack Obama and Race in America

2008-03-24T16:07:00.003-04:00

Barack Obama's speech on race relations in America, given last week in Philadelphia, had the misfortune of being overshadowed by, or cast as a reaction to, publicized comments made by Obama's long-time spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama's speech was one of the most honest and necessary interventions into American mainstream political discourse in years; obviously, that ought not shield it from critique.This will take you to a reaction piece to Obama's speech featuring contributions by the editorial board of The Black Commentator.

Also, the Real News's Paul Jay focuses on Obama's loudly-demanded 'denouncing and renouncing' of Wright, in conversation with Prof. Dwight Hopkins at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. This can be found in that neat mini-video-library from the Real News at the top of this page.

Paging Cohn-Bendit, Bensaid

2008-03-22T15:51:00.002-04:00

For the Guardian, Tariq Ali reflects on the various irruptions in progressive politics that took place between 1965-75, on this, the anniversary of the founding of the 22 March movement in Nanterre in 1968. We're generally wary of nostalgic evocations of '68, as well as its totemic status in Western left politics; Ali's piece, however, is analytic rather than elegiac.

Winter Soldier

2008-03-21T19:28:00.004-04:00

Here's a crucial video from the Real News regarding US media reporting of both casualties suffered by American troops in Iraq and the catastrophic acts carried out by some of those troops. They also show a few clips from a news conference conducted by Iraq Veterans Against the War, highlighting the 'Winter Soldier' program, in which Iraq War veterans testify as to the nature of their actions, and those of their commanders, while serving.

Works Consulted #10

2008-03-21T19:19:00.003-04:00

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Norton Critical Editions
Frank Norris, McTeague, Oxford World Classics
Lauren Berlant, 'Slow Death: Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency', Critical Inquiry 33, Summer 2007; and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, Duke University Press, 2002
Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies Routlege, 1995
JM Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year, Harville Secker, 2007

Vacation's over

2008-03-19T22:11:00.005-04:00

For today, just a few articles on the devastation of US economy brought to our attention by our dear friend JL.

The first is from NE favorite and ex-Reagan administration official Paul Craig Roberts, who discusses in this article the position of the US as a bankrupt superpower, outlining US financial dependence on foreign countries that will, he projects, grow increasingly unwilling to cover for the superpower in its fiscal irresponsibility. Along similar lines, here are few about the impending federal bailout of the US financial system: one from Paul Krugman, another, more detailed assessment from Pam Martens (which includes a commentary on the Spitzer fiasco that, frankly, we at No Empires can't quite get on board with).

Undoubtedly, there were be more to come on this front.

The death of Rachel Corrie, and the invasion of Iraq, five years on

2008-03-16T18:12:00.004-04:00

A brief update from northern Paris.

Five years ago today, International Solidarity Movement activist Rachel Corrie was crushed under an Israeli/American Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza. As Tom Wright and Therese Saliba report, Rachel Corrie's parents are in Israel this week to ttend the first Arabic-language production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, an immensely powerful one-woman play (we've mentioned it before) brought to New York last year thanks to the courage and tenacity of Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner. Cindy and Craig Corrie come against the backdrop of an utter lack of accountability regarding the circumstances of their daughter's murder; neither Caterpillar, Inc. nor the Israeli government/IDF seem to face any danger of prosecution, and they certainly haven't made any efforts to appear contrite.

RIP, Rachel.

Another (almost anniversary) sees the lead opinion piece in this weekend's Observer making the claim that

Whatever the tragic consequences of the Iraq war, we must learn from them, and when the circumstances are right, not flinch from using all the power at our disposal.

Earlier in the piece it is stated that no one could have foretold the catastrophe that eventually unfolded in Iraq, despite an overwhelming amount of journalistic evidence and political opinion to the contrary. The UK's 'liberal' newspapers continue to lose their way...

A 'bombshell' from Vanity Fair

2008-03-06T04:57:00.002-05:00

We urge you to take the time to read this investigative piece from Vanity Fair's David Rose, which lays bare the machinations behind the US's unflagging support of Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, and presents Hamas's takeover of Gaza last summer as the only way for Hamas to pre-empt a Fatah coup that could have happened at any time.

Following Hillary Clinton's recent and crucial primary victories, Alex Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair see only nastiness ahead as Clinton aims to discredit Barack Obama no matter the cost. This, they say, bodes extremely well for John McCain, and could also lead to an increasing rate of attrition among young Democratic voters as Obama's message of "hope" is trampled.

phase ii

2008-03-03T08:32:00.003-05:00

Kathleen and Bill Christison are strongly and eloquently endorsing the Nader candidacy, citing Barack Obama's indebtedness to the Israel lobby and ambiguousness on the role of the US Army in Iraq. Crucially, they implore pro-Obama democrats not to seek to limit voters' choices in the 2008 election.

Israel, meanwhile, has withdrawn troops from the Gaza Strip, threatening further operations at any time. Missing Links, a great blog that does a round-up of interesting items from the Arab press, features a long post on various reports on this most recent attack on Gaza--as well as connections that large numbers of people in the Arab world are making between Israel's assault and the arrival of the USS Cole in the waters off of Lebanon.

Well-Made World 33

2008-03-01T08:27:00.003-05:00

Of note in Israel this week was a remark by Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, in which he threatened a 'shoah' in Gaza if Qassam rocket attacks do not cease; the word is rarely used other than to refer, of course, to the Holocaust. The situation in Gaza worsens, with nearly 40 Palestinians--including civilians, and, of those, nine were children--dead in the past few days. The physical attenuation of Gaza's population continues. Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah with reaction.

An interesting article from former Israeli journalist Yonatan Mendel on the coextensiveness between the Israeli press and the Zionist project. Mendel looks in particular at the curiosities and double-standards of language that are scattered throughout Israeli journalism.

America's Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, noted Thursday that the security situation in Afghanistan is worsening, with President Karzai controlling not even a third of the country. Karzai, the Guardian notes, denies the American intelligence assessment (which itself echoes earlier, more critical reports by various think-tanks), claiming that his government in fact controls a vast majority of the country. Declan Walsh finds the explanations given by Nato commanders curious. Those commanders claim that the steady increase in suicide bombings is evidence that the Taliban is being "worn down." This claim--which hints at the fact that suicide bombing is an act marked significantly by desperation--is one never heard with regard to suicide bombings in Israel, which are discursively framed as proof of a larger looming (pan-) Arab threat. Walsh also credits the safe haven offered to Taliban fighters in Pakistan with playing a huge role in the Taliban's resurgence.

In his latest piece for Counterpunch, Patrick Cockburn discusses Turkey's bold-faced invasion of Northern Iraq (the only part of the country, he notes, that was at peace until last week), comparing Turkey in their hunt for PKK Turkish Kurd Gorillas to Israel in their repeated incursions into Gaza. He points out that this most recent development in Iraq weakens the state of the Kurdish Regional Government, which, according to Cockburn, was "one of the few concrete achievements of the US and British invasion of Iraq five years ago." Cockburn goes on to provide another useful counter-narrative to the relatively cheery reporting on the "surge" offered by the Times and its cohorts.

Well-Made World 32

2008-02-26T12:56:00.004-05:00

The improbable Ralph Nader comes into play yet again. We must give Nader credit for unflaggingly believing in the potential and importance of oppositional third-party (left) politics in America for damn near forty years. It's disheartening, though predictable enough, to see all debate around Nader's surprise entry into 2008 Presidential politics framed in the language of presumed deciding role in Al Gore's 2000 defeat. Talk about Nader the 'spoiler' end up harming and diminishing discourse around American third-party politics in general, an obvious collective loss. It can be argued that the Green Party leadership should start shifting downwards in terms of the age and dynamism of their figureheads--and, it should be said, Nader can be downright infuriating--but we like seeing at least some suggestion that mainstream electoral politics still reacts to a 'third way.' We'll let Nader speak for himself.

Fran Shor, however, can only shrug her shoulders.

In this vein, Frank Rich riffs on comparisons between the Bush Administration's pre-Iraq war planning and Hillary Clinton's spectacular misfortune on the campaign trail.

Columbia's Hamid Dabashi finds limits to Barack Obama's purportedly innovative political imagination, citing a picture which is (for us) one of the iconic, if well-hid, images of Barack Obama's political career: Obama and wife Michelle dining in Chicago with Edward and Mariam Said.

The Washington Post reports that many Israelis now support a widespread ground campaign in Gaza. So much for disengagement...

Well-Made World 31

2008-02-16T04:57:00.004-05:00

Dear February,

No more, thank you. Really. It's been quite enough.

Love,
NE
***
Again we go to the real news for a dialogue with Institute for Policy Studies' Phyllis Bennis. The Iraqi Parliament has recently passed three sweeping laws aimed at reconciliation between Shia and Sunni factions, including a potential amnesty deal for thousands of Iraqi prisoners. Bennis considers the extent to which the passing of these laws represents true compromise and a step forward--or whether they simply postpone more bitter wrangling in the months to come.

In a piece for Comment is Free, Haifa Zangana examines the gap between rhetoric and reality in the American government's frequent proclamations on Iraq.

From the West Bank, Khaled Amayreh reports that any hopes for peace in Israel/Palestine in 2008 ought to be scrapped; meanwhile, settlement-building in East Jerusalem has just been jumpstarted once again.

And finally, now that William Kristol has settled comfortably into his new perch at the New York Times, Znet has felt compelled to remind everyone of his, er, legacy.

Un monde bien fait, numero trente

2008-02-05T16:21:00.000-05:00

First to Ali Abunimah's recent piece for the Electronic Intifada, in which he examines what Israel considers the "next logical step" for the country's military in Palestine--assassinations of high-ranking members of the Hamas leadership in Gaza.

Next, check out the Realnews website for new interviews with Aijaz Ahmad--we'd particularly recommend this one, in which Ahmad discusses President Bush's State of the Union address.

that's all for now, stay tuned for another update tomorrow.

Works Consulted #9

2008-02-05T13:10:00.002-05:00

Bishop, Elizabeth. Collected Poems, London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Coetzee, J.M. Elizabeth Costello, New York: Penguin: 2003.
--The Nobel Lecture in Literature, 2003, New York: Penguin, 2003.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South (1855). New York: Penguin, 2003.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time (trans. Joan Stambaugh). New York: State University of NY Press, 1996.

Hemingway, Ernest. In Our Time (1925). New York: Scribner, 2003.

Stora, Benjamin. Histoire de l'Algerie coloniale, 1830-1954, Paris: Editions le Decouverte, 1991.

18-1

2008-02-05T13:05:00.000-05:00

Bye, Bye Hegemony

2008-01-29T17:29:00.000-05:00

Good news! According to the New York Times Magazine, Gramsci is on the skids: American hegemony is a thing of the past.

For 2016, Parag Khanna predicts a trilateral system of world domination, split between
the states, China, and the EU, with the power of the US in continuous, steady decline; American 'soft power'works no longer, as foreign investment and even domestic pop music capital go outre-mer. So-called 'second world'--nation-states (Venezuela, Vietnam, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are examples) that, for Khanna, cannot simply be called 'Third World', and whose geopolitical positioning grants them considerable leverage--will come to dictate the world's balance of power for years to come. Chavez looms large in Khanna's article, in which the author also speaks of a 'new Arabism' among Middle Eastern states more concerned with distributing oil wealth locally rather than in American banks. This 'new Arabism', while having echoes of Nasser, seems unsurprisingly unconcerned about Palestine.

Works Consulted #8

2008-01-25T15:47:00.000-05:00

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Oxford: 2003.

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). Dover: 1995.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Hackett: 1987.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (trans. Kaufman). Vintage: 1989

Well-Made World 29

2008-01-24T12:58:00.000-05:00

We know what you're thinking: after all that talk about more updates, we at NE have flaked once again. But we promise, it's not our fault. We were ill. It was gross and scary.

But we're back just in time for the death of Heath Ledger, not to mention recent goings-on in Gaza, where yet another Israeli siege continues, and the wall at the Egyptian border in Rafah has been leveled, sending tens of thousands of Palestinians into Egypt in search of basic supplies. Karen Koning AbuZayd, the head of UNRWA*, writes in the Guardian that 'a new hallmark of Palestinian suffering' has been reached in Gaza. Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz's Chief US correspondent, has posted letters from John McCain and Barack Obama on the situation in Gaza, and notes that both McCain and Obama regard Israeli security as a paramount concern (both believe, for example, that Israel has been 'forced' by Hamas to invade Gaza), and a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza an afterthought. Rosner also points out the obvious, namely that, as Obama's presidential hopes have been formulating, he's been increasingly vocal in his blanket support of Israeli government policy regarding Palestine. Scroll further down the page and you'll learn that Jon Voight supports Rudy because he's good for Israel! This is almost--almost--as good as seeing Chuck Norris on the stump for Mike Huckabee.

In a more serious vein, we go to Amira Hass. While some of her phrasing is unfortunate ("amnesia, shortsightedness, disorientation and learning disabilities," she remains one of the most important and insightful Israeli voices sounding off on Gaza.

We're a bit out of our comfort zone here, but we should touch on the disaster that was this past week in the world of finance, which, according to Paul Craig Roberts has put the lie to the "free trade delusions" that have dominated American economic policy for the better part of three decades.

*Short for the clunky United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.

Money Money Money

2008-01-16T18:28:00.000-05:00

Not too much time right now for a long introduction, but try and take a look at this crucial piece by John Lanchester for LRB about credit economy and banking.

'Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into.'**

2008-01-13T15:02:00.000-05:00

Though we're currently down on Alexander Cockburn, his brother Andrew does not disappoint with his latest piece for Counterpunch, critique of the politics surrounding 'official' estimates/reporting on the downright horrifying number of Iraqi civilian casualties since the 2003 invasion. In contrast to the most recent Johns Hopkins findings, placing the number of Iraqi murders at 665,000, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) (which, we should point out, excludes many of the country's most dangerous destinations--Baghdad, Anbar province, and two other areas deemed too unsafe to visit) recently published a far lower number: 151,000. Despite the fact that the two estimates quantify totally different death tolls (the NEJM report is interesting strictly in civilian casualties, while the Hopkins report compares death rates since the invasion with years before), the NEJM estimate has been touted by everyone from George Bush to The New York Times as the more accurate of the two; however, Cockburn draws attention to sloppy reporting and misleading statistical rhetoric in NEJM report, rightly taking the journal to task for lending a hand in attempts to downplay the devastating effects of the American invasion.

In other news, Gabriel Piterberg has written a fascinating article for the New Left Review, in which he analyzes and, in a sense, unearths, Hannah Arendt's political opposition to the Zionist project in Palestine. Recognizing the real danger of anti-Semitism, Arendt rejects the notion of a racially-exclusive Jewish state and attempts to find other solutions to the infamous 'Jewish question'. And finally, if you can get past the awful new layout at one of our go-to websites, ZNet Communications, you'll find a recent interview, conducted by Stephen Shalom, with our friend Bashir Abu-Manneh, in which the latter touches on the significance of 2007 and 2008 being, respectively, the 40th and 60th anniversaries of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the establishment of the State of Israel. Bashir also speaks about congruity between present-day Hamas and pre-1982 Fatah, as well as the history and current state of the Left in Palestine.

**Samuel Beckett, Molloy, 1955

The New Hampshire Blues

2008-01-08T12:03:00.000-05:00

Our New Year's resolution: we'll get better than this once-a-week thing, give you more frequent updates and broadened 'coverage.' For now, let's deal with the ridiculous theatrics of electoral politics in America.

Uncharacteristically for Alex Cockburn, this piece he coauthored with Jeffrey St Clair is seriously fucking boring and poorly written, but is as good a place as any to start engaging with the Iowa/New Hampshire caucus/primary nonsense. Looking to characterize Obama as somehow separate from the Democratic party 'elite'--to us, though, he may not be a former First Lady, but he is sure as shit among the cream of the party crop--Cockburn/St Clair spend most of their time attesting to Obama's ability to expand the American electorate, particularly among young voters. We can't argue that this isn't, ultimately, a positive effect, but in this video for The Guardian Ken Silverstein points out something that has been bugging us for months now: what is it about him, aside from, say, his name, that makes Obama so opposed to the democratic mainstream? Yes, he's smart and charismatic, and he is clearly, for many Americans, a figure for change--but what no one seems to be asking is what does that change represent for Obama himself? We'd also like to call your attention to two articles that try to answer that question: one is on his outlook regarding a long-standing blindspot for both the Democratic and Republican parties. The other is about his assertion that American military intervention in Pakistan should not be taken off the table is being used as justification for such action by the Bush administration. (See, also, Aijaz Ahmad on this possibility, and on recent developments in Pakistan in general.)

But Cockburn and St Clair's embarrassing leniency with the other victor in the Iowa caucus, Mike Huckabee, is perhaps a worse offense. Citing Huckabee's 'tolerance' towards immigrants (something he shares, of course, with George W Bush) and 'compassion' against convicted criminals, they ignore Huckabee's noted rejection of the scientific theory of evolution, as well as his declared intent to seek a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which are just two of his most terrifying positions. Cockburn has recently been softly defending Huckabee's candidacy, shrugging off complaints from the Left that his outspoken evangelism may prove just a bit problematic as mere 'bigotry' or misguided 'hee-haws'.

Huckabee, taking after the Israelis, is on the record: supporting a border wall between the US and Mexico and no amnesty for illegal immigrants; insisting that his faith 'defines' his life; maintaining that America must support Israel as 'the only fully-functioning democracy in the Middle East', with no mention whatsoever of the Palestinians under occupation; that the war in Iraq is part of a 'generational' and 'ideological' struggle against terrorism, that a timeline for withdrawal is not in US interests (with the corollary that withdrawal would result in a humanitarian catastrophe for Iraqis, as if this didn't already exist); that Fidel Castro is indeed the Bogeyman; that the Second Amendment is a backbone of American democracy; that progressive taxation is, in effect, economic discrimination against the rich; claiming that the US is engaged in a 'world war' with radical Islam (hence going further than even George Bush was willing to) and must as such engage 'moderates' in the Middle East and South Asia. We'll stop there but you're welcome to check mikehuckabee.com for more information.

Alexander Cockburn: quit defending Huckabee as representative of some sort of new-fangled 'populism'. You're too smart to be so completely blindsided.

Oh, and Hillary, for all her tears, is most certainly going down.

oh

2008-01-01T14:00:00.001-05:00

and, um, happy new year.

in commemoration of the event, take a look at this article by Alexander Cockburn on political events of the past year, from the death of Gerald Ford (whom Cockburn considers the best American president of the twentieth century) , to troop escalations in Iraq, the (attempted) character assassination of Jimmy Carter, the indictment of Michael Vick, and, of course, the recent surge in popularity of Republican presidential nominee Mike Huckabee.

Ron Paul and Chomsky

2008-01-01T13:37:00.000-05:00

For the past few months, No Empires could not help but notice proliferations of Ron Paul paraphernalia just about everywhere. Posters and stickers bearing the libertarian presidential candidate's imprint have been spotted by No Empires constituents in airports, businesses, and restrooms, and on telephone poles and chalked sidewalks across the Northeast and the Midwest. We admit the man has been somewhat charming in republican debates, but we still want to know: who is this guy, and what is his appeal? For a start, we direct you to a blog interview with Noam Chomsky, where the linguist points out a few problems with what to many are Paul's most appealing positions, highlighting (perhaps most importantly) the ethical implications of his ultra-nationalist stance on US foreign affairs.

Benazir Bhutto

2007-12-27T21:45:00.000-05:00

News of Bhutto's assassination reached us today in cold and rainy Providence, Rhode Island. Along with any number of analysts, we can't say we were surprised, yet shock and dismay still register highly. For now, we turn to the quick-moving Tariq Ali, who brings us this report in the Guardian.

As Tariq remarks, Bhutto's behavior both in and out of power are cause for sustained criticism, but this remains a deeply troublesome turn of events.

Holiday Round-up

2007-12-23T20:35:00.001-05:00

Above: one of Beatty's finest moments.

Isn't this part of year just the fucking worst?

Perry Anderson has contributed to the November/December issue of New Left Review, offering "jottings" on the myriad "deep structural changes in the world economy and in international affairs" that we've seen and lived through since September, 2001. Anderson, with a scope that is all-encompassing, humbly offers his article as mere conjecture, unsystematic analysis that begs further investigation; yet, this is as good a place as any to start poring over our recent and collective nightmares.

Finally, after Ismail Haniya's comments last week in which he expressed willingness to negotiate a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the NYT reports that Ehud Olmert has refused to enter into any such negotiations. Taking center-stage in the article, however, is the recent Israeli move to submit a budget approval for almost 750 apartments in the illegal settlements of Har Homa and Maale Adumin. Even darling Condi, it seems, isn't so into this recent development, coming as it does just days before the second meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials since the Annapolis conference...

Holiday Post from No Empires

2007-12-18T23:22:00.000-05:00

After a week of domestic and transatlantic travel, birthdays, library visits, and illness, No Ehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifmpires is back with an interview with Terry Eagleton (thanks to our good friend John), right in time for the holiday season. Here, Eagleton discusses the role of religion, his feud with his ever-repugnant colleague Martin Amis, and "leftist arrogance."

No Empires and New York Magazine

2007-12-10T14:39:00.000-05:00

Fitting for the soft-liberal and thoroughly contradictory, uncritical politics of New York's youngish chattering inhabitants (who, tellingly, only seem to read the magazine's restaurant section, anyway), New York Magazine has printed a one-page hatchet job concerning NE hero Norman Finkelstein, who is currently trying to rebuild his career following a recent character assassination campaign (led, of course, by Alan Fucking Dershowitz), which cost him his job at Chicago's DePaul University. Ben Harris's 'article' about Finkelstein (which artfully manages to evade ANY FUCKING ENGAGEMENT WHATSOEVER with Finkelstein's work), is entitled 'Beached' (referring to Finkelstein's recent move to his deceased father's apartment in Coney Island), and sub-titled 'The Coney Island exile of a scholar who would be Noam Chomsky, but isn't.' Your guess is as good as ours as to what the fuck this phrase means. But let's move beyond pithy linguistic arguments; there's (barely) enough here that warrants a more polemic response.

Harris, at best a thoroughly shitty writer, does nothing to mask his contempt of what he blatantly considers to be the pathetic nature of Finkelstein's (personal, political, academic) life at present:

His days are now spent in solitary scholarly pursuits; his bookshelves buckle under the weight of tomes by Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. Notes of support from his students sit on a piano; there’s a photo of him and Noam Chomsky (“my closest friend”) bare-chested on the beach at Cape Cod.

Apparently, for Harris, Finkelstein's students are woefully misguided, yet serve the purpose of consoling Finkelstein following the Dershowitz-orchestrated come-uppance he so obviously deserved. And Noam Chomsky? Harris takes Finkelstein for a deluded fool--if you two are so close, where's your buddy Noam now?

We're surprised we've taken up this much space dealing with Harris's diarrheal diatribe. Read it, or don't. Judging by his own journalistic standards, dealing with primary sources is probably not too high on Harris's to-do list.

Ben Harris: fuck you.

Well-Made World 28

2007-12-03T18:21:00.000-05:00

A mishmash for today's update.

First, we turn to yesterday's referendum in Venezuela, which ended in defeat for Hugo Chavez and his plan for advancing Venezuela along the path to a 'socialist' state. Tariq Ali, calling attention to the unprecedentedly low turnout among voters, proposes--while citing analysts of Venezuelan politics--that Chavez's main mistake was to rush the referendum process, which gave the Venezuelan populace little time to take in its implications, while also giving his critics, both in Latin America and Washington, that his rule is an authoritarian one. Ali, ever hopeful, says that this is not, by any stretch, Chavez's downfall.

We turn now to the recent "peace conference" in Annapolis, which Azmi Bishara has termed "Madrid redux"--an analogy all too depressing in its accuracy. Bishara is far too coherent and attentive to detail for us to venture any quick summation of his article, so we must turn you, with no undue urgency, over to him.

And, finally, it is being reported that, in fact, Iran began bowing to international pressure as early as 2003 by ending its project to develop a nuclear arsenal. That, though, is not stopping French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner from sticking to the militaristic line vis-a-vis Iran that he's encouraged since being brought into the fold of Nicolas Sarkozy's government, or from Stephen Hadley saying that pressure must still be kept on Iran to not, er, misbehave. Hypocrisy, while suffering a slight setback, still rules the day!

Has Moz gone the way of Martin Amis?

2007-12-01T08:59:00.000-05:00

Stephen Patrick Morrissey--of late, an exile to Rome--has sparked no small furor in the English music press with a recent interview given to the New Musical Express. In the interview, predictably titled 'Bigmouth Strikes Again', Morrissey (who has recently decided to sue the NME) makes some, um, racially insensitive (to put it lightly)comments about immigration policy in the UK. Here is his interviewer, Tim Jonze, weighs in on the fiasco.

Ehud Olmert, the failure of Annapolis, and the One State Solution

2007-11-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

Unbelievable interview with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert is featured in today's edition of Haaretz. Well, maybe not so unbelievable. Olmert is quoted as saying that as soon as a "South African style" struggle for equal voting rights is realized in Israel/Palestine, whereby the whole of the Palestinian population both inside the Green Line and in the Occupied Territories is recognized along one man/one vote lines, "the state of Israel is finished." Aside from officially establishing the thoroughly racist nature of the Israeli state--no surprise to anyone with half a brain--Olmert makes some other fascinating moves in the interview. He claims that any "peace process" will require "patience and sophistication" on the part of the Israelis (time not healing all wounds, but rather enabling apartheid walls and illegal settlements to become facts on the ground); he also lambastes an already-embarrassing "leader," Mahmoud Abbas, calling him "a weak partner [in the peace talks], and, as Tony Blair says, [one who] has yet to formulate the tools and may not manage to do so." Loyal NE readers, may we be the first to inform you: we are through the looking-glass.

Olmert's interview makes a recent "declaration" in the Electronic Intifada (co-written, among others, by Joseph Massad, Ilan Pappe, and Ali Abunimah) seem all the more poignant, if not utterly impossible in practice. In the piece, its authors make all the historically legitimate arguments as to why the "One-State Solution" is the only honest and fair one available; yet, and especially in the light of Olmert's Haaretz interview, it fails to acknowledge that, at the "official" level of Israeli politics, it is a complete and utter non-starter. Such is the paradox faced by the One-Staties: a thoroughly legitimate premise that is, it seems, impossible to realize.

Ahmad on Pakistan, cont

2007-11-28T22:41:00.000-05:00

Thanks to NE BFF J. Loose for alerting us to Aijaz Ahmad's latest interview with the Real News, in which he once again sheds light on the current political situation in Pakistan; here, Ahmed discusses the US government's dependence on the Pakistani military, a relationship that the US will maintain even, if necessary, at the expense its support of general Musharraf.

Fear and Loathing in Anne Arundel County

2007-11-27T16:32:00.000-05:00

Today is the day (or at least the paltry reenactment) we've all been waiting for since September 1993 in the Rose Garden at the White House. The Annapolis "conference"--complete with its own PowerPoint-style background graphic--has been roundly ridiculed in recent weeks, with Olmert and Bush firmly rejecting any discussion of final status issues such as the status of Jerusalem or the right of return of Palestinian refugees (which would thereby invalidate the racist Zionist project), and Mahmoud Abbas seemingly more willing than ever to kowtow to American and Israeli diktats. We first here provide you with a powerful report from Gaza, courtesy of Laila El-Haddad and the Electronic Intifada.

"If it were easy [achieving the goal of establishing peace between Israel and Palestine], it would have happened a long time ago" said George Bush...and we'll leave it to our faithful readers to fill in the flagrant historical and ideological gaps in this statement.

For now, an article by NE favorites Kathleen and Bill Christison will do more than suffice.

The Democrats and "The politics of Iraq"

2007-11-25T18:10:00.000-05:00

Today's New York Times dutifully reports that the Democratic candidates for President, given recent "security improvements" in Iraq, have decided to move beyond Iraq as a political talking point. Acknowledging (and not, it appears, questioning) the "successes" generated by the Bush administration's troop surge, the Democrats have decided to focus on domestic matters that weigh heavily on the American electorate.

This article indeed provides a sense of Democratic (cop-out) sentiment these days, moving from Hillary Clinton's praise of US troops and their ability to accomplish any task put in front of them, no matter how nefarious, misguided, or illegal; to Barack Obama, who simultaneously harps on about the price of oil and speaks of an invasion of Iran; to the Democrats' recent move to enlist Ricardo Sanchez in their efforts to continue blaming Iraqi politicians for the results of the war.

News From Nowhere

2007-11-23T18:50:00.000-05:00

Haaretz reports, to no one's surprise, that 'Israel and the PA have failed to reach a joint statement' prior to this coming week's conference in Annapolis, which likely will quickly join Madrid and Oslo in the group of cities that have hosted woefully misguided 'peace conferences' between Israel and the Palestinians, sponsored by the 'honest broker' that the US purports to be.

This among reports that envoys from Saudi Arabia will be present in Annapolis; this promise referred to a perceived 'Arab consensus' to support the talks, despite the fact that the Arab states have continually failed to rally behind the Palestinians for 40 years. Good news, though: Condoleezza Rice has been charged with the task of producing the summit's final statement, should the Israel and the Pa be unable to reach some sort of consensus. Thus spoke Ismail Haniyeh today:

"We realize that this conference was stillborn and is not going to achieve for the Palestinian people any of its goals or any of the political and legal rights due to them."

Unfortunately, we assume he'll be proven right.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T20:26:00.000-05:00

Computer problems! Stay tuned for a extra-long post tomorrow.

Annapolis Notes 1

2007-11-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

In the lead article for yesterday's issue of Counterpunch, Oren Ben-Dor provides some important context for the upcoming Annapolis conference: as we mentioned in a recent NE post, Olmert has stressed that a "core issue" for the talks will be Palestine's recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state." As many critics have pointed out, Palestinian leaders have already recognized Israel as a state, and as Ben-Dor shows, this new wording has important implications. Also addressing this question is Uri Avnery in another article for the same publication. Avnery describes the conference as a "pipedream...without any preceding strategic planning, any careful preparations, anything much at all." Among other things, Avnery reminds us of the Knesset's very recent adoption of a bill that restricts any change of the borders of Greater Jerusalem without a 2/3 majority, in effect banning Olmert from giving up any Palestinian villages annexed to Jerusalem in 1967.

Bill Keller and Co. continue to sell an unpopular war, but with some heart; plus Eagleton and Amis Revisited

2007-11-20T13:47:00.000-05:00

Today's lead article in the New York Times is not, we must stress, a whitewash. It does, of course, give Iraq War apologists something to point to and say: "See, we told you it would take time, but we've really been doing the right thing all along." But as Voices in the Wilderness's Jeff Guntzel points out in two different places, such stories, while desperately important, usually end up telling only half of the story.

In a crucial piece for the Guardian, Ronan Bennett has added to the scarce debate surrounding the row between University of Manchester's own Terry Eagleton and its recent appointment, Martin Amis. In it, he takes to task those in the British media who have trivialized the indirect exchange between Eagleton and Amis, presenting it as merely a "spat" between two well-known figures with incommensurable politics, rather than as a troublesome reflection of issues surrounding race, immigration, religion, and terrorism in the UK. Bennett laments the fact that Amis seems to have gotten off the hook regarding his thoroughly racist remarks and subsequently inadequate and deeply suspect attempts at explaining himself. We're still with Terry on this one, and Bennett does us the service of explaining exactly why we ought to be.

Lebanon "at the brink of an abyss"

2007-11-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

With all that's going on in Iran, Pakistan, and Venezuela, we haven't been posting much about Lebanon, but this article by Karim Makdisi is a welcome and insightful look at the current crisis in Lebanese politics. Makdisi spends a lot of time discussing the core of the dispute surrounding the upcoming presidential election, detailing the positions of both the pro-US March 14 Coalition (who call for an immediate disarming of Hizbullah and avoidance in Lebanon of larger regional problems) and the opposition (who consider their March 14 opponents proponents of Israel/the US), but he also explains the potential problems that may result in the next two years, even if a consensus is reached.

Siniora must step down on the November 23, so we'll try to keep NE readers posted on what is going on in the next two days.

Annapolis 2007

2007-11-18T23:08:00.000-05:00

In light of the upcoming Annapolis conference, NE presents you with the latest by Khaled Amayreh from this week's Al-Ahram. The piece outlines where Israeli and Palestinian politicians stand on issues related to the American roadmap for peace in the middle east, which both sides have agreed will form the basis for the Annapolis discussions, pointing out once again the divergence in Israeli and Palestinian opinion as to what the roadmap actually means (not to mention whether Bush's audacious pledge more than two years ago that Israel could retain major settlements in the West Bank counts as part of the plan). Amayreh also considers Israel's racist demand that Palestine recognize Israel as a Jewish state (the pre-condition, Olmert claims, to Israel's involvement in any negotiations, let alone its recognition of Palestine), outlining what such a concession would mean for Palestinian citizens in Israel as well as the Palestinian right of return.

All of this, of course, sounds eerily familiar, and if you haven't read it yet, NE recommends you take a look at the late Tanya Reinhardt's Israel/Palestine: How to end the War of 1948 (2002, Seven Stories Press) and The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003 (2003, Verso Books).

Also from Al-Ahram: it would appear that Israeli rhetoric toward Egypt has outflanked even that of the US regarding Iran. Journalist Saleh al-Naami writes that " The Israeli security establishment appears determined to deal with Egypt as if the two countries were at war," most recently appealing to the US Senators for passing of a resolution that would freeze $200 million dollars of American aid to Egypt, the purported motivation behind which is punishment for Egypt's "failure" to curtail the smuggling of arms into Gaza. Even Israel, possessing a large and undeclared nuclear arsenal, is putting pressure on the "international community" to shut down Egypt's publicly-known nuclear energy program.

"An extraordinary experiment...in centralized, oil-fueled socialism"

2007-11-18T14:50:00.000-05:00

Hugo Chavez's rule in Venezuela has taken new (if not unexpected) turns in recent weeks. What's happening in Venezuela is undeniably interesting, but we at NE are trying to temper our excitement with an awareness that Chavez, while making great strides towards a socialist ideal, is at the same time consolidating a cult of personality around himself and his office--an almost Stalinist fetishization of power/presidential office (though we'd like to assume that Chavez has no sympathy for Stalinism). The effects of the move Chavez has made are thoroughly unpredictable; his opposition calls it a textbook coup d'etat, but even the New York Times has deemed it an extraordinary socialist experiment. We should consider a nation-wide group of players in judging Chavez's latest move to consolidate the functions of the Venezuelan government, from the army (composed of both Chavistas and pro-Western loyalists) to Venezuelan farmers, who have have lost the impetus to mass-produce crops due to Chavez's initiative to drive down the price of food to accommodate the Venezuelan poor. What is happening in Venezuela is undoubtedly among the most interesting and exciting of political developments in recent years, and things seem to be moving quite rapidly--even some of those who called themselves Chavistas as recently as one week ago have changed camps--so we'll be sure to keep you posted.

We refer you to this piece by Federico Fuentes, which highlights the threats still looming for Chavez from the Venezuelan right, as well as an article from Gabriel Hetland, which draws attention to the contradictions which have been inherent in Chavez's Bolivarian revolution from the outset.

Among Venezuela, Pakistan, and Iran, we've got our fucking hands full.

Well-Made World 27

2007-11-17T13:12:00.000-05:00

Graham Usher's latest article in Al-Ahram is a helpful assessment of Benazir Bhutto's decision to refuse the possibility of talks between her and Musharraf. Also in this week's issue of Al-Ahram is a piece by Azmi Bishara which includes some commentary on Musharraf (as well as on the death of Enola Gay pilot General Paul Tibbets, America as a nuclear power, and Lebanon).

Aijaz Ahmed and The Real News

2007-11-16T23:28:00.000-05:00

If you haven't taken a moment to check out the ever-insightful Aijaz Ahmed on The Real News, now might be a good time. He has two new interviews up today, one on the new IAEA report and another on General Musharraf 's political future, so make sure to have a look.

Well-Made World 26

2007-11-15T19:38:00.000-05:00

Here's another article from Frank Rich from a few days ago and stillworth the read. Rich compares the recent controversy (or lack thereof) surrounding Michael B. Mukasey's nomination for attorney generalto the current situation in Pakistan; particularly interesting to NEreaders in the face of upcoming presidential nominations, however, isone of Chuck Schumer's main arguments regarding his role in ensuringMukasey's nomination: simply that hes not as frightful as Gonzalez orthe acting attorney general who might otherwise be in line for theposition. Rich points out that in this statement and elsewhere,democrats like Schumer "sounded whipped." The democrats' impotency,of course, is old news, but more importantly, such comments remind usthat the democrats' pathetic "anybody but Bush" strategy from the lastpresidential election still quite miraculously figures in theircurrent strategy.

Also, may we direct you to an ongoing series from Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair on the history/candidacy of Hillary Clinton, in (thus far) parts one and two (of three).

Works Consulted #7

2007-11-15T18:17:00.000-05:00

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (New York,1980)
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983)
Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born (London, 1968)
Neil Lazarus, 'Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: A Reading of Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born' ('Research in African Literature' 18, 1982); "Great Expectations and after: The Politics of Postcolonialism in African Fiction" (Social Text, 1982)
Ghassan Kanafani, The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine (New York, 1972)
Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, with a few Other Poems (Bristol, 1798)
Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race, Volume One: Racial Oppression and Social Control (London 1994)
M. Keith Booker, Ulysses, Colonialism, and Capitalism: Reading Joyce After the Cold War (Connecticut, 2001)
Derek Attridge and Marjorie Howes, eds., Semicolonial Joyce (Cambridge, 2000)
Fredric Jameson, The Ideologies of Theory, Essays 1971-1986; Volume 1: Situations of Theory, foreword by Neil Larsen (London, 1988), Postmodernism; or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London, 1991)
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Constance Farrington, trans.; (France, 1961); L'An Cinq de la revolution algerienne/A Dying Colonialism (New York, 1970)
Peter Dews, Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory (London, 1987)
Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London, 1961)
Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (London, 1949)

Well-Made World 25

2007-11-08T10:36:00.000-05:00

We're generally of two minds about Frank Rich, but his NYT opinion piece this past Sunday, whose title borrows from Joe Biden's pitch-perfect one-liner on Rudy Giuliani, is a worthwhile read. Rich muses on the idea that, for all of its swaggering and bluster, if the Bush administration does not wage an attack inside Iran, it could spell curtains for any Democratic hope of winning the White House next year.

Speaking of Giuliani, here's what he had to say recently about an old pal (guess who!):
"Sure, there were issues, but if I have the same degree of success and failure as president of the United States, this country will be in great shape."
Meanwhile, that old pal's legal troubles just won't go away...

The Guardian's US correspondent, the wonderful Gary Younge, spoke recently with Angela Davis, who comments eloquently on, among other things: the current state of race relations in the United States; the incorporation of her iconic image into American popular culture (akin to the t-shirtization of Che Guevara); the regressive nature of the political appointments given to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice; and the candidacy of Barack Obama, who, she says, represents "a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference, the change that brings about no change."

Well-Made World 24

2007-10-29T18:03:00.000-04:00

In a letter to the president of the Oxford Union, Israeli filmmaker Ronen Berelovich laments Oxford's decision to uninvite Norman Finkelstein from a panel discussion on the one-state solution in Israel/Palestine. This is a shameful display of academic intolerance that is more suited to the United States, where Finkelstein has already experienced enough undue ideological censure; accordingly, the three other academics who were slated to represent Finkelstein's side of the debate (the one-state, as opposed to two-state, side)--Ghada Karmi, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe--have withdrawn from the debate. Karmi's recent article for Comment is Free details the circumstances surrounding their withdrawal, as well as what she sees as the importation of the notorious Israel lobby of American onto British soil.

And thanks to John for bringing this article from The Nation to our attention: an account of the political climate regarding Israel/Palestine at Columbia University that almost has us at No Empires wishing we were back home...

Well-Made World 23

2007-10-23T16:50:00.000-04:00

Today, one-half of No Empires attended a lecture by Slavoj Zizek at the Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities in London. We normally reserve little sympathy for Zizek's popular obtuseness--not to mention his deplorable rock star-cum-intellectual demeanor--but he remains a powerful and intellectually responsible force of the Left. We bring to you Zizek's piece from today's Guardian, which gives, in crystallized form, the basis of today's lecture. Zizek in person, incidentally, is sloppy as fuck, and given to any number of distracting nervous tics.

Tariq Ali weighs in on the bloodshed that awaited Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan, pointing out not only the vanity that characterized her 'show of strength' in the streets of Karachi, but also the outstanding charges of corruption against her which may yet find her serving time behind bars, to the hypocritical pleasure of the Musharraf government and its demand for "justice."

In an incredible interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, the recent Nobel-prize recipient Doris Lessing called out Americans for failing to view 9-11 in the context of the "terrible" actions of the IRA in England. After making this somewhat far-fetched comparison (and without making allowances for the differences between sustained colonial resistance that, as this article from the Guardian points out, resulted in the deaths of more than 3,700 people over thirty years, as opposed to terrorist acts that killed almost 3,000 people in one day), Lessing went on to praise Lee Bollinger's treatment of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling it "marvelous!" Uh, well done, Doris.

Well-Made World 22

2007-10-18T16:22:00.000-04:00

Quote of the day--

"I do not believe that any true Muslim will make an attack on me, because Islam forbids attacks on women, and Muslims know that if they attack a woman they will burn in hell."
--Former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto on the prospect of violence directed toward her upon her return to Pakistan following eight years of exile. And yet, this, from the AP, about fifteen minutes ago.

We're doing our best to keep on top of developments in Pakistan--an as-of-yet official presidential election; Bhutto's return; continuing anti-Nato violence across Waziristan. For the moment, we respectfully defer to Aijaz Ahmad, and this two-part video interview from the Real News website, one of our favorite sites recently, where Aijaz is a senior news analyst.

Also, congratulations to new grandfather and fellow-traveler of No Empires, John Loose (see above!), as well as to Manya and Mark.

Works Consulted #6

2007-10-16T16:27:00.000-04:00

Harriot Jacobs, Incidents in the Live of a Slave Girl (1859; found in in The Classic Slave Narratives, Signet 1987)
Henry James, In The Cage (1898), in Selected Tales, (ed. John Lyon, Penguin 2001)
Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" (speech at Yale, 1989)
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898), in The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories (ed. T.J. Lustig, Oxford 1992)
Julia Kristeva, "Women's Time" (1979)
Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Blackwell 1990)
William Godwin, Caleb Williams (1794; Penguin 1988)
Ghada Karmi, talk at Bookmarks store in London; Married To Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine (Pluto Books 2007)
William Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly (1799; Penguin 1988)
Gyorgy Lukacs, The Historical Novel (1937; Merlin 1962)
Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Edward W. Said, Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature (Verso 1990)
Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin and Adorno (Univ. of California Press, 1982)
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Belknap 2005)
Elizabeth Dillon, The Gender of Freedom: Fictions of Liberalism and the Literary Public Sphere (Stanford 2004)

Legitimizing land grabs

2007-10-10T17:37:00.000-04:00

Apparently, after two recent meetings with PM Ehud Olmert, Abu Mazen has perfected the duplicitious and prevaricating language of Israeli diplomacy. In what would initially seem the toughest language to come out of "official" Palestine since this summer's coup, Abbas claims to be after no less than all territory illegally annexed by Israel in June 1967, some 2,400 square miles, or 22% of historic Palestine. He notes, however (and this is where it gets tricky), that "[to] a border adjustment, on the basis of the same quality and the same amount, we have no objections." In other words, word from Ramallah to the rest of Occupied Palestine: let's be ready for a land swap! Abbas did not deem it fit to speak of the Separation Wall, the right of return, or any other final-status issue.

This comes on a day of wide reporting of Israel's intent to annex four Palestinian villages in the West Bank, for the purpose of expanding Israeli settlements. Israeli army says that the illegal confiscation will result in a "Palestinians-only" road from East Jerusalem to Jericho. Lovely. A road that will be largely unusable/inaccessible to the majority of Palestinians near it, all to connect the discontinuous Palestinian cantons found in the 23 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho.

'Pillars of society, pimping for torture'--Perry Anderson on the European Union

2007-10-08T12:11:00.000-04:00

In a recent piece for the London Review of Books, Perry Anderson refutes the somewhat pathetic but surprisingly common (at least for Western neo-liberals, that is) notion that Europe will prove itself to be the world’s exemplar of freedom and stability for the twenty-first century (or, as it is alternately known in the minds of its champions, the "New European Century," a terminology frightening in its resemblance to its now-defunct American counterpart). Citing an unprecedented degree of 'political vanity' across the EU, Anderson seeks to clarify what ten years ago were 'three great imponderables': a single European currency, intended to bolster investment and productivity across (Western) Europe; Germany's reemergence, following reunification, as one of the two most powerful countries in Europe; and eastward expansion of the EU. The results, according to Anderson, are at best decidedly mixed, and certainly do not merit the talk of a European 'renaissance' that has been much publicized.

Tracking Europe's evolution over the last two decades, Anderson separates European myth--a Union of 'peace, prosperity, and democracy' (in the words of Mark Leonard)--from European reality--plain old free-market liberalism and privitisation of everything under the sun. The myth, which rests on a vague, always negative conception of Europe as “not America,” is betrayed, Anderson shows, by the EU’s betrayal of social democratic principles (not to mention Eastern Europe), as well as the Union’s increasingly slavish relationship to the US and its imperial misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan--and possibly, in the coming months, Iran. Furthermore, the EU has yet to strike out a path independent of the United States regarding their mutual client state, Israel, and its ongoing illegal occupation of historic Palestine. Anderson points in particular to how the Union's expansion eastward has been predicated on an unwillingness to grant Eastern European countries any sort of autonomy from the British/French/German triumvirate--this Eastern inclusion, furthermore, must go through a vetting process headed up by the UN and the United States, who are in charge of deeming several countries either fit (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic) or unfit (Turkey, thus far) for entry into the EU.

Anderson calls this an "asymmetrical symbiosis" between the EU and the US, which is ultimately in contradiction to any anticipated European hegemony in the 21st century. We don't wish to overburden our readers with a step-by-step analysis of Anderson's argument; we can only encourage you to take the time to read his supremely important article.

Terry Eagleton v. Martin Amis/Barack Obama is a fabricator and you must not vote for him.

2007-10-04T18:38:00.000-04:00

Martin Amis has been given a position at the University of Manchester, teaching Philip Roth and Vladimir Nabokov, whose influence Amis has boringly worn on his sleeve for two decades. Manchester also happens to be Terry Eagleton's employer. To add to this, Eagleton has taken the opportunity, in a new Preface to his classic Ideology: An Introduction (reprinted by Verso this year) to take Martin Amis to task for his unabashedly reactionary turn following September 11, as well as to point out that Amis the Younger seems to be inheriting the most xenophobic and idiotic traits that his father, Kingsley, ever exhibited.

We are of the mind that both Amises have written, between them, at least two good novels (chronologically, Lucky Jim and London Fields). Yet Amis the Younger's war-mongering turn in recent years is thoroughly inexcusable, not to mention patently racist. In a quote that could have been come straight from the mouth of Christopher Hitchens (who has also, as we're sure you're aware, gone off the deep end in the past decade), novelist Martin Amis offered this answer to a question about whether his creative writing courses would have a particular theme: "If all this does turn out to have a theme, it'll be, "Don't go with the crowd, don't do anything for the crowd, don't be of the crowd or with the crowd." Yet Amis is fooling no one. An apt slogan for the corruption of critical thinking, this quotation could be the motto of a particularly unpalatable contrarian attitude by which the likes of Amis and Hitchens justify their newfound reactionary sensibilities in the wake of 9-11. If Terry Eagleton and Martin Amis do end up in a hallway scuffle at the University of Manchester, we at No Empires know which of the two we'll be rooting for.

Echoing the first-ever No Empires post, No Empires still hates Barack Obama. We'll leave you with an excerpt from an article by Paul Street on America's most accessible black man; yet also its most dangerous, as he seems willing to ignore the entire miserable history of white supremacism and the black experience in America:

In Selma, Alabama last March, Obama claimed that the Civil Rights Movement's heroic struggles in Selma (site of a famous 1965 voting rights march) and Birmingham (home to an epic 1963 desegregation battle) sent out ripples of socially progressive change that permitted his black father (Barack Obama, Sr.) and white mother to "get together" and conceive "Barack Obama Jr." Behold the following incredible passage from Obama's speech at the fabled black church Brown Chapel in Selma:

"Something happened back here in Selma, Alabama. Something happened in Birmingham that sent out what Bobby Kennedy called, "Ripples of hope all around the world." Something happened when a bunch of women decided they were going to walk instead of ride the bus after a long day of doing somebody else's laundry, looking after somebody else's children. When men who had PhD's decided that's enough and we're going to stand up for our dignity."

"That sent a shout across oceans so that my grandfather began to imagine something different for his son. His son, who grew up herding goats in a small village in Africa could suddenly set his sights a little higher and believe that maybe a black man in this world had a chance."

"What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, "You know, we're battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we're not observing the ideals set forth in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites." So the Kennedy's decided we're going to do an air lift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is."

"This young man named Barack Obama [Sr.] got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama. I'm here because somebody marched. I'm here because you all sacrificed for me."

Too bad Obama was born four years before the Selma struggle in the relatively multicultural island state of Hawaii, where there was nothing all that shocking about a white woman marrying a graduate student from Kenya!

I cannot explain the line about "men who had Ph.D's.

Follow up to Ahmedinejad at Columbia

2007-09-26T17:20:00.001-04:00

For the millionth time, thanks and love to Loose. This is from the Fars news agency in Iran:

Iranian University Chancellors Ask Bollinger 10 Questions

The following is the full text of the letter.

Mr. Lee Bollinger
Columbia University President

We, the professors and heads of universities and research institutions in Tehran , hereby announce our displeasure and protest at your impolite remarks prior to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent speech at Columbia University.

We would like to inform you that President Ahmadinejad was elected directly by the Iranian people through an enthusiastic two-round poll in which almost all of the country's political parties and groups participated. To assess the quality and nature of these elections you may refer to US news reports on the poll dated June 2005.

Your insult, in a scholarly atmosphere, to the president of a country with a population of 72 million and a recorded history of 7,000 years of civilization and culture is deeply shameful.

Your comments, filled with hate and disgust, may well have been influenced by extreme pressure from the media, but it is regrettable that media policy-makers can determine the stance a university president adopts in his speech.

Your remarks about our country included unsubstantiated accusations that were the product of guesswork as well as media propaganda. Some of your claims result from misunderstandings that can be clarified through dialogue and further research.

During his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad answered a number of your questions and those of students. We are prepared to answer any remaining questions in a scientific, open and direct debate.

You asked the president approximately ten questions. Allow us to ask you ten of our own questions in the hope that your response will help clear the atmosphere of misunderstanding and distrust between our two countries and reveal the truth.

1- Why did the US media put you under so much pressure to prevent Mr. Ahmadinejad from delivering his speech at Columbia University? And why have American TV networks been broadcasting hours of news reports insulting our president while refusing to allow him the opportunity to respond? Is this not against the principle of freedom of speech?

2- Why, in 1953, did the US administration overthrow the Iran's national government under Dr Mohammad Mosaddegh and go on to support the Shah's dictatorship?

3- Why did the US support the blood-thirsty dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraqi-imposed war on Iran, considering his reckless use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers defending their land and even against his own people?

4- Why is the US putting pressure on the government elected by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza instead of officially recognizing it? And why does it oppose Iran 's proposal to resolve the 60-year-old Palestinian issue through a general referendum?

5- Why has the US military failed to find Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden even with all its advanced equipment? How do you justify the old friendship between the Bush and Bin Laden families and their cooperation on oil deals? How can you justify the Bush administration's efforts to disrupt investigations concerning the September 11 attacks?

6- Why does the US administration support the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) despite the fact that the group has officially and openly accepted the responsibility for numerous deadly bombings and massacres in Iran and Iraq? Why does the US refuse to allow Iran 's current government to act against the MKO's main base in Iraq?

7- Was the US invasion of Iraq based on international consensus and did international institutions support it? What was the real purpose behind the invasion which has claimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives? Where are the weapons of mass destruction that the US claimed were being stockpiled in Iraq?

8- Why do America's closest allies in the Middle East come from extremely undemocratic governments with absolutist monarchical regimes?

9- Why did the US oppose the plan for a Middle East free of unconventional weapons in the recent session of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors despite the fact the move won the support of all members other than Israel?

10- Why is the US displeased with Iran's agreement with the IAEA and why does it openly oppose any progress in talks between Iran and the agency to resolve the nuclear issue under international law?

Finally, we would like to express our readiness to invite you and other scientific delegations to our country. A trip to Iran would allow you and your colleagues to speak directly with Iranians from all walks of life including intellectuals and university scholars. You could then assess the realities of Iranian society without media censorship before making judgments about the Iranian nation and government.

You can be assured that Iranians are very polite and hospitable toward their guests.

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad at Columbia

2007-09-25T08:51:00.000-04:00

Much has already been made of Ahmedinejad's visit to Columbia, which passed yesterday. After cancelling his invitation by Lisa Anderson last year, it's been obvious that Lee Fucking Bollinger couldn't have kept his well-worn, if inconsistent--we're reminded of the row over Jim Gilchrist and his proto-fascist "Minutemen" last year--First Amendment cred by bailing on Ahmedinejad two years in a row. Sure enough, L.F.B. was quick to pat himself on the back for going out on such a limb in upholding Ahmedinejad's right to speak--though he also, of course, found time to mouth the Bush administration's line about Ahmedinejad being the leader of a "state sponsor of terror," how Iran's helping fight a "proxy war" against the US in Iraq, blah blah blah. For his performance, Bollinger even managed to win the approval of AIPAC.

We'd like to direct your attention to the Washington Post's Global Power Barometer, which summed up national and global reaction to Bollinger's "introduction" and Ahmedinejad's speech this way:

Conservative and heartland America papers by and large praised the very tough introduction of Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and strongly criticized the performance of the Iranian President.

Analysts with an understanding of the global stage were fairly uniform in their view that while President Bollinger played well to those who criticized his decision to invite President Ahmadinejad in the first place, his introduction played perfectly into the hands of the Iranina President and Iranian hard liners. The take of these analysts was that while a Tim Russert (NBC Meet the Press host) style inquisition could have taken the Iranian President apart, Dr. Bollinger's approach turned him into a sympathetic figure and violated just about every Middle East tradition, thereby enhancing President Ahmadinejad's stature in Iran and the region. Consensus: Thanks to Bollinger, Ahmadinejad won on the global stage.

GPB take: While the GPB understands the pressure President Bollinger was under, his response was symptomatic of the ignorance even educated Americans have about playing to the myriad of cultures spanning the Middle East and the world. To date that extraordinary cultural ignorance has cost the US thousands of US lives, trillions of taxpayer dollars and the presitge of the US throughout the world. It is the primary reason the US is at the bottom of the GPB scale in terms of its ability to move the global agenda. Hopefully, at some time in the future, American politicians (and university presidents) will learn that being truly tough and winning on the global stage requires the discipline to realize you need to move those who are your adversaries not those who compose your base. The Iranians learned that a very long time ago, which is why they came out ahead today with the audiences that will determine US success or failure in the Middle East.

Let's be clear--we have very little sympathy for Ahmedinejad's abrasive, one-liner style, which only seems to increase in intensity the more he comes under fire in his own country; and Holocaust denial holds for us about the same water as those who claim, as Benny Morris bizarrely now does (but for many years did not), that Palestinians in 1948 left their homes and land entirely of their own will, or at the urging of neighboring Arab states, rather than under the threat of forced expulsion or death from Haganah forces.

It's enough to say that Iran's president is a provocateur without equal on the world stage, and that his wide popularity in the Arab and so-called "developing" world is a result of his unflinching willingness to decry question America's untrammeled power. That said, we are of the mind, with Juan Cole, that Ahmedinejad is a "bantam cock of a populist", whose real (and only) authority lies in the regional strength that Iran has been flaunting ever since the American misadventure in Iraq went awry, irrespective of what date one wishes to put on the beginning of the present nightmare. Iran is a real political force to be reckoned with in today's Middle-Far East, as much as Hezbollah and Hamas, independent of lazy and unfounded US claims of patronage between the former and the latter two. In fact, the US is directly responsible for this unprecedented shift in the balance of power. Yet Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, are continually deemed unfit as partners in dialogue, let alone as important political actors.

All this being said, a balance sheet deserves being drawn, at least to flesh out our own feelings on Ahmedinejad. Let's ignore the crowds of (partly bussed-in) protesters crowding College Walk and the paths to Butler Library and Lerner Hall; pictures in the New York Times of some of them holding up the painfully predictable "Iran funds Hamas"placards--the same we've seen at "Salute to Israel" parades on Fifth Avenue--is enough to pass their presence off as demagoguery and plain political infantilism.

The rub is, when Ahmedinejad says rightly that "We need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for" the Holocaust--referring to Israel's repeated, often implicit assertions that the crimes of Nazi Germany ought to justify its 40-year old illegal occupation and brutally violent denial of the right of Palestinian self-determination--he still fucks this up by saying that the undeniable fact of the Holocaust ought to be called into question. Looking to make a plainly historical point, Ahmedinejad lapses into asinine ideology.

He finds himself on solid ground once again that Iran cannot formally recognize the state of Israel "because [the Israeli state] is based on ethnic discrimination, occupation and usurpation and it consistently threatens its neighbors." Again, this helps account for his oft-wavering popularity at home and abroad. Ahmedinejad's on the money as well when he points out the brazen hypocrisy of Europe and America's desire to control or curtail Iran's nuclear programs.

Just as there is no excusing treating the Holocaust as "theory" rather than historical fact, there is no excusing his ludicrous assertion that "[Iran doesn't] have homosexuals like in your country"--though this doesn't at all give free license to gay and lesbian rights activists to join in the war-mongering chorus in Morningside Heights. (An aside: please see Joseph Massad's Desiring Arabs, referred to elsewhere on this site, for more on how the "Gay International" ends up universalizing repressive norms of what behavior is and is not "gay" in the name of its own normative ontology.)

No Empires: Summer 2007 Demo

2007-09-23T15:28:00.000-04:00

As we've alluded to, we wrote and recorded a few songs this summer, and we'd like to share them with you. The first two tracks below are NE originals, and the third is a cover of a song by late-70s Boston band The Rentals (no, not the shittier-than-shit Weezer breakaway). This third song in particular is recommended if you like songs about, uh, child molestation. Pervert.

Extra-special thanks to TJ DeSola and Colin Hagendorf.

"Hard" copies of this demo, in cassette form, expected to be available Winter-Spring 2008.

1. "Girlfriend Island"

2. "Excavation"

3. "I Got A Crush on You"

Well-Made World 21 (a Transatlantic strike)

2007-09-13T22:49:00.000-04:00

Late (or early?) edition UPDATE:

The sky gets darker the longer the Giuliani campaign increases its viability. Why this endlessly greedy, self-aggrandizing, par-for-the-course asshole would want to abandon his uber-cushy private sector job for the paltry paycheck of President is a bit unclear--though it's been obvious for some time that he's ready, finally, to leave old buddy Bernie Kerik (who has been, more recently, and in order: failed candidate for Homeland Security; head American cop in Iraq [for 4 months]; and potential tax-fraud indictee) by the wayside. It seems people, and their convictions/affiliations, really can change. Giuliani, who, as mayor, was a fierce gun control advocate--one rare point of agreement between us and him--is now doing his all to woo the N.R.A., even going so far as to say that 9/11 has put "a whole different emphasis on what America has to do to protect itself.” (Though it's arguable that one of Rudy's spokesmen went even further in his clarification of this remark; see the end of the article.)

Ahmed Yousef, political advisor to (unconstitutionally) sacked Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh, has written an editorial for Ha'aretz in which he puts forth a position which should be plainly obvious, yet given American coverage of the subject, is woefully anything but: that the political stalemate, at the "official" level in Israel/Palestine, as well as final status issues pertaining to the Israeli occupation, can only be solved with an inclusion of Hamas in multilateral dialogue. Yousef points out that the purportedly-total animosity between Hamas and Fatah, deployed to great effect in the Western press by Mahmoud Abbas and fellow coup-makers, is nowhere near as all-encompassing as it would seem. He concludes rightly that, far from being spokesmen for the radical Islamist avant-garde in the Arab world, Hamas is working to curtail extremist trends by offering a widely popular--among occupied Palestinians, if not the Arab world more broadly--and secular platform for peace between Israel and occupied/displaced Palestinians. Something tells us that the sound logic of Yousef's proposition will find scant audience in the circles of Bush, Olmert, and Abbas; in particular with Bush, as it flies in the face of the deeply deluded neocon logic he's done so much to propogate.

Speaking of which delusion...
In his latest piece for commentisfree, William Dalrymple argues (quite even-handedly, NE might add) for a strain of American/British foreign policy less resistant to political Islam, pointing out the neo-conservative response has done nothing but guarantee the rise of what they hysterically call "Islamofascism." Like many commentators before him, Dalrymple contrasts neo-con foreign policy (considered by frightening numbers of people in the countries NE call home a legitimate reaction to the threat of "Islamofascism" and the rise of "jihadism") with what anyone NE can respect would consider a self-fulfilling prophecy. As neo-cons consider the growing numbers of Muslim representatives in democratic governments proof of a problem in need of a solution, NE is reminded of pre-emptive warfare, a neo-con trope that is, apparently, no longer necessary.

Works Consulted #5

2007-09-13T22:39:00.000-04:00

Sarah Grand, The Beth Book (Thoemmes)
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (Signet Classics)
Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland (Penguin Classics)
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas and A Room of One's Own (Harcourt)
Fredric Jameson, The Modernist Papers (Verso)
David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (Verso)
Franco Solinas, State of Siege (script of Costa-Gavras film)

Well-Made World 20

2007-09-08T16:25:00.000-04:00

View from a room in Chicago, where this past weekend NE neglected to venture to the Empty Bottle to take in a Silver Apples show, yet managed to consume margaritas from a tap, hot fudge out of a microwaveable pouch, and direct sunlight, all at U.S. Cellular Field. There was a Sarah Grand novel somewhere in there, as well, courtesy of Myopic in Chicago. We're only human--and we were celebrating a birthday. Love and thanks to Lauren Leigh for some local knowledge and advice, and for helping us find delicious and cheap burritos. (La Pasadita!)

Now, back to business.

Columbia University has reclaimed (from DePaul University) its rightful place as the epicenter of highly dubious and ideologically-motivated tenure fights. Barnard College has already approved for tenure anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj, author of the excellent and rigorous Facts on the Ground, an examination of the use of archeology in Israeli society and politics, and an account--dating back to the Mandate period--of the ways in which Israel, through a mix of archaeology, politics, and violence has tried to nullify any Palestinian claim to the land which now forms the Israeli state. Despite Barnard's approval, Nadia's fate now ultimately lies with Lee Fucking Bollinger, as Columbia has final jurisdiction regarding tenure at Barnard. We apologize for not being the slightest bit optimistic for Nadia, as Bollinger has gone to great lengths recently (most notably through a couple full-page ads in the New York Times) to defend Israel against Britain's Association of University Teachers, who are suggesting a boycott of Israeli academics for their tacit support of Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories and the south of Lebanon. As was the case with Norman Finkelstein, Nadia's qualifications for tenure are unquestionable, and her work is vital.

More on Finkelstein: following a settlement with DePaul, he has formally resigned from his teaching post. Link is to an interview with Finkelstein and his attorney, conducted by the venerable Amy Goodman.

Finkelstein update

2007-08-31T10:44:00.000-04:00

One would think that Father Dennis Holtschneider and DePaul University could stoop no lower, after they denied Norman Finkelstein and Mehrene Larudee tenure on the absolute flimsiest of premises--let's call it The Dershowitz Ultimatum. However, they outdid themselves on Sunday, when they cancelled Finkelstein's classes, and announced that he would be placed on "administrative leave, with pay" for the 2007-8 academic year, which was anyhow to be his last at DePaul. To take it even further, they are keeping him out of his own office and barring him from the political science department. When classes begin September 5, Finkelstein says he will be there, and if he continues to be shut out, he'll resort to alternative measures.

Well-Made World 19

2007-08-24T15:10:00.000-04:00

For the NLR, Alex Cockburn has expanded a piece from Le Monde Diplomatique--which we linked to several weeks back--on the state of the American anti-war movement. Cockburn writes on the recent history of anti-war and left groups in America, both popular and marginal, and details the ineptitude of the splintered coalitions opposing the Iraq war, finding much fault with the mainstream anti-war movement's "occasionally petulant subservience" to the Democratic party since 2003.

Also, tacked onto a piece for Counterpunch on Nuri al-Maliki is a reaction to Cockburn's criticism of the anti-war movement from the Institute for Policy Studies' Phyllis Bennis. Bennis takes issue in particular with the notion, proposed by Cockburn in his original piece, that it would behoove the left in the US to humanize Iraq's multifaceted resistance. Bennis complains that because the Iraqi resistance lacks a cohesive and demonstrable central authority (unlike the FMLN, or the African National Congress), it lacks accountability to the population of Iraq (who bear the brunt of the America's aggression, as well as of the resistance) and so does not deserve the support of anti-war sympathizers in America. It's puzzling, if not plain stupid, that Bennis could possibly expect an El Salvadorean-style resistance authority after six years of the Bush administration doing everything in its power to exploit deep-seated ethnic tension in Iraq. Bennis also makes the point that, because some actions taken by the resistance are morally reprehensible, no further attempt at humanizing the resistance are necessary, or even warranted. Cockburn then responds. Read on.

George Bush has recently likened the situation in Iraq, and the consequences of a troop withdrawal, to the fate suffered by millions of Vietnamese following the end of the war there. The New York Times claims that "Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies." Bush mentions the Khmer Rouge and the "killing fields" of Pol Pot, but neglects the fact--pesky historical memory! motherfucker!--that, had Richard Nixon heeded the antiwar movement, the war would've ended in 1969, and the "secret" war in Cambodia, which paved the way for Pol Pot by completely destroying the country, would've never taken place.

Munir Chalabi has written a crucial piece of analysis of the Iraqi oil law, which remains stillborn.

Here's a trio dealing with fallout from the recent Hamas putsch/Fatah coup, and it seems that Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad combined may yet outflank post-Oslo Arafat's desperate ineffectivity and enslavement to US-Israeli diktats. Amira Hass, an NE hero and an Israeli woman who has lived in and reported from Gaza for over a decade, gives us the latest from Israel's wet-dream of a "Palestinian state." Amira is characteristically even-handed in reporting the Palestinian political civil war, faulting

Israel, the occupier that shirks its obligation as an occupying power; the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, which is abandoning its citizens while continuing to try to ostracize the majority movement and make it fail; Hamas, which boasted about "liberating" Gaza and uses Qassam fire and declarations of "resistance" to escape its political and economic failures; the donor states, which use (generous) donations to cover up political powerlessness; and the United States, which is leading the boycott campaign [against Hamas] and supports Israel.

Exiled ex-Israeli MK Azmi Bishara, writing for al-Ahram Weekly, draws historical, political, and moral parallels between apartheid South Africa and the occupied Palestinian territories. This is a concern, of course, pursued in recent decades by Maxime Rodinson, Edward Said, Norman Finkelstein, Nelson Mandela, Ramzy Baroud, Jennifer Loewenstein, and others. Bishara remains under threat of arrest, were he to return to Israel, due to accusations that he provided tactical support to Hezbollah during last summer's Lebanon war, charges with both Bishara and Hezbollah have stringently denied.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article8962.shtml

On inactivity

2007-08-17T10:24:00.001-04:00

As "regular" readers (to sound presumptuous) of NE can recognize, we haven't exactly been the most prolific blog-keepers of late. Early on, we set an ultimately untenable precedent of 15-20 postings a month. That we probably would not be able to stick to such a rate of output was in the back of our minds when NE took off--but we remain confident and ambitious.

At the time of writing, NE's contributors are preparing for a transatlantic rupture, half of which has begun, and which culminates in one month, when one can find half of NE in Bloomington, Indiana (one can already), and half in London, UK. While the expected communication lag may make the idea of continuing this project seem daunting, we feel that it can only bring our work to better, and more unexpected, places.

We've begun to feel that the work we've done here so far, while exciting for us and hopefully of some greater services to those who read it, has become somewhat constricted and, dare we say it, even predictable. The "Well-Made World" series, an urgent and challenging part of NE (as well as subtle tribute to B.C. Gilbert), has been predominant here, and while it will continue to be a cornerstone of the project, our perhaps-overweening focus on it has caused the overall "diversity" of what we would like NE to be to suffer. All by way of saying: we're not getting too comfortable (or at all comfortable, really...), and we're going to push this thing a whole lot further in the coming weeks and months.

On a more exuberant note: No Empires has recorded a three-song cassette (two originals and one cover; total running time approx. 4 1/2 to 5 mins.), mixing of which will continue over the next few weeks. A (very) limited edition of this tape will hopefully be available this winter.

Well-Made World 18

2007-08-07T10:04:00.000-04:00

Hi again. Thought that, come August, we had gone the way of the US Congress or its Iraqi counterpart? You were wrong. We are back.

Over the past 40 years, Regis Debray has made it from languishing in Bolivian jail--after being one of the last people to see Che Guevara alive--to being one of the most respected and sought-after political analysts in Europe. We've returned with Debray and this piece on Palestine, commissioned last winter by then-outgoing French president Jacques Chirac, and published in the August 2007 edition of Le Monde Diplomatique. Debray's report reads as somewhat dated--it was handed in to the French government in January, and therefore cannot cover even the most obvious and directly important events that have transpired since then, such as the Hamas putsch in Gaza and the subsequent illegal Fatah coup. What Debray finds is far more damning than a simple gap between intent and action on the part of Israel or the "international community." Rather, what he sees at work is a fundamental break between the lip service paid to the "peace process" or a putative "Palestinian state," and the creation of facts on the ground--Israel's favored "strategy" since the pre-state Yishuv--that are destroying what slight chances remain for even an "imperfect peace."

The Guardian's Jonathan Steele writes that, unfortunately for Dick Cheney and his friends in the US oil lobby, Iraqi legislators did not pass the oil law that Washington has been trying to ram through the Iraqi parliament before it began its much-debated August recess. This could be due to the simple fact that, to the chagrin of Cheney et al, the Iraqi lawmakers have actually decided to carefully read the legislation, which would greatly destabilize Iraqi sovereignty over the country's oil reserves if passed in its present form.

Works Consulted #4

2007-08-02T10:44:00.000-04:00

witold gombrowicz, cosmos (trans. danuta borchardt) (yale, 2005)
raymond williams, the politics of modernism: against the new conformists (verso, 1989)

Twilights Last Gleaming

2007-07-30T16:06:00.000-04:00

More posts to come, but in the meantime, go see Ulzana's Raid at BAM tomorrow night. NE loves Robert Aldrich!

No Empires' Favorite Records of 2007 (so far, and in no particular order)

2007-07-18T05:32:00.000-04:00

Mika Miko - 666 (PPM)
Judee Sill - Live in London: The BBC Recordings 1972-73 (Easy Action)
Silver Daggers - New High & Ord (Load)
Throbbing Gristle - Part Two: The Endless Not (Mute)
Shearing Pinx/Modern Creatures - Split cassette (INW)
Dead Moon - Echoes of the Past (Sub Pop)
Meg Baird - Dear Companion (Drag City)
Acid Reflux - EP 7" (TKO?)
Tyvek - Summer Burns 2x7" (Whats Your Rupture?)
The Vicious - Igen 7" (YAN)
Blues Control - S/T (Holy Mountain)
Sir Richard Bishop - While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust)
Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall 1971 (Reprise)

Well-Made World 17

2007-07-16T09:32:00.000-04:00

Europe

Loose directs us to a missive from Terry Eagleton, on the Guardian's blog, calling curtains on Britain's centuries-old tradition of subversive/contrarian writers--making an exception for Harold Pinter, who, Eagleton admits, may only be offering a form of "champagne socialism." Unsurprisingly, TE's examples are overwhelmingly male, though he does toss in the obligatory Virginia Woolf/"Three Guineas" reference, and notes the brief flashes of Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing. Still, Eagleton's contemporary targets (Larkin, Hare, Rushdie, Amis the Younger, et al.) are worthy ones.

The "War on Terror"

Some of the most "well-behaved" prisoners at Guantanamo, many of whom have been slated for release for upwards of a year, have recently been awarded new freedoms including access to select films once a week and limited access to tv. This and other "concessions" to detainees, rather than softening the image of the atrocious conditions at Guantanamo, highlight the absolute horror that is the system, and the dangerous paranoia that prevents detainees from doing just about anything. Read Andy Worthington on these new developments here.

Near East/ The "Muslim World"

No Empires admits to our own lack of analytical depth re: the situation obtaining in Pakistan since the military coup that put Gen. Pervez Musharraf in (increasingly shaky and dubious) power in 1999. It is, without a doubt, a country that has, for ideologically nefarious reasons, found itself swirling in the politics of George Bush's "War on Terror." But this month's seige at the "Red Mosque" in Islamabad, which had been brewing for months, certainly helps us place things in some perspective, at least as much as the previous crisis over the Pakistani judiciary did. We defer, for the moment, to Tariq Ali, who finds that the Pakistani electorate is hesitant to side with either of the groups--in Ali's words, "the Judges or the jihadis"--that have drawn the ire of Musharraf's authoritarian regime.

Richard Falk takes on the difficult, and often morally/politically dubious, task of drawing parallels between the approach of Israel and the "international community" toward Gaza, and the record of "collective atrocity" left in the wake of the Third Reich. There is, of course, nothing that galls Israel's supporters more than equivalences of this sort, which Falk is extremely careful in drawing out; what is preferred, of course, is an Israeli monopoly on the legacy and moral resonance of the Holocaust, which is cynically used to justify Israel's deplorable behavior. For more on what has been called "The Holocaust Industry", see the work of Norman Finkelstein.

The Independent has published a downright horrifying preview of interviews with American veterans of the War in Iraq, conducted by the Nation magazine. It's all here: utterly racist disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians; hackneyed "information-gathering" techniques; unencumbered bloodlust; and psychological destruction of both civilians and G.I.'s. Harrowing reading ahead, but is anyone all that surprised?

An IRIN report reveals that the Iraqi Ministry of Finanace is now offering life insurance, as well as bodyguards, to Iraq's university professors. Iraq's education system was once the envy of the Near East; a decade-plus of UN-sponsored economic sanctions--not to mention Saddam Hussein's well-documented paranoia and anti-intellectualism--irrevocably changed this situation. George Bush's war has brought the death of more than 200 professors, and the flight of thousands more.

In a charged piece for Al-Ahram Weekly, reprinted at the Electronic Intifada, Columbia's Joseph Massad rails against the subversion of Palestinian democracy that has been taking place over the past year-and-a-half.

Following her death on March 16, 2003, the parents of Rachel Corrie (subject of one of the best plays in recent memory, finally brought to the Minetta Lane theater last winter) filed a civil suit against Caterpillar, Inc. the American company that has a contract with Israel and provides it with the bulldozers that are regularly used to destroy Palestinian homes, a particularly long-standing and odious instance of illegal collective punishment. A judge dismissed the case in 2005, but Corrie's parents have moved to have the case reopened, citing the spuriousness of Caterpillar's original argument that they just couldn't possbily have known, and therefore have taken responsibility for, what Israel intended to do with their bulldozers.

The U.S.

The New York Times reports on the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which would see the installment of hundreds of cameras to monitor car (and, presumably, foot) traffic from the East River to the Hudson, to the tune of $90 million.

In a piece for Le Monde Diplomatique, Alex Cockburn writes on the sluggishness of the American anti-war movement, and points out that, for an anti-war demonstration to be "memorable and effective," it has to be "edgy, not comfortable"--something No Empires has grappled with recently, in the wake of our attending in June the first-ever protest specifically directed against the Israeli occupation.

Rudy Giuliani's campaign takes a hit in the South, as Rep. David Vitter becomes ensconced in his own hypocrisy. Sinner! No Empires isn't sure who we'd like to see drop out, or drop dead, first: Giuliani, or John McCain.

On elitism, and complacency

2007-07-12T11:20:00.001-04:00

You can talk about the doltishness of our president all you want, but you have to acknowledge his power and influence, and that your snarky comments aren't going to change anything when no one is listening. Rather than ignore (with more than a tinge of self-righteousness and elitism) the idiocy and dogmatism of Washington at this completely formative moment in US history, try and be engaged. Rather than throw up your hands and drop out completely as soon as you recognize the emptiness of "official" Washington language, and realize that emptiness does not translate into impotence--parse the rhetoric and recognize its destructiveness. Decades from now, when historians are doing the difficult and vital work of figuring out just what the fuck went wrong with American foreign and domestic policies at the beginning of the 21st century, where do you think they will turn? Just because contributors to a website like Counterpunch, or intrepid journalists like Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk, seem to be telling the "right" story in their current work, doesn't mean we can just leave it at that.

Nota bene: despite the repeated use of the second-person pronoun in this post, this really isn't directed toward one person/group of people in particular. Rather, it bemoans a general trend that helps no one understand what is happening in the world around us.

Of course, it's not easy. If you're declaring yourself to be "above" paying attention to a Bush press conference, you're not better off turning to the major American print news outlets.

Coverage in the mainstream media of George Bush's press conference yesterday only serves to highlight, in our opinion, the absolute complicity of the American press in the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq. In a typically muddled piece of "analysis" printed today, the New York Times's David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker--politely--lend their voices to the growing chorus of those who think that, in the end, George Bush must inhabit an ideologically perverse and analytically barren alternate universe. That this is, at this point, far too easy to suggest, seems not to matter. By sticking, albeit tepidly, to Bush's executive war-speak about what shape the American "mission" will take in a "post-surge" scenario, Sanger and Shanker not only serve to legitimize and reinforce Bush's corrupt Near East agenda; they also (purposely?) obscure their own paper's role in selling the public an unmitigated atrocity. On top of this, their piece ends with a move that could have come from Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama themselves: namely, to blame the occupied for the crimes of the occupiers. To say that the government of Nuri al-Maliki just simply won't have the wherewithal, or even the desire, to perform the difficult task of political reconciliation among Shia and Sunnis in Iraq, is to absolve the U.S. government of all wrongdoing in bringing unthinkable death and destruction through an illegal invasion, and a military occupation that is almost five years old.

Yesterday, the editors of the Washington Post accused, it seems, everyone but themselves of "wishful thinking" on Iraq, saying that if Bush seems over-optimistic about the likelihood of the situation in Iraq changing by mid-September, then Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton are, at best, guilty of the same as regarding the consequences of a troop "withdrawal." Borrowing a tactic, it would seem, from Bush's own speechwriters, they stoop even lower than the execrable Times and offer the trillionth repetition of a "stay the course" mantra.

This comes hot on the heels of a Times editorial on Saturday demanding an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Nevermind that whenever ANYONE in the White House, Congress (excepting Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul), or mainstream media talks about "withdrawal," they are being disingenuous, for what they really mean is "redeployment," and a contuining presence of US troops in the Near East and Gulf states. Anthony DiMaggio sees right through the Times' and other mainstream US news publications recent "anti-war" turn on their editorial pages, and asks why it's come about 50 months too late--though this hypocritical about-face did prompt the Washington Times and Wall Street Journal to condemn the Times' "appeasement." The best we can say about these two latter publications is that, hey, at least they're consistent in their support of unbridled aggression to protect U.S. "interests."

What the fuck is Ryan C. Crocker talking about?

2007-07-10T15:09:00.000-04:00

Crocker is the U.S.'s ambassador to Iraq--an undesirable, if not downright impossible, job, to be sure. But while he's being interviewed inside Saddam's old Republican Palace, THIS CRAZY SHIT is what he has to say about the current policy debate on withdrawal swirling in Washington:

Setting out what he said was not a policy prescription but a review of issues that needed to be weighed, the ambassador compared Iraq’s current violence to the early scenes of a gruesome movie.

“In the States, it’s like we’re in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we’re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else,” he said. “Whereas out here, you’re just getting into the first reel of five reels,” he added, “and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four and a half are going to be way, way worse.

If this is the level of abstraction that administration officials are resorting to, then no matter what George Bush says shortly in Cleveland, his Iraq misadventure is beyond doomed, and his legacy is in the toilet (as it should be).

The Washington Post's "ANGLER" series on Dick Cheney

2007-07-10T14:57:00.000-04:00

This is David S. Addington. As Dick Cheney's lawyer, he is the scariest person in the Bush administration that you have maybe never heard of. Allow No Empires to direct you, if you haven't read it already--and we bet you haven't!--to the Washington Post's series on the underside of the Cheney vice-presidency, in four parts.

Works Consulted #3

2007-07-10T13:36:00.000-04:00

Joseph Massad, Desiring Arabs (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians (Routledge, 2007)
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (Columbia University Press, 1987)
Ahdaf Soueif, In The Eye of the Sun (Anchor Books, 2000)
Orhan Pamuk, Snow (Vintage, 2005)

Army of Islam Frees Alan Johnston

2007-07-05T10:20:00.000-04:00

While we were busy grilling hamburgers, the Palestinian faction Army of Islam released Alan Johnston. No Empires is thrilled at this outcome, especially considering how unlikely it had seemed, and is interested to see whether it is true, as The New York Times reports, that in securing Johnston's release, "Hamas has undoubtedly given its image a boost and gained in respectability."

No Empires Misses Alan Johnston Pt. 2

2007-07-02T14:30:00.000-04:00

Both the BBC and The New York Times recently reported that Hamas arrested "a spokesman" for Army of Islam, the Palestinian group that kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston. Of course, this is absolutely terrifying, considering the tape AOI recently released in which Johnston explains how his captors will kill him if any rescue attempts are made. The Hamas government has rightly made the Johnston case a major issue in its attempts to stabilize Gaza.

The article can be found here. Note that while the Times's Steven Erlanger can't come up with much negative to say about Hamas's latest attempts to free the Johnston, he adds to the end of his article a bizarrely disconnected fact-sheet of sorts on the organization and on Israel/Palestine in general, starting with information on how the Hamas government "organizes religious and charitable institutions that are also used to recruit members and sometimes armed fighters" and later outlining recent arrests of Hamas members, which of course brings the article full circle and seems to call into question whether the democratically elected Hamas government has any right to arrest anyone at all.

About six months ago, one-half of No Empires wrote a letter to the NYT editor to bemoan Erlanger'sround shoddy reportage from Israel--he's a huge fan of the bumbling, ideologically-motivated subject change evidenced above. The letter apparently couldn't pass muster at "the paper of record," and was never printed.

Both at home and abroad, this insistance on the illegitimacy of the Hamas government allows the vacuum of leadership evidenced by groups such as the AOI, as well as the Johnston kidnapping, to continue. This crisis of leadership dates back at least to the death of Yasir Arafat, if not to the era of the thoroughly-discredited Oslo accords, and it seems that despite Hamas's efforts, the situation is only getting worse. No Empires would finally like to point out that NOTHING good can come of this, particularly if Johnston is indeed killed (which, unfortunately, seems more and more likely as those on all sides get increasingly desperate).

no empires goes to washington and yonkers

2007-06-29T00:03:00.000-04:00

from practice, and from the June 10 rally to protest the 40th birthday of the Israeli occupation.

Alistair Crooke on the future of Palestine

2007-06-28T15:25:00.000-04:00

The current situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has been treated with (characteristic) obfuscation, over-simplification, and all-round poor analysis in the Western media. No Empires would like desperately to direct your attention to an article by former UN envoy Alastair Crooke in the most recent edition of the London Review of Books. In a timely and sober analysis, Crooke not only hits precisely on the ways in which the governments of Europe, Israel, and the United States have, since January 2006, created the conditions for recent developments; he also, accurately, characterizes Hamas and Hezbollah as "moderate Islamist groups," with specific and local political aims, and broad grass-roots popularity--a welcome respite from the blanket treatment of these movements in the Western press as "terrorist organizations" or "militant Islamist groups," or any similarly inappropriate ideological description. No Empires implores you to read Crooke's piece.

Well-Made World 16

2007-06-26T23:09:00.000-04:00

Near East

In a terrifying development, Alan Johnston--now held captive in Gaza for 105 days--has appeared in a new video wearing what is purported to be a bomb-belt, which he says would be detonated if there is any attempt made, either by Hamas or the British, to free him by force. In the video, Johnston is quoted as saying that his "Captors tell me that very promising negotiations were ruined when the Hamas movement and the British government decided to press for a military solution to this kidnapping." This comes as Hamas, trying to show itself capable of exercising a less violent form of control in Gaza, has taken it upon itself to secure Johnston's release. Something No Empires finds interesting is the attempt being made to discredit Hamas both by Fatah capitulationists (backed, of course, by America, Europe, and Israel) and extreme Islamist elements hoping, it would appear, to outflank it.
No Empires wants to drive home the (obvious) fact that the Hamas government must still be considered to represent the political will of the occupied Palestinian population. Here, Saree Makdisi explains why the "relief" felt in the halls of Western power at the removal of the elected government by "presidential fiat" is certainly not shared by people who once again have, as their "legitimate" leaders, corrupted careerists who have consistently watered-down (if not abandoned wholesale, under American and Israeli pressure) any truly just political solution in Israel/Palestine.
Despite UN pressure, Israel continues to resist opening the Karni crossing to allow passage of vital supplies. As No Empires readers will recall, Israel has pledged, certainly half-heartedly, to do all it can to facilitate humanitarian aid to Gaza; but not Karni, not yet--despite its being an economic lifeline for Gaza, Israel, true to form, vaguely invokes security concerns. Israel has promised to allow passage of supplies through smaller border crossings instead.

DePaul's Matthew Abraham marvels at his colleagues' deafening silence surrounding the denial of tenure to Norman Finkelstein and Mehren Larudee.
Last week, both The New York Times and The Washington Post featured op-ed letters by Ahmed Yousef, political adviser to Ismail Haniya. In the Times, Yousef focuses on Hamas' reasons for taking control of Gaza. In the Post, Yousef urges the ever-intractable Bush administration to reverse its policies in Israel/Palestine, noting that "Hamas has a world in common with Fatah and other parties, and they all share the same goals." No Empires thinks these articles might be the most worthwhile op-eds to come out both papers in quite a while, though they have prompted much outrage from authoritarians and fascists who think that "terrorists" should not have a place on the opinion pages of a newspaper.

Europe

Robert Fisk, in vintage form, absolutely skewers Tony Blair's visit with the Pope, as well as his new job prospect as the Quartet's Middle East peace envoy. Sadly for Mr. Blair, Catholic-in-training or not, no poorly-timed pangs of conscience can undo 10+ years of ignorance, unbridled militarism, and Washington-teat-sucking. A disclaimer: No Empires finds the second article on Blair linked to above, from the Guardian, a journalistic embarrassment and further evidence of the Guardian's noted slide toward liberal apology. However, we do learn that Blair was encouraged to seek out his future role by none other than George W. Bush, who then passed along his suggestions to the UN, without even the slightest regard for the other members of the illustrious "Quartet." We are also told that, though Mr. Blair's popularity may be lacking in the streets of the Arab world--we can only wonder why!--he is held in high esteem by the "Arab political elites": i.e., those like Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah II, and Abu Mazen, who are currently hammering more nails into the coffin of the Palestinian cause, with the help of Ehud Olmert, at Sharm el-Sheikh. Sadly, despite fresh Russian objections, it does appear that Blair's future is certain. Also see Soumaya Ghannoushi on this veritable slap in the face to both justice and sense.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Israeli government today that Russia, which has not ruled out dealing with Hamas, does not support an Israeli "divide and conquer plan" of isolating Haniya's government and eventually invading Gaza.
No Empires was not quite surprised to hear that the Indian-born writer Salman Rushie was knighted last week, considering his heart-warming transition from apparent anti-imperialist to UK lapdog in the past six years or so. Following Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa that called for the Rushdie's death, "Sir Salman" railed against "Islamists," backed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supported House of Commons leader Jack Straw in the face of his memorable comments on the Niqab. See Mahir Ali and Priyamvada Gopal on the ridiculousness of "Sir Salman."

No Empires Goes Missing

2007-06-25T13:39:00.001-04:00

You may have noticed that No Empires has been MIA for the past week or so. Our apologies. No Empires was in New Hampshire. We will be back with more updates (including posts about our trip and the recent Fucked Up/Career Suicide/Dustheads show) by the end of the day.

Fucked Up and No Empires--Summer 2007

2007-06-18T17:19:00.000-04:00

No Empires missed Fucked Up in New York last summer (one half of NE was in Italy, the other half was late to the game). Happily, the Canadian hardcore outfit will be back in NY about 50 or 60 times this summer, so No Empires will have a chance to see them, um, 50 or 60 times--starting next Friday in Bushwick, with Dustheads. They are sure to be great, so No Empires hopes you come too. Though No Empires is not quite sure how they feel about this, we feel obligated to tell you that like another No Empires favorite, Mika Miko (who will be in New York in August), Fucked Up has some real universal appeal, with releases on Deranged Records (Canadian punks), Vice Records (hipsters), Jade Tree (emo kids), and an upcoming 7" on Whats Your Rupture? (indie-rockers? indie-pop lovers?).

Well-Made World 15

2007-06-18T16:27:00.000-04:00

Gilbert Achcar, a favorite of No Empires, provides a balance sheet on Washington's surge, as George Bush announces that all additional US troops mandated by the surge are in place. A writer for the Socialist Resistance website is Achcar's interlocutor, and while the questions asked may leave one wanting, Achcar's responses are illuminating, particularly as he traces shifts in the strategic/political thinking of Moqtada al-Sadr and Hassan Nasrallah.
The Israeli paper Haaretz features a section called "The Israeli Factor: Ranking the presidential candidates," which ranks the American presidential candidates by how Israel would fare should he/she be elected. Unsurprisingly, front-runners Clinton and Giuliani are at the top of the list, Giuliani for turning down a $10 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, after the prince suggested US policies in the Middle East (and Palestine in particular) might have played a factor in the attacks. (We're surprised someone from the Saudi monarchy was allowed to insinuate even THAT much.) You may recall Giuliani's much-lauded outburst at the second Republican debate not long again after Ron Paul (not included in the Haaretz list) suggested that a cause for 9/11 might have been the fact "we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years." "That's really an extraordinary statement," Giuliani shot back. "As someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq; I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11." No Empires cannot help but be blown away by the fact our fellow New Yorker gets away with this shit. Notably, Barack Obama sits at the low end of the scale--despite his recent overtures toward AIPAC-- but the lowest rating went to Republican Chuck Hagel, who called for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon last summer.

Middle East

Just sworn in as the head of a Palestinian emergency cabinet, Salam Fayyad is already telling Palestinians in Gaza, "'You are in our hearts, and the top of our agenda." No complaints from him, however, when Israel cut off fuel supplies to Gaza gas stations, and not a peep in the face of reports that Ehud Barak--he who, as prime minister, gave the go-ahead to Ariel Sharon's "right-of-ownership walk-about" (the phrase is David Hirst's) on the Temple Mount, accompanied by scores of Israeli security forces, sparking the (ongoing) second Intifada--now, as defense minister, plans to launch a military operation in Gaza within weeks.
Ilan Pappe, in a piece for the Electronic Intifada, decries the Western media's abandonment of any historical context in its coverage of recent events in Gaza, and calls for an explicit rejection of any framing of these events under the auspices of a "global war on terror." He also reminds us that the Strip--not just since last week, but since Oslo--has been conceived of as a completely separate "geo-political entity" by Israel, the United States, and the capitulationist Palestinian "leadership."

Well-Made World #14

2007-06-14T18:14:00.000-04:00

No Empires still hates Lee Bollinger. He was terrible as our university president, and only gets worse when it comes to placating the ADL and friends.
NE could not pass this one up. Turns out that, since 1994, the US military has been researching the use of, shall we say, "unconventional," non-lethal weaponry. The highlight of this article is the revelation of one US hope to develop a bomb that would cause uncontrollable sexual urges among (male) enemy forces. "Let's watch these men fuck, and then kill them!"--is this how it would have gone? For more on enduring racist assumptions about Arab sexuality, from Andre Gide to Abu Ghraib, as well as an eloquent work of intellectual history, see Joseph Massad, Desiring Arabs, Chicago, 2007.
Manhattan judge Charles S. Haight Jr. reverses his recent rebuke of NYPD surveillance tactics, dealing a blow to organized dissent in the city No Empires calls home.

Middle East

Huge developments in Israel/Palestine over the last twenty-four hours. The Western "strategy" of isolating a democratically-elected government is playing out to devastating effect in the Gaza Strip, amid recent intense factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah. Abu Mazen has, unsurprisingly, dissolved the fragile unity government in Palestine and declared a state of emergency; what is surprising, however, is that Fatah appears to have been so thoroughly routed, given its links to Muhammad Dahlan and his millions in arms, courtesy of Washington. No Empires is prone to believe Hamas spokesmen who say that they were pressed to ensure that Dahlan's thugs (the National Security Forces) did not act as a supra-governmental force--though this, of course, does not mean we condone the violence, which of course plays right into Washington's and Jerusalem's hands.
The Palestine Center for Human Rights documents, and condemns, the recent violence in the Occupied Territories, going so far as to apologize for their staff's inability to fully cover events as they unfold, given the starkly dangerous atmosphere in which they are working.
Alvaro de Soto, former UN coordinator for the Middle East (as of yesterday) discusses Palestine/Israel in his End of Mission Report, claiming that the one-state solution is gaining ground, and also that Western refusals to deal with democratically-elected Hamas officials may lead to a weakening of democratic impluses amongst Palestinians. Full text of his speech can be found here.
Not long after Desmond Tutu compares the situation in Palestine to South African apartheid, Israel walks all over him once again. Despite Tutu's efforts to investigate the carnage wreaked at Beit Hanoun last year, Itzhak Levanon shrugs it off, playing the part of the broken record. As usual, he cites "imbalanced and one-sided resolutions" in the UN council, "which utterly ignores the fact that we live with terrorism every day and that more than 3,000 Qassam rockets have been launched into Israel since we withdrew from Gaza," adding that "a large part of these missiles have been launched precisely from towns such as Beit Hanoun." Towns such as Beit Hanoun, No Empires asks? Cheap rhetorical devices abound.
As you may well know, No Empires loves Ilan Pappe. Thank you JL.
And finally, Amira Hass on the current situation in Gaza.

Europe

Simon Kelner, editor of the Independent, responds in full to the exiting Prime Minister's repudiation of his paper, wondering if Blair would have gone so far if the Independent hadn't been so scathingly critical of Blair and Bush's march toward Baghdad.