Obama in Jerusalem

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."

No Empires and New York Magazine

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.

Finkelstein update

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 16

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.

US

• 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."
  

Finkelstein

This is the first in a series of No Empires posts dedicated exclusively to the Norman Finkelstein tenure case.

• Matthew Abraham has written a strong piece in defense of Finkelstein on the Guardian's website.


• Electronic Intifada reports of an ongoing sit-in at the office of DePaul president, Rev. Dennis Holtschneider .


• Columbia's Bruce Robbins is circulating a petition calling for a halt to "business as usual" with DePaul among American academics and their students. No Empires received Robbins' petition in an email, but you can find another letter of support for Finkelstein here.

Well-Made World 13

EUROPE

• No Empires to Albania: Uh, what the fuck?
• Tony Blair, apparently thirsting for (positive) relevance, has lashed out against political reporting in the British media--and by the Independent in particular--for undermining Britons' confidence in their country and their government. Simon Kelner, editor of the Independent, responds, feeling honored at his paper's having been singled out, and even sees Blair's attack as confirming the veracity of the Independent's anti-Iraq war stance.

NEAR EAST

• Flailing around for bedfellows among an Iraqi population it has done everything under the sun to fragment and destroy, the US is giving arms support to Sunni groups for the purpose of fighting their former Shiite allies, who are now accused of representing Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
• Kevin Zeese picks up where Dennis Kucinich left off on the floor of Congress a week or so back, and updates us on the state of the Iraqi "hydrocarbon law," a privitization law that the United States is desperately clinging to as the "benchmark" by which the puppet government must prove itself. Iraqi oil laborers are on strike and are under constant threat from the Iraqi Army and the Maliki government for "sabotaging the [Iraqi] economy."
• Meanwhile, the Iraqi Parliament has recently passed a resolution calling for an end to the American occupation. Today's New York Times, furthermore reports a closed-door meeting between William Fallon, head of CENTCOM, and Nuri al-Maliki, during which Fallon stresses the need for "public progress" on security in Iraq, and where does the pressure start? With the oil distribution law.
• Loose sends us this piece by Patrick Seale, which reminds us that, in recent weeks, George Bush and Robert Gates have stated that the US aim is an "enduring presence" in Iraq--they cite the post-WWII South Korean and Japanese models, though we all know Bush has never read anything resembling a history book in his life--and also that, of the 110 bases built by the US following the invasion, 14 of these are slated to become permanent bases (including the 100-acre compound on the banks of the Tigris--see Well-Made World 6).
  
  LATIN AMERICA

• Richard Gott, the preeminent journalist of Latin America, writes on Hugo Chavez's recent refusal to renew the charter of RCTV, producers of "colonial" television and proponents of the short-lived, CIA-backed coup against Chavez in 2002. See The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, dir. Kim Bartley & Donnacha O'Briain.

U.S.

• In yet more distressing news for academic freedom in America, Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure in the political science department at DePaul university in Chicago, even after his departmental colleagues voted 9-3 in favor of tenure. This would usually be the place for some No Empires-style vitriol directed against Alan Fucking Dershowitz, who wielded massive outside pressure against Finkelstein, but we're too disgusted to continue.

Well-Made World #8

• Rannie Amiri provides more much-needed insight on the situation in Lebanon's Nahr al-Bared camp, pointing to how Siniora's lax approach to Sunni radicals (in the hopes of undermining the Shi'a organization Hezbollah) has backfired.
• The US Congress today, predictably, passed the only version of George Bush's Iraq War spending bill that the President would not veto, confirming their own spinelessness and irrelevance about a year ahead of schedule. This at a time when a New York Times/CBS News poll finds public support for the war at its lowest point since the occupation of Iraq began. No Empires wonders if those responsible for the poll took their own editorial board/news directors into account, seeing as how they share responsibility for selling the fucking thing in the first place?
• Yvonne Roberts takes up the debate over a UK-centered boycott of Israeli products, and asks us to 'throw a stone at Goliath' in anticipation of June 9, a day of Global Action for Palestine. No Empires will be in Washington for the march.
• Robert Jensen weighs in on the all-too-important fight for tenure being waged by the estimable Norman Finkelstein, against the most powerful and most dishonest lobby in the world (spearheaded by the scourge of No Empires, Alan Fucking Dershowitz)--and draws incredibly disheartening conclusions about the state of US academia.
• Howard Friel on how the New York Times aids and abets Israel's impunity in the 'international community."
• Amjad Barham on why the international boycott of Israeli academic institutions is justified, and shows how the vast majority of Israeli academics are at the very least silent in the face of their country's misdeeds.
  

well-made world #1

well-made world #1

• Azmi Bishara maintains both his innocence (of charges that committed treason last summer during Israel's invasion of Lebanon, while still a Knesset minister) and his standing as the most important--and most maligned--Palestinian intellectual in the world.
• Patrick Cockburn on the "Great Wall of Baghdad"
• Patrick's brother, Alex, reports on the self-implosion of John McCain (formally approved and applauded by us at No Empires), and laments the absence of a viable Third Party candidate in the 2008 Elections
• Judith Butler on the recently-published Jewish Writings of Hannah Arendt

Oh. And Alan Dershowitz is still a fucking piece of shit.