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."

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

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.

Well-Made World 17

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.

Well-Made World 15

US

• 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

US

• 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.
  

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 #9

• In Russia, gay rights activists are attacked by neo-Nazis, under the eyes of the police--and then the beaten activists are arrested.
• Israeli historian and No Empires hero Ilan Pappe's latest piece for Electronic Intifada, in parts one and two.
• Virginia Tilley on the academic boycott of Israel.

Well-Made World #5

• No Empires will never understand why the US Army thinks this scheme will work.
• The ever-reliable, and brave, Patrick Cockburn interviews one of the most infamous "jackals" (Tariq Ali's phraseology) of the new Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, who, incredibly, was left off of the original "NO EMPIRES HATES" list.
  
• Sorry to be blunt, Mr. Tenet, but fuck your book tour, and fuck you. Too little, too late.
• Ashley Dawson explains that "while the World Bank's official inquiry denounces the Goodfellas-style strong-arm tactics and scatological language he employed during his tenure as president, it fails to focus on the broader forms of corruption promoted by Wolfowitz. Nor does it allude to the disastrously wrong-headed lending policies that ensure that the Bank's baneful influence will linger long after Wolfowitz's exit." She cites "fundamentally corrupt and undemocratic" appointment procedures at the World Bank and points to a "cronyism at the top extends far beyond Wolfowitz's shady package for his girlfriend" before going on to discuss the Bank's disasterous energy lending policies, which, of course, are unlikely to change once the Bank drops Wolfowitz.
• Bill Fletcher is a former president and executive of the TransAfrica forum, and he's rightly skeptical about the Obama candidacy.
• Ali Abunimah, the indefatigable, continues to push for a one-state solution in Palestine/Israel.
• Yesterday, the NYPD released as-yet-classified internal documents regarding its (extensive/costly/downright fucking frightening) preparation for the actions taken against the Republican National Convention in 2004. The New York Times, apparently looking to flex its "social conscience" muscle behind the ACLU (Mr. Keller, No Empires is not buying it!) has some feedback.
• No Empires supports single-payer health insurance, though this may, for now, be a losing battle: "The US ranked last [among Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand) in most areas, including access to health care, patient safety, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity. Americans were also last in terms of whether they had a regular physician."
• Regular contributor John Loose brings us an update on Washington's continuing and nefarious machinations in Venezuela.

well-made world #2

• "Blair makes his unwilling exit against a backdrop of car-bombs and mass carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for terrorist attack." tariq ali on "bush's zombie," tony blair.
• haaretz's indomitable amira hass on biometric "smart cards" for palestinians.
• the latest on the abduction of bbc reporter alan johnston, who no empires respects as the pre-eminent western journalist working in gaza at the time of his kidnapping.
• electronic iraq on the destruction of the tigris, now a "graveyard of bodies"
• today in the bronx at about 2:30pm, no empires noticed road blockages--duly enforced by NYPD trucks and vans--between 161 st and 158 st on river avenue, directly under the 4 train, outside of yankee stadium. see this article about the singing of "god bless america" at the stadium during the seventh inning. no empires does not approve.
• no empires loves bernie williams.

LATE EDIT(S):
Taking its place alongside Dreams of a Nation, curated by Columbia's Hamid Dabashi--and developed concurrently with a volume of the same name printed by Verso and featuring essays by Michel Khleifi, Bashir Abu-Manneh, Ella Shohat, Joseph Massad, and Dabashi--is the Emily Jacir-curated Palestinian Revolution Cinema. Review at the Electronic Intifada.

and thanks to john loose once again,
more on blair by tariq ali.