It also expresses the main theme as I had interpreted it while reading the work. There are many common ideas, and all are inter-related in one manner or another, but one of the more common phrases, used by many of the writers, is one containing the root word tribe or tribal. The tribe in this case are those brought up and living in mainstream Jewish thought, arguments, and traditions, where Israel and the Jews are constant victims and recognize no others, maintaining at the same time their exceptionalism with their place in history. That is putting it simplistically, but in each short personal memoir different strands of the idea stand out.

Tribalism is mentioned throughout the work:

"I realised then that Judaism was more about tribalism than a universal religion....my antipathy to injustice is now much stronger than any tribal loyalty inherited from my ethnic background....Jewish moral tradition...which was enhanced by the European enlightenment, was substituted with a tribal code based on loyalty and revenge."

"This [incident] sheds light on the mechanisms for enforcement of tribal loyalty....where ethnic and tribal sentiments are involved, even exemplary intellectuals may lapse....The feeling of seeing an alien tribal ritual has stayed with me - an anthropological perspective on the customs of a culture to which I don't belong."

"I no longer need an identity other than my own, and I experience myself as a member of the human race rather than of a particular tribal group."

"Said [author of "Orientalism"] dragged me through my tribal narcissism....I developed a world view and ethics that were universal rather than tribal or relativistic."

"I immediately had to re-think my childhood...the tribal paranoia and martyrdom."

These comments return to the editor's theme of changing of thought patterns, of breaking out of familiar dogmatic ways of acting and thinking into a more fully self-actualized person. The results of this are twofold - a rejection or loss of the previous tribal group, and an acceptance and opening up to new ideas, opportunities, and friendships. However, for those that are labelled deviant, "Deviant behaviour may reflect a pathology of the society rather than of the individual." Further for those that make a change, "To be well differentiated it is necessary to develop a sense of self that is separate from the collective identity of our primary work group."

One writer noted that he had lived within a "limited identity" and until he "acknowledged the profound influence of this primal error, may participation in the generational reenactment of hatred and retribution, of chronic hostility, and mistrust, was destined to continue." He then had to consider "the possibility that they didn't become our enemies because of who we were; they became our enemies because of what we did." [italics in original]

Jewish progressive humanism

Accompanying the tribal idea was the recognition that the tradition of progressive humanist Judaism was being lost by the actions of the Zionists and Jewish residents of Israel and the U.S. and other countries (for this work notably Australia, U.K, and Canada). Some writers arrived at this awareness slowly, some realized it as a sudden event brought about by some significant contradictory evidence of behaviour (what we did) - all through exposure to the plight of the Palestinians who for several "had no opinion about the Palestinians because I had never heard of them." Or from their experiences with the IDF where the Palestinians "were invisible." Much of that of course is part of the Israeli/Jewish culture, where schools "talked about Israel, but never mentioned Palestine or Palestinians."

For one author, "the rich progressive humanist Jewish traditions which were so strong among Jews before the Nazi Holocaust...Has been replaced by fear, aggression, and harsh ethnocentricity - a shocking and ironic posthumous victory for Hitler."

One referred to tikkun olam, repairing the world, and felt closer to their Jewish progressive traditions because of their activism. This was extended more by another author, who argued that simply doing a good deed was insufficient, that to be a radical activist involved "going to the root of the situation and repairing it so the world can be a better, more whole place." For all the activists, their background in Jewish progressive humanism supported and reinforced their change towards their activities, and only highlighted the hypocrisy of a tribal code that spoke of universal values while denying them to others, "the deeper moral issue was identical [to apartheid]. It was the issue of inalienable human rights."

Lies and myths

One of the more important revelatory moments came when the activists became aware that they had been lied to and misled. The new truth becomes, "that authorities lie, conventional doctrines are often false, official power is used to suppress the truth and punish 'deviants'." The historian Ilan Pappe noted that the Israeli military archives "exposed the Israeli historiography to which I belonged, as having been developed by a fraudulent group of experts...I had a sense of betrayal." Others, learning their history within their community learned "a version of history that I have now come to understand as a wild and vivid myth."

In much milder terms, Anna Baltzer, says "I was the one who had been misled," as she listed numerous incidents that challenged her orthodox ideas. She witnessed medical deaths due to lack of access to proper medical treatment, harassment of children and farmers by settlers, lack of clean water, trees and houses ripped apart by Caterpillar tractors, the destruction of Gaza, the lack of educational opportunities, and on, also witnessing ultimately one of the Palestinians' characteristics, "steadfast."

For Rich Forer, he came to acknowledge his "history of delusion and denial," recognizing that when it came to Israel, he "had brushed aside challenging questions in favour of an irrational but emotionally satisfying appraisal."

More basically stated, Rich Siegel says "I had been lied to all my life."

The future?

Many of the activists express thoughts indicating that Israel could not survive in its present form and had to change, that its colonial settler mythology and practices could not support the country into the future.

"Israel can only bring about its own destruction if it clings to its current path of colonial domination of the Palestinians."

"Israel, like all colonial regimes who managed in the end to redeem themselves from their oppressive pasts, must traverse a long and painful trail from de-colonisation through reconciliation, to a new form of political life that is just and inclusive of all the country's inhabitants, before it can expect security and normalization."

Ilan Pappe again, says "that unless Israel is de-Zionised there is no chance for peace." He adds, "There is little chance for change from within Israeli society." The issue "of boycott and sanctions, seemed urgent to me as I still believe that the operation in 1948 which I coined "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine" continues today, and it has to be stopped to avert another catastrophe."

Referring back to the Jewish humanist tradition Starhawk writes "I was raised to love justice, not tyranny - no matter who the tyrants profess to be. Without justice for the Palestinians, there can be no security or peace for Israelis."

Much more...

"Beyond Tribal Loyalties" is much more than the ideas reviewed above. It is a powerful expression of humanity in search of itself, of recognizing the atrocities that are perpetrated against the Palestinians and against the fundamental humanitarian values of Judaism. The stories are deeply personal, emotional, simply written and represent a very valuable record of how the world could possibly be changed. This is a wonderful work of human emotional effort and physical presence to overcome layers of prejudice, lies, and mythology. It should receive wide spread attention as its message is one ultimately of hope, of awakening to a new broader global humanity, of a secure world existing in peace.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of
opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestinian Chronicle. Miles' work is
also presented globally through other alternative websites and news
publications.

I should have stayed with him, because in his own way he does reveal the true nature of the U.S. empire - arrogant, myopic, self-centred, and self-contradictory. My favourite quote from him, in the "Lexus and the Olive Tree" (Anchor/Knopf Doubleday, 1999) is amazing in that it is both so supremely right and supremely wrong at the same time:

"Indeed, McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. And these fighting forces and institutions are paid for by American taxpayer dollars." (p. 464)

So supremely right in that it is true. So supremely right in that it is false.

It is true that the U.S. military backstops the U.S. economy around the world, although it is not quite the "hidden fist" that Friedman might want it to be. It has been doing so for centuries, from the slaughter of the indigenous people of North America, through the Spanish defeats in Mexico and later abroad, on into the wider spaces of Asia, until arriving at today's global full spectrum dominance, or at least the attempt to get there. From railroad barons, through banana and sugar cane barons, and oil barons, all the way through to the barons of the financial world, the U.S. military has been part and parcel of the corporate consumer deal at home and abroad.

It is false in that Friedman intends this as a positive attribute of the U.S. system, one that is of benefit to the world, reflecting all the hubris and patriotic jingoism that the U.S. self defines as being the "essential" country for its moral and democratic leadership. It is false in that it makes 'free enterprise' not so free and it makes democracy and liberty anything but the ability to pay homage to the great superlative ethics of the U.S. - or be destroyed attempting to deny them.

Happily, it only took Belen Fernandez nine pages to reach this quote in the first section of her book discussing Friedman's views on the U.S. From there, she proceeds to display Friedman's incessant lack of intelligent thought.

The Arab/Muslim world

Personally, the writing took on more importance when Fernandez began discussing the Arab/Muslim world, not that U.S. domestic postures do not affect the world. Rather than simply stating the obvious fallacies of his texts as she does in the first section, the Muslim/Arab section is more focussed on deconstructing the nature of Friedman's writing. While presenting to the reader her desire for a "better contextual understanding" of Friedman's work, Fernandez places more emphasis "review[ing] certain defining characteristics of Friedman's writing, as well as key historical events - namely 9/11 - that have influenced his perspective."

Immediately he is criticized as having a reliance "on overly simplistic and baseless analyses of international phenomenon..." and in a similar vein, "to downplay the importance of the historical milieu in which populations exist and events occur." Associated with this is "[t]he jingoistic bombast and sense of vicarious delight in military punishment" contained within his writing. The third characteristic comes from Friedman's restrained recognition that some of the things the U.S. does are not the "best...this should not have a sustained negative impact on its global image or arouse undue suspicion about its present motives." These characteristics are indicative of his position, a "testament to the advantages of having a news job in which one is not required to maintain a coherent discourse."

Fernandez' largest criticism is "Friedman's intermittent reliance on infant terminology to analyze parts of the Arab/Muslim world...one manifestation of a tradition of unabashed Orientalism that discredits Arabs and Muslims as agents capable of managing their own destinies." She divides his orientalism into pre- and post- 9/11 with the pre- 9/11 described as "a subtle tendency toward ethnic stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims," although I would disagree here and from her own examples, it is rather blatant stereotyping.

Along with the language factor, Friedman "anchor[s] Oriental subjects in antiquity, where they remain in perpetual need of civilization by the West and its militaries." Accompanying this "mission civilatrice" is Friedman's interpretations of women and their role in both Arab/Muslim societies and their rescue by the U.S.

Other factors come into play, more general than the specifics of the Arab/Muslim world. She describes Friedman's "failure to keep abreast of his own views on certain issues," and his "institutionalized habit of self-contradiction."

Israel/Palestine

All that is truly criticized for the Arab/Muslim world remains true and even more seriously highlighted for Israel /Palestine. According to Fernandez, Friedman's overall position is being "able to advertise himself as a serious critic of Israel while simultaneously reiterating that the nation "had me at hello," which "shifts the spectrum of permissible discourse such that any substantive criticism can be rejected as extremist." Friedman himself is a self-confessed 'Israelite', and as a result

"Someone who openly adopts a state founded on a policy of ethnic cleansing as a personal "badge of pride" does not of course, qualify as an unbiased commentator on the Middle East."

Other factors affect Friedman's writing on Israel/Palestine. He operates with full double standards when it comes to Israel, his "predilection for double standards favoring Israel is visible time and again, as is his predilection for calling attention to double standards not favouring Israel." His ability to change his arguments to suit his story is an example of "historical revisions" that also serve "to excise from the record his own previous reports."

While discussing Friedman's unquestioning support of U.S. support for Israel, Fernandez critically says "History may yet produce a term along the lines of "schizofriednia" to signify self-contradiction, selective memory, and failure to integrate one's thoughts." Finally, she offers,

Friedman's warmongering, apologetics on behalf of empire and capital...attest to this representative role in Western mainstream media...largely composed of journalists who "perpetuate the dominant ideology" and act as "the functional tools for a bourgeois ruling class."

But I much prefer Friedman's own probably unrealized ironic statement on that issue:

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact checking, we have a problem.

Details

I have not delved into the many detailed examples that support Fernandez' arguments on the above statements. The work is readily accessible for any reader, whether familiar with criticism of empire or not. The many contradictions, bad metaphors, revisions, and other examples are so rapidly presented and intertwined that the worst danger is becoming dizzy with the confusion of ideas drawn from many different sources. For all that, Friedman is worth reading from an informed viewpoint, as he truly does represent the empire at its best in terms of apologetics, contradictions, arrogance, and misrepresentations of facts. However, Fernandez' work, "Imperial Messenger," should be the companion volume to any and all reading of Friedman.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of
opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle and Uncommon Thought Journal. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

We have had in the intervening years since that publication a significant decrease in democracy within the U.S. (constitutional issues, international law, and human rights issues such as torture). Indeed if democracy is inimical to mobilization, then democracy needs to be avoided, and its "restraining" power has been greatly diminished (when were the people, the demos, last asked if they wanted the U.S. to go to war?) As for demanding and orchestrating authentic transitions, that has been exposed through global media as being very real, although always with unexpected outcomes - and notice that the "transitions" are not necessarily labeled as democratic, simply transitions. The record over the last decade would also show that stealth has not created a secure international system (secure for whom - the global elites, the corporate bosses?) While stealth has been tried, so has massed military attack - all with expected 'unexpecteds' (sort of like Rumsfield's "known unknowns").

In short, yes there is an empire, a U.S. empire, it is not democratic, it wants transitions to its own favour, and will try to make it happen either covertly or overtly. Neither is working well, unless one considers that the global elite are becoming richer at the expense of the many. He noted that his personal first hand experience witnessing events in the world was his education and drew him to the classics of philosophy and politics "in the hope of finding explanations for the terrors before my eyes.

With that as my background to Kaplan's writing, I thought that reading Monsoon would be a rather antagonistic affair, even while trying to keep in mind that this is obviously written from the U.S. perspective however ingrained or not that might be. Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised, not that I was in full agreement with his perspective, but his writing was both informative and entertaining within the recognition of his North American view of the world (with apologies to Mexico). Using a combination of historical background, anecdotal experiences, current interviews, supported by a wide range of travels, Monsoon becomes a worthwhile reading experience. It is a similarly engaging style as with Thomas Friedman and Robert Fisk, without the depth of perspective that Fisk delivers, and fortunately without the sometimes rather bizarre conclusions and statements that Friedman manages to come up with.

The theme of the book - no, not global warming - is about U.S. foreign policy and how it has and will relate to the littoral states of the Indian ocean, necessitating the inclusion of China within that discussion as a non-littoral but very involved state. Travelling generally from west to east in the narrative, Kaplan presents historical background, current situations, and personal perspectives with lively and vivid descriptions along with information from interviewing a variety of people along the way. Returning to his statement from above, that he hopes to find "explanations for the terrors before my eyes," he comes close, very close, but is just moments short of grasping what he is really seeing or saying.

There are areas of context and interpretation that do limit the text. Two of his main sub-themes are Islamic terrorism and democracy, and for both he makes statements that are almost 'aha' moments, but then are left hanging without actually making it into deeper connections. Further from apparent awareness, although perhaps lingering constantly in the background, is the very empire which he identified earlier as not being given its due background for the region. Other empires - Portugal, Dutch, British, French, Japanese - are all included for the influence they have had on the region, but little is discussed of U.S. actions, covert and overt, in the region, past or present. In the manner in which his information is presented, it makes little difference to the agreeable nature of the narrative, but it needs to be kept in mind while reading that there is much of the overall general context of the U.S. imperium that is not discussed. Diego Garcia is one of the singular misses, the island nation given to the U.S. military by Britain while the indigenous Chagossians were evicted from the island and not compensated. Ethnic cleansing? Racism? Empire? Certainly far from "the restraining power of our own democracy."

So what about that democracy and terror? While the work does not specifically state that Islamism is the home of terror in the region, it does continue throughout, as would be necessary, the idea that most of the countries are Islamic or have large Islamic populations (India has about 160 million Muslims, second largest in the world). Further Kaplan places that in context with the endemic poverty of the region as being the seed ground for possible terror recruitment. If he examined his own words more carefully, he should be able to make the statement that Islamism does not breed terror, that poverty does not breed terror, but that subjugation/occupation especially from a different religious ethnic group is what creates terror.

Kaplan identifies social disruption, ethnic and religious occupation, lack of official responsibility (think the denial of democratic rights to Hamas) as being reasons for most of the disruptions to organized government in the region. That they happen to be in Islamic countries is no surprise, as the Islamic countries have been beset with imperialism for the past seven hundred years, if not longer. And while Kaplan recognizes the influences of the previous empires, very little is made of the current U.S. aggression and occupation of the region, nor its support and manipulations of various regimes that have come and gone, good guys become bad guys and move on.

If Kaplan could have recognized the real train of thought that he has come up with, it would be that Islam is not the heart of terror, that disruptions to one's daily life, to one's homeland, to one's religion and set of social beliefs is the main reason for terror. That is true for Sri Lanka (where a Christian led the Tamil rebellion and initiated the advent of suicide attacks), Ireland, South Africa, Lebanon, Vietnam, and much of Latin America (see also Robert Pape Dying to Win and Martin Roseroot Pious Passion). Poverty may be co-related, but is not a cause in and of itself, otherwise there would be a significant greater amount of terror in the world. Social disruption of belief systems and threats to one's lifestyle especially by an occupying force creates the seed for terror. That is Kaplan's biggest miss, although he does present his own evidence for it.

As for democracy, Kaplan makes a very curious and powerful statement early in the book:

"Americans have had a tendency to interpret democracy too legalistically, strictly in terms of laws and elections. They put perhaps too much stress in the act of voting itself, an interpretation of democracy which can inhibit American power rather than project it. In some societies, particularly in the Middle East, democracy is a matter of informal consultation between ruler and ruled, rather than an official process." [italics added]

Oman is used as the exemplar, as it "demonstrates that whereas in the West democracy is an end in itself, in the Middle East the goal is justice through religious and tribal authority."

I am not sure what was intended by the line about inhibiting or projecting U.S. power, but the rest of the statement is profound in its simplicity - democracy is not just a vote, it involves discussion, consultation with the people and their beliefs. The U.S. is currently one of the prime counter examples to this (although many other western nations - democracies - could be included), with an elaborate multi year voting system with all sorts of rules and regulations that tend to limit participation rather than include it; then, when elected, it is the elite that rule and the main people consulted are the carpetbaggers and corporate bosses of the world. Hardly a democracy in Kaplan's true view.

All in all, read the book, it provides good background information to the region and softly delves into what the future might hold. At the same time keep in mind the lack of U.S. imperial context and interest not only for the littoral states, but other states bordering on those states.

Both of these strands of course support the desire of the U.S. to have a stable political status quo in the area in order that their over all imperial intentions can continue while the puppet governments and their oppressed people 'dialogue' for no change at all.
U.S. principles are clearly defined by their actions. U.S. "principles" are violent and repressive, and have been throughout their encounters since the beginning: towards the indigenous population of North America; towards the Latin populations throughout Central and South America; towards the people of Asia; towards the people of Africa; and today we can see the violence towards the people of the Middle East and South Asia where U.S. military forces are occupying two countries and coercing others through their subservient elites into complying with U.S. imperial wishes.

The main principle expressed throughout U.S. history, in spite of
the hubris and arrogance of their lofty verbal principles, is to control as much of the rest of the world as possible, ultimately by violence. Compliance is also achieved through soft coercion of the elites, by manipulating the financial status of nations through the institutions of the Washington consensus, by supporting any group that will overthrow any government that opposes U.S. interests, and through the more obvious direct unilateral military action.

While I do not like violence, as no intelligent and reasonable person would, most of the positives of the world have not come about because people were complacent and governments generous. Human rights of all genres - for children, women, ethnic minorities, workers - have all had to fight in some form or another to achieve their rights. Oppression of these rights in a violent manner - remembering the use of private security officers and the army in repressing the workers movements in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s - often leads to violent reactions.

To see Egypt protest against its own government, in a manner which is essentially non violent, becoming violent in reaction to the hostility of the police, including under cover plains clothes police, can in certain respects be directly attributed to U.S. support of the Egyptian government. From that I was disgusted in listening to both Hilary Clinton and Frank Wisner proclaiming their love of dialogue and principles.

We have seen how the latter has worked out in Palestine/Israel. We have seen how that has worked out in the broader Middle East extending into South Asia. We have seen how that has worked out for the border fence with Mexico and the new drug war expansion in that country. It is visible within the U.S. as more and more restrictive legislation is passed, while the Pentagon budget, the war budgets, and the security budgets go relatively untouched. U.S. violence is pervasive, from within its own society to its grab for the resources and markets of other societies.

The U.S. has no interest in democracy in the Middle East as that would create governments hostile to its intents and purposes as the electoral success of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shi'ites in Iraq, and Hamas in Palestine testify. It is too late for "dialogue", too late for "principles" to work their wonders. Now is the time for action and reaction - with the end results unknown. If the U.S. truly wants "diplomatic dialogue" and enforcement of its principles, its first and absolutely necessary tasks will be to remove its military from the region and stop funding of oppressive regimes.

I wish the Egyptian people every success in establishing a government independent of U.S. influence, of any influence other than their own. No one at this conjuncture knows how the situation will settle out or what the long term ramifications are if Mubarak is overthrown. Mubarak operates (operated?) a violent and oppressive government with the clear financial and political support of the U.S. The people want change, and violent oppression may create violent reaction, as the burning police vehicles and the burning of the government party's offices demonstrate.

And a final note, thank you al-Jazeera for your continued live coverage of the events. Your eyes on the world reveal much of what U.S. media ignores in their support of U.S. military and corporate intentions in the Middle East and around the world.

The first article "Beyond Moderates and Militants - How Obama can Chart a New Course in the Middle East" struck me as a non-starter as Obama has done nothing to do away with Bush's heritage and has extended it further east with another surge into Afghanistan and incursions and covert actions into Pakistan. The authors introduce Obama with what I perceive as an error in that "the Obama administration has rejected...the worldview of the Bush administration." Perhaps rhetorically with vague talk about change and hope, neither of which offer any practical solutions, leaving Obama's actions to speak for themselves: unconditional support for Israel; kowtowing to AIPAC; supporting military occupation as a theoretical means to bring peace into the region; and basically not challenging any of the previous actions of the Bush administration. His appointees in a variety of positions within the executive are mainly from the previous Bush and Clinton administrations.

Much of the article emphasises the Palestinian/Israeli problem. This "resumption of crises in the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, and between the Israelis and the Palestinians prompted an ongoing, persistently vicious, and periodically violent renegotiation in the balance of power among nations...and within nations." There is much to argue with here. There has been no resumption of crises as it has been ongoing for decades and the "vicious and violent renegotiation" rises almost entirely from Israeli contravention of international laws of all kinds with U.S. support ideologically, financially, and militarily. This is combined with U.S. vicious and violent actions in pre-emptive wars in the region very similar in nature with regards to international law as the Israeli actions. That context is missing.

The article argues on, coming to a mid-point conclusion that Obama is pursuing policies that, "had Bush implemented them during his administration, may well have worked." That is a rather bizarre argument as Obama has not changed the U.S.' military or economic posture in the region, only the rhetoric. Following that the authors say the U.S. "risks making vital policy adjustments only after it is too late." Adjustments? Such as removing the military from the Middle East? Israel's "undeclared nuclear program, foot-dragging approach to peace, and often single minded reliance on military means to resolve conflicts are hard to reconcile with Obama's intention to restore [U.S.] standing in the Arab and Muslim worlds." The rhetoric may well be working, as people generally do want change, but U.S. actions, which have been pretty much identical to the Israelis on the military side, do not support the supposed benevolence of Obama's words.

The article to its credit does at least recognize Israeli intransigence and the "one dimensional approach" used by the west, and it recognizes the contradiction about the U.S.' "promotion of liberal values [as] a pillar of Middle East policy" at the same time "trampling the very principles underlying that vision." U.S. history is filled with good intentions (rhetorically) and murderous deeds in foreign countries. It also recognizes that with its military and economic power the U.S. "still enjoys veto power over virtually all significant regional initiatives," but some of those regional initiatives - Iran supporting the Shi'ites of Southern Iraq, Hezbollah gaining and so far maintaining a degree of political power in Lebanon - have not exactly worked according to U.S. desires.

The nuclear issue receives brief comment without discussing the overwhelming predominance of Israeli nuclear power under its official policy of maintaining ambiguity by not stating anything. There really is no ambiguity, but by not stating that it has nuclear weapons, Israel avoids all sorts of political posturing that would be necessary in its rhetorical arguments about peace, freedom, democracy, equality, and its position as the underdog victim in the region. It also avoids coming under attack for having double standards vis a vis Iran within the context of the NPT.

Finally the article settles on the idea that the U.S. must "grasp the necessity of including new regional actors to help achieve what is now beyond the ability of Washington and its allies to do on their own: giving legitimacy and credibility to an Israeli-Palestinian accord." Obama will have to "go further and close the book on the failed policies of the past." This of course contradicts the statement about having veto power over regional initiatives, but ignoring that for now, there is little discussed about what the alternates to the reality of the failed policies could be. So many have been offered here and elsewhere, yet the authors seem reluctant to address the various alternate solutions as to their chances of success or not.

If it is beyond the ability of Washington to be successful what are the alternatives? Getting out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and stopping military and financial support for Israel would certainly change the U.S. policy in the region. Stop threatening Iran indirectly with the "all options" phrase used so often in current political discourse, threats contrary to international law. Or perhaps least likely, the U.S. and its allies - Great Britain and Canada in particular - could step up and announce a credible Israeli-Palestinian accord that recognizes the true nature of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and, combined with military and financial counter-actions, pressure the Israelis into accepting a rational settlement with a functioning contiguous Palestinian territory as a neighbour to a democratic Israel. That alone would settle much of the discord in the region. It is within the realm of the possible; unfortunately maintaining course, maintaining the status quo seems to be the path of least resistance for the U.S. - and unfortunately serves Israeli interests all too well as they slowly take in more and more Palestinian land.

Are they ready to change course? Short answer, no. They have neither the moral courage nor the humanitarian instinct to do so.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications such as Uncommon Thought Journal and Rowan's Avenger.

There is plenty of that in Canada's position. In his speech supporting Israel at a "gathering of international parliamentarians and experts," he performed the old standard of conflating the Holocaust with the creation of Israel, yet he should know that the Zionist cause began well before there were any indications of that genocide. Christian Zionism could be argued to have begun even before the European variety showed its colours at the turn of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Both Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists understood that to occupy Palestine meant the displacement by some means - some form of ethnic cleansing or genocide, of the indigenous people - the Palestinians - who resided there and had since the beginning of the Christian era.

With the holocaust newly behind them, the UN offered a plan - it was just a plan and not a declaration of the creation of a state, Israel did that unilaterally - offering the Jewish population more than their share of the land base when numerated on a per capita basis. Harper then disingenuously says Israel is "the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack." But wait a moment. If the Israelis claim, as they do, that they have a mandate from the UN to establish the state, then that claim would apply equally to the Palestinians as they were also mandated a state alongside the Jewish state.

Not only is the state of Palestine threatened, its very existence is threatened as it has essentially been dismantled and split up into many little cantons or bantustans or in the case of Gaza, a large outdoor prison. After the Israeli pre-emptive war of 1967, the Palestinians were left with only twenty per cent of the land. That small portion has shrunk into the little truncated areas of today, with the whole region occupied by the military, with both the Israeli military and civilian governments ignoring international law as it relates to occupation and human rights.

The very real threat is to Palestine, yet the Israelis have deviously managed through repetitive rhetoric to try and maintain the world view of themselves as victims. Israel exists. It has declared itself. It will continue to exist. It originated several wars, including the nakba of 1948, the Six Day War of 1967, the invasion and occupation of Southern Lebanon, the invasion and occupation of Syrian territory, a second attack and invasion on Lebanon, and the ruthless and barbaric attack - not that they all weren't - on the defenceless citizens of the Gaza strip.

Harper then argues that Israel "is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation." I would have to agree with him on this point, but with cause. Israel has full supremacy over the region due to its several hundred nuclear weapons that preclude any attack on Israel by any other state in the region. It has the full support of the largest military and largest economy in the world, the U.S., a partner that believes and acts in a pre-emptive manner, ignoring the very same international standards as Israel does. Yes, there are many other problem areas in the world, but the U.S. occupation of areas of the Middle East, its military and financial support of Israel ($3 billion a year), its kowtowing to any demands that Israel makes for fear of its own domestic votes, its support of non-democratic and oppressive regimes, creates an identical powerful set of international crimes.

Harper of course uses condemnation as a sign of anti-Semitism. No, it quite simply is a sign of opposition to criminal activity that has the intent of displacing all the Palestinians. The historical record is replete with statements about the Zionist knowledge of and willingness to express that they would have to use force in one manner or another to create an ethnic Jewish state.

Yes, there is anti-Semitism in the world, but more importantly there is also a strong and completely separate strand of condemnation that is simply against the criminal abuse, murder, imprisonment, torture, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, the people who are truly threatened in the region, whose country has essentially disappeared from the steady encroachment of the Jewish settlers on their land. That is not anti-Semitism, perhaps anti-Zionist at worst. Nor is it an attack on the Jewish faith.

Harper himself is a fundamentalist right wing Christian. Under his beliefs that the Jewish people are the chosen people, that the land of Palestine is really the land of Israel as a God-given covenant, and that the land of Israel needs to be repopulated by the Jewish people before the Christian messiah can return, he needs to ask himself some questions.

What kind of God is it that allows for the greed and arrogance of occupying a land and dispossessing and killing its indigenous populations, of placing them in cantonments/reservations and denying them all the opportunities that the supposed democratic and free societies they claim to be are able to provide?

What kind of God is it whose chosen ones and their main ally torture, incarcerate, starve, invade, and destroy civilian infrastructures in other territories, who rob their resources (oil, water), and carry the strongest and most deadliest of the weapons of mass destruction while trying to argue that others should not have them?

In light of the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people and their threats and actions against other countries, will God remove them from his graces, deliver them some humility, so that they may again at some future time serve as beacons and examples of Gods divine graces?

Are the Israelis acting on an anthropomorphized divinity by which they get to claim their own fundamentals, however contrary to either humane or divine love and compassion they may be, contrary to not only humanitarian law but divine law?

Harper`s ignorance of Palestinian/Israeli history has to be wilful. Neither the existence of the Jewish people nor the state of Israel is threatened, they are far too strong for that. Anti-Semitism does exist, and I agree it needs to be expurgated. At the same time the state of Israel still needs to be recognized for its true character as a non-democratic occupier of Palestine whose actions contravene most accepted international norms. Israel and the U.S. both need to accept these international norms before the majority of the rest of the world will be able to stop their condemnation of their actions.

Harper's comments express an ignorance and conceit - and dishonesty - placing him alongside the best hubris and rhetoric offered by his U.S. and Israeli compatriots. He will probably take that as a compliment.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications including Uncommon Thought Journal and Rowan's Avenger.

In an historical sense, looking at the way the idea of being chosen affected the decisions and events around the people claiming to be chosen, the authors did a reasonable job. It is much more of an historical overview than a psychological examination of the ramifications that assuming and advocating "divine election" would create. The material covered does provide a slim overview of historical events.

In the Jewish case the mythological biblical events concern the original 'nation' of Israel - nation being a term that has several meanings according to its context - and how it develops through the diaspora and on into Zionism and the current problems of Israel/Palestine. In the case of the United States, the historical review starts with the first colonial settlers and their attitudes and actions in relation with the indigenous populations, and then carries forward through several presidencies to the current support of the state of Israel by the U.S. government.

Within these presentation the obvious questions should rise, that "If you are the chosen people, are you acting in a manner in which that divine election was intended? And if not, is there the possibility that the election could be nullified?" The authors put it this way, sort of a half question, "that its [Israel's] values rested on the people's commitment to God's commandments, that the land was theirs only so they might strive to become just?" This is followed by another half question reminding the readers that "Israel's first two historical sojourns in Zionism ended in exile, with the Lord displeased with His people's transgressions, their greed and idolatry?"

Following more discussion of Zionist philosophy, the authors conclude that both "religious and secular Zionists adhere to a narrow, materialistic interpretation of chosenness." The result is that "They reject the ordeal of working toward a more just society in favor of facile striving for territory." They are bereft of a different understanding of chosenness, "as a burden...a divine commandment to build a society that treats its sons, daughters, neighbors, and strangers with compassion and grace and at the same time renounces any claim of superiority." Further, expressed in messianic terms, "once the idea of the Promised Land is severed from the messianic desire to the reward with just deeds, the Jewish people, secular and religious alike, are left with the forceful pursuit of territory."

Turning next to the U.S. the authors highlight the idea of the claims about a "new Jerusalem", of being a "beacon...a light shining unto others," the essential idea being that the state would serve as an example and draw others who want to also exemplify those standards towards it. The brief history given shows how this idealism was often, and is especially under the ongoing consequences of Bush's actions and personal messianic beliefs, turned into an arrogant, conceited, and racist views of the peoples of the world who did not agree with U.S. foreign policy. The other became "evil", the U.S. is good, and there is little in between. Except that examining the actions of the U.S. in comparison with what it says it wants serves only to dismiss the words as plain contradictory rhetoric.

While the book itself is reasonable, it has a poorly argued section, almost apologetic but not quite getting there, which essentially asks "Why pick on Israel and their treatment of the Palestinians and Arabs when there are so many other bad things going on around the world that do not get mentioned?" A second similar question is made for the U.S., "Why are they blamed for all the bad things going on in the world? The answers should be obvious to the authors, but they choose not to see it. The authors end their argument with the question, "in a world of dispossession and monstrous injustice, why the rancor and disproportion." Their counter examples include slavery and slaughter in Sudan and women's right throughout the Arab world, good solid bread and butter issues to fall back on when one's overall strategic plans and goals come under detailed examination.

The answers are inter-twined for both questions, as the U.S. is the main financer of the Israeli military, supports its actions in the Middle East, and is using/being used by Israel for respective foreign policy goals. The main response is, that yes, there are many other atrocities around the world, many other areas that could be examined, but in consideration of the wealth and power of the U.S. and Israel, their very central role in world events, in all Middle East events, makes them subject to the brunt of critical foreign policy analysis and humane international criticism around the world.

The Sudan and Arab women's rights, the depredations of the Khmer Rouge (really, also initially aided by the U.S. involvement in Vietnam just as their involvement in Afghanistan against the Soviets aided the rise of Islamic fundamentalism) and a host of other ills in the world are very real, but remain peripheral to - tho part of - the fundamental U.S./Israeli imperial designs for the world. Are they being singled out? Yes, and for cause.

Perhaps that chosenness has something to do with it as well. Both Israel and the U.S. claim to be chosen by God in some manner. But what kind of God is it that allows for the greed and arrogance of occupying a land and dispossessing and killing its indigenous populations, of placing them in cantonments/reservations and denying them all the opportunities that the supposed democratic and free societies they claim to be are able to provide?

What kind of God is it whose chosen ones torture, incarcerate, starve, invade, and destroy civilian infrastructures in other territories, who rob their resources (oil, water), and carry the strongest and most deadliest of the weapons of mass destruction while trying to argue that others should not have them?

The hypocrisy, greed, arrogance, double-standards that accompany the words and actions of the U.S. and Israel raises probably two final theological questions: Will God remove them from his graces, deliver them some humility,
so that they may again at some future time serve as beacons and examples of Gods divine graces? Or are they even truly God's chosen people, and are acting on an anthropomorphized divinity by which they get to claim their own fundamentals, however contrary to either humane or divine love and compassion they may be?

This is not a great book, nor in the one section even a reasonable book. It does however raise some interesting ideas on what effect the belief in being chosen can create within the world of the here and now. It can serve as a starter for a discussion on chosenness, but the history of the idea needs to be combined with a much stronger basis of understanding the current foreign policies of both countries to have a true comprehension of the effects that the idea of divine election has had and will continue to have on real world events.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

At initial view the trajectory of the six persons studied may appear subject to a disjointed story, yet the history flows from one person to the other not just on the consistency of the policy issues, but with the connections between the various persons via their families, friends, and political associates. They are all bred from the same elite group that has been in power from the beginning, undergoing political name changes and sometimes political rhetoric but always with the same message - the empire for liberty.

What Immerman highlights within this theme is that the empire is much more about empire and much less about liberty. With that, he begins with a discussion on what an empire consists of and what liberty consists of, having more difficulty defining the latter than the former. His work "seeks to persuade the reader that America is and always has been an empire," and that the "extension of America's territory and influence has always been inextricably tied to extending the sphere of liberty." He admits that liberty is interpreted "so broadly and in so many different contexts, that it all but loses its meaning."

One of the "fundamental features of empire" identified by Immerman is that within an empire "Centralization and integration are distinct from equalization...Class and regional differences [remain]." Further, "Because of violence's historic role in the establishment of empires, not all the people with the heterogeneous population could qualify as citizens, not all were equal, not all could or would assimilate, and not all consented to the rule of the sovereign." After exploring the various permutations of empire Immerman concludes that the U.S. "fit even the most restricted definition of empire by the outbreak of the Civil War." His work takes a broader perspective however and sees the U.S. empire as roll-over from the intentions of the British Empire on the North American continent.

While introducing the six persons chosen for the essays, Immerman indicates that "Neither the formulation nor implementation of U.S. foreign policy is democratic. Only an elite few get a "Vote." By their rhetoric and by their values, these individuals gave voice" to the silent majority and "played pivotal roles in shaping the course of the American empire." From his clearly developed thesis and his strong precis of the important players of his choice, the characterizations that follow provide a lively, entertaining, and informative package on the development of the U.S. empire of liberty.

Liberty...and racism

The central theme that keeps reoccurring is that of 'liberty', and how it is misused and abused as part of the rhetoric of empire. It begins initially of course with the obvious lack of liberty for the black slaves and the indigenous population, the sub-theme running throughout of this brand of liberty being racist (and thus unequal and non-democratic).

Benjamin Franklin is first on the list, at first an ardent supporter of the British Empire, who from circumstances changed allegiance to the new American Empire, "His choice of an American empire over Britain's was his most difficult, agonizing decision." Even here at the start, the concept of liberty was limited. Franklin's goal for the American revolution was "to create the institutions under which ordered [italics in original] liberty could thrive," but while often speaking of liberty, it "was a means to an end, not an end in itself." For the indigenous people, "it never occurred to him to grant Indians the liberty to remain on the land," nor "it never really occurred to him that Canadians were at liberty to resist envelopment by the American empire," and he still denied liberty to his slave.

As the nascent empire expanded it ran full on into the conflict between expansion and liberty. The concept of expanding one's empire to protect the homeland is not a Twenty-first century concept, but had its origins with the southward and westward expansion of the U.S. In the era of John Quincy Adams, the next of Immerman's subjects, the acquisition of Florida involved inhabitants "sympathetic to the United States [who] would stage coups and then request U.S. annexation." That successful paradigm was accompanied by "just war ideology" suffused with the "racism he shared with his countrymen" to articulate a doctrine of the right to defensive war."

These policies led to Adams prescient thoughts on the empire, that "by enlisting under other banners than her own...the fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....She might become the dictatress of the world." During this era of the creation of the Monroe Doctrine, more contradictions rose, as "The more forcefully [Monroe] demanded the abolition of colonization, the more difficult it became to divorce the expansion of U.S. territory from the expansion of slavery."

Slavery, insisted the southerners, "was the purest form of liberty." While best remembered for his opposition to slavery and the annexation of Texas, at the end of his life and career "Adams had yet to denounce slavery publicly. Union and empire always took precedence."

Commerce and the military

The concept of liberty became conflated with commercial prosperity, as phrased by Immerman's third candidate of empire, William Henry Seward, who proclaimed commerce "the chief agent of its [America's] advancement and enlargement of empire." This commercial empire, had the military to support it, as evident in "Admiral Matthew Perry's coercive "opening" of Japan in 1854 to American trade." Seward was one of the first proponents who "advocated enhancing U.S. military, especially naval, capabilities, and signalling America's willingness to use force to buttress its diplomacy," and thus its commercial control.

Following Seward, Henry Cabot Lodge championed the same militant perspective, one that continued especially through the Latin Americas. During this era, secretary of state James Blaine "marked the shift toward the aggressive global posture that portended America's emergence as an overseas empire." Hawaii, the Philippines, and Venezuela all were subject to the more aggressive posturing. Liberty for Lodge, "was never more than an abstraction."

The acquisition of Hawaii was represented through the commercial interests of white sugar agribusinesses, but for Lodge "military and strategic concerns were paramount," concerns that "were inseparable from America's national character...the character of force." Lodge became the "point man for American imperialism," who was not concerned about possible damage to the domestic sugar industry, nor were there any "considerations of the native Hawaiian's liberty," as "upon these islands rest a great part of the future commercial progress of the United States."

Lodge's rhetoric played the race card as well, as the U.S. imperial drive "makes for civilization and the advancement of the race." His rhetoric also included the arrogance and conceit of empire, boasting "We have a record of conquest, colonization, and territorial expansion unequalled by any people of the nineteenth century." Lodge perceived the U.S.'s mission as "a mission of freedom", yet the contradictions of freedom with the obvious racist overtones of statements made about the Philippines "demonstrated a remarkable facility for intellectual gymnastics."

Empire of security

These same themes carried forward into post World War II rhetoric and actions, first with the Cold War and subsequently with the "war on terror." John Foster Dulles, Immerman's fifth subject, cared even less about liberty and was more concerned about security. Dulles became known for his "moral crusade [of] reducing statesmanship to a religious contest between good and evil." With a strong Christian fundamentalist background, Dulles championed the right of the U.S. to lead the Free World "by exercising...its spiritual, ideological, economic, and, most important, military power. Dulles did not concern himself with the liberty of those subject to U.S. rules." Liberty was in his vocabulary, but "without the need to provide substance to its meaning."

It was during Dulles' tenure that the not so covert coups in Guatemala and Iran occurred, under the auspices of his brother Allen Dulles, head of the newly created CIA. The Iranian coup was "an unintended consequence" of his influence (taking place in association with the British), a "watershed in the growth of the American empire" and its further consequences or 'blowback' that is even more evident today than previously. And in Guatemala, the country was "liberated...from its own people, and as a consequence made a mockery of the very word liberty. [italics in original]"

Immerman summarizes the results of Dulles' tenure saying

"the empire Dulles was so instrumental in constructing was unequivocally not an empire of liberty. Whether wrestling the imperial mantle from the British and French or building on the foundation laid by American decades earlier, what became the outposts of America's empire in Southeast Asia, in the Middle East, in Latin America, and elsewhere allowed for little liberty within its populations."

Empire of full spectrum dominance

The final subject of Immerman's careful research is Paul Wolfowitz, a neocon player within the Bush government. His influence carried on well before the Bush regime, and even when an insider his seemingly lower position of influence belied the significant part he played in creating the empire of "full spectrum dominance." Wolfowitz was well schooled in the theory of nuclear warfare, creating the base necessary for believing in the utility and practicality of first use pre-emptive nuclear weapons warfare.

Fitting the motives to suit their own purposes, the neocons, with Wolfowitz in full stride, more fully developed the sinister aspects of the 'evil' empire of the Soviets, believing that the "Kremlin lacked the moral scruples to be trusted and possessed the technological capacity to cause incalculable damage when it cheated [on nuclear parity]" Wolfowitz's "messianic impulses" early on led him to identify the Persian Gulf in general and Iraq in particular as "potential grave danger...because at stake were vital oil reserves, and because the Arab-Israeli conflict presented a ready platform for mischief making" by the Soviets.

The neocons that Wolfowitz represents "resolutely held to the premise of America's exceptionalism," among whose attributes "was its righteousness" contrasting with not just the Soviets but much of the rest of the world who were "evil." This good-evil dichotomy made the neocons "wary of negotiations and multilateral institutions." This "temperament...shuns complexity, tactical adjustment, and the role of patience in geopolitical manoeuvrings," creating an atmosphere wherein "the U.S. must also abandon its atavistic aversion to using force."

Wolfowitz himself combined a self-righteousness with "an extraordinary confidence in the efficacy of American arms," harnessing together its "unassailable moral purposes to its unassailable military might.....No one had been more instrumental in developing the conceptual framework for Bush's global posture, and no one was more attuned to or sympathetic to the president's agenda." In a prime case of blowback, Wolfowitz's desire to do away with Saddam Hussein, Wolfowitz's "arrogance" and "hubris" "led to what may turn out to be the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, a blunder that could prove fatal to the empire."

'Promoted' to the head of the World Bank, Wolfowitz "brought to his first meeting his reputation for arrogance, self-righteousness, ideological inflexibility, contempt for the conventional wisdom and the professionals responsible for it." Being "in so many ways the personification of the twenty-first century's "Ugly American", he was forced to resign from that position and his career is "on hold." For those concerned about liberty, one can only hope he stays on hold.

Obama's hope

As with all histories, the writing creates a time lapse that makes interpretation of current events difficult if not impossible. Immerman ends his work castigating the Bush administration as "detention, torture, and rendition were systematic, orchestrated by the [CIA] with the Bush administration's explicit approval." Following that he looks forward to the 'audacity of hope' and 'change' that have proven to be meaningless under Obama's leadership. While recognizing that Obama has not followed through on his rhetorical promises, he indicates that the future "may well incorporate less empire and more liberty."

If so, it will probably be involuntary, in the face of the triad: of military ineffectiveness even with massive superiority in a technical sense; of the economic problems whose solutions are so far benefiting only those large corporations who are operating well within the structures of the empire; and of the increasing environmental problems as indicated by recent global weather events. The empire may well be less - more liberty remains highly uncertain.

Immerman's journey through the "Empire of Liberty" strongly supports his starting theme. The United States has always held imperial ambitions. The large contradiction involved within empire places its requirements for expansion and acquisition of territory and wealth against the liberty of others at home and abroad. This is an excellent work that flows cleanly through the history of the U.S., a valuable addition to any library concerned with history, empire, and liberty.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

Nakba and ethnic cleansing

The first sections of Jamal Kanj's story outline very quickly the events of the nakba, with references to the even longer history of Zionism going back to 1896 and a declaration from Theodore Herzl concerning the endeavour "to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed, procuring employment for it in transit countries, but denying it any employment in our own country."

Demographics has always been a problem for the Jewish state and give the lie to the democratic claim of the Jewish state. Jamal quotes Joseph Weitz, the head of the Jewish National Fund in 1940, saying, "Not one village must be left, not one tribe. The transfer must be directed at Iraq, Syria, and even Transjordan." Ben Gurion, from whom comments about peaceful coexistence can be found, nevertheless felt and understood the problem created by a resident Arab population, indicating that the UN partition plan "does not provide a stable base for a Jewish state....There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%."

Jamal ends his introduction with notes concerning the life of 'survivors': "the refugees have indefatigably remained part of a nation, without the state." This becomes a heavily ironic comment in comparison with the declared and possibly mythological exile of the Jewish people over two thousand years. This is perhaps the underlying theme to the work, that the Palestinians "have remained part of an enduring nation in exile. The dispossession and the challenge to survive have become their very identity and a key component of what it means to be a Palestinian."

Camp life

Life in the camp was "deprivation by circumstance" yet that deprivation was tempered by the idea that "it is not possible to lack what you have never experienced." Protected as best as possible from life's hardships by his parents, the family lived "a relatively normal life." For Jamal, this was all too true, as his early life centred on life in the camp, and "life was normalized by what we had and not by what was lacking." Higher education and a skilled trade became goals for the children of the camp.

Daily life consisted of fetching water for washing and cooking on a daily basis from a communal water tap. Firewood was important, gathered from local farmers fields and hedges from around the camp, or from the beaches of the Mediterranean where the camp was located. Bread making was another daily requirement. These activities, done mainly by Jamal's mother, were also one of the main sources of news and gossip in the camp.

Jamal describes his personal economy, digging up sand and aggregate from the beaches for construction, selling scrap metals and rendered animal bones for fertilizer products. Farm labour on nearby Lebanese farms provided another source of funds. Fishing with rod and line, latter supplanted by dynamite, provided food and funds.

Never accepted as citizens, the refugees were extremely limited with any economic or personal contact with Lebanese society, although as time passed, not only did the refugee camp become somewhat self-supporting and innovative in both a technical and business sense, it also interacted more and more with the countryside and villages around it.

Education and activism

As Jamal approached the teen years, political awareness and revolutionary ideas developed. As political and resistance activities increased in the camp, so did Israeli incursions, from land and sea. The general rule was followed in that "It was...very common for Israelis to shell civilian neighborhoods indiscriminately and disproportionally under the specious pretext of self-defense."

Part of this was the delayed fused munitions that exploded well after the raids ended, when people had gathered at the scene of the attack to give assistance; another part was the cluster bombs that left hundreds of unexploded ordinances lying around that Jamal and his friends helped round up (now there's an everyday 'normalized' activity that most of us have never experienced!)

In spite of the obstacles thrown up by being in a country that did not give citizenship to the refugees, Jamal persevered with his education. For the most part of his high school years, civil war disrupted camp life physically and economically. It also disrupted the activities of the educational institutes he needed to attend in Lebanon.

Outside

The combination of determination, perseverance, and good timing led Jamal to Baghdad in order to obtain his high school diploma. His reaction to Baghdad was very positive, as "One cannot live in Baghdad and not acquire fond memories of the place....At the time, the Iraqi government was also looking toward the future, as the zealously promoted education, self-reliance, industrialization and manufacturing. Learning was becoming an important pillar in Iraqi society."

From there, he left for the United States where he earned an engineering degree (1983) and later an MBA in Global Management (2001). His story does not cover this period, but returns to a later visit to Gaza and the West Bank under UN auspices. After describing a near fatal accident while visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem, his passage aided by his UN credentials, Jamal ends his story with an account of the destruction of the Nahr el Bared refugee camp.

Return to Nahr el Bared

Several plausible reasons are provided for the destruction of the camp. First, the "disappearance of another Palestinian camp is one less political hurdle in the complicated peace process," in which the Arab governments tend to call for a "Just solution" rather than a right of return. Israel is suspected of playing a part in the camps destruction - no surprise with that - through there spy networks and military provisions. Another aspect mentioned is the demographic balance as "Lebanon's democracy is held together by a thin thread balancing arrangements across the sectarian divide."

The camp's successful economy also played a part in its demise, as its proximity to Syria and the Mediterranean "helped create a relatively strong and vibrant economy," part of which involved smuggling contraband goods, even though that money generally went to large Lebanese traders. The camp competed successfully with Tripoli and surrounding communities as costs were lower, labour costs were lower, and as the government did not recognize the camp residents as citizens, there were no taxes collected.

The final summation is directly stated: "Arab governments and the international community, and even the Palestinian Authority, provided a cover for the destruction of thousands of homes under the pretext of fighting "Muslim fundamentalists."

The destruction of the camp deepened Jamal's understanding of what the earlier generations had suffered, what all of Palestine had suffered during the nakba. He was "able to fathom the secret of the older generation's eternal connection to Palestine, a nation that continued to exist only in their historical memories."

Palestinian identity

Jamal Kanj's story evokes all the emotions experienced through life's trials, enhanced and exaggerated by it being experienced within a refugee camp that remained under continual stress from external forces. The book is well written and does not dwell on the deprivations, but instead emphasizes the successes of life within the camp, successes against many seemingly overwhelming odds. From that success, the success of survival and more, the Palestinian identity will remain strong within its own community. Children of Catastrophe explains that identity and brings it to life in a straight forward manner, for those beyond the borders of the community, to the larger community of global humanitarian awareness.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publication.

This most recent work, Washington Rules, is appropriately titled and well focused on the one main theme that 'Washington' - the political and military structures of U.S. government - is responsible for and the only country capable of maintaining world peace through global leadership and the only means to do so is through military might. This leads to Bacevich's "trinity": a global military presence, global power projection, and global intervention. The route this trinity takes through successive governments from Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon through to Bush, Clinton, and more Bush demonstrates that it is neither a Democratic nor a Republican ideal but is instead a government institutional ideal that all presidencies have bought into up to and including Obama. The media presents presidents as being the "...Decider, a president all too often becomes little more than the medium through which power is exercised."

Certainly there have been differences in approaches, permutations of ideas and means, changes in structures and devices, but the over-arching "American credo of global leadership and the sacred trinity of U.S. military practice - commit the United States to what is in effect a condition of permanent national security crisis." This permanent crisis, fostered first by anti-communism and now by anti-terrorism, this trinity, this strategy "has propelled the United States into a condition approximating perpetual war."

Ironically, by being so engaged, "this reliance on military might creates excuses for the United States to avoid serious engagement" making it "unnecessary to attend to what others might think or to consider how their aspirations might differ from our own." That also leads to "an excuse to avoid serious self-engagement" to the extent that "citizens of the United States have essentially forfeited any capacity to ask first-order questions about the fundamentals of national security policy."

Those statements, coming from a retired U.S. army colonel who has taken it upon himself to educate himself about the discrepancies he perceived after the fall of the Berlin Wall, are a powerful indictment of the U.S. military, political, and economic structures that allow a state of perpetual war while ignoring the problems at home, "Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland and Detroit." Education becomes part of the answer as "When Americans demonstrate a willingness to engage seriously with others, combined with the courage to engage seriously with themselves, then real education just might begin."

All the Presidents

After these introductory comments, Bacevich takes the reader on a tour through the highlight events of U.S. foreign policy as dealt with by successive presidents.

Starting with Eisenhower, the base line was set for a paradigm of global dominance via covert activities from the CIA under the tutelage of Allen Dulles, and overt activities with the start up of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), under the tutelage of General Curtis LeMay. The CIA's 'successes' included the overthrow of the Mossadegh constitutional democracy in Iran in 1953 [2] and the CIA instigated coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guaman in Guatemala. [3] LeMay's success was the creation of the overwhelming nuclear force of bombers that he provided the battle plans for, worrying little about costs as per Congress, "SAC served as an institutionalized economic stimulus program."

Both were intent on defeating the looming national security crisis of communism. While Dulles and Lemay "testified to [their] hopes of averting a showdown with the Soviet Union, each promoted patterns of behaviour that increased the risk of such a confrontation."

Transiting from Vietnam

From that base Bacevich works forward in time. The Kennedy years witnessed Cuba and Vietnam, two significant events which reinforced the U.S.' adherence to the 'trinity' of global affairs. It also witnessed the development of a "fraternity of nuclear strategists" who were "Trafficking in jargon tricked out as profundities" generating "a dizzying array of obfuscating twaddle." Not much has changed there except that perhaps the "twaddle" gets piled higher and deeper as time goes on.

Vietnam, "a war fought to sustain the Washington consensus," resulted after all was said and done as a transformation of "a people's army into a professional force," in which "decision makers gain[ed] a free hand to use a military over which the American people had forfeited any ownership."

Former UN ambassador and secretary of state, Madeleine Albright serves as Bacevich's focus to demonstrate how the Washington rules had been "fully refurbished" for delivery "into a new millennium." He quotes four significant statements from her, the two which stand out are, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" and the usual U.S. boasts that "...we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further...into the future."

Bacevich recognizes the language as "pretentious...grating...and royal" yet realizes that she was "deadly earnest...and expressing sentiments widely shared across the foreign policy elite." These views, "central to the Washington consensus...the pursuit of exalted ends empowers the United States to employ whatever means it deems necessary," resulting in, as described earlier in the book, "highly flexible moral standards."

Into the Gulf

The presidency under Jimmy Carter is often viewed in the media as that of a 'peace' president, but Carter did more than his share to push forward the military power of the U.S. He reneged on his vow to remove troops from Korea, and under his watch, the Pentagon "began developing a major new base in the Indian Ocean on the British-owned island of Diego Garcia, a project that involved expelling the island's inhabitants." This ethnic cleansing of a colonial British claim set up the major base in the Indian Ocean from which the U.S. watches and operates throughout the Middle East and all of Southern Asia.

The big move was in the Middle East - rather than turning down the military presence overseas as the Cold War chilled, Carter set in motion the U.S. adventurism into the Middle East, declaring that any attempt "by any outside power to gain control of the region "as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America," to "be repelled by any means necessary including military force....The significance of the shift in military posture that Carter set in motion can hardly be overstated."

Overseas operating bases, rapid deployment, 'precision' munitions, and light fast forces became the new norm, with "Operation Desert Storm represent[ing] the culmination of a reform project that had absorbed the energies of the officer corps ever since the Vietnam War ended." Following this, the blockade of Iraq, the "unexpected" attack of 9/11 which provided the new Pearl Harbour for the fraternity of nuclear/military strategists, then followed by "Iraqi Freedom", the claim that this "concerted exercise of American power would eliminate the conditions giving rise to violent jihadism and affirm Washington's claim to global dominion lost all coherence and credibility."

Open ended war

The final section of the book examines the current overbearing military presence that has extended the Washington rules into an era of proclaimed never ending war. This "Long War", the "Global war on terror", two terms now trying to be forgotten - along with Bush's ill-considered but with elements of truth "Crusade" - represents an era when "open-ended war became accepted policy." Congress under the Democrats "routinely voted the money needed to ensure the war's continuation, tacitly signalling their fealty to the Washington consensus." While Obama campaigned on the slippery concept of change but only "produced results that served primarily to affirm the status quo," "little of substance has changed" with the Washington rules, only affirmation and extension.

Two groups accommodated willingly to this enterprise. First, "The American people more generally, accommodated themselves to this prospect," even though "victory had essentially become indefinable and the benefits accruing to Americans were at best obscure." The second group more obviously was the military itself, wherein "An officer corps that had once resolved to avoid protracted war at all costs now contemplated an era of conflict without end," and "persuaded [the generation of officers represented by Patraeus] to see armed conflict as an open-ended enterprise."

Surge, COIN, and Obama's accommodation

The surge in Afghanistan, (modelled on the surge in Iraq that was "successful" only by a co-relationship with U.S. money buying off the Sunni insurgents) demonstrated that "By escalating the U.S. military presence there, the president in effect ratified the Long War." The "counter-insurgency campaign" - COIN - or more accurately a "targeted assassination campaign" that is far from accurate - became the new idea introduced into "Obama's war."

Obama does not ride easy with Bacevich as with the surge, "the actual ability to exercise choice had already passed from his hands." The result, reiterated, is the ratification of the long war, wherein "the president had effectively forfeited his opportunity to undertake a serious reassessment of the basic approach to national security formulated over the course of the preceding six decades....Real change would have to wait for another day."

Education

Recognizing that "there is no end in sight, even though the conditions that first gave rise to Washington rules have ceased to exist," that "the problem set has changed, while the solutions proffered...remain largely the same," Bacevich looks for a solution.

First he returns to the credo and trinity express in his introduction. These Washington rules "Deliver profit, power, and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries...media personalities and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations." The credo combined with the money and power opportunities "make the imperial city on the Potomac one of the most captivating, corrupt, and corrupting places on the face of the earth." If the status quo remains, the future holds "a military that is perpetually at war and...an economy propped up by perpetual borrowing caus[ing] one or both to collapse."

Alternately, Bacevich sees the U.S.' role as to model democracy and freedom rather than impose it, to create at home a "more perfect union" that is a beacon to illuminate and exemplify the way, and "any policy impeding that enterprise - as open-ended war surely does - is misguided and pernicious," not to mention deadly and disastrous at home as well as abroad.

He asserts that "No evidence exists - none - to suggest that U.S. efforts will advance the cause of global peace." Military supremacy is both an illusion and a disaster, and U.S. forces should primarily be stationed in the U.S. The only effort that will succeed is that "U.S. troops should withdraw from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia forthwith." Unfortunately in that regard, "The Washington consensus persists...because if conforms to and reinforces widely accepted, if highly problematic, aspects of American civic culture," a large part of which is "individual choice above collective responsibility and immediate gratification over long term well being."

Ultimately, "If change is to come, it must come from the people." Thus the need for education "to take on the responsibilities of an active and engaged citizenship - has become especially acute," otherwise "Over the horizon a shipwreck of epic proportions awaits."

A powerful conclusion, from a well written, well sequenced work. Bacevich has a logical coherent thread throughout his arguments about the militarization of U.S. society by way of the national security strategies. As for education, it initially rises from seeing enough or being given enough information that is accurate (media take note) such that "dissonance [is] too great to ignore. The ensuing process of confronting illusions...and of dissecting the contradictions besetting U.S. policy [is] sometimes painful and never easy...The ability to see things as they are, without blinders, is [a great gift]"

Bacevich has been well gifted.

[1] see Andrew J. Bacevich:
American Empire, Harvard University Press (2002);
The New American Militarism, Oxford University Press (2005);
The Limits of Power, Metropolitan Books (2008).

[2] see Stephen Kinzer:
All the Shah's Men, John Wiley & Sons (2003);
Overthrow, Times Books - Henry Holt and Company (2006).

[3] see Nick Cullather, Secret History, Stanford University Press (1999) for details of this overthrow.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of
opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is
also presented globally through other alternative websites and news
publications.

Somehow I cannot do that, and it leaves me 'dazed and confused' when the mass of information that is available reveals quite transparently that all the major disaster news items are related and that the sum total of them all is that on our current course, we are all facing dramatic and perhaps traumatic changes to our lifestyles. Today's news items that leave me dazed and confused run the full spectrum of scary items: Euro devaluation; massive oil pools in Gulf of Mexico heading towards Gulf Stream; Arctic long term ice rotting away; 145th Canadian and 1000th U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan; Israel continues occupying Palestine.

Economics

The global economy appears to be nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme that will fall apart as soon as a critical person, institute, or mass of investors stops believing they can reap more profits from it. Finance capitalism displays its fault lines all across Europe as the EU in conjunction with the IMF and World Bank - the Washington consensus - bailed out Greece. This imposes on Greece an austerity program that has long proven that it does more to impoverish the middle and lower classes offering more regressive taxation accompanied by a decline in social services and social benefits ranging from medical services, through education to pensions and income assistance.

The bailouts in Greece and the resulting market chaos from a frightened financial sector will take its toll, as usual with the masses absorbing most of the losses in the form of higher taxes and degraded services, public and private. With one big thump, neo-liberalism and its finance capitalism has arrived in Greece, soon perhaps to be followed by Spain, Portugal, Italy and who know what others to join Latvia, Estonia, and Iceland as failing Euro-states.

For all the rhetoric spewed out by global economists, it only goes to strengthen my long held belief that economists are essentially useless and the "science" of economics is an oxymoron as it is based on invented formulas from imagined markets. It also strengthens my fear that sometime soon, combined with all the other elements in the economic news concerning banks and mortgages and employment stats, something catastrophic will happen to make everyone's savings and earnings next to worthless.

Oiling the Military

And then when it costs an estimated one million dollars a day to maintain one U.S. soldier in the Middle East, it only emphasizes how the military is very much involved with our current global economy, in more ways than one. Along with the cost of the war - in the hundreds of billions of dollars, leading into the trillions - are the costs to the occupied countries from a wide range of parameters including civilian infrastructure (housing, water, electricity, schools, and hospitals), chemical poisons (from various ordinances including depleted uranium and white phosphorous), internal refugees, and the destruction of local economies, increasing the chances of graft, oppression, and criminal activities.

Which still omits the purpose behind the wars in the first place, supposedly based on a global war on terror, and the spreading of democracy and freedom throughout the Middle East...while the reality of the wars is the opportunistic events of 9/11 enabling an excuse to become a global military hegemon trying to capture the oil, gas, and mineral wealth of the region at the same time containing the rising power of China and the re-assertiveness of Russia.

Of course the part of the military news reported this week is the 145th Canadian soldier and the 1000th U.S. soldier to die in Afghanistan, most of them from IEDs buried at roadside or in car bombs, as with this incident in Kabul. Broadly suggested on the patriotic front is that we must all support our troops, something I find hard to do when Canadian troops are not much more than allies for the U.S.'s intent on military control of the world. Seldom is mention given to the thousands, hundreds of thousands, of the local populations killed directly from military action or indirectly from its many collateral consequences. An indigenous person who fights against foreign occupation immediately becomes a terrorist, yet the real terror being spread comes from the reported imminent assault by U.S./NATO forces against Kandahar, even though similar actions in the much less populated villages of Marjah has been an understated failure.

Another tie in militarily is of course Iran and Israel. With Israel thumbing their collective noses at the U.S. administration, unthreatened by U.S. military strength as it has its own finely tuned military - supported in a large part through U.S. 'aid' and supplies of high tech military equipment - the U.S./Israel/Iran triangle creates the fearful situation of another impending military action, perhaps leading into the use of nuclear weapons depending on the fierceness or not of Iranian resistance. That scenario is currently tempered by the news report of Brazil's Lula reaching a limited agreement with Iran and Turkey on the transportation and servicing of enriched uranium, but it waits to be seen how the U.S. and Israel argue their way around this diplomatic action that bypasses their efforts at control.

And then on into Pakistan, 'Obama's war' of choice, undeclared, fought through covert operations within the population and within the government agencies, while a large clear majority of the citizens see the U.S. as the biggest threat to the country. It is also fought through high tech warriors at computers well away from the actual situations, relying on nothing more than their own gut level despisal of the indigenous populations. The Pakistan situation goes to show that the main U.S. response to its declining global economic role, its reliance on oil for the vast majority of its economic demands, its only true method of resolving any situation it does not like, is to send in the military. Who's next? Iran? Venezuela? Korea? As the U.S. empire becomes even more aggressive militarily, I can only think again, we're all facing something quite dramatic and traumatic!

More oil

Totally unrelated to all this military and economic garbage, at least as presented by the media, are the two news items this week that supposedly have an impact on the environment. Which they do, but their impact and significance go far beyond the reporting of the actual information as narrowly presented in the news and most commentaries.

The biggest news is that of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It has had no real impact on the economy, other than the regional economy of tourism and fisheries along the Gulf Coast, but no earth shaking effect on the dollar or the overall economy, perhaps more significant if it reaches the Gulf Stream and on into the Atlantic.... Yet it is all too representative of the overall economy. The necessity for oil in our high energy, easy energy economy, the disdain for environmental safeguards, placing profits above the environment we live in, the ignoring of information concerning the drilling operations such as the partial failure of a rubberized protective pressure gasket signals that the corporate world, the supra-national corporations that have effectively superseded governments in many areas, could care less about anything but their own profits.

Our easy energy economy relies on oil and its derivative products. Everything we do, everything we have, is all related to the easy energy provided by oil, a resource that is at or very near its peak, with not a slow rundown on a bell curve at the end, but a roller coaster style drop off as extraction becomes more difficult for a variety of reasons. Our agriculture runs on oil, from the fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides through to its transportation thousands of miles away to the homes of those that can afford the luxury of thousand mile meals. Our health structures, medicines, tourism, our whole civic structure based on the automobile, the world of plastics, the energy needed to make and use all the consumptive demands of our society rely on oil.

All that consumption is expressed in the other news item concerning the Arctic ice cover. The climate change deniers will not go away, but there is irrefutable evidence that the climate is changing. That evidence comes in part from the Arctic ice, now with only twenty per cent of it remaining as long term multi-year ice, the rest is new annual ice. The surprise comes from the awareness that although the winter ice appeared to have regained its cover - as it had - the multi-year ice had diminished greatly and what was left was a conglomeration of rotten ice and new ice. More evidence comes from the indigenous people, the Inuit, who have lived there for millennia and now are unable to read the ice and weather patterns as they change rapidly from their long ancestral observations. The culture changes with it as new names for new phenomena of weather and flora and fauna are being introduced.

All that oil, coal, and natural gas, our natural heritage from millions of years ago when the climate created an enormous energy bounty harvested naturally from the sun, we have squandered on an easy fast paced uncaring life in the short term for a decidedly undetermined, uncertain, and freaky future. The developed countries bounty comes from the easy energy domination of oil and the corporate structures controlling global wealth and global finances. Our changing climate with its wider range of variability is very much still an unknown...but what is known is that the ice cover, which was forecast to be gone in a century or so from the Arctic ocean, is now possibly going to disappear completely (except for winter ice cover) within a decade or so.

There in the Arctic is the confluence of our oily greed, our uncaring effluent affluence, our military solutions to world problems. When I look at the responses to natural and man made disasters around the world I shudder to think what would be the consequence of another major military action that could result in the use of nuclear weapons. I shudder to think what the climate might throw at us as it continues along its unpredictable responses to the carbon energy we are pumping back into the atmosphere. The economy, which in the news is generally front and center, becomes a matter of worthlessness when faced with what could be large and sudden changes in the status of global energy and weather systems.

Solutions....

I sometimes wonder if there are any realistic solutions given human nature, its short term perspectives, its vanity, and its supposed intelligence that somehow always seems to create some form of blowback for its actions. There are solutions, ones that would still create dramatic change but hopefully soften the trauma for everyone. The changes need to be significant and not just the cosmetic panaceas that cover - and conceal - the symptoms but do little for the actual underlying problem of living in a militarized consumptive finance-oriented society

In no particular order, as they are all complementary actions, there are several ideas that need to be put into action, hopefully through a rapid evolution of common sense intelligence toward the planet and its inhabitants, as revolutionary ideas while founded on good ideas and great plans, often create a deterioration into violence that nullifies the intent of the actions in the first place.

Israel/Palestine/Iran and the rest of the Middle East

Israel/Palestine are the symbolic focus of the militarized activity in the Middle East and South Asia. The tie in between the Israeli and U.S. military in all its components (industry, politics, technology, finance) demonstrates the perversity of human nature in relation to a falsely created 'other'. The 'other' for the Israelis occupying Palestinian lands are the Palestinian 'terrorists' conveniently supported by the U.S. designation of any thought or action against their occupying forces as being terroristic. The solution to any problem in for both countries has proven to be some kind of military violence, neither truly wishing to negotiate, with its implications of equal bargaining rights and acknowledgement of legitimate grievances on the part of the occupied and subjugated peoples.

This part of the solution is simple but I do not see it happening. The occupiers need to go home. The brief spate of democracy that went awry - with Hezbollah gaining recognition in Lebanon, Hamas defeating Fatah in Palestine, the Shia's gaining power in Iraq with a challenge to U.S. occupation, and Egypt cracking down violently on its renewed opposition to autocratic rule - challenged the very theoretical philosophical rhetoric of democracy and freedom that these countries pretend to uphold. This part of the solution should happen, but it won't, as the other imperial factors of resources and finances are slowly nibbling away at the security and wealth of the 'homeland'. The empire will not go away peacefully.

Corporations

Another solution not likely to happen due to the power structures involved and the political and military tie ins is that of controlling the corporations. The supranational corporations - many larger than governments, most having entitlements to sue, threaten, lobby and challenge national governments that even the local citizens do not have, all provided by agreements that were decided upon in thoroughly non-democratic fashion - need to be shut down. Perhaps not totally disbanded, but they need to have their political and legal powers greatly curtailed if not abolished.

Corporations are set up for one purpose - to create wealth for the owners and avoid legal responsibility for anything else while doing so. The big corporations need to be brought under national civilian control, meaning essentially under national law based on human rights, social rights, and environmental responsibility. Responsibilities for the environment, workers conditions and rights, product recycling should all be implemented at both the global and national level. The cost of doing business should include the real costs on the environment and the people that work and live in that environment. Failing that, they should simply be disbanded - nationalized and broken apart.

There would be of course much screeching and crying about the loss of wealth and the loss of employment and the crashing of the global GDP and all the other economic ills that our current finance capitalism and debt burdened financing are creating anyway. With the environment threatened and in return giving humanity a literal unexpected blowback, with the economy teetering on the edge of chaos, the main solution will come from taking away the power of the corporations over the legitimate concerns of a country's citizens.

Many of these corporations rely on the 'hidden fist' of the military for their survival, both for capturing and harnessing resources and markets, but also as part and parcel of the militarily financed corporations that create so much havoc globally. To think they will go peacefully away when their very foundation is threatened by the shrinking energy resources of the world is illusory. Citizens and duly elected governments need to stand up for their integrity and get rid of the power of the corporations that truly rule our lives.

Think skeptically, act positively - live locally, think globally

The foundations of a soft-landing for the restructuring of our relationship with the environment and the decreasing ease of carbon based energy resources needs to start with information and education. With human intelligence and craftiness much could be done to alleviate any hard landings from environmental change, economic collapse, and the loss of easy energy. I have to question whether any government, whether any group really has the power to do this as the inertia within a society based on fast fuel and ease of transportation and manufacturing energy will be hard to transform.

The elites in society will wish to remain the elites and hoard as much wealth and power they can retain as events change around them. Very few people will be accepting of giving up their privileges, very few will be accepting of giving up their easy entertainment and comfortable thoughtless manners that lead us closer and closer to an ultimate need to change and restructure. Change is certain. The environment will dictate that to us very soon, denial or not. The loss of carbon energy will dictate that to us very soon, denial or not.

I expect the news not to change much. What I can hope for is that as many citizens as are able will read and inform themselves about all the global concerns by comparing and contrasting the words with the actions of the current powers, corporate, political, and military. They truly create a dissonant sound, confusing, obfuscating, lying and concealing. Read, be informed, think skeoyically, act positively (act actively - be an activist, let your voice be heard), live locally while thinking globally. In the meantime, I remain, still, dazed at the possible significance of it all for my future and current and future generations of my family, confused by the apparent inability of others to see that action and not complacence is needed to make real progress towards a successful future.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

One of the more interesting discussions was on OpEd News from two articles by Josh Stieber, a soldier who was with the same company/unit but did not go on the mission having recently adopted conscientious objector status. [1] The arguments ranged from outright condemnation through acceptance of Josh's position without accepting the overall military effort, to those supporting the soldiers with their own apologetics. Overall it was an interesting discussion that appears to have generally taken the middle course, and hopefully the author's realizations about the inhumanity of war will provide effective discussion points that can help other soldiers wake up to the reality that war is not the answer (to what question, if any?), that war has an international criminality beyond the propaganda of empire couched in the terms of patriotism, democracy, freedom, and peace.

Rules of engagement

An article in al-Jazeera [2] took the stronger position of the apologetics side, to the point of essentially saying, really, look, its not our fault, it's the rules of engagements fault, and, hey, we're just doing our job. Robert Grenier, former CIA chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan does his best " to try to explain US behaviour as honestly as possible" while hoping it "will make sense to those who typically look at the world and individual events from a different perspective to that of most Americans." He is trying to explain "why the US government, and the people who represent it, behave as they do." Grenier tries to speak calmly through his self-righteous indignation over people finding fault with his beloved country's mission, one he should know well as a CIA employee.

Not an easy task and he does not succeed, except perhaps for the members of the choir who are already converted to this perspective.

His main rationale is that what you see is not really what is happening - that it needs more information about how the mission was organized and operated. I won't go into his details here, mostly about the technicalities of "risk management," because basically this mission, the Iraqi mission, and the whole U.S. Middle East mission is based on lies and international crimes. Towards the end of the discussion Grenier tries to make it even more acceptable by relating incidents in which the U.S. military accidentally targeted their own people, from two main factors:

The propensity of people to see what they expect, or want, to see and the inability of people who lack understanding of the environment in which they are operating to understand what they are seeing at all.

Some of the clearest examples I have witnessed of both these tendencies have come in instances where Americans were the actual, or near, victims.

Well gosh, if we can kill our own people accidentally, or mistakenly target them, then its understandable that we can kill other people as well without feeling guilty about it - it's all about those darned rules of engagement, not too mention we did not really understand the situation.

Except it isn't about rules of engagement.

Murder, straight and simple.

It is about murder, as witnessed by the video and regardless of the mission imperatives, it is still murder. Not even collateral murder, murder straight and simple. And it is murder brought on by an invading and occupying force that is there illegally under international law and thus becomes a crime under international law.

Iraq was invaded on several pretexts, all false. The first pretext was that there were nuclear weapons, in spite of information from elBaradei of the Atomic Energy Agency that they did not exist. Secondly, that Iraq was working with al-Queda and thus responsible for 9/11, for which there is absolutely no evidence, partly because Hussein had a distinct dislike for al-Queda and Muslim fundamentalists. The third pretext was that of bringing peace, democracy and freedom to a country ruled by a despot. Hussein may have been a despot, but he was one initially supported by the U.S., and there are many other U.S. supported non-democratic regimes ("moderates" is the term used by the apologists) in the Middle East that have yet to be invaded.

The invasion was not sanctioned, it was a pre-emptive offensive attack, illegal under international law treaties and charters that the U.S. is signatory to. The occupation has not protected the civilians and the civil infrastructure of the occupied territory, and is establishing permanent garrisons - settlements if you will - in the occupied territory - again against the Geneva conventions. Torture has occurred and arguably still occurs, along with renditions to territories where the authorities are not quite as exposed and touchy on the issue, areas like Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean and command central for the Middle East.

In the broader mission view, in the global context, international criminality given, the real reason has everything to do with empire and oil.

Rules of Empire...and oil

More correctly the acronym ROE should stand for Rules of Empire, rules that are significantly different than what the empire expects of its "subjects." The reasons for being in Iraq arrive from geo-strategies thought up in Washington over the last several decades (with a nudge and a wink from the Israelis). Oil, and more oil, with some gas, is the main reason, as the world nears peak supply about now, and the U.S. homeland supplies reached their peak decades ago. Containment, and more containment, is another significant reason as the U.S. fears not the terrorists so much as the rising power of China economically and militarily and the resurgence of Russia, the latter not so much as a power globally, but certainly as a regional spoiler. Iran is a diversion, a thorn in the side of the overall containment plan; the terrorists an ephemeral ghost, the fear created for public consumption.

Caught up in all this are the citizens of Iraq.

What about the victims?

When I quoted Grenier above, I did so partly because the first statement is so true, so true of the overall U.S. military-political strategy in the Middle East, "the inability of people who lack understanding of the environment in which they are operating to understand what they are seeing at all." The mission is based on lies and ignorance, at least as presented to the willing cooperative media and the apparently pacified and gullible citizens of the U.S. Following that, it is interesting that the "clearest examples I have witnessed" occurred where "where Americans were the actual, or near, victims."

My, how noble and patriotic to say that yes we suffer too, in our illegal invasion and occupation of this country, and if we kill a few of "those bastards" it's okay because we have or almost have done the same to ourselves.

One thing missing from all these discussions was a statement from the Iraqis, unfortunately all who appeared to have died in the "heat" of the "battle", the only heat coming from the gunship and the sun, and the only battle being gunship versus a group of Iraqis "armed" with two cameras. The whole story of imperial ambition, of military strategy is to deny the humanness of the other, to deny that they have any rational thinking, or any human emotions, or families to go home to, loved ones to grieve their murder, families now even more destitute than before...

...and a population more hostile than before against the occupiers.

A different perspective

Yes, Mr. Grenier, the world does view itself from a different perspective than the U.S., one that sees the U.S. as an arrogant, ignorant empire.

Does your explanation make sense? No.

Were you as honest as possible? Perhaps, but that only would underline the extent of your own ignorance on your country's geopolitical strategies, something I find hard to believe from a former CIA employee.

Can you really explain why the U.S. government and its people behave as they do? Not in the simplistic manner that you attempted under the narrow confines and artificial suppositions of rules of engagement, ignoring completely the international criminality of the whole operation in Iraq.

Yes, we need different perspectives, and hopefully with people such as Josh Stieber speaking out against the inhumanity of war, that different perspective will gain ground.

[1] Josh Stieber. "Lessons from Collateral Murder," OpEd News. Sunday, April 11, 2010. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Lessons-from-Collateral-Mu-by-Josh-Stieber-100411-889.html

and

Josh Stieber. "Collateral Murder? Wikileaks soldier speaks," OpEd News. Friday, April 09 2010.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Collateral-Murder-Wikilea-by-Josh-Stieber-100409-170.html

[2] Robert Grenier "Follow the chain of command," al-Jazeera. Monday, April 12, 2010. http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/04/201041173452920826.html

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

Intersecting with the water crisis is the current economic situation with the rising economic power of India and China and their roughly 2.5 billion population making increasing demands on energy and food resources. Oil is at or near its peak, and while it may not be noticeable in the near future, its increasing scarcity and difficulty with extraction will cause the price to rise inexorably, creating further economic hardship and alternate demands on the environment.

Global Warring

A new text by Cleo Paskal [1] highlights the intersection of these environmental, economic and political crises and how they will redraw the world map. Her writing is not of the apocalyptic nature, not describing the horrors of a post-nuclear holocaust period nor the horrors of the survivalist's imagination when the economy and the environment tank together and suddenly we need to become self reliant in a much more primitive sense.

Instead, it is a strong academic analysis of the current geopolitical/environmental interactions that could possibly - in spite of the denials above - spell 'doom'. Her information is concise and wisely presented, without exaggeration or resorting to hyperbolic disasters. She describes the rising power of China and India, beset with their own environmental challenges, but "planning for the [long-term] future" as they "graduate more than half a million engineers and scientists a year." The U.S. is viewed from the Katrina perspective and its demonstration that the U.S. cannot manage a single environmental disaster let alone be "prepared to manage repeated major domestic environmental disasters."

Paskal is clear with her goal of using "the best science available to understand the implications of the inevitable in order to minimize the geopolitical, economic and security fallout" of climate change. [italics added]. She is not operating from theory but from history with "myriad examples of the environment affecting war and politics." Her stated goal, with which she succeeds is to "demonstrate that environmental change is about to have enormous, and specific, geopolitical, economic and security consequences for all of us."

The chapter on the Middle East is titled "Today's Weather - Intolerable with periods of Uninhabitable." Historically the problem with the fertile crescent "was too many people, too little food and water, and too few places to secure more supplies."

Her closing, after many well argued presentations says that with "all the threads together, the world of tomorrow looks chaotic and violent. Even more so than usual. And even more than expected." Our current "social, political, security and economic structures [are built] on the assumption that there are certain geophysical and climatic constants to act as a foundation. There aren't. There never have been. And there never will be." So now you can go read the apocalyptic and survivalist authors, as this relatively calm academic analysis arrives at a pretty gloomy and scary picture.

Water...and Israel

Water is a large part of Paskal's discussion. Storms are becoming more violent and less predictable. The monsoons are undergoing new vagaries. Rivers are exploited to make them toxic sewers and/or to have them run dry before they reach the sea. All this is supported by the current National Geographic special issue "Water - Our Thirsty World." [2] After discussing the current fresh water status, the glacial melt of the Himalayas, the monsoons, the 'holiness' of certain water sources, the "burden of thirst", California's "Pipe Dream" situated on a highly active seismic zone, the topic of water in Israel is addressed.

Generally I have criticized the Geographic for its frequent attempts to 'balance' arguments, arguments often between powerful corporations and weaker NGOs and citizens groups, or between environmental agencies and the more powerful governments. Balance is not good journalism when the power of circumstances and events lies strongly and critically with one side, at which point an analytical advocacy is by far the greater route to take.

I feared this article on Israeli water might strive for 'balance' but there are some strong references that indicate that the National Geographic editors are beginning to question the power equation in Israel. The article, "Parting the Waters", [3] is essentially about the Jordan River, that a " six-year drought and expanding population conspire to make it a fresh source of conflict among the Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians vying for the river's life giving supply." The article continues that the "lower Jordan is practically devoid of clean water, bearing instead a toxic brew of saline water and liquid waste that ranges from raw sewage to agricultural runoff....The fight over the Jordan illustrates the potential for conflict over water that exists throughout the world."

Yet it is more than potential in Israel/Palestine, it is kinetic...actualized. While the politicians describe the occupation and annexations in terms of religion, the building of the wall as a prevention against terror, and the savage attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Jordan as attacks against terror, one of the principal underlying causes is water resources. Of global military conflicts over water "since 1950, 32 took place in the Middle East, 30 of them involved Israel and its Arab neighbours."

The article tries to be optimistic, quoting one source as saying "water is just too important to go to war over...people need water, and that's a huge incentive to work things out." Unfortunately, that optimism is not apparent in the actions of the Israelis. The author recognizes that the West Bank Palestinians are under Israeli military rule, that Israel harvests much of the ground water and of the flow of the Jordan, denying access to the Palestinians. Turn about, when water is scarce, the Palestinians must buy it from Israel, paying money for water removed from their territory, water that lowers the water table for the fewer and fewer remaining wells. Another source is quoted, while looking at a Mekorot [Israel's national water authority] well, "This is what water theft looks like in this part of the world."

Balance and context

The attempted balance is interesting. The chief Israeli water negotiator (and one has to wonder how much 'negotiation' actually takes place under military control), Noah Kinnarth, tries to argue that the underground water "knows no borders" and that the Palestinians think that the water that falls in the West Bank belongs to them." What a novel idea, your own rainfall belonging to you. Kinnarth's final twist is that with Oslo "we agreed to share that water. They just can't seem to get their act together to do it."

I am uncertain of the author's intent here. The latter statement is obviously completely out of context - as a militarily occupied territory under variable and oppressive military law, with valuable agricultural land and water resources being remove through illegal expropriation and the winding turns of the Wall, with its leaders continually being arrested, tortured, and or assassinated - could hardly be expected "to get their act together." Does the author let the statement stand out of context through his own prejudice or ignorance? Or is he allowing it to stand on its own demerits, expecting the readers to fill in the nuances of his presentation, combining his statements about military occupation, the drilling of wells, and the ignorance of the Israeli 'negotiator's' statement?

I will give the benefit of the doubt to the author this time, as the final comment goes to a Palestinian farmer, Muhammed Salamain in the village of Auja. He has had no running water for five weeks, does not have enough water to irrigate crops, cannot access the aquifer, and summarizes, "we are powerless to do anything about it." To get to the water he needs in the Jordan, he would "have to jump an electric fence, cross a minefield, and fight the Israeli army." And he can't get his act together? No wonder.

Israel, war and water...and the U.S.

The Israeli's have always wanted the full landscape of Eretz Israel, purportedly for religious reasons, but geopolitically the scarce water resources have had significant influence on their actions towards limiting access to the Jordan, the annexation of the Golan Heights, and the occupation and attacks on Lebanon. Combining the geographic narrative with the Paskal presentation, Israel sits in a precarious yet powerful position.

With the strongest military in the region, one of the strongest in the world with many nuclear devices, with its need for control of water for a burgeoning population - the Palestinian population growth rate is higher - and its short lines of access to oil and gas resources for energy and industry, Israel is well situated to take advantage of any turmoil caused by the intersection of global environmental catastrophes and geopolitical catastrophes of its own or others making. Should the rest of the world devolve into chaos without taking Israel with it, the water is there for the taking, the oil is there for the taking, and the Palestinians are there for removal.

This is a rather grim finale to the interpretation of these two items. However, both geopolitics and the global climate are unpredictable, with many unexpected occurrences and outcomes. Again Iran enters the picture, not as an imminent threat, but as a created threat that will allow Israel to rationalize more authoritative action of whatever kind it wants in order to secure its future needs.

The U.S. plays a large role in this, but as per Paskal, "power is imperceptibly shifting away from the United States....there is a growing movement away from overt alignment with the States....Authoritarian regimes benefit from having an enemy....the US military is becoming [?] unpopular and politically marginalized globally...." China and India are taking up the slack.

Israel is powerful, yet at the same time extremely vulnerable, sitting in a precarious geopolitical situation. Surrounded by hostile yet compliant neighbours - ranging from the U.S. supported Egyptians, Saudis, and Jordanians, and the more antagonistic governments of Lebanon and Turkey - relying on power alone, as seen with the U.S. and its attempts at global military control, creates many unexpected feedbacks, many distortions in the economy and social/cultural fabric of the country. Israel has recognized the environmental threat, and is using its military to control as much of it as it can.

The lessons of history, natural history and geopolitical history, would indicate that a different approach is needed. Restoring the rights of the Palestinians in either a functional contiguous independent state or in a truly democratic bi-national state, would relieve enormous geopolitical pressure, and make the quest for environmental survival that much stronger.

[1]Paskal, Cleo. Global Warring - How Environmental, Economic and Political crises Will Redraw the World Map. Key Porter Books, Toronto, Canada. 2010.

[2] __________ "Water - Our Thirsty World." National Geographic, April, 2010.

[3] Belt, Don. "Parting the Waters," National Geographic, April, 2010. pp. 154 - 171.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

Christian Peacemakers

I recently attended a local presentation of Christian Peacemakers (CPT) on their experiences in Hebron in Palestine. The main presenter Johann Funk is a Mennonite who has been to Hebron several times recently. The CPT ideal as presented on their website is a powerful statement of intent:

CPT embraces the vision of unarmed intervention waged by committed peacemakers ready to risk injury and death in bold attempts to transform lethal conflict through the nonviolent power of God's truth and love.

I was highly impressed with the stories presented, the actions of the team members, and the accuracy and depth of Johann's historical knowledge and theological understanding. I am left with two general reactions. The first is the very positive impression of direct purposeful action of a non-violent but still very dangerous nature used to assist the people of Palestine as they try to survive the everyday suppression of their lives. It is however, one of the introductory images that remained with me the strongest, and it is an image I have seen before, but it keeps changing. That image was the juxtaposition of four maps of Israel/Palestine from before WW II to the present.

Small green dots

The first map - and I would expect that most readers are familiar with these maps - showed a small scattering of white dots representing the Jewish settlements mostly along the northern Mediterranean shores of the British Palestinian mandate. The next shows the demarcation lines as proposed by the UN, giving Israel 54% of the land. The third map is the familiar "green-line" map of the era before the 1967 war. The final map - and this is the one that keeps changing - shows what is left of actual Palestinian "controlled" territory. I use the word controlled, as the area is truly under the control of the IDF and its self-made military laws, supported by the "quisling government" [to quote Johann] of the Palestinian Authority.

What is left at the moment is a mere 12% of the original Palestinian territory, broken up into a gerrymandered arrangement of non-contiguous cantonments. These areas represent both refugee settlements from the 1947-48 and 1967 wars and indigenous settlements that have survived in one fashion or another the occupation of surrounding lands.

The 12% solution - not possible

While I have seen the latter map many times before, the green dots this time appeared to be incongruously small and divided: a two state solution - at least from the appearances on the map - is no longer possible. Twelve per cent? Five million people? Scattered villages, refugee camps, water resources confiscated by Israel, farmlands being confiscated directly as military areas or through the archaic three year vacancy rule? Off limit roads bisecting communities? A huge wall snaking its way around, through and between areas of Palestinian land, creating barriers to all walks of life?

No, this scattered confined remnant could never be considered a state except in the fantasies of the upper netherworlds of politicians and religious fanatics. What is actually on the map is one state, the state of Israel, that has incorporated a series of cantonments into the fabric of its existence. These are not benign cantonments, but are harmful to both populations, assuredly much more harmful to the Palestinian population within the cantonments. It is full blown apartheid, except for the regular intrusions of the IDF.

I cannot see in any manner or form that these scattered remnants - without a good agricultural base, without proper water resources, with highly restricted movement not only outside but inside the remnants - could ever exist as a state. Israel, unwittingly, has created a single state solution - a defacto single state solution. What now exists is a single non-democratic state, using apartheid racist tactics to confine one segment of the population (and this is a population that is genetically identical to the original Jewish inhabitants of the land) to a series of what are essentially open air prisons.

Truce?

A day after the CPT meeting, I read an article in Foreign Affairs[1] that in general calls for an immediate truce between the Palestinians and Israel in order that the other problems may be worked out. Apart from being poorly written with scattered threads of arguments intertwining and interjecting one on the other, and really offering nothing new to the situation other than a rewording of ongoing practices and ideas, two main ideas remained from the presentation.

First is the thought that the Palestinians have several times not only offered a truce, but practiced what they preached and established unilateral truces. In particular with the recent Gaza war, it was Israel that broke the truce. The Palestinians were not faultless in this, but few truces (including the long standing one in Korea) have existed without violations from time to time.

The author, Ehud Yarri, argues that the truce would "constitute a major step towards ending the occupation, fundamentally reconfigure the conflict, and make the prospects for a final-status agreement far brighter than ever before." Sounds great, but it is not significantly different than the ongoing stages of the non-existent peace process. It would not solve the Jerusalem settlements problems, nor discuss the right of return, nor the acceptance of the green line boundaries as the truce line would be "roughly to the lines of the existing security barrier."

A "limited truce" would allow "further actions to isolate Hamas" and operate "under a national unity government led by the PA." Yaari argues that the Gaza campaign was a "punitive action" that "compelled Hamas to accept a cease-fire without gaining any relaxation of the siege." So Hamas, at one moment in time the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people (described here as a "setback), is to be isolated (and supposedly eliminated although that is not stated directly).

There is no recognition that Hamas had maintained a cease fire, and had offered a 'hudna' long before this article ever existed. To exclude a segment of the population is only to create or extend the hostility of that segment of the population - it is not a solution. Inclusion is a much better prospect, as one can now see in Afghanistan with the Taliban, as was done in Ireland, in South Africa, and with China in the WTO, and generally has a moderating effect on all political players.

Demographics

The second idea rising from the article is the always underlying but seldom stated fear of the changing demographics of the area, that if there was a one state solution the Palestinian population would overwhelm the Jewish population. At the moment in Eretz Israel, the populations are very close to being equal, with the Palestinian population having the higher birth rate.

Yaari's fear is that "new concepts will begin to compete as alternatives" as "support for the two-state formula that currently exists will likely erode." He sees this as a "stealth" tactic by the Palestinians, "accomplishing...the sort of Arab demographic dominance that Israeli leaders have for decades sought to avoid by occupying, rather than annexing, the Palestinian territories," the latter would force Israel to "coexist alongside an Arab majority within the whole of Palestine." What a novel idea - co-existence.

The greater fear is demographics:

Israel must offer Palestinian statehood for less than peace before the Palestinians and their leaders abandon the two-state model altogether.

De facto single state

That is the essence of the article. Unfortunately, looking at the map, looking at the population statistics, looking at the actions of the admitted "occupying" forces, the actual de facto arrangement is that of a single state. It is not a healthy state, but a rogue state, a failed state, a non-democratic state, an apartheid state, one that imprisons, oppresses, tortures and denies half its population any resemblance of a decent living.

Palestinians may wish for an independent state, but available information would indicate that Yaari's fear, and the larger Jewish fear, of a single unitary state already exists. The problem then becomes where to go from here. Continue the pretence of providing - eventually, after more land is occupied and settled, effectively annexed - for a supposedly independent sovereign Palestinian state? Look for an excuse such as Iran to create a catastrophic event that would allow Israel to evict the Palestinians under the larger media publicity of a wider war with possible nuclear consequences? Or become much more humanitarian, living within the peaceful precepts of all faiths, and accept that two peoples who are essentially and biologically brothers and sisters, could live peacefully side by side in a greater democratic state?

[1] Ehud Yaari. "Armistice Now," Foreign Affairs. March/April 2010, NY. pp. 50-62.

[2] Michael Brown, Ali Abunimah, and Nigel Parry. "Palestinian population exceeds Jewish population says U.S. government," The Electronic Intifada, 1 March 2005.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3649.shtml

As most followers of the news are aware, the Israelis announced plans to construct another 1600 settlement units in the Jerusalem area. They did this in the face of Biden who at the time was meeting with Netanyahu concerning the rebooting of the "peace process." The main purpose of the "peace process" - at least for the Israelis - is to be able to establish communities - "facts" - on the ground so that if they ever did finally get to some form of settlement, imposed or negotiated, the inarguable facts would severely limit what could be negotiated as far as independent, sovereign, and contiguous territory for Palestine is concerned.

Biden, Clinton, and Obama all "condemned" these statements, acting as any affronted president should [1] in their pretended outrage against Israeli actions. The real message arrives with the comments from the Quartet: the UN, the U.S., Russia, and the EU. Ban Ki-moon,
the UN secretary-general, acting as head of this group said he "urges the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activities," adding they "condemned...the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem".[2]

The comments continued emphatically,
"The Quartet has sent a clear and strong message: we are strongly supporting your efforts to establish an independent and viable Palestinian state." Later he added, "Let us be clear, all settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and this must stop."[3]

Others in the region however were not as fooled as perhaps the rest of the world is, having dealt with this issue for the last forty and more years. As reported on al-Jazeera,
"The Palestinian Authority will need the UN's support in these confrontations." And that is the crux of the matter - taking the issue to the UN.

International Law

Why does the U.S. not introduce this topic to the Security Council at the UN? Why did Ban not do the same? Why are they all sitting back saying the UN needs to do something when nobody is willing to take it to the UN? The answer is really quite simple: taking the issue to the UN Security Council would address the issue for what it is, a crime against international law of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter of Rights.

If the UN Security Council dealt with the matter and supported the "condemnation" as strongly as the (ineffective) quartet, it would then be a matter of international law, and it would then have to be recognized that both Israel and the U.S. are constantly in contradiction of many international laws concerning occupation, war, and the humane treatment of prisoners. Following the U.S. lead, with the EU and the Russians in support, there would be unanimous approval from the Security Council for such a condemnation and establishment of the "facts" in international law. They obviously want to avoid this.

International war

Another factor that struck me as singularly ignorant and arrogant is the pronouncement from the U.S. General Patraeus,
"The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the [CENTCOM area of responsibility] AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world." Biden stepped in again saying, "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace."

NO! Really? Do you think it is a perception of Israeli favouritism, or perhaps do you think, in the deep darker corners of your mind, refusing to come out into the arena of awareness, that it is true, you do favour the Israelis? And further, in those same dark recesses of the arrogant U.S. mind, lurks the thought that perhaps what is occurring is against all international law, both the events inside Israel/Palestine and the events occurring in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan? And who are the moderate Arab regimes? Are they the ones that refuse to do anything except mutter a few politically correct phrases directed to the Palestinians, while they continue to kowtow to the U.S. presence in the region and accept all the favours that are offered the elites of these supposedly moderate countries?

And why are you there in the first place? Biden's ignorance and arrogance in considering that the U.S. is supporting regional peace is nothing but....pardon the language...crap. Put it all in context. The U.S. is interested in the oil in the region, always has been except that the British made it there first. The U.S. has always supported Israel, maybe not without contention and not always overtly, but the political mechanisms in the U.S. have always been favourable to Israel. The U.S. has always wished to contain the Soviet Union and now is doing the same with Russian interests in the region. China becomes a new added factor, with its increasing demand and increasing economic and military power throughout East Asia, and the U.S. is obviously trying to limit its growth in the area.

Peace? What arrogance! What ignorance! What culpability!

No, the U.S. is not there for peace. The U.S. is there for war, a war to control all the elements that might hinder their access to soon to be rapidly depleting oil resources, other natural resources, and to contain Russia and China from encroaching on "their" territory. It is a war of terror, creating the very terror they presume to eliminate. The ephemeral disappearing terrorist, creating an ongoing situation of contingencies that the U.S. then allows themselves, a unilateral self-justification, their invasions and encroachments on the sovereign territory of many nations in the Middle East and Asia (and indeed around the world).

The U.S. was quite happy to create a coup to eliminate the democratically elected Mossadegh government of Iran and then support the Shah of Iran when he ruled the country with the aid of his secret police (SAVAK). The U.S. supported Hussein of Iraq until it became necessary to take pressure of the Saudi government and find a new base for their military establishments. The U.S. was quite happy to stand by as the Israelis captured all the remaining Palestinian territory in the 1967 war, with no complaints when the USS Liberty was destroyed, and stood by again as they attacked Lebanon in 2006, hoping to see a new puppet government established there, and then stood by while the Israeli military pummelled the Gaza territory, in full contradiction of all international law (thus making them complicit), hoping for the elimination of those pesky Gazans who did not like living in an Israeli ghetto or prison.

Take it to the UN

The U.S. and Israel are locked in a macabre dance. The U.S. congress shuffles meekly along to the orchestration of the AIPAC group. And now the U.S. is excited because the Israelis say they are going to build some more settlement buildings. Get real. They really do not care, other than for their own deluded "perceptions" of peace.

Take it to the UN gentlemen (and I use the term sarcastically), and allow the world to see the truth of the situation in relation to international law.

[1] and has, see:

Alexander Cockburn,
"My Fellow Americans, Tonight I'm Going to Talk Frankly About a Pesky Little Nation Called Israel ... ", Counterpunch, March 20-21, 2010. http://www.counterpunch.org/

[2] "Quartet calls for settlement freeze," al-Jazerra, Saturday, March 20, 2010.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/20103198524314112.html

[3] "UN chief visits West Bank," al-Jazeera, Saturday, March 20, 2010
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010320113956764437.html

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

Most religions have within them the philosophical/moral basis for the establishment of a democracy.

Most would fit a social democracy or even true communal communism if beliefs accorded to family and community were respected and implemented. The discussions about the umma within Islam, the communalism within Christianity, and some of the Talmudic traditions within Judaism, all carry strong elements of democracy. Most importantly as will be discussed later, is the attention to the weak and the poor within society, as well as care for society in general and the environment - and at the opposite end, the kings and rulers were not above the law. Unfortunately many religions - and certain sects within all religions - become dogmatically structured around a patriarchal system, or become entangled in some political philosophy that denies the communal-democratic basis of the religion.

Volumes could be written arguing from this perspective on the ins and outs and validity of democracy versus church regulations versus theological interpretations but
there are two points I wish to make here. First is the concept of a Jewish and democratic state. Secondly, the semi-religious beliefs of Confucianism raise the idea of a meritocracy as a possible permutation of democracy.

A democratic and Jewish state?

Many problems occur around the idea of a state that determines its democracy on the basis of one particular religion. While Israel is not alone in this, it serves as an indicator of how far religious zealotry and dogma and political will based on that zealotry - through belief or simple utility - can deny democracy to its citizens and to citizens of areas that it controls.

It is obvious that there is nothing democratic about an occupation. Democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, both occupied countries, is essentially a farce. A government supported by foreign money, a country that has various war lords serving within its institutions, a government that would change dramatically if the occupiers withdrew cannot by any definition other than the lie of propaganda be considered a democracy. For Israel, its denial of Palestinian rights with the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself is a denial of democracy. It is a denial of democracy prejudiced upon a religious "holier than thou" belief system - in which the "thou" becomes homo sacer, the other, outside the law and thus subject to whatever treatment is accorded it without retort - and it is omnipresent in all areas of Israeli/Palestinian society.

The pure lie of democracy as a gift from the rulers, the elite, was fully demonstrated during the Palestinian elections in which Hamas emerged a surprise winner. This democratic victory was quickly denied by the U.S., Canada, and Israel, with the ongoing results being the continued subjugation of the Palestinian Authority to the Israeli political will and the demonization of Hamas and its enclave of Gaza, an enclave determined mainly by outside forces trying to entrap Hamas. Which is in effect what happened, again with results that demonstrate the full lack of democratic ideals of the Israeli government as it subjects the territory to ongoing containment - essentially a huge outdoor prison camp - and savage military attacks that are demonstrably against international law. Democracy has only been achieved by the people, the demos, standing up for their rights, fighting against the abuses of the elites and rulers - and that fight is at its most physical and savage in occupied territories such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and even more so in Palestine.

A democratic meritocracy?

With the rise of Chinese power through economic wealth, technological advancements, and increases in its military budget, most recent works on China as the rising power of the East contain arguments about the nature of Chinese society as influenced by its Confucian background.[3] While not truly a religion, its philosophical underpinnings and the manner in which it is used parallel in certain respects the philosophical structures of the other main religions. Part of the Confucian belief system is that of an ordered society, with a hierarchal structure, but it is not a completely rigid structure and is supported by the belief and application of the concept of merit as a means of advancement.

Historically the rulers and elites of Chinese society were supported by a bureaucracy that was determined theoretically by the merits of those doing the work. The merit was established by a series of examinations to determine the best candidates for the bureaucracy. The rulers themselves were perceived to be there on merit, and if they no longer deserved or earned the merit of the populace, they would be overthrown. These greatly simplified explanations give support to the concept of the intellectual rigor that the Chinese apply to their education. It can also in part help explain the demographic statistic indicating that the distribution of wealth within a meritocracy, in this case China, is not nearly as widespread as in the "democracies" - of which the U.S. has one of the largest spreads in the world. China's current economic growth is increasing the spread, but the idea of a meritocracy remains strongly within its societal structures.

It is hard to imagine a meritocracy in place in North America. Very few of our politicians would merit any of their positions or wealth if they had to pass tests in order to be in power. Many of our politicians are surprisingly ignorant of much of the world, its cultures and beliefs, its geography and life. Democracy in North America comes from the power of wealth and not from the power of common sense and merit. While a meritocracy is not necessarily democratic, it certainly has a level of appeal and would be a highly valid instrument to incorporate within a democracy. Perhaps China will become democratic after all, in a manner that most pundits observing China are not even capable of considering, a social democratic meritocracy.

Today's democracy

Another look at today's democracies and their achievement of wealth demonstrates that free enterprise had very little to do with that wealth creation. Rather, all countries that have harvested the world's wealth have done so by protecting their own industries and products at the expense of those from other countries. This applies to the British, French, Dutch, and Spanish empires, as well as to the American empire. It also applies to the current rise in the wealth of the Chinese. Protection can be afforded in many ways, from tariffs, to quotas, to tax laws, to rules and regulations imposed on imported goods. However it is achieved, most countries that have become wealthy have done so through some form of protectionism.

The authors of the books on China mentioned above relate how this is true of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, all but the latter being considered democratic and held up as exemplars of free trade capitalism. Neither concept holds. They all operate as quasi democracies, having succeeded economically with strong government support and interventions, while the democratic aspect is arguably much more in line with the Confucian meritocracy of China. Certainly the people vote, but it is the underlying bureaucracy and rules and regulations of business and the economy that truly determine the power of the government, not the people, the 'demos'.

Examined in that light, many other countries become nominal democracies as well, with that paragon of self -defined enlightenment and freedom, the United States, presenting many aspects of its political culture that deny democracy to its people. The U.S. along with many other western countries are more correctly a plutocracy or an oligarchy, where the wealthy control the power structures of the country.

An aspect of democracy that is singularly lacking in the western powers is that of the openness and transparency that they all call upon others to demonstrate. Corporations, as seen above are decidedly non-transparent, as are their military liaisons and their governmental cohorts. Corporate secrets, government secrets, are subject to tests under the Freedom of Information Laws extent in most democracies, yet it is increasingly more and more difficult to access full information without denial through classification or redaction.

It can be argued that the reasons for this secrecy have very little to do with intellectual property rights, or that the information is "too sensitive" to be dealt with by the public, or that the security of the country will be compromised. Governments and businesses keep secrets not for the protection of the business, the government and the state in face of dangers from abroad - except that, ironically that is exactly what it is for, because in a true democracy, if the people had all the information that they wanted through truly free requests, the revelations of government incompetence, culpability in various crimes (national and international), obeisance to various lobbying groups (think AIPAC), and disregard for people, their cultures, and the environments they live in would be glaringly obvious. Secrecy is not to protect the country, but to protect the people in power from the wrath of the citizens that they are manipulating.

So what becomes democracy?

The democratic ideal is difficult to achieve. Anything that is remotely related to a social democracy comes under the gun - literally - of the U.S. military. Most of South and Central America have experienced the interventions of the U.S. military in one form or another, either direct invasion, or covert operations, or not so covert support of the right wing business elites of the countries. From the "banana republics" of Central America - so called because of the dominance of United Fruit and its offspring, Chiquita, and Standard Fruit and its offspring Dole in co-opting much of the agricultural landscape - through to the southern state of Chile and the overthrow of the Allende government to be replaced by the militaristic Pinochet dictatorship, the Americas have suffered under the non-democratic and internationally criminal actions of the United States.

Further away, in Iran - with the overthrow of the Mossadegh social democracy, through to the invasion and massacre of millions of south-east Asians in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, to similar massacres of so-called communists in the Philippines and Indonesia - the U.S. record is consistently the denial of democracy when it comes in the form of a social democracy, wherein the people actually have or want to have some say in the government and its application of rules and regulations.

A associated directly with all this are the multinational corporations that harvest the wealth of the countries on the receiving end of these military adjustments. Combined, the two are, in spite of all their wonderful rhetoric of democracy and freedom, only interested in wealth accumulation with no interest in the people or the environment.

A social democracy attempts to protect its resources and use them for the well being of its own people, through carefully managing sales and extraction, by protecting the environment, protecting the health and well being of the people, by supporting health, welfare, and educational systems for the betterment of all, and finally to protect the environment and culture of the cultural and geographical systems of the country.

Would not most people of the world, given the chance to vote on it, tell their governments to provide health, education and welfare for all, to protect the environment, to provide for the aged, sick, and disabled? Would they not vote for clean water - the right to water which has been denied them in national and international rights? Would they not vote for local agriculture supplemented by fair trade for other agricultural products, at the same time maintaining the integrity and sustainability of the agricultural landscape by avoiding monocrop genetically modified agriculture supported by a few big businesses? Would they not vote to tell occupying forces, or any military foreign forces to go home and leave them in peace? Would they not vote to constrain the rights of corporations, to keep them responsible for environmental as well as personal damages and apply responsibilities and liabilities to the owners and managers?

Unless heavily inculcated with the dogma and rhetoric of military glory and economic survival through debt riddled consumerism, an educated public (remember the meritocracy argument?) would more than likely make choices that protect the cultural community as well as the agricultural and geographical resources. An informed public, informed through a critical media, informed by truly free access to government and corporate information, would certainly rule the nations differently than our current crop of secretive elites.

Sum

All these arguments are of course short versions of what could become chapters, books, on the various topics quickly over viewed. A true democracy would be ideal, but that ideal will not be realized until the armies of the world are constrained, until the corporations of the world are put back under control of the nations, until the nations are allowed to choose their own destinies through unhindered noninterfered-with truly free elections. True democracy, true people power, is a long way off in much of the world. It is to realize that and to understand all its permutations that will help bring it about as a reality, through the long slow process of education, protestation, agitation, and resistance.

Notes　

[1] These quotes are widely cited in a variety of sources active against the deservedly deceased MAI. Also quoted in Chomsky, Noam. "Hordes of Vigilantes", Profit Over People - Neoliberalism and Global Order. Seven Stories Press, N.Y. 1999. p. 163.

[2] Ramzy Baroud. "The Hypocrisy of Al-Demoqratia," December 12, 2009. Palestine Chronicle. http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15605

[3] three useful recent works:
Eamon Fingleton. In the Jaws of the Dragon. Thomas Dunne Books, New York. 2008.
- a readily accessible read, a more 'dramatic' read than the others, but allies with Jacques' book.

Martin Jacques. When China Rules the World. Allen Lane (Penguin), London. 2009.
- a more academic read, a bit more difficult to follow, but supports the ideas presented in Fingleton. Very good at interpreting the Chinese representations of themselves.

Bill Emmott. Rivals. Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) , Boston. 2009.
- Emmott is an economist and thus argues grandly using many monetary statistics and is much more a western interpretation, based on some typical western stereotypes and interpretations of Chinese character.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

I differentiate between democracy and freedoms. Having power for the people indicates that the people have an actual say in what the government is doing, and that the government, being of the people, by the people, for the people, responds to the wishes - and hopefully educated wishes - of the populace. Freedom, as present in our current society, represents the wide range from any kind of licentious but licit behaviour through the practical freedoms of the press and media up to the philosophical freedoms of religion and thought. It seldom represents responsibility towards society and its various parameters of poverty and the environment, or towards other less fortunate members of society. It does represent choice, choice to one form of behaviour or another, for the environment or against the environment, for the people, or for the corporation. Democracy and freedom are highly compatible but not necessarily the same thing.

The vote

Democracy as envisioned by most is encapsulated into the act of voting. Our grandfathers died for it in the First World War, "sacrificing" themselves for the empire in order to achieve it (either that or be shot as a traitor or deserter or for treason). The same mantra is brought forth every Remembrance Day, of our soldiers dying so that we have the freedom to vote. Consider that Soviet Russia had votes, Mugabe had votes, occupied Iraq and Afghanistan had votes, occupied Palestine had a vote, Cairo, Islamabad, Honduras, and Russia all had votes, yet the effect of those votes ranged from no democracy to only nominal democracy, or a nominal democracy invigorated with great helpings of violence.

In modern democracies, the psychological spin doctoring is so intense that a vote becomes a popularity contest, decked out in mudslinging, fear of the other, and so many outlandish promises (some call them lies) that votes are essentially bought on the rhetoric of uneducated platitudes to try and soothe the seething angst of the voter. The billions of dollars promised during an election, the great calls for more openness, clarity, and better communication, for more citizen participation are all forgotten once the election has been confirmed one way or another. The 'representatives' then head off to the seat of power to learn what they need to do in order to stay in power and to stay within the confines of the party they are nominally elected under and to not get kicked out of caucus. Foolishly the majority of citizens believe that what was talked about will be delivered (Did we want NAFTA? No, got it anyway.)

The real power, without the people, begins its work in the hallways and private rooms of the institutions that represent our democracy. The interplay between corporations, big business, government lobbyists, bureaucrats, and the military, is what truly runs our democracy. It is in these elite corridors of power that businessmen and women collude in private for a new world order, where decisions made will later be justified to the people under some manner of fear mongering or some well inculcated belief system ever present from the very first time a child watches television or runs a computer game.

Globalization and a not so flat world

The cry of globalization is frequently incorporated within the context of democracy, an almost supra-democracy wherein global communications, the internet, cell-phones and the laptop computer are making the world a level playing field. It encompasses the business world of Thomas Friedman's work of the same verbiage, to the exhortations of politicians and soft imperialists towards the coloured revolutions around the world. Certainly it has had its impact, but it is only technology, and one might as well describe the ubiquitous kalashnikov as a more effective leveller in the world of globalization.

The world remains bumpy and lumpy as the various contenders to power, or those trying to tame them, rise and fall within the technological capabilities of their most recent state of the art purchase. Whether it is big business, or big government, ranging through to subversive elements or insurrections against occupation, the technology has enabled the various players to continue making the world as uneven as possible, trying to tilt it entirely within their own favour. The ultimate bump that denies the level playing field are the computer nerds somewhere in the middle of U.S. playing their war games in real time as they control missile firing drones over the skies of Afghanistan and Pakistan blasting mostly civilians to shreds. No kalashnikov will ever be near them - and they call the insurgents cowards....

But globalization is much more the Friedman's technological wonders of communication. It is much more about the World Trade Organization (WTO) which is
"the place where governments collude in private against their domestic pressure groups," those pressure groups being environmental, labour, health, and other social organizations. Renato Ruggerio, former director of the WTO said, "We are writing the constitution of a single global economy."[1] Ironically, the credit goes to the internet for the destruction in 1998 of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) to which this quote refers. Globalization as envisioned by the WTO and the other members of the Washington consensus - the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund who have carried forward the effective work of the WTO and its MAI intentions - is completely non-democratic.

Its non-democracy comes from several factors. First and most obvious is that representatives to any of these institutions are not by election, not by representation, but through invitation. The representatives are appointed from international corporations, from banks, from lobbyists and other government institutions. Secondarily, the institutions from where these people are chosen - the business corporations and unelected members of government bureaucracies - are decidedly non-democratic as well. Thirdly, the "free trade" demanded under the WTO banner is anything but free.

The free trade espoused by these people and institutions is only free for the manipulation of wealth. Workers are not free to travel to wherever the pay and working conditions are better, but are constrained to their own geographical regions. The environment is not free although its resources are taken for free without too much concern about the long term negative results from pollution caused by extraction, transportation, consumption, and elimination through burning or waste dumping. And rather than being free trade, trade and commerce is bound up in multiple layers of rules and regulations that tend to over-ride national rules and regulations, especially pertaining to health, safety, education, and workers rights, entrapping the weaker governments into a cycle of democratic social welfare destruction. The overall result is wealth and resources rising to the dominant financial countries (ignoring momentarily the elites and their cronies within the weaker countries) while the weaker countries remain perpetually indebted to the member states of the Washington consensus.

Corporations and capitalism.

Corporations are probably the least democratic institution in the world, designed and purpose built to gather wealth, to avoid paying taxes, and more particularly to avoid the managers and shareholders from having any responsibility for institutional damages, either on the personal level or the global level. The corporation becomes a person under law, an invisible person, as the real people hide behind the legal barriers set up by corporate lawyers and accountants and MBAs and governments to protect their harnessing of wealth.

They have been around for a while, set up as a mechanism to harvest the wealth of the East Indies, of North America, and to transport that wealth back home. They have continued to receive government largesse in the form of favourable rules and regulations to the extent that they now are part and parcel of government and all too frequently are powerful enough to over-ride government constraints - until when things become really shaky because of their own manipulations, government steps in and bails them out - their own form of social welfare without the democracy aspect.

Corporations are decidedly non-democratic and their paramount place within the so called "capitalist" system (by whichever definition or permutation or purity of idealism it is defined to actually be) renders the capitalist system non-democratic as well. Economists rank about the lowest in my judgement of the range of careers available to anyone, working within a world of abstract perfection with mathematical models that are invented and created out of thin air without a connection to reality (all math should represent physical reality in some way as it does with chemistry and physics). Those economists who define themselves as supporters of capitalism are arguing for a world with its base mired in poverty and its peak in the giddy heights where the few control by far the most wealth of the world.

The underlying basis of capitalism necessitates unemployment in order to keep labour cheap and mobile (at least within a region or country). It necessitates poverty, if not for a motivator then for the same cheap labour. It requires consumption at all levels which because of the need for poverty and unemployment, also requires a complacent middle class to be the consumers of the world. Without a truly decent wage, with both parents working, with unending propaganda/advertising beating it into the consumers brain that they simply are not cool, sexy, articulate, or beautiful if a certain product is not purchased, the theoretical middle class drives itself - sometimes literally as our culture is based on the automobile - into ever increasing levels of debt. That debt is wealth to the corporations, as the consumer is trapped into an ever larger cycle of purchasing and debt creation.

The peaks of capitalism thrive on market control, elitism, cronyism and the ever revolving door between big business, government, and the military. It returns us to the world of globalization and the WTO and Washington consensus discussed above. Its reality is a world in which ten per cent of the population control over half of the global wealth, while half the global population controls only one per cent of the wealth - and really probably do not 'control' even that. From these vertiginous heights of wealth the world perspective is perhaps flat, the bottom layers being so dim and distant in view that we are all of equal powerlessness to the elites.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

The author of the article is Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research In International Affairs and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs, both rather impressive sounding names, as all names of think tanks should sound. What was not mentioned is that Rubin is also
professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. While checking this out on the internet, I discovered that the IDC had recently held a conference on victims of terror and how to help them: "...the first advanced academic conference focusing on the victims of terror and their families. The conference dealt with the impact of terror attacks on society and the individual and presented theoretical approaches and practical methods of helping the victims."

Even though it is a side issue to what I initially set out discuss, it only emphasizes the pro-Israeli slant of Rubin's connections as all the terror victims discussed in the precis were Israeli, soldiers, or U.S. victims of the Twin Towers. Absolutely no mention, as one might expect, of the terror suffered by the Palestinians. Although the Israeli press is often quite open about its operations within Palestine, the IDC is a private for profit institution and obviously considers the Palestinians to be the source of the terror and not the occupation of Palestine by the IDF.

My initial point was that the Vancouver Sun did not mention this association, perhaps through ignorance, but just as likely through not wanting to bias the readers interpretations of their own pro-Israeli slant. The appearance of neutrality is important even if that is not the case.

"Abbas isn't going anywhere"

Arguing against Rubin is difficult mainly because he does not present logically sequenced rational arguments, but starts off establishing his own emotional mind-set of Palestinian culpability for their problems with Israel. Following that, to support his argument he essentially lies about the factual support to his argument while disingenuously stating that all his ideas are "clear in any accurate factual account of what has happened."

The article itself is titled "Abbas isn't going anywhere" with the subtitle, "There's no peace deal in the Middle East because Palestinian leadership doesn't want one." He starts by saying that "Abbas never had any intention of resigning or calling elections...because the PA fears it would lose them and Hamas, which rules Gaza Strip, won't let them be held there." That could all be well and true, but until events actually unfold - or don't unfold in this case, it is speculation.

Rubin argues emotionally that the "Palestinians are always presented as victims, passive observers, people who have nothing to do with their fate." That of course is intended to play the 'reverse sympathy card' for Israel, but it is a statement that carries no truth. Most importantly in denying this is the obvious high degree of activism from civil disobedience, from civil protest, through quasi-legal formulations (think the Israeli created Palestinian Authority), to the much more aggressive and assertive militant insurgencies of the two intifada's and the suicide attackers. There is absolutely nothing passive about that.

Somehow he twists that first illogical statement into a much broader one in which "...everything must always be the fault of Israel or America or the West" with Rubin's "fact is" saying the problem is that of the Palestinians "...seeking Israeli's destruction over a compromise peace that would mean the conflict's end in a permanent two-state solution."

Both statements are falsehoods. Most Palestinian sources that I am familiar with recognize that their history, their leadership has its own faults. There is also plenty of material indicating that the Palestinians are capable of compromise in their search for peace, to the point of recognizing Israel's existence.

What is true is that, yes, the Palestinians are victims of military occupation, harassment, and torture, and yes they are victims of military rule that contravenes several international sources of law. What is also true is that they are not passive (a significantly incomprehensible statement for anyone following all the protests and violence in the region).

Rubin's statements about the passivity of the Palestinians is a somewhat clever reversal of the Israeli's inculcated doctrine that they are the innocent victims of Palestinian and Islamist terror, and are incapable of acting and reflecting on perhaps why the Palestinians are acting this way - or in his own words, Israelis "...are always presented as victims, passive observers, people who have nothing to do with their own fate." When his words are reversed in intention, they carry a similar falsehood.

Israel plays the victim role, yet it is the occupier, the aggressor, the perpetrator who wished from the inception of the Eretz Israel dream to ethnically cleanse all of the area of Palestinians. Because the Palestinians did not just passively move out of the way, and with fluctuating levels of belligerence and insurrection, the Israelis play to the world's sympathies as victims of their own culpability.

Camp David

Rubin's 'factual' support begins with Camp David. He says Arafat and the Palestinian leadership "were offered a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem and billions of dollars in start-up funding twice in the year 2000...." This "offer" had nothing on paper, there is no record of anything written down so that outside observers could examine what was said or truly offered. Unless something is in writing, especially in political agreements, it is worthless.

What was offered was offered verbally (if at all, see below), and by best accounts was not a state but a truncated series of bantustan like cantons surrounded by areas of Israeli control, with the Jordan valley remaining under Israel Defence Forces military control. There was no sovereignty offered, no sovereign rule over a contiguous piece of sovereign territory. In reality there was not even an offer made, as Robert Malley, Clinton's Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs and his advisor at Camp David. Malley indicated, "It is hard to state with confidence how far Barak was actually prepared to go....His strategy was predicated on the belief that Israel ought not reveal its final position - not even to the United States - until the endgame was in sight." [1] That endgame of course is the continued settlement of the West Bank until Israeli control is absolute.

Rubin follows the generally accepted Israeli obfuscation concerning Jerusalem and reiterates it as fact. The verbal tricks around the description of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem indicates that the capital in East Jerusalem should more correctly have been labelled as 'east of' Jerusalem in Abu-Dis, as "It is only through this deceptive use of definitions that Israel can claim that it proposes that the city be divided into the Jewish part "Jerusalem" and the Palestinian part, "Al-Quds." [2]

The end result of all this is the Israeli statement about having no partner in peace, a cultural icon now prevalent within Israel and the U.S. but not supported elsewhere. It is the Israelis not wanting 'peace' as that would necessarily constrain there initial ambition to control all of Eretz Israel.

Partners in crime - the settlements

The article continues arguing about the settlement deal reached between the United States and Israel. The overwhelming obvious lack here (or at least it should be obvious) is that this agreement was between partners in crime and not with the Palestinians. As usual with these settlement agreements, the reality on the ground is that the settlements would continue to be built as the Israelis continued their verbal charade of complying with the agreement.

Rubin argues that the settlement deal was a "huge concession" even though it did not apply to Jerusalem. I would have to ask how a "huge concession" can be envisioned when it does not include the huge settlements that are being built in Jerusalem with the direct intent of eliminating the Palestinian population - but above all, how can it be a concession of any kind when settlements in occupied territories are illegal under international law? Of course, Israel, with the support of the U.S., has continually flaunted international law and disregards it completely.

Laughable solution (tragically)

Rubin's rather laughable solution in a tragic-comic farcical sense is "If the Palestinian leadership wanted to end the "occupation" [why is that quoted as if it is not a fact?] and get rid of settlements [ahh, I get it - get rid of settlements, but not necessarily all of them!] on its territory [aha, so it is their territory after all! So it must be occupied...!] there's a simple solution. It need merely negotiate peace with Israel as soon as possible." Really? These negotiations, mostly between the U.S. and Israel, have been ongoing for decades and have only succeeded in extending Israeli domination over Palestinian territory. And there is no way that Israel will give up its settlements, a few "outposts" perhaps [there, I can use useless quotes too!] but nothing significant if at all elsewhere, and they certainly will not give up territory around Jerusalem nor would they allow full sovereign control to any territory deemed Palestinian by the partners in crime.

In his final statement, he indicates that the "PA's rejections of peace" is in order to "keep the door open for total victory, to avoid compromising, to prevent internal conflict, it is willing....to use both real and fictional suffering as leverage in an attempt to get far more." Hmm, the pot calling the kettle black? Not even that. It is a true irrational reversal of what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, delaying, stalling, causing suffering, and, especially within the U.S., using fiction to leverage everything to their advantage.

Charades
The Palestinians are not passive as witnessed by the many events occurring within the occupied territories, nor should they be represented that way, nor should it be argued that they are creating this view of passivity. These are Rubin's constructs to present an illogical and false argument against the Palestinians. There has never been any "peace agreement" of any substance that has ever been presented to the Palestinians, only the ongoing charade between Israel and the United States, neither of whom truly cares about the Palestinians. The charade is for public consumption and the creation of a false mythology of leaderless terrorists attacking a passive Israel.

What happens with Abbas now remains as conjecture. Will he stay? Will he go? Is he truly refusing to negotiate with Israel? Or is he simply recognizing the real situation in that there is nothing to negotiate when Israel holds all the power, and is backed by the U.S.? Is he perhaps simply recognizing that negotiations under these conditions will simply be the ongoing charade of the U.S. championing Israeli rights, hoping and wishing that the Palestinians will acquiesce, roll over and play dead? To truly be passive?

Regardless, Rubin's article [3]only adds to the Israeli obfuscation of the situation, attempting to make the Palestinians the guilty party in their own occupation.

[1] Baroud, Ramzy. The Second Palestinian Intifada - A Chronicle of a People's Struggle. Pluto Press, London, 2006. p.21.

[2]1 Rinehart, Tanya. Israel/Palestine - How to end the war of 1948. Seven Stories Press, New York, 2005. p.35.

Note: there are many other sources that support the two cited above.

[3]Rubin, Barry. "Abbas isn't going anywhere. There's no peace deal in the Middle East because Palestinian leadership doesn't want one." Vancouver Sun. Saturday, November 28, 2009. Also available at: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/Abbas+going+anywhere/2279878/story.html

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

Palestine as the centre

When I first started my research/reviews, it quickly became apparent that Palestine was not only a metaphorical centre for the problems of many of the peoples of the world, but it is also the reality of much of the political-military manoeuvring that continues not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world, as the demands for resource control and market control begins shifting from west to east. Yet it is easy to lose site of the situation in Palestine.

The western media is staunchly on the side of the Israeli powers, and what little reaches publication provides the Benny Morris version of events in which Israel is the victim of Palestinian intransigence and fundamentalist terror rather than Palestine as the victim of an internationally illegal occupation, an internationally illegal wall, and various internationally illegal acts of war and suppression and a Jewish fundamentalism that allows no citizens other than its one ethnic cadre with Eretz Israel.

Western governments for the most part, particularly the U.S. with its Canadian partner in crime, follow the Israeli line without question or opposition, blindly reciting the common rhetoric of 'terror' and more terror. Great Britain and the U.S. conspired against Iraq, as they did with Iran under Mossadegh in 1953, as they did in Afghanistan on into Pakistan, and as they are doing with Iran now. The real terror is that disseminated by the occupiers.

More media

Returning to the media there are other problems. First is that of the compartmentalization of news items such that all these problems seem disparate and unrelated, horrible or terrible or scary, but not necessarily related. Accompanying this is the seemingly trivialization of these problems, reduced s they are to ten second sound bites that create captivating headlines but little weight of substance - in general a lack of thought, depth and wisdom. Even the documentary shows while adding more information, still attempt "balance" - the downfall of journalism - as true journalism should advocate a position based on total sums of information, accepting a perspective that evidence - rather than hearsay or meaningless rhetoric or mythological beliefs - supports.

Another problem with media is its tie ins with the corporate world and the constant barrage of advertising combined with dim-witted shows created for an audience that is not educated (and continuing to slip within the OECD education rankings) for anything more meaningful. The U.S. denigrates propaganda in all its forms within other countries, yet cleverly incorporates its propaganda into the daily life and routines of its citizens from the moment they can watch television and activate a computer. It is called advertising, consumption, saving while buying (an obvious contradiction in terms that everyone seems to accept), everything that is required to keep the populace happy, placated, and docile while the elite rampage through the world harnessing as much of its wealth as possible.

It is this same media that trivializes global warming as a matter of carbon emissions from cars and a few too many power plants without recognizing the gross consumptive habits of the west that requires more than our own planet for sustainability - unfortunately we only have one that is accessible to us. It is the irony of a magazine sponsoring a contest on 'going green', with part of the reward being more air miles. It trivializes the plight of the poor by telling us all that the recession is over...well, almost over...we need to all adjust to a new standard...that the poor need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

The great black hope

President Obama mesmerized enough voters to gain control of the helm of the ship of state in 2009, a ship of state fuelled by 'hope,' 'change,' 'audacity,' and a 'yes we can' attitude. All very nice, all very vague, all resulting in the ship of state barging its blind way through all aspects of troubled waters.

Obama's most recent trip to the Asia-Pacific congress highlighted the diminished status of the U.S. in the region. Attending more as a supplicant than a leader, more of a follower than a leader, Obama still tried his wonderful rhetoric about cooperation and improving humanities plight, rhetoric aimed probably more at the U.S. domestic market than at the Asian countries, who have deftly moved around U.S. interests and are creating their own sphere of interest, or, probably more correctly, their system of tribute to China, the emerging giant in the area.

The Middle East wars are ongoing and have been expanded into Pakistan. More troops will probably be sent into Afghanistan while those in Iraq are destined to remain in their forts for some time to come yet. Covert operations and political manipulations have destabilized Pakistan, creating a hostility within its population against the U.S., while U.S. flyboy geeks operate computer consoles within the homeland in order to bomb 'suspected terrorists' half a world away, an easy task for those raised on video war games, collateral damage be damned.

Palestine continues to be 'settled' while ongoing house demolitions and many forms of terror are structured over the area as a whole under the control of the Israeli military. Obama back-tracked very quickly on his verbal support of stopping Israeli settlement building and turned it over to place it as a condition to restart the 'peace' talks, the unending series of Israeli delays and stalls that allow it to continue to occupy the territories and continue construction.

Other problems remain or loom larger for U.S. interests as they continue their unequivocal support of Israel. Lebanon internally has recognized the strength of Hezbollah and accepted its arms as a part of its identity. Iran continues to be harassed and threatened on the pretence of making nuclear weapons, while Israel, Pakistan and India receive a wink and a nod but no official condemnation of their nuclear programs - and North Korea remains a reactionary nuclear stalwart that the U.S. does not seem to know what to do with.

Oil, resources control, and the economy...and...

All this, apart from the religious aspect and the U.S. evangelistic right wing's anticipation of Armageddon combined with Jewish zeal for a pure homeland, is about oil. But not just oil, but all other resources, and not just resources, but the control of those resources and the fear of a rising multi-polarity being led by the Chinese with accompaniment by a renewed belligerence of Russia and the rising economic power of Brazil and India among others (the BRIC nations).

U.S. wealth is built on two things at the moment - the willingness of the world to finance its debts (and thus it wars) and its ability to militarily control the resources or the nations that own the resources and the elites within the nations that up to now at least feared/respected/fawned upon U.S. imperial strength. The rise of the BRIC nations creates huge demands for resources and is creating new liaisons of commerce and trade around the old structures of the U.S., most importantly the declining status of the IMF, World Bank and the WTO. In order for the U.S. to try and maintain the course of the ship of state, it retains its traditional military belligerence, preferring occupation, hostility, covert actions, threats, torture and assassinations to negotiations and productive dialogue - again at odds with the platitudes and rhetoric emanating from Obama's Washington, not much different from Bush's or Clinton's or all the other Washingtons.

Thus, while declining in prestige and limited by asymmetrical power, the U.S. clings to its military horizons in the Middle East, clings to its ephemeral mirages of peace talks between Israel and Palestine, continues to blame the Middle East for problems created by years of colonial exploitation and colonial resource extraction, blind in its vision of itself as the 'light on the hill' that will save all of mankind. It is too blind, too wayward, too uncaring and thoughtless as it pursues its own elitist and narcissistic course.

These resource wars, and the accompanying end run negotiations between various trading partners that now deny the U.S. even observer status in their interactions, accompany the economic decline of the U.S. as economic pundits wait with unknowing anticipation to see if and or when the U.S. loses control of its currency to another reserve currency or system of currencies. Amongst all this, the environment is - literally - laid to waste.

...the environment.

Except for the committed scientists and the informed members of the public, the environment remains of little import to the elite powers. Perhaps it is an attitude that everything will sort itself in the end with the elites remaining at the top of the heap while the poor and downtrodden suffer and wither under whatever global climate change chooses to bring to bear upon us. Or it is simply ignorance, disbelief, a state of suspended animation, while we all cruise along on our consumptive journey, not wishing to contemplate the worst that can happen. Or perhaps the worst that can happen, especially in the short term, is more war, death and destruction as the new plurality of powers manipulate in whatever fashion to regain/maintain their order within the hierarchy of nations.

War of course creates one of the worst environments in which to live, during and after. Civilians suffer the most, and children the most among them. The after effects of Fallujah are now coming to the fore, with stories of increased cancer rates and birth defects, similar to the effects that have been recorded in Vietnam after the use of Agent Orange, and in Japan after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Certainly people affected by this will not worry themselves too much about either the near or distant future.

I expect little if anything from Copenhagen, little if anything from either the U.S. or China or other states wishing to continue to ride along on the current bearing of rising economic wealth. It would prove too costly to our current economic system to do anything realistic to limit climate change (change is already happening, limitations are all that can be expected at best), and would disrupt the comfortable lives of the elites if they had to allow political power to devolve towards the people, creating a true democracy that might and probably would choose a less consumptive egotistical lifestyle ( and therefore less militarily oriented) in order to allay some of the worst effects of climate change.

Globalization and solutions

Another term that is not working out as its supporters intended to. Instead of a MacDonalds in every country preventing war through hamburgers, instead of a flat planet with equal opportunity for all, instead of everyone rising on the tide of continued growth and emerging democracy, all of course based on U.S. standards and ideals, instead of all that, the world is witnessing the decline of U.S. power and the rise of the BRIC powers. The U.S. remains belligerent, it remains within the thrall of Israeli prophecy, it continues to blindly believe its own disproven rhetoric wherein its actions have all too frequently fully contradicted the rhetoric used to make excuses to its own citizens as to why it needs to invade and occupy half the world in order to create democracy and freedom.

There are solutions, to me so obvious that I am not going to reiterate them here at this time. It is not the solutions that are so problematic, but rather the inculcated beliefs of supremacy and righteousness that are so difficult to overcome. And that is where reviewing books and writing critiques and commentaries retains its value.

It is to advocate against the atrocities that the elitist powers hold on to. It is to highlight and recognize that all our current problems - climate change, wars, the economy - are all part and parcel of one large problem - the need for a paradigm shift in the manner in which humanity approaches its lifestyle demands on a finite planet, a paradigm shift in the manner in which a much broader, much longer, much more self effacing view of life is needed in order to plan for a sustainable future that should look quite a bit different than the future that more wars, more occupations, more greed, and unbridled debt-ridden consumptive living would bring to the world.

According to the Norway Post:

...Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.

The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened, the Committee says.

The comments are mostly about talk: "a new climate...diplomacy...dialogue and negotiations...vision...negotiations...." all about ideas that have not happened on Obama's watch.

What you do speaks so loud, I can't hear what you say....

Those who have read my work know that I refer to this phrase somewhat frequently, when the rhetoric, apologetics, excuses, visions, and hopes in no way match the reality of what occurs in the real world.

While Obama is a wonderful orator and speaks marvellous words of people talking and negotiating and dialoguing, about a world the majority of us desire, he has accomplished nothing, nor do I believe he has laid the groundwork for future success as his actions are often compared to his words.

Domestically he has failed - or is in the process of failing - with healthcare, the environment, and the economy, three of the biggest concerns of average citizens today. Healthcare has been strangled by a Congress that is falling in line with the large pharmaceutical companies. The people he put in place for the environmental agencies are old Clinton cronies who are linked to serve the very industries that are damaging the environment. The economy has been assisted by government largesse to the large corporations who helped create the economic problems in the first place (although it really was a group effort between government, the corporations, and the military) while the people who followed the mantra/propaganda of consumer debt pay the final price.

In foreign affairs nothing has been accomplished except more talk, with the western media in particular creating wonderful scenarios about a changing world, while strong doubts already have risen after his fine rhetorical speeches in Cairo, the UN, and elsewhere. Against international law, he has unilaterally extended the "War on Terror" into Pakistan. He has pretended to do away with illegal confinement and tortures, but is careful to make sure that occurs only on U.S. territory, while it continues, against international law, in other 'alien' lands.

Nothing has been accomplished with nuclear disarmament but a lot of talk, and while a lot of talk might be necessary in order to achieve a full and equitable nuclear drawdown, the best action that would speak louder than any of his rhetoric would be a unilateral decrease in nuclear armaments without asking others to do the same (after all, why quibble, overkill is overkill and there is still enough of that to go around several times). Threatening another country with military action, or possible military action also goes against international law, while the threatened country by most accurate accounts is well within international law with their actions.

Other nuclear countries receive the double standard. India has developed nuclear weapons outside of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and now receives preferential treatment from the U.S. government. Later, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons, outside the NPT, with a wink and a nudge from the U.S., and now is suffering under increasing covert action, increasing direct action, and increasing political manipulation within the broader scope of the new AfPak war. All these actions - essentially the subversion of another county's sovereignty - could be deemed illegal under international law.

Israel and Palestine

Covering the smallest land area, but being at the centre of the emotional and geostrategic turmoil of the Middle East and Arab states lies Israel. It has been understood for decades that Israel has a nuclear arsenal of an estimated couple hundred nuclear weapons, deliverable by plane, missile, and sub (and who knows what other delivery units have been devised). Operating completely outside the NPT, fully avoiding the question whenever it might occur, Israel pretends that they do not exist, and the U.S. pretends that they do not know they exist. Obama is the perfect foil for continued Israeli transgressions against the Palestinian people.

Obama has done nothing about the Israeli/Palestine situation other than a lot of talk, and a considerable amount of that talk has been decidedly one-sided. His advisors are all decidedly pro-Israeli in the context of the land question and settlements. He has given in to the continuation of the settlements, deemed illegal under international law, has said nothing about the separation wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice, and has said nothing about Israel's nuclear arsenal nor Israel's threats against Iran. While Obama talks, the Israelis continue to do what they have always done through negotiations and talking: talking about peace, while continuing to occupy Palestine, while continuing to build settlements, while continuing to suppress the civil society of Palestine, all actions against international law.

A greater purpose, or smoke and mirrors?

There are a number of comments about the prize being an incentive for Obama to live up to his rhetoric, to create an equitable peaceful world (although fewer than those that I could find wondering why he received it at all). That may well be true, and Obama may well believe it, but for me, it all comes back to the difference between the spoken word and the actions on the ground. Obama's rhetoric about the Middle East, about world peace and cooperation all sound mighty fine. The tools that he has used so far to try and accomplish this are the same old militaristic tools that have always been part and parcel of U.S. foreign policy. Unilateral invasions, occupations, threats of invasion, covert actions against governments, hostile actions against civilians all go against international law - more decidedly they go against common sense that violent military actions will somehow create a peaceful world.

I would be happy to have Obama live up to the expectations (hmm, but what really are the expectations of the Nobel Prize Committee?) of the prize, to realize his rhetorical grand visions of world peace and harmony. However, unless he can stand up against his own advisors, unless he can go against the grain of the established Washington perspective of the world, unless he can face down the Israeli political machine, not much will change.

A farce is a pretence or mockery. It is the dismal humour of human tragedy. The human tragedy hear is Obama's sparkling rhetoric allowing him to receive a peace prize, while providing a thin veneer over the illegal and hostile actions the U.S. promotes for its own geo-strategic purposes around the world.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.