UN-HABITAT, an agency of the United Nations, recently published a 218-page report entitled State of the World's Cities, 2010-2011. The report is full of statistics on the status of cities around the world and their demographics. It defines slum dwellers as those living in urban centers without one of the following: durable structures to protect them from climate, sufficient living area, sufficient access to water, access to sanitation facilities, and freedom from eviction.

Almost intentionally hidden in these statistics is one shocking fact about urban Iraqi populations. For the past few decades, prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the percentage of the urban population living in slums in Iraq hovered just below 20 percent. Today, that percentage has risen to 53 percent: 11 million of the 19 million total urban dwellers. In the past decade, most countries have made progress toward reducing slum dwellers. But Iraq has gone rapidly and dangerously in the opposite direction.

According to the U.S. Census of 2000, 80 percent of the 285 million people living in the United States are urban dwellers. Those living in slums are well below 5 percent. If we translate the Iraqi statistic into the U.S. context, 121 million people in the United States would be living in slums.

If the United States had an unemployment rate of 25-50 percent and 121 million people living in slums, riots would ensue, the military would take over, and democracy would evaporate. So why are people in the United States not concerned and saddened by the conditions in Iraq? Because most people in the United States do not know what happened in Iraq and what is happening there now. Our government, including the current administration, looks the other way and perpetuates the myth that life has improved in post-invasion Iraq. Our major news media reinforces this message.

I had high hopes that the new administration would tell the truth to its citizens about why we invaded Iraq and what we are doing currently in the country. President Obama promised to move forward and not look to the past. However problematic this refusal to examine on the past -- particularly for historians -- the president should at least inform the U.S. public of the current conditions in Iraq. How else can we expect our government to formulate appropriate policy?

More extensive congressional hearings on Iraq might have allowed us to learn about the myths propagated about Iraq prior to the invasion and the extent of the damage and destruction our invasion brought on Iraq. We would have learned about the tremendous increase in urban poverty and the expansion of city slums. Such facts about the current conditions of Iraq would help U.S. citizens to better understand the impact of the quick U.S. withdraw and what are our moral responsibilities in Iraq should be.

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Food security, however, does not equal food sovereignty, nor does it ensure that the roots of hunger in the world's poorest countries will be addressed. Feed the Future is likely to be yet another program that benefits large corporations and does little to address the real issues hindering agricultural growth in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Big Ag's Revolving Door

On June 14, 2010 USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah addressed a food security meeting of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Dakar, offering support

And while Shah admirably noted the role of women in agriculture and the importance of civil society in carrying out the FTF initiative, he stopped short of acknowledging the tremendous potential for agricultural development that already exists on the continent. For instance, there is the Tigray Project in Ethiopia that boosts food production through agro-ecological methods, and the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in Madagascar that uses organic and sustainable methods to increase rice yields as much as sevenfold. Instead, Shah spoke of new seed varieties introduced in Mali and the market viability of USAID-supported farming in Ghana.

This is hardly surprising coming from Shah, who recently served as the agricultural development director at the biotech-friendly Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation is a primary funder of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which despite its sustainability rhetoric is a vehicle for the promotion of genetically modified (GM) seeds in Africa. The revolving door doesn't stop there, however. Obama has brought a squad of pro-biotech officials into his administration, including former Monsanto Vice President Michael Taylor and former vice president of the lobbying group CropLife, Islam Siddiqui.

Wrong Solutions and Ignored Histories

Therefore, it is no surprise to hear FTF officials talk about the power of new seed varieties in ending hunger in Africa, despite their potentially disastrous consequences. The history of GM seeds and the green revolution in Asia shows that such approaches serve only to augment the profits of corporations like Monsanto while driving small farmers into debt. Although the green revolution in Asia did boost yields, study after study on African agriculture proves that organic, non-GMO agriculture is "better for food security than most conventional systems and is more likely to be sustainable in the longer term." Farming with GM seeds and fertilizers is a very top-heavy method that does not address the true causes of hunger and instead approaches food insecurity as a profit-making opportunity. Mamadou Goita, the executive director of the Institute for Research and the Promotion of Alternatives in Development (IRPAD) based in Mali, recognizes that "as is always the case with Africa, once again the world is obsessed with addressing the consequences while blatantly ignoring the root causes of the problem."

Many of these roots of hunger were planted in the 1980s by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank's Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), which bankrupted Africa of its crop diversity and traditional farming methods in favor of large-scale, market-led production. In fact, just as the United States began heavily subsidizing its own big industrial farms, the IMF prohibited African countries from subsidizing their own agricultural systems.

The result was a dumping of surplus goods such as rice and wheat from the United States into African economies. Local farmers couldn't compete with the prices and therefore couldn't sell their products even in their own communities. To make matters worse, many farmers had switched to export-worthy staples and away from traditional crops, making it even more difficult to feed their families.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

Though the FTF initiative does encourage host country governments to consult with civil society, its tight relationship with companies like Monsanto will severely undermine local and regional sovereignty over food resources. Monsanto has a history of hooking poor farmers on seeds and accompanying herbicides and pesticides they cannot afford to buy. Furthermore, though the Danforth Plant Science Center, one of FTF's partners, may hail the creation of a nutrient- and protein-rich cassava plant, it fails to recognize that crop diversity -- and thus diet diversity -- is nature's best remedy for nutrient deficiencies. By introducing single, silver-bullet crops into African soils, FTF risks creating a continent of monocrops that contribute to environmental degradation and declining human health, and which put societies at great risk if the crop fails.

At a recent U.S. House of Representatives hearing on FTF, members of Congress raised very few of these questions about the risks of GM seeds. On the whole, they welcomed the testimony of representatives of Monsanto and the Danforth Plant Science Center, both of whom hailed the potential benefits of "better" seeds. Even if those seeds can produce higher yields in the short term, more food does not mean less hunger or less poverty and a green revolution will not cure the problem of chronic hunger in Africa. A more sustainable solution involves approaches such as using indigenous varieties of crops that are drought-tolerant, teaching farmers about organic methods of composting and fertilizing, and planting a diversity of crops, thereby generating healthier soil. The best thing the United States could do with FTF is to promote and enhance traditional, agro-ecological methods of farming -- but then again, that wouldn't be profitable for private companies like Monsanto.

Many in Africa remain skeptical of GM seeds, which are often seen as a neocolonial tool by developed nations to further exploit Africa's vast natural resources. Countries such as Zambia have opposed the importation of food aid that is genetically engineered, and groups like Biowatch in South Africa have led successful legal cases against Monsanto. However, GM crops are already cultivated on a large scale in South Africa, and the absence of a large scientific community in Africa has allowed GMO-producing companies to dominate the debate. International organizations such as GRAIN and Food First are attempting to elevate the concerns around GM seeds in Africa through advocacy and outreach. The information these organizations are producing, along with scientific studies that highlight the health and environmental risks of GM crops, should be widely circulated.

Ensuring Accountability on Positive Advancements

Feed the Future does get a few things right, such as working with agricultural extension services in each individual country, assisting in the construction of roads to help farmers get their products to market, and establishing irrigation systems in dry regions of the world. It also recognizes the importance of country-led development and the necessity of women's involvement in agriculture projects, both of which are foundational to any development initiative.

However, for these proposals to be successful, FTF must enforce strict accountability and transparency mechanisms, particularly in countries whose governments are notoriously inattentive to the needs and aspirations of their citizens. FTF has chosen 20 countries in which to begin its work; among them are countries like Uganda, whose President Yoweri Museveni is considered corrupt and undemocratic. Thus, for infrastructure projects and extension services to be effective, FTF must ensure funding is carefully monitored and that the outcomes are objectively evaluated.

The global food sovereignty movement is growing. All over the world, communities and farmers are taking greater ownership over their land and food. "Food sovereignty is the people's right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems," offering "a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime." It will be a central area of discussion during the World Social Forum in Dakar in February, moving individuals to organize around the right to control their food and trade systems. By joining this movement in the United States, individuals can act in solidarity with the struggles facing African farmers, consumers, and producers. It will take this and more to change the direction of U.S. agricultural policy abroad and programs like Feed the Future.

Instead of pushing the corporate-friendly elements of FTF, the U.S. government could do more to assist agricultural growth in the global south by targeting the roots of the problem. By enacting fair trade laws, ending subsidies to large agribusinesses in the United States, tackling the causes and consequences of climate change, and supporting community-led attempts to organically and sustainably grow food, Obama could begin to make a positive contribution to U.S. Africa policy. In its current state, FTF may be more of a boon to companies like Monsanto than to Africans facing the realities of hunger and poverty.

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But in the age of Guantanamo-like gulags filled with bearded Muslim men, such principles are disregarded. The very ideals that have been celebrated in the United States for generations are being trampled upon, violated and abused.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can reference American ideals and speak of democracy while justifying the peculiar elections in Afghanistan, or the bewildering sectarian "democracy" underway in Iraq. However, when President Barack Obama made the seemingly dreadful mistake on August 13 of endorsing the right of Muslims to build a community center near Ground Zero, all hell broke loose.

Representative Peter King, a Republican from New York - echoing the sentiment of numerous others in congress, media and public - immediately denounced Obama's remarks. The very next day, the president was forced to explain to CNN the underlying intent of his comments. He laboriously delineated the difference between commenting on "the wisdom" of the project and upholding the broader principle that the government should treat "everyone equal, regardless" of religion.

The controversy is odd, as well as embarrassing, because the intention of building the community center and the mosque - which includes a lecture hall and a swimming pool - was meant as a gesture of goodwill, an attempt at cultural and religious dialogue. It signals the Muslim community's desire for inclusion. It is also an act of defiance.

Those who committed their evil deed in the name of religion, and those who lead major wars also in the name of religion are groups most disaffected by a community initiative aimed at rising over the superficial religious divides that have lead to major crimes and fueled criminal wars.

However, not all of those who against the approval of the mosque project are politically manipulative, ideologically or even religiously motivated. Some have innocently bought into the ridiculous media allegations and insinuations. They have been led to believe that building such a structure would be insensitive, betraying the memory of the September 11 victims (who also include Muslims), and could function as a symbolic message that the terrorists have won.

One fails to understand how a prayer room, a swimming pool and a lecture hall a few blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood represents a victory in the books of al-Qaeda's grand designs. But more importantly, such language suggests - if not confirms - that what is underway is nothing but a religious war. If that is the case, then Muslims, using the same logic, have the right to curtail the freedom and target minorities in Muslim countries because they profess religions that are supposedly hostile to Islam. But isn't that precisely what al-Qaeda - a group abhorred by most Muslims - among other zealot groups have been arguing, if not practicing?

It's unacceptable that after years of American wars in Muslim countries - which preceded the terrorist attacks of September 11 - and many more wars which killed, wounded and devastated millions, we are still stuck in the same terrible mentality. Many haven't yet matured to see through the tainted lenses of hate and prejudice, the logic of "us" and 'them'. The very mindset that led America to its political, economic, military and moral crises for years continues to prevail. The very same cheerleaders who supervised the demise of their country as a world leader are now carrying the torches and forks of intolerance against a mosque, a lecture hall and a swimming pool.

The Muslim community center project was meant to remain a local affair until Obama afforded his support during a Ramadan meal with members of the US Muslim community. His comments presented the perfect opportunity for a perfectly opportunistic group of politicians and media pundits. His words were twisted and manipulated to give the impression that he cared little about the victims of September 11. The US president was reduced to actually have to state that "the pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable ..."

However, as unbelievable, sad and self-defeating such a debate seems, it is also a wake-up call and a stark reminder of the kind of hatred and intolerance that gave that spot in lower Manhattan its dreadful name. Hatred and intolerance have also created uncountable other "ground zeros" in various Muslim lands, from Baghdad, to Gaza to Kabul and elsewhere.

Perhaps the controversy is a reminder of the issues we still need to urgently confront. We cannot indulge in the rhetoric of change, hope and audacity, while we remain at the same emotional and psychological standstill. We need to realize how such a fragile collective state of mind makes many of us so easily exploited and readily manipulated. This is the discussion that truly needs to commence, as boldly and urgently as possible.

- Ramzy Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

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Here in Bourj el-Barajneh, one of a dozen Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, time seems to have stood still for years. Generation after generation, children grow up in the same desperate reality, punished for crimes they did not commit, injured by a history not of their making. They stand on dirty balconies, cracked beyond repair, watching Beirut and the world go by.

The city is abuzz with life, politics, rumors, anticipation and intrigue. It remains perpetually divided between many worlds and contradictions, in a way that seems almost impossible to reconcile or bridge.

Bourj el-Barajneh has grown into a 'municipality' since its original inception as a 'temporary' accommodation for the Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their homes and land in Palestine between 1947 and 1948. The Palestinian physical share of the camp has largely remained the same, although the numbers have significantly grown. Influxes of Shia, Sunni, and more recently Iraqis have moved in and around the vicinity of the camp. Little was put in place to accommodate the natural growth, or to regulate the latter population influxes. Some self-servingly argued that allowing Palestinian refugees to improve their conditions would disconnect them from their homeland and sense of belonging. Therefore, suffer they must, with little work opportunity, no civil rights, and no cement or building material to repair their pitiful existence.

A state of arrested development has defined this particular refugee camp and Lebanon's relationship with refugees. Those opposed to the refugee presence fear that incorporating Palestinians into Lebanese society might be the prelude to incorporating them into the country's political landscape. This might risk further complicating an already messy demography. While Christian sects in Lebanon are the most fearful, others are also anxious.

In 1982, a constant state of siege received a boost when the Israeli army, along with their allies among Christian Phalangists, laid a brutal and deadly siege around Bourj el-Barajneh. Palestinians and Lebanese resisted, but lightly armed refugees could only go so far in withstanding the might of regional superpowers armed by a world superpower. The camp eventually collapsed, as many of its buildings fell. Whatever remained standing was dotted with holes and painful memories.

Another siege followed, and lasted for almost exactly three years, between 1984 and 1987. The perpetrator this time was the Amal militia. This incident also left its own evidence of ailing walls and cracked windows. With rebuilding made illegal by law, and very little by way of funds, the dust of war was the only fresh coat of paint the camp could possible hope for.

But they are many in Lebanon who still want to see improvement - whether slight or significant to the lives of Palestinian refugees, whether in Bourj el-Barajneh or elsewhere. Hezbollah has, till now, guarded various refugee camps against many threats. Palestinians here gratefully acknowledge that without Hezbollah serving as a bulwark against the many looming dangers, the plight of the refugees would have been much worse. But Hezbollah, a Shia group, can also be hostage to Lebanon's abhorring sectarian divisions, demography and political forces. Palestinians here are counting on Hezbollah to step up its support. They need the group to challenge the rejectionist forces in the Lebanese parliament, and demand civil rights for Palestinian refugees. Much is being debated at this time, and there are many backdoor discussions over details, semantics, and more.

Meanwhile, the two Palestinian girls continue to stand on the discolored balcony. They are sisters of about eight and ten years old. They were born after the two terrible sieges and much of the war that tormented their family for generations. But they were here to witness the 2006 war. Their refugee camp is a short distance from the Dahiya, the predominantly Shia neighborhood where Hezbollah is headquartered. Tough men and women withstood the unimaginable firepower directed at that tiny stretch of land, as in many other parts of Lebanon. Now, most of Dahiya has been rebuilt, with final touches being laid to edifices of concrete that will soon - if another war doesn't erupt - become hospitals, schools, offices and subsidised residential areas for the poor.

But the same is not true for Bourj el-Barajneh. The camp continues to carry the physical and philological scars of past wars, each generation passing them on to the next. A paradigm shift here is only possible when the balance of power significantly shifts in favor of one party or another. Aside from admiring its stiff resistance against Israel, Palestinians in Lebanon place so much hope in Hezbollah, believing it will be the party that finally tips the balance of power in favor of justice for the refugees.

Bourj el-Barajneh roughly translates into 'Tower of Towers'. And in many ways it is. It has stood the test of time and bombs. Its people have surpassed the limits of human endurance and determination in a way that should be scientifically recorded. In some areas it towers over Beirut, from the Haret Hreik direction. Illegal construction and limited space for horizontal expansion forced the refugees to build in some parts in a vertical fashion, creating a Kafkian-like reality, true but surreal.

And the refugees too are teetering between the lines of an almost pseudo-reality. They find themselves held hostage in time and space, in a growing city, a hectically changing world, frozen in time and increasingly lowered expectations.

The two girls continued to stare, clearly without a specific target in mind, while people below them walked on, unhindered by their confusion. I too walked away. For a minute I hoped for a sign, anything that could assure me that there was some meaning behind all this strangeness, all this injustice. I am sure there is, but today, I could find none.

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In Lebanon, a sense of urgency always seems to prevail, even when there are no urgent matters to tend to. Jamal's driving style has probably changed little through the successive Israeli wars and bombardments of Lebanon in past years (the last being the 2006 war, which destroyed much of the country's infrastructure and killed hundreds of civilians).

Although no bombs were falling now, Jamal could feel something in the air. "They are cooking something big," he said, "but what it is, no one really knows for sure."

Jamal was referring to a joint historic visit to Lebanon by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on July 30. President al-Assad joined King Abdullah in his plane, where they stayed for a few hours and lunched with Lebanese leaders. The occasion marks the first visit by a Saudi King to Lebanon since 1957, and also al-Assad's first trip to Beirut since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005. While both these fact are important, what is most interesting is the fact that Syria and Saudi Arabia once stood at complete odds over the rivalry in Lebanon between two collations - the ruling March 14 Coalition and the one comprising the opposition under Hezbollah's leadership, the March 8 Coalition.

While Jamal was puzzled by the July 30 visit, he is hardly confused about where he stands. He remains unquestionably a fervent supporter of Hezbollah, the Shia group that led the Lebanese resistance that forced an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Many believe it also defeated the Israeli forces that attacked Lebanon in 2006, and see the group as a symbol of Arab resistance against Israeli threats. But Jamal, like many of Hezbollah's supporters in Lebanon is not Shia. He is a Sunni.

Jamal's wife of many years died two months ago. He saw her as his life partner and his "only love in life." As he spoke about her, he breathed in the smoke from his cheap cigarette - as if carbon dioxide might somehow help to rejuvenate memory. He held in the smoke as he began searching for something on his duck-taped cell phone. As if the frenzy on the road was not dangerous enough, Jamal then paused to locate a photo of his wife, a shy and kindly-looking woman in a white headscarf. She was 55 when she died of cancer. For a poor man like Jamal, medical treatment would normally be confined to whatever public hospitals had to offer. But private hospitals subsided by Hezbollah made it possible for Jamal to ensure that his wife received the best in medical technology. Although she eventually succumbed to her illness, she was shielded from pain under the care of competent and respectful doctors and nurses.

No, there should be no 'eureka' moments here. Jamal's passionate support of Hezbollah is not simply self-serving. He is very clear on his ideological affiliations and is not hesitant to point out their shortcomings. Also, if he was seeking personal benefit, he would surely be driving a better car, wearing a nicer shirt, and smoking fancier cigarettes. "Hezbollah made it possible for a man like me to be proud again," he said. According to him, Hezbollah's heroism in the battle field, and unconditional social services provided mostly to the poor in Beirut and elsewhere restored his pride and dignity. But Jamal himself is a self-declared Arab-Nationalist, a Nasserite even.

Unlike other cities, Beirut doesn't convey one overall impression and experience. The photos of the war martyrs - with most recent victims having newer and larger posters - are mixed with many signs of globalization. While Jamal's car seemed commonplace in West Beirut, in East Beirut, the worn-out vehicle seemed to fight for an ever-shrinking space among newer models. But Jamal didn't sound intimidated or disturbed by his comparative poverty. His language is revolutionary, laden with terminology affiliated with various ideological brands: Islamist, Socialist, Pan-Arabist. There are many like him in Lebanon, emboldened by the impressive victories of the resistance, and the failures of all who attempted to co-opt it.

Still, cultural differences remain. There are many others, who, although Arab, prefer to speak in French. Indeed, the conflict in Lebanon cannot be reduced to mere groups and individuals, but is also a cultural clash. The party that will eventually prevail will ultimately define Lebanon: as an Arab country or some other imagined entity.

There is much haste here, as the clash is expected, once more, to come to head. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which was set up in the wake of Hariri's assassination is expected to reveal its findings soon. It is feared that the investigation will blame "rogue elements" of Hezbollah for the killing, as disclosed by the leader of Hezbollah himself, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. Many here believe that STL has been largely compromised and politicized, and is a Western-Israeli platform intended to destabilize Lebanon and extract concessions from Hezbollah. The outcome of its investigation is likely to also be political. Many are worried, although some are comforted by the fact that Hezbollah is just too strong to be undermined by STL's findings.

"This bridge is the highest in the Middle East," Jamal said proudly, as we crossed the massive and very high concrete edifice. I nodded admiringly, thinking he was proud simply of an architectural achievement. He continued, "Israel destroyed it in the war, and two months ago it was re-opened. It is much more impressive than before."

"They destroy, we rebuild," he reminisced, words that accentuate the wisdom of generations. "This is what resistance is all about."

He pulled in another deep breath of smoke, and held it in for a while. Then he slowly released it, as we finally crossed the bridge.

- Ramzy Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

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If a person had traveled forward in time, arriving from even the recent past, of say, twenty-five to thirty-years ago, and looked upon the present day United States -- he would have thought he had entered some alternative universe inhabited by deranged grotesques. Resembling a dadist reality television program, a sizable portion of the populace of the US (save our ugly, contemporary, sweatshop-assembled clothing) could pass for George Grosz or Max Beckmann caricatures from Weimar Republic Germany.

In the few public spaces remaining, the time traveler would encounter an over-weight, ill-informed citizenry, staring, compulsively, at hand-held electronic appliances, as if the actual world, on the other side of the small, glowing screen, held no interest for them. He would bear witness to an age when mass media imagery has crowded out and colonized almost every area of life, both public and private, and is peopled with caricatures of willful ignorance and brainless self-regard such as Sarah Palin.

As is the case with individuals, every era is endowed with a distinct character, something near a personality, all its own. If that personality could, over time, gain a sense of self-awareness, our own would blush in embarrassment viewing Palin ... Preening, sputtering her word salad palaver, resembling an aging prom queen turned infomercial spokesmodel and speaking as though she acquired the english language from shredded scraps of speeches by Ronald Reagan and random bits of Bazooka Joe bubble gum comix, she is possessed of such an extreme degree of incomprehensible self-regard it seems a form of derangement.

In little danger of gaining self-awareness, Palin both characterizes and is a caricature of the era: obsession with power and celebrity, mindless memes, and the endless, contrived drama and meaningless denouement on display in the short attention span theatre of corporate and social media -- all its devices and collective derangement -- that are reactionary in the shunning of substance and the determination to remain devoid of the deepening implications of human interaction. Ergo, these traits and characteristics are reflected in Palin and vice versa, then back again, ad infinitum, like distortions in carnival funhouse mirrors.

Does one get the feeling that the more powerless we feel, collectively, about the rising levels of economic exploitation exacted upon us and the accelerating rate of ecocide committed on the planet by corporate oligarchs, the more celebrity "news" and other tropes of empty distraction and denial will froth forth from the idiot imaginings of the pop culture douche-scape?

In our time, the understanding of the intrinsic value of almost every endeavor is reduced to the crackpot realism of its commodified and practical worth. In the popular imagination, manic commercial come-ons dominate the day, in which, images of beauty, as well as the force and foibles of human character, has been hijacked and appropriated for strictly commercial exploitation. Naturally, those who long for beauty in human or divine form turn away in mortification, and, more and more become possessed of compensatory prayers for the destruction of this empire of commercial vacuity. As the mind is ground to spittle in the gears of the corporate wheelhouse, one may begin to dream of, even yearn for, apocalypse -- a longing for a Götterdämmerung of kitsch.

For many years now, we have been witness to cultural fantasies(both of the religious and secular variety) of decline, decay, of even the end of civilization itself ... that are, perhaps, a collective wish for the taut bindings that modernity places on the psyche to be loosened. The modernist towers must fall; then our insular, nature-denuded mode of mind will be pulled down from its lofty precincts into the élan vital of primal dirt ... There, the sterility of the collective, corporatized mind will meet its end, and reborn passion and vital imaginings will bloom like wild flowers in a post-apocalyptic strip mall parking lot ... This is what, I suspect, lies beneath our fascination with apocalyptic scenarios. In these contemporary deluge myths, the hyper-commercialized and commodified psyche, befogged by its own convoluted libido, once destroyed, is now free to start life anew.

Concurrently, in the fundamentalist Christian imagination, narratives of consumerism and End Time Mythology interweave and meld, becoming a gospel of instant gratification and imminent destruction ... This is a religious cosmology resonating from a junk food paradigm: The Gospels of The Drive Thru Jesus; when The Rapture comes, our corporeal bodies will be cast aside like fast food wrappers.
But be warned, by eating of all that high caloric food, all of you Jesus-hungry Lard Asses of The Lord: If your clothes were to fall from you (as your prophecies claim) as you rise skyward, the sight of all your fat, sagging bodies, floating in air, will resemble anything but the dawning of eternal paradise -- instead the event will more likely resemble an endless tape loop of a porno video for fat fetishists shot in a zero gravity chamber.
The narrative of fundamentalist Christianity has become so encumbered with kitsch imagery that its followers hope for the destruction of the planet itself so that they can escape the soul-defying imprisonment of its creepy dogma.

Hence, the modernist conundrum is: how does one retain the depth and resonance of myth, without concretizing it into a pernicious, fundamentalist death cult? Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- the myths of the jealous, desert god -- present a problem, because they place the answer in heaven i.e., far away in a sterile paradise ... The gods of the earth have been cast-out as sinful. Hence, those religions become so obsessed with a fantasy of purity that earth-dwelling and subterranean drives and desires -- that were symbolized, for example, by the Greeks as the gods Hermes, Pan, and Hades -- appear to Christian believers as Satanic.

In other words, Christians, Jews and Muslims, with their gaze fixed on heaven, view their earthly, human half as demonic. Moreover, by becoming split-off from their human half, followers of monotheistic belief systems are prone to suffer all the ills they attribute to the devil. Satan does have a "wide stance" after all.

This is a view of the world devoid of nuance: it is a cosmology inhabited by angels of light or musky demons of darkness ... In the fantasy, there exists no Orpheus to fuse the two worlds in entrancing song ... no Hermes to guide the hero into the realm of keening and kvetching shades ... no Persephone -- her lips lacquered in pomegranate juice -- metaphorically ending the stasis of collective human childhood with the implications of all life's seasons.

In its monotheistic view of the world, these fundamentalist fantasies are comparable to logic-clutching, dry as dust, modernist narratives, because both perspectives are so confining, so stultifying to the heart and mind of an individual, that their adherents grow obsessed with fantasies of the world's demise as a way of escaping the confining nature of the belief system itself.

Accordingly, we, as a culture, may just get our wish. Beauty and mortification are the language of the soul. If one ignores beauty, then the mind will begin to dwell on beauty's hidden half: horror. One will see it everywhere. Hamlet laments:

O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
--Hamlet: Act 1, Scene 2.
William Shakespeare

There is an abiding bleakness present in the hidden half of the hyper-commercialized psyche -- a darkness visible; therein, one must gain a willingness to walk through, even pause, for a time in its stark and repellent landscape ... In order not to crackup, one must crack-wise ... to hang a hammock there, between death and the abyss. Apropos: in polar contrast to the froth, faux urgency, and con artist flattery of mass media imagery, one must be willing to accept the deepening effect of being powerless before the trajectory of history and the proliferation of human folly. Most of the time, there are no solutions, only revealing questions and clear-headed responses. For example:

Upon hearing Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic advisor, bray, "putting limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error."

Bill McKibben replied: "Summers is the perfect exemplar of that attitude: an incredibly smart guy whose context is so narrow it ends up making him very dumb indeed."

In my opinion, what caused Summer's level of intelligence to plummet at a Niagara Falls' grade incline can be traced to his unwavering fealty to the tenets of marketplace fundamentalism. The crackpot realist's notion that nature has no value in and of itself, and is only worth what it can be rendered down to as a commodity. The trees of a rain forest can be pulped to paper cups. A human being is only the content of his resume.

This amounts to dharma for dimwits: A bio defines a human being in the same manner and degree of veracity as a restaurant menu describes the various slabs of meat offered ... commodified things that were once living beings.

What Summers' view of existence refuses to acknowledge is: The unsettling truth that what we inflict upon the world we will eventually inflict upon ourselves. When we internalize a self-destructive notion such as a rain forest is expendable -- only fit for commercial exploitation -- then this is the demeaning manner in which we regard fellow human beings. Moreover, it is an absurd and dangerous fantasy to believe our species can have autonomy from nature, and we, for any extended length of time, can have mastery over it.

Federico García Lorca imagined this delusion of psychological separation from and mechanistic dominance over nature and fellow human beings as follows.

The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.
--Excerpt from: City That Does Not Sleep

Sadly, from evidence extant, both elite and hoi polloi of our era labor under this deranged perception. I reside on the island of Manhattan and I'm baffled that so many of my fellow New Yorkers (once a feisty, even belligerent breed) don't seem to care or even notice that they are being gamed. Our billionaire mayor protects his class; we pay for their follies, and they continue to grow richer. The game is so throughly rigged, even when they contrive to immolate the global economy, we get "austerity cuts," and they get on their Gulfstream jets and fly to Dubai.

As things stand at present, for the corporate class, their actions seem to yield no consequences. All this defies logic as well as gravity ... the invisible hand of the marketplace (actually the buckling backs of the middle and laboring classes) can't hold up their swaying tower of hubris much longer. But when it comes down, stand clear, there are no bystanders when an empire crumbles. Despite Larry Summer's pronouncements to the contrary.

Since poetic vision has no place in Summer's view of the world nor offers a solution for its ills, he may never seek counsel in what James Hillman has termed: the thought of the heart and the soul of the world. Hillman's view of the world offers a shift in perspective that could help restore our sense of beauty and tragedy, and, in doing so, bestow us with respect for our own humanity and a greater reverence for living things.

John Keats called earthly existence and the suffering therein a "vale of soul-making." In other words, we must descend into the human condition and into our own humanity in order to grow humble enough to learn and adapt to change. For our winged spirits must be forced out of their revelry of self-regard -- the intoxication of their sky-shackled swoon of impersonal flight (privileged passengers of corporate jets included) -- and be wounded by the conflicts and contretemps of this world and thus become more human.

This development means the end of grandiosity and the beginning of an appreciation of life's grandeur. Sarah Palin, Larry Summers, Mayor Bloomberg, and all the rest of the divas and supernumeraries contributing to the opera-scale cognitive dissidence of the age, will continue to belt out their crackpot realist arias, but, backstage, The Second Law of Thermodynamics has just begun to clear its throat.

I'll give the final word to Lorca:

No, I won't; I attack,
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast the sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.
--Federico García Lorca
Excerpt from: New York (Office and Attack)

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com. Visit Phil's website http://philrockstroh.com/ And at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000711907499

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I share their enthusiasm for profound, bone-marrow transformation of the status quo. Jefferson really was right when he proclaimed that the United States needed a revolution every twenty years. Many of us who were activists during the Vietnam War era were determined to pull off a revolution that would destroy the military industrial complex, institutionalized racism, and the entire capitalist agenda.

Today's visionaries and activists cherish similar hopes, yet I fear that they do not yet grasp the kind of revolution that the planet seems to be asking for. And unlike the revolution we envisioned four decades ago, this one must be in response to the planet and the earth community. From this perspective, I believe there are two kinds of revolution in front of us: The kind that is inappropriate and the kind that is both useful and critical for planetary survival.

Inappropriate Revolutions

The most truly inappropriate revolution would be one based on false assumptions, principally, the notion that political change on a grand scale is meaningful. Pundits of this kind of revolution include all cheerleaders for the Democratic Party and all others who champion the Progressive, left-liberal landscape. These folks are currently obsessing about the November election and agonizing over Tea Party cacophonies. From this perspective, if the far-right were resoundingly defeated by the election of liberal candidates, the nation might be spared from spiraling downward into fascism.

Other well-meaning but naïve proponents of revolution argue that social upheaval and more people in the streets will signal enough distress among the population to provide fertile ground for a political and cultural revolution. While not directly advocating the overthrow of the federal government, these individuals are poised to organize and assume positions of leadership should sufficient unrest unfold.

Inappropriate revolutions tend to focus on widespread global (whether literal or symbolic) measures that will result in mass consciousness raising, mass movements, and mass political and cultural change. This philosophy mirrors "bigger is better" and assumes that significant change only happens when society at large is involved. Models of this kind of revolution in the modern era would be ones such as the Russian Revolution, the Maoist revolution in China, and the Cuban Revolution.

Such revolutions rarely address the emotional and spiritual aspects of social change because for the most part, the possibility that any force greater than the human mind and ego exists is rejected out of hand. A revolution operating from this assumption is by definition, human-centric. Whereas political revolutions may include individuals who care deeply about the ecosystems and argue passionately for stewardship of the earth, their agenda is not fundamentally informed by the earth. Man is still the measure of all things and therefore, given the desired political context, humans can reverse their species' destruction of the planet and engineer something approximating utopia.

So what is an appropriate revolution? And appropriate to what, you may ask.

Appropriate Revolutions

An appropriate revolution is one that is relevant to what is actually needed in the light of human and planetary evolution. It is not primarily political but rather informed by what the earth community is asking for. For example, the earth is not asking for more efficient and accessible healthcare. Rather, it is asking that humans live in such conscious intimacy with the earth that nearly all of humanity's diseases and injuries are prevented as a result of that relationship.

Likewise, the earth is not asking for renewable energy but a cellular level transformation of consciousness regarding how we live on the earth-how we eat, what we wear, the products we use, where we live, where we travel and how.

The earth is not asking for jobs, but rather a painfully honest examination of our purpose in walking on her body in terms of the work that is most beneficial for her and all species that inhabit the planet.

The earth is asking, no pleading, for inhabitants who are willing and eager to live and relate locally in small communities, cooperating with neighbors to replenish what has been stolen from the earth and to enhance the well being of all species.

In his essay, "A Revolution That Is Arising From The Earth", William Kotke states:

We who can read these words are civilized people who have been mentally conditioned by the culture of civilization and the industrial society from birth. We have precepts loaded into our subconscious minds which cause us to see reality in a certain way. To a native Maya person in the State of Chiapas, Mexico, the earth speaks through them. They live integrated with the earth in their everyday energy systems and in their mental attitudes. To them the fact that the earthlife has manifest these living things around us, and us, means that we are children of the Mother Earth and we speak as one of the voices of the earth. To the Maya this is obvious on a deep level. To us it is an interesting intellectual proposition only, because we have been conditioned by a cultural upbringing that filters out this deep understanding and we do not mentally link our life with the life of the living earth.

To the Maya security is the earth and its care. The Maya live with the earth and feed from its natural bounty. Historically for a million years our species has been very successful. We have been adapted to the earth life. We lived within the ecological web and energy flows of the earth. Our traditional migratory patterns carried us over our gathering areas. In the season when the game were fat in one place we went there, when the berries were ripe in another we went there. Our success was adaptation to the life of the earth. We also had a culture that respected the earth and living things. The proposition is simple. We are alive, we live because of the other living things which feed us, we are obligated to respect and encourage those other living things so that we too can live.

In order for these indicators of an appropriate revolution to be actualized, a new kind of human must emerge-a new species with conscious self-awareness that knows-not thinks or feels-that it is not "in harmony" with the earth, but that it is the earth. This knowledge can only be acquired if our species is willing to experience, not theorize, that it originated from something greater and emerged on this planet for the purpose of serving something greater in order to perpetuate its values throughout the earth community and for countless generations in the future.

This revolution has already begun and manifests itself in the mission and work of organizations like Transition, Business Alliance of Local Economies (BALLE), and the permaculture movement. These organizations are about much more than growing organic gardens. One of their principal functions is the revolutionizing of how money works-a revolution without which fundamental change is impossible. They are creating self-sufficiency and resilience in neighborhoods and local communities, both of which may serve as mainstays in the event of infrastructure collapse, food and water shortages, natural disasters, economic devastation, and loss of essential services.

The localization efforts of organizations such as these have far more implications than mere "emergency response" preparation. They will eventually become the new normal as the collapse of industrial civilization exacerbates. The sooner these systems become firmly in place, the more resilient their citizens will be in navigating a world that in a couple of decades may be unrecognizable by current standards. They have evolved not merely out of vision and ingenuity but out of

a palpable sense that a new humanity is in the process of emerging-a humanity that functions optimally not in a global economy or through mass consciousness raising, but through networking and smallness of scale.

So with those who argue that a revolution is desperately needed, I would heartily agree-with the caveat that it must be an appropriate one, skillfully moving in response to the earth and the evolutionary threshold on which humans stand. It must focus on building vibrant and discerning communities who will keep ears and hearts to the ground, listening for what the earth is asking of them.

In closing this piece, I must notice that three years ago on the Speaking Truth to Power website, I wrote in depth about the fallacy of placing confidence in Barack Obama as the candidate who would "revolutionize" the United States. I was called cynical, narrow-minded, and hopelessly pessimistic. Three years later I am hard-pressed to find anyone who is enthusiastic about the record of President Obama or the likelihood that if he has a clue about anything, he would actually abdicate his Goldman-Sachs designed throne and implement the platform of "change" on which he ran for office. Even if he were to do so, there is no money for such an agenda, and a cataclysmic Gulf Oil disaster has become an unimaginable game-changer.

All of this only validates my premise that local action, self-sufficiency, and taking charge of issues in one's community are the essential ingredients of revolutionary change rather than dependence on a distant President and Congress, bought and orchestrated by the very system that is annihilating the earth community. Do not take my word for it. Research for yourself what the three organizations mentioned above have accomplished in the last three years. If you still insist on calling me cynical, I would argue that the definition of that word completely escapes you.

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Understanding the real nature of resistance, however, is not easy. No newsbyte could be thorough enough to explain why people, as a people, resist. Even if such an arduous task was possible, the news might not want to convey it, as it would directly clash with mainstream interpretations of violence and non-violent resistance. The Afghanistan story must remain committed to the same language: al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Lebanon must be represented in terms of a menacing Iran-backed Hizbullah. Palestine's Hamas must be forever shown as a militant group sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state. Any attempt at offering an alternative reading is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorists and justifying violence.

The deliberate conflation and misuse of terminology has made it almost impossible to understand, and thus to actually resolve bloody conflicts.

Even those who purport to sympathize with resisting nations often contribute to the confusion. Activists from Western countries tend to follow an academic comprehension of what is happening in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Thus certain ideas are perpetuated: suicide bombings bad, non-violent resistance good; Hamas rockets bad, slingshots good; armed resistance bad, vigils in front of Red Cross offices good. Many activists will quote Martin Luther King Jr., but not Malcolm X. They will infuse a selective understanding of Gandhi, but never of Guevara. This supposedly 'strategic' discourse has robbed many of what could be a precious understanding of resistance - as both concept and culture.

Between the reductionst mainstream understanding of resistance as violent and terrorist and the 'alternative' defacing of an inspiring and compelling cultural experience, resistance as a culture is lost. The two overriding definitions offer no more than narrow depictions. Both render those attempting to relay the viewpoint of the resisting culture as almost always on the defensive. Thus we repeatedly hear the same statements: no, we are not terrorists; no, we are not violent, we actually have a rich culture of non-violent resistance; no, Hamas is not affiliated with al-Qaeda; no, Hizbullah is not an Iranian agent. Ironically, Israeli writers, intellectuals and academicians own up to much less than their Palestinian counterparts, although the former tend to defend aggression and the latter defend, or at least try to explain their resistance to aggression. Also ironic is the fact that instead of seeking to understand why people resist, many wish to debate about how to suppress their resistance.

By resistance as a culture, I am referencing Edward Said's elucidation of "culture (as) a way of fighting against extinction and obliteration." When cultures resist, they don't scheme and play politics. Nor do they sadistically brutalize. Their decisions as to whether to engage in armed struggle or to employ non-violent methods, whether to target civilians or not, whether to conspire with foreign elements or not are all purely strategic. They are hardly of direct relevance to the concept or resistance itself. Mixing between the two suggests is manipulative or plain ignorant.

If resistance is "the action of opposing something that you disapprove or disagree with", then a culture of resistance is what occurs when an entire culture reaches this collective decision to oppose that disagreeable element - often a foreign occupation. The decision is not a calculated one. It is engendered through a long process in which self-awareness, self-assertion, tradition, collective experiences, symbols and many more factors interact in specific ways. This might be new to the wealth of that culture's past experiences, but it is very much an internal process.

It's almost like a chemical reaction, but even more complex since it isn't always easy to separate its elements. Thus it is also not easy to fully comprehend, and, in the case of an invading army, it is not easily suppressed. This is how I tried to explain the first Palestinian uprising of 1987, which I lived in its entirely in Gaza:

"It's not easy to isolate specific dates and events that spark popular revolutions. Genuine collective rebellion cannot be rationalized though a coherent line of logic that elapses time and space; its rather a culmination of experiences that unite the individual to the collective, their conscious and subconscious, their relationships with their immediate surroundings and with that which is not so immediate, all colliding and exploding into a fury that cannot be suppressed." (My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story)

Foreign occupiers tend to fight popular resistance through several means. One includes a varied amount of violence aiming to disorient, destroy and rebuild a nation to any desired image (read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine). Another strategy is to weaken the very components that give a culture its unique identity and inner strengths - and thus defuse the culture's ability to resist. The former requires firepower, while the latter can be achieved through soft means of control. Many 'third world' nations that boast of their sovereignty and independence might in fact be very much occupied, but due to their fragmented and overpowered cultures - through globalization, for example - they are unable to comprehend the extent of their tragedy and dependency. Others, who might effectively be occupied, often possess a culture of resistance that makes it impossible for their occupiers to achieve any of their desired objectives.

In Gaza, Palestine, while the media speaks endlessly of rockets and Israeli security, and debates who is really responsible for holding Palestinians in the strip hostage, no heed is paid to the little children living in tents by the ruins of homes they lost in the latest Israeli onslaught. These kids participate in the same culture of resistance that Gaza has witnessed over the course of six decades. In their notebooks they draw fighters with guns, kids with slingshots, women with flags, as well as menacing Israeli tanks and warplanes, graves dotted with the word 'martyr', and destroyed homes. Throughout, the word 'victory' is persistently used.

When I was in Iraq, I witnessed a local version of these kids' drawings. And while I have yet to see Afghani children's scrapbooks, I can easily imagine their content too.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

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The fraying ligature of the landscape of the United States reveals an inner geography of alienation and anomie. Living on the island of Manhattan, I daily negotiate an urban layout of practical, but identity-decimating grids -- a cityscape of harsh, inhuman right angles ... a geography that renders street encounters abrupt, curt and intrusive.

After a time, one begins, by reflex, to buffer oneself against such intrusions, withdrawing inward ... becoming a self-enclosed, walking fortress, shielding oneself from the degradations of these impersonal affronts (that feel altogether personal) -- with I-Pods, Blackberries, and other vestments attendant to the muttered prayers of the self-absorbed.

While above the street -- corporate towers -- that are steel and concrete kingdoms of blind, willful ascension -- blot the skyline ... these structures flee upward, as if to escape the implications of life lived at street level and sharing in the consequences of decisions made within their sterile, insular sanctums of power and cupidity.

This is architecture as blind hubris: creations made by the hands of mortal men ... yet failing to have any connection to the ground, these buildings crowd out the real estate of the sacred. Moreover, their manic skyward thrust leaves them, and those imprisoned within, bereft of roots that reach down into the renewing loam of the earth, to where mortal vanity is delivered to dust and desperate hopes rot and transubstantiate into the compost that nourishes new life.

And blooms of renewal, I suspect, will not be found online as well. The electronic sheen of social media sites is no substitute for communal fabric. There is no animal musk nor angelic apprehensions to en-soul the flesh and tease wisdom out of obdurate will ... No matter how many restless shades want to friend you on FaceBook nor ghostly texts descend upon you in an unholy Pentecost of Tweets, online exchanges will continue to leave you restless, hollow, and yearning for the colors and cacophony of an authentic agora.

The adolescent purgatory of FaceBook -- with its castings into the Eternal Now of instant praise, acceptance, and rejection -- reflects, magnifies, and acerbates the perpetual adolescence of the contemporary culture of the United States, intensifying its shallow longings and displaced panics, its narcissistic rage and obsession with the superficial. It devours libido, by providing a pixilated facsimile of the primal dance of human endeavor, leaving one's heart churning in thwarted yearning, locked an evanescent embrace with electronic phantoms, as one, paradoxically, attempts to live out unfulfilled desires by means of hollow communion with the soul-negating source of his alienation.

One can never get enough of what one doesn't need. Ergo, the compulsions and panic of millions of hungry ghosts will hold an ongoing, hollow mass online, in a futile campaign to regain form, gain direction, and walk in meaning and beauty among the things of the world, but instead will remain imprisoned within the very system that condemned them to this fate.

And this is the place, we, as a culture, will remain, for a time. This electronic inferno will be our vale and mountaintop, our sanctuary and leviathan. We will stare baffled into its vastness, stupefied and lost within its proliferate array of depersonalizing distractions and seductions. The more we try to lose ourselves in it, by surrendering to its shimmering surface attractions, the more tightly we will become bound in the bondage of self.

Naturally, living in the grinding maw of such monsters of alienation will engulf one with ennui and angst. Moreover, the judgment of anyone claiming not to be afflicted should be regarded as suspect.

Possessed by this mode of being: we languish in a zoo of our own making where we gaze, without comprehension, at the confines of our enclosure, chew our paws, pace the cage, and are restless for mealtime. Like an animal in a cage, we are no longer what we were meant to be ... we have forgotten what it is to be alive. With the exception of superficial form, we begin to lose our affinity to what makes us recognizable as a human being and as an animal -- for we have become simply a sad thing that waits for lunch. And I defy any caged clock-watcher in a cubicle to defy that point.

Restless and agitated in our confinement, we sink further into anomie ... into the benumbing embrace of comfort zones (over-eating, anti-depressants, consumerism as emotional distraction, addiction to electronic media) where we chose safety over the truth of our being. In these cages of inauthenticity, our heart's longings and human needs are held in stasis by the perfunctory persona we cultivated for approval and acceptance; there, consigned to a barren region of mind where one is rewarded for docility and duplicity, one languishes, bereft of eros and pothos ... unconsciously self-convicted and sentenced for the crime of being a serial betrayer of one's essential self.

So much of the criteria of the modern condition has atomized us, stripped us, collectively, of ritual, purpose and meaning, and placed us in the midst of what T.S. Eliot expressed in prosody as a "heap of broken images."

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
--From: The Waste Land

There is danger, of course, in such places -- but there is also the possibility of renewal.

Personal and historical traumas leave a legacy of bewilderment. And being bewildered i.e., being in a psychic wilderness, lost, having wandered or been cast past the known horizon of experience ... is to be in position to engage the novel, be in the thrall of unfolding mystery, and wander in a soul-suffused landscape of the sublime.

A state of alienation is right where we should be: To be able to adapt to a culture dedicated to little more than finding efficient means of exploiting the hours of the greater public's lives for the benefit of a greedy few ... would be a tragedy. Living within this culture should bring on despair ... It is a leviathan that has devoured your existence. Do you think you can renovate the belly of the beast ... set up a time-share with Jonah and Pinocchio there ... and live in comfort?

Should not one stagger and stammer in mortification when shown a handful of dust?

Moreover, the solution we are offered -- making ourselves a dwelling within a prison of consumer kitsch -- should and does only bring on more anomie. Eliot wrote the following regarding a psyche attempting to adapt to a dying culture:

[...] Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
--From: The Journey of the Magi,

One of the notions, as Rilke might put it, that is "brooding like a seed" in my psyche has been the distinction James Hillman makes between civilization and culture. Hillman avers that, and I agree, civilization is a dead thing -- an edifice of crumbling marble enshrined in an eros-devoid museum of the mind where we do little more than give empty, obligatory homage to a fossilized tableaux ... our forced reverence is but a perfunctory prayer muttered before the iconography of a dead religion; in contrast, culture is a living, breathing phenomenon of the collective mind, heart, and soul of the people within it. Its logos inhabits the very air of existence, permeating it like the sound of birdsong, and cricket and cicada stridulation throughout a high summer night.

Moreover, he avers that culture is akin to a madhouse; in fact, the solution lies in the back ward of the asylum, the area where are housed the hopeless cases. In other words, like Dante ... proceed to the place you most fear looking upon, embrace it, and hear its awful keening and heart-opening agonies. There is the location of rebirth, the last circle of hell ... retreating to a comfort zone will simply leave the situation is stasis.

So the question arises: How does one enter the soul-making shabbiness of the human condition, even though, as always, we are powerless against the trajectory of history and lost within the mad proliferation of culture -- and, as Bob Dylan limned in lyric regarding the alienation this situation evokes, "[one has] no direction home?"

Try this: embrace the bracing pain of your alienation: make a home in being lost. Gaze with wonder of upon the sacred scenery of your bewilderment ... Wandering in the wilderness is a holy state.

Wendell Berry believes such ventures to be one of the true vocations of the soul:

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
--Wendell Berry

In other words, in times such as ours, when we embrace our alienation then we will be welcomed home ... to share a common shelter with the multitudes who are also lost.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com. Visit Phil's website http://philrockstroh.com/ And at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000711907499

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While I'm the last to defend dictators, this is a completely unsubstantiated claim of what happened in Syria. Perhaps worse, the assertion about Israel is just false. Israel's first invasion of Lebanon was just about that bloody.

And what of the achievements of the Six Day War, a war deliberately calculated by Israel's establishment to win the land of the self-defined Greater Israel - all the Palestinian territories plus slices of Syria and Lebanon - it had failed to grab at its founding?

Israel went so far as to attack ruthlessly an American intelligence ship to suppress information of General Dayan's movements of armor, the general's purpose being the quick seizure of all the lands Israel desired and then presenting the world with a fait accompli.

And how do you reckon the toll of misery of decade after decade of hundreds of thousands of refugees plus the forty-plus years of truly abusive occupation?

I could continue, for unquestionably the invasion of Iraq was about and for Israel's benefit. That's million people killed and a couple of million refugees, refugees taken, in large part, by poor Syria.

"So is it true, as many defenders of Israel claim, that the Jewish state is judged by different standards from other countries? I believe it is."

This completely ignores the fact of Israel's establishment constantly claiming that is the only democracy and representative of human rights in its part of the world.

If you claim one standard but behave by another - truly indistinguishable from the region's dictators - I do think the world is entitled to comment. Israel holds ten thousand illegal prisoners, imposes a ghastly blockade for over three years, imposes countless checkpoints on people's ordinary lives in the West Bank, regularly assassinates those with whom it disagrees, and uses every underhanded technical gimmick it can think of to keep stealing other people's land.

Indeed, it could be well argued that the kind of Israel we see has effectively retarded the development of democracy in the Arab world. Israel's cooperative friend Mubarak, a dictator of thirty years, is supported by everything the United States can think of, suppressing all genuine democratic movements. For a long time, it was the same with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Opposing Israel's excesses has provided a rallying cry for every dictator in the region. At the same time, the United States and Israel would prefer these populations suppressed by dictators who in private mind their own business or are even rather cooperative, a la Mubarak.

"That all Jews, including Israeli Jews, should remain haunted by a horrible past is understandable. But it must never be used to justify aggression against others."

But that is precisely what Israel's establishment and its army of apologists abroad do, day and night. It is, if you will, a ghastly form of special pleading.

"There are other reasons, however, for the double standard directed at Israel. One is what the liberal Israeli philosopher and peace activist Avishai Margalit has called "moral racism." The bloodlust of an African or Asian people is not taken as seriously that of a European - or other white - people."

But isn't that exactly what happens inside Israel? Day in and out in countless ways, Sephardic Jews are not treated with the same respect and regard as Ashkenazi Jews. And the poor small lot of dark-skinned African Jews are treated with palpable contempt. The world should have higher standards than Israel itself in these matters?

"...the legacy of colonialism works against Israel in another way, too."

Oh please, this is tiresome old idea to trot out. Besides, in the eyes of most Arabs, Israel is itself an example of colonialism. Here is a tiny enclave - truly a garrison state - living in the midst of many tens of millions of people for whose cultures and aspirations it has absolutely no understanding or sympathy. You could draw a parallel to Israel's position today with that of European Crusaders who built massive forts in the Middle East at places like Acre.

In the end, if Israel expects to be treated as a normal country, it must behave like one.

Surely, most people, including likely most Jews, know Israel has yet to behave as anything resembling a normal country.

__________________________

Note: Response to the comment of a reader

"Islam is the problem behind virtually all the problems that Israel faces."

What a preposterous statement.

Does the author realize that there are more than a billion Muslims in the world?

How can any thinking person speak this way, condemning with one glib sentence about a fifth of the world's population?

There is no history, also, of Muslims being especially hostile to Jews. Indeed, Islam adopted many of Judaism's prophets and customs as its own.

Further still, until the creation of modern Israel, most Muslims in the Middle East treated Jews decently.

Israel, since its inception, has practiced a behavior towards its neighbors summed up by the Zionist slogan, "the iron wall."

"The iron wall" means ignoring neighbors as legitimate residents of the region, treating neighbors with contempt and violence - in effect, a very hostile form of shunning.

Who can defend such treatment instead of living in peace and respect?

Yes, there were always bound to be some hostilities - after all, Israel proper is on land taken from people who lived there for countless generations - but I think a different approach would have achieved different results.

Israel could easily have made it worth the Palestinians' while with assistance and compensation instead of spending vast sums on armaments in a mini-Cold War.

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Articles have now appeared in the Hong Kong and Chinese press exposing these headline wage rises as bogus. The China Times, a business newspaper, pointed out on July 4 that, despite increases in the basic wage levels at Foxconn, its 800,000 employees are actually worse off than before. The announced pay rises added up to 122 percent but a drastic cut in overtime, accompanied by intensified workloads, means an actual income decline of nearly one third.

An assembly line worker told China Times: "After hearing about the wage increases, I was excited for a long time, thinking I could get 2500-2600 yuan [a month], but the result is no more overtime and the income drops sharply." He explained that he used to earn 1,900 yuan ($US280) a month with overtime, but in June earned just 1,300 yuan. At the same time, his workload increased from assembling 15 components per hour to 16-17.

Other firms in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong are using the Foxconn ruse. A worker at an auto parts factory in Foshan, where strikes in Honda's plants took place, told the China Times that he was "forced to have pay increase". The worker explained: "Before the wage increase our basic salary was 850 yuan [a month] with a 80 yuan full attendance bonus, but after lifting our basic pay to 920 yuan, there were no more bonuses." In other words, the pay increase was in reality a pay cut.

Workers at a toy factory in Dongguan's Houjie township complained of similar tricks. Their boss promised them 200 yuan more a month, but started to charge them 150 yuan a month for food that had previously been provided without charge. So the wage rise amounted to just 50 yuan a month, or $US7.40.

At Foxconn, the wage rises were part of a carefully orchestrated public relations exercise, not only aimed at placating workers. It also reassured major international companies such as Apple, Nokia and Sony that their corporate image was not going to tarnished by the exposure of the inhumane, sweatshop conditions where their products were manufactured.

The South China Morning Post Magazine in June pointed to the widespread discontent among workers in Foxconn's giant complexes in Shenzhen that house 420,000 employees. The pay increase of 33 percent for Foxconn's Shenzhen workers to 1,200 yuan a month was only a little higher than the local minimum wage. A worker explained: "Foxconn are very smart; they say it's a pay rise but we actually earn less. It's meaningless. They will increase daily quotas to make up for lost time. It's always the same."

Another worker told the newspaper: "I am still required to work 11 hours a day, from 7.30 am to 7.30 pm, seven days a week ... Although the company guaranteed at least one day off every week after 13 suicide attempts, the policy hasn't been carried out. One of the few improvements was that our supervisor broadcast pop songs after we complained that all work and no play made workers dull boys. But even that was cancelled after just a few days."

Production line managers continue to enforce a demerit system for petty offences that results in pay deductions. Lu Bingdong, 22-year-old worker, is part of a line with a daily quota of 21,000 Apple iPhones. He explained: "You can lose points for having long [finger]nails, being late, yawning, eating, sitting on the floor, walking quickly. There's a whole load of things. Just one point means losing my monthly bonus."

Foxconn, like many smaller companies, operates on thin profit margins. Major Western corporations have refused to pay higher prices for their products. Professor Lin Jiang of Sun Yat-sen University told the China Times that a wage increase of more than 5 percent would be unbearable for most enterprises in Dongguan. The large headline wage increases were therefore "mirages" for workers.

Foxconn, one of the world's Fortune 500 corporations, recorded a share price fall of nearly 7 percent on June 30, after announcing net losses of $18.7 million in the first half of 2010. Foxconn's share price has plunged by more than 50 percent this year, amid investor concerns about labour unrest and losses. Morgan Stanley has downgraded Foxconn's stock to "underweight", while JPMorgan warned that 2010 will be "a bad year" for the company as one of its major clients, Nokia, faces a stagnant market for its smart phones, partly due to the deepening economic crisis in Europe.

Foxconn is pressing ahead with long-held plans to relocate from Shenzhen to inland areas where official minimum wages are much lower. A huge new plant housing 300,000 workers is proposed in Henan province, where the local minimum wage is only 600 yuan a month, even after a 33 percent increase this year. Meanwhile the two plants in Shenzhen will be merged, with some production being transferred to factories in Chengdu or Tianjin, where wages are lower. For all Foxconn's hype about giving workers back their "dignity" with higher pay, its reaction is to seek out cheaper labour.

Other employers are exploiting the cheap labour of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia or Burma. They earn less than $5 or 34 yuan a day and receive no bonuses, overtime or other benefits. A shoe factory owner in Dongguan, who employed over 200 Cambodian and Lao workers or a quarter of his total workforce, was cited by Forbes magazine on July 1: "They are hard workers and obedient employees. They could work 15 to 16 hours a day and work for a month without any break."

Jeff Joerres, chief executive of Manpower, one of the world's largest recruitment companies, told the Financial Times last week that large capital-intensive American companies were thinking twice about investing in China. Their concern was not only workers' demands for higher wages, but the danger of political instability associated with labour unrest. Joerres referred to the greater attractiveness of Vietnam and other cheap labour platforms--with the implicit message to Beijing that it must suppress strikes to remain competitive.

Peter Morici, a former chief economist for US International Trade Commission, told Investor's Business Daily on July 2 that US corporations would find "China to be a much more hostile place do business" as the unrest of workers spread. The newspaper noted that the conventional wisdom of investors was that China's authoritarian government "could keep workers in check". But Charles Wolf, a senior Rand Corp economist, warned that the regime was not all-powerful. "They have their hands full with a lot of things, and controlling labour unrest is one of them," he said.

Rural discontent is also emerging. Farmers began a protest on June 24 against inadequate compensation for land requisitioned for industrial projects at Deyang in Sichuan province. More than 300 protestors were injured and 200 arrested after a violent crackdown by 1,000 armed police against 5,000 villagers on July 3.

The four-day strike by workers at the Japanese-owned Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co. ended last Saturday after management apparently made limited concessions to workers' demands for higher wages and better conditions. A two-day strike that halted production at a Honda assembly plant in Guangzhou ended yesterday. The facility manufactures the Honda Jazz for export to Europe. But like earlier strikes, none of the underlying issues have been resolved. The attempts by Foxconn and other companies to dupe their employees by offering large wage rises with one hand, and taking them back with another will only breed resentment and anger, fuelling even more determined strikes and protests in the future.

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The human rights agency has confirmed that 35 women and children were killed following the latest US attacks on an alleged al-Qaeda hideout in Yemen. Initially, there were attempts to bury the story, and Yemen officially denied that civilians were killed as a result of the December 17 attack on al-Majala in southern Yemen. However, it has been simply impossible to conceal what is now considered the largest loss of life in one single US attack in the country.

If the civilian casualties were indeed a miscalculation on the part of the US military, there should no longer be any doubt about the fact that cluster munitions are far too dangerous a weapon to be utilized in war. And they certainly have no place whatsoever in civilian areas. The human casualties are too large to justify.

Yemen is not alone. Gaza, Lebanon and Afghanistan are also stark examples of the untold loss and suffering caused by cluster bombs. Meanwhile, the unrepentant Israeli army will not consider dropping the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas altogether. Instead it is pondering ways to make them 'safer'. The Jerusalem Post reported on July 2 that the army "has recently carried out a series of tests with a bomblet that has a specially designed self-destruct mechanism which dramatically reduces the amount of unexploded ordnance." During the Israeli onslaught in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Israel fired millions of bomblets, mostly into South Lebanon. Aside from the immediate devastation and causalities, unexploded ordnance continues to victimize Lebanon's civilians, most of whom are children. Dozens of lives have been lost since the end of this war.

In Gaza, the same terrible scenario was repeated between 2008 and 2009. Unlike Lebanon, however, trapped Palestinians in Gaza had nowhere to go.

Now Israel is anticipating another war with the Lebanese resistance. In preparation for this, an Israeli PR campaign is already underway. It seeks to convince public opinion that Israel is doing its utmost to avoid civilian casualties. "As a result of the collateral damage and international condemnation, and ahead of a potential new conflict with Hizbullah, the IDF has decided to evaluate the M85 bomblet manufactured by the government-owned Israeli Military Industries (IMI)," the Jerusalem Post reported.

Of course, Israel's friends, especially those who are yet to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions, will be pleased by the initial successes of the Israeli army testing. Under pressure to ratify the agreement, these countries are only too eager to offer a 'safer' version of current cluster bomb models. This would help not only to maintain the huge profits generated from this morally abhorrent business, it would also hopefully quell growing criticism by civil society and other world governments.

In December 2008, the United States, Russia and China, among others, sent a terrible message to the rest of the world. They refused to take part in the historic signing of the treaty that banned the production and use of cluster bombs. In a world that is plagued by war, military occupation and terrorism, the involvement of the great military powers in signing and ratifying the agreement would have signaled - if only symbolically - the willingness of these countries to spare civilians' unjustifiable deaths and the lasting scars of war.

Fortunately, the refusal didn't completely impede an international agreement. The incessant activism of many conscientious individuals and organizations came to fruition on December 3 and 4 in Oslo, Norway, when ninety-three countries signed a treaty banning the weapon.

Unfortunately, albeit unsurprisingly, the US, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan - a group that includes the biggest makers and users of the weapon - neither attended the Ireland negotiations of May 2008, and nor did they show any interest in signing the agreement in Oslo.

Most countries that have signed the accords are not involved in any active military conflict. They are also not in any way benefiting from the lucrative cluster munition industry.

The treaty was the outcome of intensive campaigning by the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), a group of non-governmental organizations. CMC is determined to carry on with its campaigning to bring more signatories to the fold.

But without the involvement of the major producers and active users of the weapon, the Oslo ceremony remained largely symbolic. However, there is nothing symbolic about the pain and bitter losses experienced by the many victims of cluster bombs. According to the group Handicap International, a third of cluster-bomb victims are children. Equally alarming, 98 percent of the weapon's overall victims are civilians. The group estimates that about 100,000 people have been maimed or killed by cluster bombs around the world since 1965. Unlike conventional weapons, cluster bomblets survive for many years, luring little children with their attractive appearance. Children often mistake the bomblets for candy or toys.

Recently, some encouraging news emerged from the Netherlands. Maxime Verhagen, Minister of Foreign Affairs, urged his country's House of Representative to ratify the Convention, which bans the production, possessions and use of such munitions. The ban leaves no room for any misguided interpretations and does not care for the Israeli army's experimentations.

In his speech, Verhagen claimed, "Cluster munitions are unreliable and imprecise, and their use poses a grave danger to the civilian population...Years after a conflict has ended, people - especially children - can fall victim to unexploded submunition from cluster bombs."

To date, the agreement has been signed by 106 countries and ratified by 36 - and will enter into force on August 1, despite the fact that the big players refuse to take part.

The Netherlands' push is certainly a step in the right direction. But much more remains to be done. The onus is also on civil societies in countries that are yet to ratify the agreement or sign it in the first place. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men (and women) to do nothing." This holds as true in the issue of cluster bombs, as in any other where human rights are violated and ignored.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

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Talk about a possible double-dip recession misses the larger reality: For many millions of Americans the first recession is still here; there has been no recovery for them. Too bad President Obama cannot comprehend that. Nice that only 23 percent of people believe that his policies have made economic conditions better. Maybe they got the change they were waiting for.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center provides disturbing data that no amount of lies from politicians can refute. Without a lot more consumer spending, remember, the US economy will not regain lasting health. The scope of the economic shock is shown by the 60 percent of Americans that have cut down on borrowing and spending. And nearly 50 percent are in worse financial shape because of the economic downturn. Forty percent of adults have tapped savings and retirement accounts to make ends meet. Nearly 25 percent have had to borrow money from someone. Ten percent have moved back with their parents to survive the economic tsunami, and that rises to 24 percent for workers between 18 and 29 years old.

More and more Americans now recognize that retirement will have to wait. For those 62 and older and still working, 35 percent have postponed retirement. That jumps to 60 percent as a likely action for working adults between ages 50 and 61. Replace the golden years with the disappointment years, especially when inevitable reduced Social Security and Medicare benefits hit hard.

For those still lucky enough to have jobs, the Commerce Department reports that the personal savings rate in May -- the part of wage income that goes unspent -- rose to 4 percent, the highest amount in nearly a year, as anxious consumers faced continued economic woes, such as fears about losing jobs or homes, affording food and health care, and a tumbling stock market.

And always remember that the official jobless rate of just under 10 percent is pure bunk; it really is close to 20 percent nationally, and a lot worse in many places and for African-Americans and Hispanics. The average time for being without a job is now six months, with many more people jobless for a whole lot more, often several years. All this means suppressed consumer spending and continued high home foreclosure rates. No big surprise that consumer confidence crashed almost 10 points between May and June. Welcome to high anxiety.

Also keep in mind that even as the general consumer spending shows little life, the Upper Class keeps on living it up. Gallup reported "Upper-income Americans' self-reported spending rose 33% to an average of $145 per day in May -- up from $109 per day in April 2010 and May 2009, and the highest monthly average since November 2008." The rest of the population's self-reported spending averaged $59 per day in May. So, rich Americans are spending nearly twice as much as the vast majority of Americans every day. Indeed, Tiffany reports sales up 17 percent in the jeweler's most recent quarter. Overall US luxury sales, says MasterCard SpendingPulse, jumped 22.7 percent in March, over the previous year. The increase in luxury buying appears to be coming almost totally from the "ultra-affluents," those households making over $250,000 a year. Their first-quarter spending increased 22.6 percent, meaning that they have returned to spending at pre-recession levels.

And here is a gem of a new statistic. In 2009, the Economic Policy Institute reports that the typical working American with a four-year college degree took home $1,025 per week, $5 a week less than Americans with a four-year degree took home, after adjusting for inflation, in the year 2000. How's that for progress?

Meanwhile, almost half of U.S. companies that reduced or suspended their contributions to employee retirement plans during the recession haven't restored them.

The ultra ugly truth is that there is very little hope for the US economy providing true prosperity for the vast majority of people in the foreseeable future. Unemployment will remain high and consumer spending will remain low except for the wealthy. Economic inequality is terrible and punishing most Americans who should forget about that fabled American dream. To visualize America's staggeringly unequal distribution of wealth, suggests University of Tennessee at Martin historian David Barber, envision a 100-seat auditorium filled with 100 people. If seating in that auditorium reflected our current wealth distribution, the single richest person in the hall "would be able to spread out smartly" over nearly 43 seats. The poorest 60 would have to squeeze into just one.

As government deficits continue at historic high levels there will be even more pain as local and state governments cut employment and services. All the economic impacts of the BP oil spill in the Gulf region will continue to expand and reverberate and it is doubtful that enough money will come from BP to those in pain soon enough to prevent catastrophes for millions of people.

Some impacted people may turn to religion as if God has not already shown total disdain for humanity. Some will delude themselves that voting for certain candidates in the coming midterm elections will help. Others will bury themselves in various distractions or choose to believe the political lies of President Obama and other politicians. [How did all that federal stimulus spending work for you?] Perhaps far more Lower Class people [Are you in denial about your Lower Class status?] should consider the advice of the deeply cynical: Kill Yourself. If only politicians would take that advice.

Happy Fourth of July. Time to try and remember the good old days.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn at delusionaldemocracy.com.]

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For ten years, numerous committees, international and local organizations and independent researchers have tirelessly mulled over all sorts of indicators, numbers, charts and statistical data relating to extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality, child mortality, and so on.

The conclusions derived from all the data weren't necessarily grim. And the sincerity of the many men and women who have indefatigably worked to ensure that the eight international development goals - agreed to by all 192 UN member states and over 20 international organizations - were fully implemented, cannot in any way be discounted. They were the ones who brought the issue to the fore, and they continue to push forward with resolve and determination.

The problem lies with the concept itself, and with the naive trust that governments and politicians - whether rich or poor, democratic or authoritarian, leading global wars or trying to steer clear from the abyss of famine - could possibly share one common, selfless and unconditional love for humanity, including the poor, the disadvantaged, hungry and the ill. The utopian scenario might be attainable one day, but it certainly won't be happening anytime soon.

So why commit to such goals, with specific deadlines and regular reports, if a genuine global consensus is not achievable?

Since its inception, the United Nations has been a source of two conflicting agendas. One is undemocratic, and championed by those who wield the veto power at the Security Council. The other is egalitarian, and it's embodied in the General Assembly. The latter reflects the global mood and international opinion much more accurately than the former, which is largely dictatorial and caters only to power.

As a result, two conflicting sets of ideas and behaviors have emerged in the last six decades. One imposes sanctions, leads wars and destroys nations, and the other offers a helping hand, builds a school, shelters a refugee. The latter offers assistance, albeit on a relatively small scale. The former spreads devastation and destruction on a grand scale.

The Millennium goals evolved from this very dilemma, which continues to afflict the United Nations and undermine its noble principles. For now, MDGs would have to settle for being a true reflection of peoples' aspirations, but with little expectation of achievable results.

That does not mean that there is no good news. On the contrary, there will always be reasons to compel us to push further towards desired change. Since September 8, 2000 - the day in which the General Assembly adopted the Millennium Declaration - many encouraging results have been reported. Although the progress, as reported during the 2005 World Summit of leaders, was still falling short from the target dates, much has been achieved.

On June 23, Charles Abugre, the Director for Africa of the United Nations MDG campaign presented the 2010 Millennium Development Goals Report in Berlin. The same report was simultaneously presented in New York and Paris. According to its findings, the 2008 food and 2009 financial crises didn't stop progress, but they certainly made the goal of reducing global poverty by half "more difficult to achieve."

Indeed, significantly less people are reportedly living on less income, though, according to Aburge, bringing "poverty down to 15 percent of the global population" is less likely. Aburge has also said that progress has been made throughout the world, with the distressing exception of Central Asia, which is "riven by war and armed conflicts."

In areas such as child mortality rate and combating epidemics, there has been little or no progress. More, "environmental degradation continues at an alarming pace," according to Abugre. "CO2 emissions have even increased by almost 50 percent over the past 17 years, and in spite of a minor slowdown in emissions due to the crisis, are set to increase further." It's important to mention here that some countries are much closer to succeeding with the MDGs than others. China, for instance, has slashed the number of its poor by a huge margin, while others have fallen deeper into poverty.

While the numbers offer a strong enough reason to maintain a global push for reducing poverty, there is little evidence to suggest that the improvement is in any way related to the global pledge of 2000. It may well be a reflection of the state of affairs of individual countries. For example, China's economic progress is hardly related to the September 2000 meet, and Afghanistan never really opted for the US-NATO invasion of 2001, which eliminated any realistic chance for the country to ever meet such seemingly lofty standards.

In its constant search for consensus, the General Assembly's goals hardly view development from a critical perspective. They do not take into account the way in which structural adjustment policies, designed by international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank forced poor countries into debt and extreme poverty in the first place. They also ignore the way in which rich and powerful countries, in their quest for military, economic and political dominance ensure the subordination of poor, politically fragile, and militarily weak countries.

Of course, delving into the real issues would undermine the futile search for consensus, threatening the 'amiable' image of the General Assembly. These are left instead to the Security Council or those members of the UNSC, whose 'opinion' is the only one that truly counts, and who regularly go on to prescribe decisive and cruel policies.

All of this is not to say that the millennium goals should be relegated. Every noble effort should be supported and lauded. But unwarranted optimism can border on folly if one intentionally ignores the dynamic of lasting change, whether at a micro or macro levels. The discussion of MDGs should not come at the expense of realism and truth, and it should certainly not just serve as yet another feel-good moment for the rich, while further humiliating for the poor.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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Most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are second and third generation refugees. Impoverished camps are the only homes they have ever known. In Palestine, their real home, their villages were destroyed, their fields were burnt down and their culture was eradicated. An ongoing attempt at erasing every aspect of the Palestinian Arab identity in today's Israel continues unabated, strengthened by the rightwing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is recognized in many political circles as 'fascist'.

But what 62 years of dispossession, massacres and untold hardship failed to destroy - the memory and the belonging - will certainly not be eliminated now by some rightwing politicians and few parliamentary bills at the Israeli Knesset, including one that forbids Palestinians from commemorating their Nakba (Catastrophe of 1947-48).

The ongoing debate in the Lebanese parliament, however, is of a different nature. Lebanon is striving to settle many hanging political questions. Despite Israel's devastating wars, a more confident Lebanese populace is emerging. This was largely empowered by the success of the Lebanese military resistance to Israel. A country of law and order is replacing that of chaos and turmoil, and a level of political independence is making some promising appearances after decades of total political dependency and proxy civil wars.

However, there are those who want Lebanon to remain a country divided on sectarian lines, a characteristic that defined Lebanese society for generations. Only such a division could guarantee their survival at the helm of dismal clan-based, sectarian hierarchy that has long degraded the image of the country, and allowed outsiders, notwithstanding Israel, to manipulate the fragile structure for their own benefit.

The denial of rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is an old subject that often resurfaces as a political ploy to serve immediate interests. This time, however, things seem to be different. Lebanon needs to move forward. Denying 400,000 people living a most wretched existence in scattered refugee camps, surrounding by mass graves, military checkpoints and no political horizon whatsoever is not conducive to the process of political and social progress.

Of course, those who dread the possibility of a modern Lebanon unified by one common identity - one that is not held hostage to sectarian allegiances or tribal affiliations - want Palestinian refugees to remain perpetual victims. The good news is that the bill is supported by who are otherwise political rivals in Lebanese politics - Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister of the Future Movement, and Hezbollah and Amal, among others.

The bill, introduced by the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) on June 15 "would cancel prohibitions on property ownership and social security benefits for Palestinians, and ease restrictions on their right to work," according to Human Rights Watch. Nadim Houry, HRW director in Beirut, said, "Lebanon has marginalized Palestinian refugees for too long (and the) parliament should seize this opportunity to turn the page and end discrimination against Palestinians."

Indeed, it is an opportunity. But MPs from the Free Patriotic Movement, Phalange and Lebanese Forces are strongly opposing the measure. Phalange official Sami Gemayel, for example, has tried to delay the measure, hoping perhaps to deflate the strong movement that no longer tolerates denying Palestinian refugees their basic rights. "A matter that has created a number of crises for more than 60 years could not be tackled within three days," the Lebanese Daily Star quoted him as saying. Of course he could not help but infuse the same old tired mantra, stressing that "integrating the Palestinians in the Lebanese society would undermine their right of return and fulfill an Israeli demand."

Not one Lebanese could possibly believe that a Phalange official - whose party worked with Israeli forces in the summer of 1982 to orchestrate and carry out the killing of thousands of defenseless Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps - could truly be concerned about the Palestinian sense of belonging, identity and right of return. It is obvious that the measure could embolden refugees into demanding full integration into Lebanese society, which would completely undermine the foundation of the sectarian society that the Phalange official stalwartly champions.

But why should Palestinian refugees be humiliated for no fault of their own? Why should they live under the choice that they either suffer under draconian measures or risk losing their right of return? It's like repeatedly punishing the victim for 'allowing' his victimhood. The fact is, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, like Palestinian refugees elsewhere are utterly clear regarding their right of return and their adherence to that right. They need not to be fined or jailed for adding a bedroom to their ramshackle homes in the refugee camps. They need not be treated like tenth class citizens to be reminded of their love for Palestine, the names of their destroyed villages, and the memories of their ancestors.

It is ironic how Mr. Gemayel found it implausible to reach a solution regarding the acknowledgement of Palestinian refugees basic rights in three days, while it was astoundingly achievable to butcher thousands of innocent civilians by Phalange forces in 36-48 hours in Sabra and Shatilla on September 16, 1982.

The survivors of those camps, and the rest don't wish to impede the 'Christian' parties' bid for demographic and sectarian 'balance' in Lebanon. Their home is Palestine and they cannot wait to return. But, until that day arrives, there is no need to deny them the most basic of rights and infringe upon their very dignity. One can only hope that Lebanon's new political development overpowers those who wish to keep the country fragmented, sectarian and forever hostage to the ghosts of its colonial past.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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The statement alone indicates the momentous political shift that's currently underway in the Middle East. While the shift isn't entirely new, one dares to claim it might now be a lasting one. To borrow from Erdogan's own assessment of the political fallout that followed Israel's raid, the damage is "irreparable."

Countless analyses have emerged in the wake of the long-planned and calculated Israeli attack on the Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara, which claimed the lives of nine, mostly Turkish peace activists.

In "Turkey's Strategic U-Turn, Israel's Tactical Mistakes," published in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Ofra Bengio suggested Turkey's position was purely strategic. But he also chastised Israel for driving Turkey further and faster "toward the Arab and Muslim worlds."

In this week's Zaman, a Turkish publication, Bulent Kenes wrote: "As a result of the Davos (where the Turkish prime minister stormed out of a televised discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres, after accusing him and Israel of murder), the myth that Israel is untouchable was destroyed by Erdogan, and because of that Israel nurses a hatred for Turkey."

In fact, the Davos incident is significant not because it demonstrates that Israel can be criticized, but rather because it was Turkey -- and not any other easily dismissible party -- that dared to voice such criticism.

Writing in the Financial Times under the title, "Erdogan turns to face East in a delicate balancing act," David Gardner places Turkey's political turn within a European context. He sums up that thought in a quote uttered by no other than Robert Gates, US defense secretary: "If there is anything to the notion that Turkey is moving Eastward, it is in no small part because it was pushed, and pushed by some in Europe refusing to give Turkey the kind of organic link to the West that Turkey sought." But what many analysts missed was the larger political and historical context, not only as pertaining to Israel and Turkey, but to the whole region and all its players, including the US itself. Only this context can help us understand the logic behind Israel's seemingly erratic behavior.

In 1996, Israeli leaders appeared very confident. A group of neoconservative American politicians had laid out a road map for Israel to ensure complete dominance over the Middle East. In the document entitled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," Turkey was mentioned four times. Each reference envisaged the country as a tool to "contain, destabilize, and roll back some of .. (the) most dangerous threats" to Israel. That very "vision" in fact served as the backbone of the larger strategy used by the US, as it carried out its heedless military adventures in the Middle East.

Frustrated by the American failure to reshape the region and unquestioningly eliminate anything and everything that Israel might perceive as a threat, Israel took matters into its own hands. However, in 2006 and between 2008 and 2009, it was up for major surprises. Superior firepower doesn't guarantee military victory. More, while Israel had once more demonstrated its capacity to inflict untold damage on people and infrastructure, the Israeli weapon was no longer strategically effective. In other words, Israel's military advantage could no longer translate into political gains, and this was a game-changer.

There are many issues the Israeli leadership has had to wrangle with in recent years. The US, Israel's most faithful benefactor, is now on a crisis management mode in Iraq and Afghanistan, struggling on all fronts, whether political, military or economic. That recoil has further emboldened Israel's enemies, who are no longer intimidated by the American bogyman. Israel's desperate attempt at using its own military to achieve its grand objectives has also failed, and miserably so.

With options growing even more limited, Israel now understands that Gaza is its last card; ending the siege or ceasing the killings could be understood as another indication of political weakness, a risk that Israel is not ready to take.

Turkey, on the other hand, was fighting -- and mostly winning -- its own battles. Democracy in Turkey has never been as healthy and meaningful as it is today. Turkey has also eased its chase of the proverbial dangling carrot, of EU membership, especially considering the arrogant attitude of some EU members who perceive Turkey as too large and too Muslim to be trusted. Turkey needed new platforms, new options and a more diverse strategy.

But that is where many analysts went wrong. Turkey's popular government has not entered the Middle Eastern political foray to pick fights. On the contrary, the Turkish government has for years been trying to get involved as a peacemaker, a mediator between various parties. So, yes, Turkey's political shift was largely strategic, but it was not ill-intentioned.

The uninvited Turkish involvement, however, is highly irritating to Israel. Turkey's approach to its new role grew agitating to Israel when the role wasn't confined to being that of the host -- in indirect talks between Syria and Israel, for example. Instead, Turkey began to take increasingly solid and determined political stances. Thus the Davos episode.

By participating at such a high capacity in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, with firm intentions of breaking the siege, Turkey was escalating its involvement well beyond Israel's comfort zone. Therefore, Israel needed a decisive response that would send a message to Turkey -- and any daring other -- about crossing the line of what is and is not acceptable. It's ironic how the neoconservatives' "A Clean Break" envisaged an Israeli violation of the political and geographic boundaries of its neighbors, with the help of Turkey. Yet, 14 years later, it was Turkey, with representatives from 32 other countries, which came with a peaceful armada to breach what Israel perceived as its own political domain.

The Israeli response, as bloody as it was, can only be understood within this larger context. Erdogan's statements and the popular support his government enjoys show that Turkey has decided to take on the Israeli challenge. The US government was exposed as ineffectual and hostage to the failing Israeli agenda in the region, thanks to the lobby. Ironically it is now the neoconservatives who are leading the charge against Turkey, the very country they had hoped would become Israel's willing ally in its apocalyptic vision.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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In the interest of "keeping us safe," the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unveiled a spiffy new surveillance cam "that puts others to shame," CNET breezily reported last week.

The Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (ISIS) is a hemispherical group of cameras roughly the size of a basketball that, if one believes giddy accolades by enthusiasts touting the system, will lovingly wrap us in a "high-res video quilt," a DHS press release gushes.

The ultra-wide camera undergoing field-tests since December at Boston's Logan International Airport, streams distortion free, real-time stitched video and has a resolution capacity of approximately 100 megapixels which our guardians say is "as detailed as 50 full-HDTV movies playing at once, with optical detail to spare. You can zoom in close...and closer...without losing clarity."

But with an abundance of acronyms, and a decided lack of imagination from a gaggle of secret state agencies, one shouldn't confuse Homeland Security's ISIS with one incubating beneath the dark wings of the Pentagon's "blue sky" office, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

That program, Integrated Sensor Is Structure, also known as ISIS, is being shepherded along by Lockheed Martin, America's No. 1 defense corp. DARPA's ISIS promises to build an autonomous airship powered by solar fuel cells for American warfighters, one capable of staying aloft for a decade above 70,000 feet, well out of the way of an adversary's surface to air missiles.

According to the description on the Strategic Technology Office's web site, their ISIS "will develop the technologies that enable extremely large lightweight phased-array radar antennas to be integrated into an airship platform." This would enable ground commanders "to track the most advanced cruise missiles at 600 km and dismounted enemy combatants at 300 km."

Pentagon gurus and the corporations they so lovingly serve, recently awarded Lockheed Martin and subcontracting Raytheon Corporation, a $400 million dollar contract for Phase III work on the radar system, Defense Systems reported in April. DARPAcrats claim the high-flying airship will provide "theatre-wide, persistent area surveillance and tracking capabilities" to America's Borg Army of resource grabbers.

And with The New York Times reporting June 14 that the "United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself," it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that sometime soon the corrupt Karzai regime, the Taliban, their ISI paymasters and their American overlords will cozy up and play "let's make a deal"!

Nor should either project be confused with the failed "secure border" scheme known as the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System or ISIS (there it is again!) or its successor, America's Shield Initiative. No, that corporatist boondoggle which cost taxpayers some $439 million between 1997 and 2006, eventually morphed into the equally useless Secure Border Initiative or SBInet.

Fully in keeping with the tenor of the times, to wit, that government should get "out of the way" and let business work its magic, DHS's own Inspector General described the troubled history of the project in critical testimony to Congress. The IG criticized lax practices that led the Department to allow the contractors, led by Boeing Corporation, decide what the system would look like and what technology would be used to build it.

Needless to say, that didn't work out well! Just this week Washington Technology reported that Boeing "could see its lucrative, but troubled Secure Border Initiative contract scaled back as Homeland Security Department officials consider stopping future construction of the 'virtual-fence' security systems along the U.S.-Mexico border."

Like predecessor ISIS, the $800 million program has suffered from delays, technical glitches and "changes" in direction. In March, Home Sec Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the program was "being re-evaluated as part of an ongoing reassessment." No matter, with cash in hand Boeing, and a string of disappointed subcontractors, can afford to "move on."

But I digress...

No dear readers, the Heimat Security project I'm describing is close to earth, perhaps only a few feet above the congested street where you trod, oblivious to the legion of minders busily stripping you of your rights; above all, the right to be left alone. Ah, but there's the rub. Why should any of Oceania's proud citizens have anything to fear? After all, only evil-doers have something to hide, don't they? Why wouldn't you leap with joy at the prospect of being enwrapped in a vid-quilt cocoon lovingly designed by America's finest minds?

"Traditional surveillance cameras can be of great assistance to law enforcement officers for a range of scenarios," DHS flacks croon. "Canvassing a crowd for criminal activity during a Fourth of July celebration, searching for who left a suitcase bomb beneath a bench, or trying to pick out a terrorist who has fled the scene and blended into a teeming throng in the subway."

Who'd oppose that?

But why stop there? Surely there are other applications for the privacy-killing gizmo. Where did that political malcontent go after handing out "subversive" leaflets at the mall? And that flash mob of miscreants protesting an oil firm's board meeting or, heavens forbid!, bum-rushing grifting merchants of death at an industry trade show; where'd they scram to? Multitasking is the name of the game and DHS has got it covered!

A joint project of the Science and Technology Directorate's Infrastructure and Geophysical Division, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory and the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, ISIS was built with off-the-shelf cameras, image processors and readily-available commercial software. No need to reinvent the wheel here in these tough economic times!

The innocent-looking array points in all directions and captured images are "stitched" together, creating a creepy "god's eye" view that allow CCTV operators to easily track people back and forth through the HD "quilt" files without losing a single suspect, I mean American, as they pass from one field to the next.

"Other neat tricks" enthusiasts effervesce, "will be provided by a suite of software applications called video analytics. One app can define a sacrosanct 'exclusion zone,' for which ISIS provides an alert the moment it's breached. Another lets the operator pick a target--a person, a package, or a pickup truck--and the detailed viewing window will tag it and follow it, automatically panning and tilting as needed." (emphasis in original)

We're told that "video analytics at high resolution across a 360-degree field of view, coupled with the ability to follow objects against a cluttered background, will provide"--wait!--"enhanced situational awareness as an incident unfolds."

"We've seen that terrorists are determined to do us harm," Dr. John Fortune, the I&G's head honcho told contractors lining up to get a slice of the vid-quilt pie. "ISIS is a great example of one way we can improve our security by leveraging our strengths."

And should things, pardon the pun, pan out, "ISIS creators already have their eyes on a new and improved second generation model, complete with custom sensors and video boards, longer range cameras, higher resolution, a more efficient video format."

"Eventually," we're told, "the Department plans to develop a version of ISIS that will use infrared cameras to detect events that occur at night."

South of the Border ... Bring On the Drones!

Meanwhile, as Homeland Security unveiled their chic new spy-cam and exiled SBINet to the Isle of Lost Corporatist Dreams, The Hill reported that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began flying "Predator B aerial drones, which have proved successful fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, were deployed this week along the border between Texas and Mexico."

CBP, a DHS satrapy plagued by endemic corruption engendered by deep state management of the multibillion dollar drug trade, was accused last week of murdering an unarmed 15-year-old who had the temerity to throw rocks at border agents from the Mexican side of the border.

Democracy Now! disclosed June 10, that U.S. authorities said that "Sergio Adrian Hernandez Güereca was part of a group of boys throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents who were trying to detain two people at the border crossing."

While intrepid agents claimed they feared for their lives, "a cell-phone video obtained by the Spanish language network Univision shows otherwise," Amy Goodman reports. "The grainy footage shows the Border Patrol agent detaining one man at gunpoint. While he has the man on the ground, he points his gun toward a second person on the Mexican side of the border. The video shows that person running away as the agent fires several shots. The video then shows a body next to a column under the bridge."

In other words, there's nothing to see here, move along!

This latest border killing follows closely on the heels of "change" President Obama's pledge to station 1,200 National Guard troops along the border to stem the flow of economic migrants hammered by continued depredations resulting from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the highly-lucrative drugs trade.

According to Narco News, "a special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations," investigative journalist Bill Conroy reported June 12.

The deployment of deep cover Special Forces assets are part of the Obama regime's Mérida Initiative, a "security arrangement" between the U.S. secret state and their Mexican and Central American counterparts.

The alleged aim of the initiative is to stamp out national security threats posed by drug traffickers, transnational criminal syndicates and money laundering by "dirty" banks. To aid the venture, Congress generously allocated some $1.6 billion for training, equipment and intelligence to regional security forces. Undoubtedly, such operations would be greatly enhanced by flying unmanned drones over suspected drug smuggling routes as an assist to our allies.

Last Saturday however, the National Post reported that "an investigation conducted by The Montreal Gazette, CBC Radio and the U.S.'s National Public Radio (NPR) has found powerful elements within the Mexican government and army have no intention of ending the narcotics trade."

But wait, hasn't a Special Forces contingent dubbed Task Force 7 by Conroy's source, been providing expertise for more than a year to the Mexican Army to root out corruption and slay evil-doers, the same Army that has "no intention" of ending the grisly trade responsible for deaths of thousands?

The National Post disclosed that "senior government and military officials are helping the Sinaloa cartel and its leader become the dominant drug-trafficking organization in Mexico. This means the cartel will likely become the most powerful organized crime group on the continent."

True enough as far as it goes, but I'd offer one slight edit: the Sinaloa cartel would perhaps "become the most powerful organized crime group on the continent," only were we to ignore the key role played by North American, specifically U.S. banks, in laundering billions of dollars in blood money, a minor, though pertinent detail, omitted by the National Post, the Gazette, NPR and the CBC.

After all as Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime told The Observer in December, "the proceeds of organised crime were 'the only liquid investment capital' available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year." Indeed, Costa claimed that "drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the [2008] global crisis."

All the more reason then, to bring on the drones!

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), a close political ally of former President George W. Bush (no slouch when it came to protecting Afghan drug rackets), praised Obama's move to fly Predators along the border. The good Senator told The Hill, "the beginning of UAV flights over the west-Texas portion of our border with Mexico marks an important advancement for border security in our state."

The Bushist crony continued: "We are working hard to make round-the-clock aerial surveillance the standard for all 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, and I hope this development is the first of many steps to bring our border detection and security efforts into the 21st century."

Not to be outdone by a political "rival" across the aisle, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a south Texas Democrat, praised CBP's drone deployment and said, "By putting eyes in the sky along the Rio Grande, we will gather real-time intelligence on the ground to augment the good work of federal, state and local law enforcement on the border."

Or provide those shipping multi-ton loads of cocaine and other illicit drugs northward adequate warning! Indeed, Narco News disclosed in May that "a law enforcement task force in New Mexico that is supposed to target drug-trafficking criminals is instead awash in charges that it is using its nearly $600,000 taxpayer-subsidized budget to fund its own corrupt practices."

Although an investigation by an internal affairs unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed "a disturbing trail of bookkeeping irregularities and multiple mysterious bank accounts," the indefatigable Bill Conroy revealed that "nothing of consequence happened to the task force or its operations, and it continues to operate under the same leadership to this day."

A minor detail perhaps, but then who cares! Certainly not our intrepid "watchdog" Washington press corps led by CNN's White House correspondent Ed Henry, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder and others, who recently cavorted with the Vice President at a "beach party" at Joe Biden's mansion, Salon's Glenn Greenwald disclosed!

For the "people who matter" however, unleashing a drone fleet along the border will be music to the ears of General Atomics, the manufacturer of the Predator B. What, with saturation coverage of the Iraq and "Afpak" theatres by the CIA and Pentagon's armada of killer robots, the $10-12 million dollar price tag per drone is a surefire win-win all around.

Is this a great country or what!



Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press , Uncommon Thought Journal, CJO's Avenger212, and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
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My father was born on a Reservation in the American mid-west. His people, like the Palestinians, resisted invaders of European ancestry and were crushed. At present, both peoples remain exiled and caged in their native land.

The Jewish side of myself understands the historical traumas that gave rise to the yearning for a tribal Homeland. Atavistically, I suffer the Jewish state's collective night terrors and reel in its daylight rationalizations for its brutalities. But the Native American in me knows the rage of those crushed by the heartless force of an invading people.

Neither my father's peoples' bows and arrows nor the "threat" of metal rods, clutched by a few activists aboard the illegally seized Gaza-bound Peace Flotilla, nor Hamas' small rockets will change the tragic trajectory wrought by a tribalist land grab. History reveals a conquered and caged people will starve, in both body and soul, as they watch their hopes wither to dust. But I will not condemn them for their struggle, and even their "provocations" -- dangerous and outrageous provocations ... such as the desire not to live out their lives behind ghetto walls, and the actions they take accordingly. (Even though, a provocation will never soften the banal mind of a bully to end his reign of brutality.)

To this day, within me, there are traits of cultural Judaism that have not been washed away in the deluge of shame I experience when confronted by the actions of the state of Israel and the casuistry of her apologists. Deep in my genetic structure, I carry tribal memories of Diaspora and its concomitant feelings of alienation from majoritarian culture. Most often, I still apprehend human existence from the perspective of an alien and interloper, believing my survival is dependent upon knowing where I stand in hostile terrain. By rote, I play the role of the outsider, wary and savvy in my dealings with a hostile gentile world.

In this, I understand the paranoid nature of the Jewish state and the reasons underlying her supporters' rationalizations of her many crimes. Self-deception is at the root of habitual deceit. Sadly, the true believers of the Zionist cause have become case studies in that tragic trait.

The archetype of the eternal outsider and his involuntary wandering still resonates within me. In this manner, I feel kinship with my urban Ashkenazi/Sephardim ancestors ... those who knew a just society, structured on social justice and civil equity, was the Jewish minority's best hope for living in safety among a gentile majority -- not this narrative of grandiosity and exceptionalism one hears muttered by bearded boneheads (and other Bronze Age cultural throwbacks) at the Wailing Wall and posited on the editorial pages of the Jerusalem Post.

By stealing those parcels of arid acreage in the Middle East, Zionists will match generations of hostile Goyim in the harm they level upon future Jewry: By having chosen mindless might over justice and fairness, they have bestowed a wasteland upon the human hearts of their descendants.

Every human being is born, powerless and vulnerable, into a world they did not create. Ergo, for the awakening heart of the young, it can be a barren land, a dreamscape of ghosts, built by the bony hands of the dead ... their mouldering myths carrying the cold of the grave not the eros of the breathing moment. Ghosts such as these curse at the present with the imprecatory psalms implicit in the foundation of the Zionist state -- and, as the nation's history unfurled, became explicit in her policies. Israel's collective brutalities are the blind thrashings of traumatized souls who, in their agonies, wound all near them.

Such forces of toxic, displaced vehemence can uncouple us from our humanity, warping libido into murderous intent, reducing meaningful endeavor to selfish striving, and twisting our exuberance into zealotry, thereby achieving a form of ass-backward alchemy by transforming living human beings into resentful shades -- those seemingly no longer here ... reacting rather than responding, reciting propaganda as opposed to seeking meaning, squandering the golden, eternal moment before us by transmuting it into leaden habituations of the mind. For all appearances becoming a ghost, haunting the moments of one's own life -- non-responsive, sans retrograde resentment, to the élan vital of the world -- dead, but for the redundancy of one's breathing.

In this way, the spirit of a culture can become a mob of resentful, vicious ghosts. With ghosts, the context of their suffering is misplaced. They cannot haunt those who gave them injury. Their tormentors are long dead as well. The raging spirits of the Zionist state can no longer locate the historical oppressors of the Jewish people, for they have long since been conscripted to dust. Hence, the adherents of Zionism reap vengeance against those living souls who misfortune has placed near them.

The Jewish state demands its neighbors make amends for crimes they did not commit -- to cower before the steel-toe might of its military and make perpetual penitence for the sins of Europe.

Even if they did so: Such an act would not restore my mother's childhood ... would not return to flesh the ashen remains of the millions who made their graves in the winds of twentieth century Europe.

For the Jewish people, as is the case with all humanity, survival in the present age is not dependent on military prowess nor the blessing of an imaginary father in the sky. Awakening to new realities restores meaning and resonance to our lives. Felicity to the putrid, Bronze Age admonitions of a savage sky spirit involving the ownership of desert real-estate only entombs the heart and mummifies the mind.

Accordingly, the most putrefied and pernicious of these fallacies -- the delusion that there exists a "Chosen People" -- must be the first to be toppled.

God's Chosen People? Chosen for what reason: First, divinely bestowed entitlement to a parcel of parched landscape, then exile, persecution, extermination? And now for what purpose: Simply to join the brutal ranks of history's bullies?

When the ashes of the Holocaust cleared, this is the world my mother's tribe built: A right-wing state that believes its godly mission is to lord over and oppress a militarily weaker people. Moreover, if they resist -- starve them, murder them in their homes, drive them into exile. The Israelis seem to be demanding this of the Palestinian people: Why don't you simply accept your lot as being compliant lessors and stay confined to your ghettos?

Furthermore, if you object, then leave -- go into exile -- wander the earth without a home. It would seem, over the course of the lives of the last few generations of Jewish believers, the ancient myth has morphed: The desert god has become more of an earthly ironist than wrathful sky-daddy.

In fact, mirroring the ways of their invented father in heaven, some of my blood relatives have become such inadvertent ironists, as they, at this moment, squat in Palestine, bristling with misplaced rage, manic with delusional entitlement, and, on the whole, casting a curse upon future generations that will poison their hearts and cascade through the generations with a terrible symmetry.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com Visit Phil's website Ebullient Skepticism.

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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.

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From a young age, I would embark with my family on the short journey from our refugee camp to the beach. We went on a haggard cart, laboriously pulled by an equally gaunt donkey. The moment our feet touched the warm sand, the deafening screams would commence. Little feet would run faster than Olympic champions and for a few hours all our cares would dissipate. Here there was no occupation, no prison, no refugee status. Everything smelled and tasted of salt and watermelon. My mother would sit atop a torn, checkered blanket to secure it from the wild winds. She would giggle at my father's frantic calls to his sons, trying to stop them from going too deep into the water.

I would duck my own head underwater, and hear the haunting humming of the sea. Then I'd retreat, stand back and stare at the horizon.

When I was five or six, I believed that immediately behind the horizon there was a country called Australia. People from there were free to go and come as they pleased. There were no soldiers, guns, or snipers. The Australians - for some unknown reason - liked us very much, and would one day visit us. When I revealed my beliefs to my brothers, they were not convinced. But my fantasy grew, as did the list of all the other countries immediately behind the horizon. One of these was America, where people spoke funny. Another was France, where people ate nothing but cheese.

I would scavenge the beach looking for "evidence" of the existing world beyond the horizon. I looked for bottles with strange lettering, cans and dirty plastic washed ashore from faraway ships. My joy would be compounded when the letters were in Arabic. I would struggle to read them myself. I also learned of such countries as Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco. People who lived there were Arabs like us, and Muslims who prayed five times a day. I was dumbfounded. The sea was apparently more mysterious than I'd ever imagined.

Before the first Palestinian uprising of 1987, the Gaza beach was yet to be declared off-limits and converted into a closed military zone. The fishermen were still allowed to fish, although only for a few nautical miles. We were allowed to swim and picnic, although not past 6 pm. Then one day the Israeli army jeeps came whooshing down the paved road that separated the beach from the refugee camp. They demanded immediate evacuation at gunpoint. My parents screamed in panic, herding us back to the camp in only our swimming shorts.

Breaking news on Israeli television declared that the Israeli navy had intercepted Palestinian terrorists on rubber boats making their way towards Israel. All were killed or captured, except for one that might be heading towards the Gaza sea. Confusion was ominous, especially as I saw images of captured Palestinian men on Israeli television. They were hauling the dead bodies of their Palestinian comrades while being surrounded by armed, triumphant Israeli troops.

I tried to convince my father to go and wait by the beach for the other Palestinians. He smiled pityingly and said nothing. The news later declared the boat was perhaps lost at sea, or had sunk. Still, I wouldn't lose hope. I begged my mother to prepare her specialty tea with sage, and leave out some toasted bread and cheese. I waited until dawn for the "terrorists" lost at sea to arrive at our refugee camp. If they made it, I wanted them to have something to eat. But they never arrived.

After this incident, boats began showing up on the horizon. They belonged to the Israeli navy. The seemingly hapless Gaza sea was now dangerous and rife with possibilities. Thus, my trips to the beach increased. Even as I grew older, and even during Israeli military curfews, I would climb to the roof of our house, and stare at the horizon. Some boats, somewhere, somehow were heading towards Gaza. The harder life became, the greater my faith grew.

Today, decades later, I stand by some alien sea, far away from home, from Gaza. I have been denied the right to visit Palestine for years. I stand here and I think of all those back home, waiting for the boats to arrive. This time the possibility is real. I follow the news, with the stifling awareness of a grown up, and also with the giddiness and trepidation of my six year old self. I imagine Freedom Flotilla loaded with food, medicine and toys, immediately behind the horizon, getting close to turning the old dream into reality. The dream that all the countries that my brothers thought were fictitious in fact existed, embodied in five ships and 700 peace activists. They represented humanity, they cared for us. I thought of some little kids making a feast of toasted bread, yellow cheese and sage tea, waiting for their saviors.

When breaking news declared that the boats had been attacked just before crossing the Gaza horizon, killing and wounding many activists, the six-year-old in me was crushed. I wept. I lost the power to articulate. No political analysis could suffice. No news reports could explain to all the six-years-olds in Gaza why their heroes were murdered and kidnapped, simply for trying to breach the horizon.

But despite the pain that is now too deep, the lives that were so unfairly taken, the tears that were shed across the world for the Freedom Flotilla, I know now that my fantasy was not a child's dream. That there were people from Australia, France, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, the US and many other countries, who were coming to us in boats loaded with gifts from those who, for some reason, really liked us.

I cannot wait to get to Gaza, on top of a boat, so I can tell my brothers, "I told you so."

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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Yet, I think and think and think about the god of the killers.

None know whether this god has a thousand arms, or a hundred heads, or is adorned with garlands of living snakes, or is armed with clubs, or with swords, or whether he inhales air, or vacuum or exhales fire or brimstone. But what everyone now does know is that the god of the killers is a most vengeful, savage and ruthless deity and craves the blood and flesh of innocent people.

In asking his worshipers to slaughter in his name, the god of the killers demands the most abject and degrading submission. He hates and loves only those his devotees hate and love. Nothing is so pleasing to this god as the butchery of those his followers hate. Nothing satisfies him more than when he looks down from his starry throne, he finds his followers busy in bloody carnage. Nothing so enrages him as to have his followers leave the massacre to him.

This god promises happiness here and hereafter to his slaves, and threatens to eternally punish all the rest. The redder the hands of his followers with human blood, the greater their reward behind heaven's golden gates. But only when his slaves commit slaughter upon slaughter, with steady hands and steely nerves, and then get upon their knees and tell him repeatedly that he is good, that he is merciful, that he is just, that he is love, would the reward come--not before. If his slaves waver or refuse to become party to his gruesome plans, or decline to grovel before him and flatter him enough, they are denounced, hated, reviled, banished here, and threatened with eternal torment in the fiery depths of hell once up there.

This is a god who addresses his disciples and calls them intelligent beings, and yet makes it a crime, punishable with timeless flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of analyzing his dispatches. He quivers with godly rage if ever a man dares to think that, perchance, there may not be a god that is appeased by blood, that the times of gods wanting the blood of the first born is long gone, that salvation through slavery is a contradiction in terms, that true deliverance may lie in free thought riding on the wings of reason. Nay--he wants man to kneel in fear, to tremble in terror, to freeze his mind, to never ever question but to only obey that which his high priests translate for him. And to kill and to kill and to kill.

I don't know what to write and how to write for anguish leaves me paralyzed. The only conclusion I have come to is that there cannot be such a god. I just can't believe in such a blood thirsty god whose fear paralyzes the thinking faculties of even his adorers. I cannot become one who cringes to the very earth, in infinite humiliation of my soul, to the god of the killers--a god that can dash me to the lower hell or raise me to high heaven if I don't do or do his dark bidding. I just cannot believe in a god that would order me to kill my brethren--his children again.

No--there can't be such a god. And if there is, the killers can have him.

More than this, I do not want to pen.

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How will the news of the future be distributed? The jury is still out, but not completely. Increasingly, we are driven to believe that the future will be paperless. Some argue that the "paper" will be taken out of the "newspaper" within a few years. Their logic might have come across as far-fetched in the late 1990s, but it can hardly be dismissed in 2010.

Two American intellectuals added their voices to the chorus of those predicting that the print media would not continue to define the news for long. In October 2009, Leonard Downie Jr., vice president at large and former executive editor of The Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, professor of Communication at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, co-authored a 98-page paper entitled, "The Reconstruction of American Journalism."

Here, they made the assertion that: "Newspapers and television news are not going to vanish in the foreseeable future ... But they will play diminished roles in an emerging and still rapidly changing world of digital journalism, in which the means of news reporting are being re-invented, the character of news is being reconstructed, and reporting is being distributed across a greater number and variety of news organizations, new and old."

The idea is not a new one. In August 24, 2006, The Economist published an article entitled, "Who killed the newspaper?," which claimed that, "Of all the 'old' media, newspapers have the most to lose from the Internet. Circulation has been falling in America, Western Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand for decades ... in the past few years the Web has hastened the decline."

While we freely refer to the digital media revolution as "new media," few dare classify print newspapers as "old." The Economist did, nearly four years ago. Considering the speed at which the digital media world is moving -- with the introduction of new gadgets and the level of Internet penetration throughout the world -- print papers are now most definitely old and aging.

The magazine also made an interesting reference to Philip Meyer, whose works include, "Precision Journalism: A Reporter's Introduction to Social Science Methods and Newspaper Ethics in the New Century: A Report to the American Society of Newspaper Editors."

In his most recent book, "The Vanishing Newspaper," Meyer calculates that "the first quarter of 2043 will be the moment when newsprint dies in America as the last exhausted reader tosses aside the last crumpled edition."

More, digital media are making waves not just in the constant improvement of news and information technology, but also influencing the level of trust readers have in the new media. Indeed, it is not just about how the news is conveyed -- digitally or on paper -- but how our perception of the news is changing altogether.

American intellectual and best-selling author John Mearsheimer didn't neglect to refer to the Internet in one of the most important and honest assessments on "The Future of Palestine." In his recent speech, he stated that "The Internet is a game changer. It not only makes it easy for the opponents of apartheid to get the real story out to the world, but it also allows Americans to learn the story that the New York Times and the Washington Post have been hiding from them."

Those familiar with the book Manufacturing Consent, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky understand well that traditional media coverage of news is largely determined by "filters" which allow competing interests to determine what we read and watch, and thus our perception of the world. The Internet, despite all its shortcomings, is much more equitable and democratic. That should not discount the fact that poorer countries still do not have the kind of Internet availability, speed and access that is common and widespread in the developed world. But the fact that an online community newspaper has a fighting chance, like any other mainstream newspaper, is certainly worth celebrating as an achievement.

There is also another reason why we will continue to go digital, and why it will only be a matter of years before the pendulum turns in favor of paperless media world.

The latest Climate Change conference in Copenhagen failed to set limits on carbon emissions or to come up with any serious or binding agreements. It was a colossal disappointment. But that failure was political more than scientific. Very few still argue that global warming is a hoax, or believe that the environment is sustainable, considering our long-unchecked way of life. More, recycling is no longer a fad. Some countries are debating laws that make recycling mandatory, and to punish violators. Considering all of this, it is difficult to imagine that years from now we will continue to use and discard newspapers so readily, as if the paper on which news is printed doesn't come from trees, and as if discarded papers don't constitute landfill.

Bob Dylan continues to be right. "The Times They Are a-Changin." And it's time that we also appreciate that change, not resist it; work with it, not against it. There is no shame in embracing change. When the first commercially successful trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was completed in July 1866, some must have thought that humanity had reached the zenith of achievements as far as the field of communications was concerned. Now telegraphs are only found in museums and are coveted collectors' items. Instead, hundreds of millions of people routinely and conveniently send texts, sounds, images and videos through their cell phones without much fuss or excitement. Although the concept is still the same, the medium has changed dramatically.

The same can be said about news. The news industry will never die; in fact, in a globalized and interconnected world, we will seek news more than ever before. But the medium will inevitably change, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. It is telling that the most featured and best-selling item from Amazon.com is the Kindle digital reader, and that iPad has been topping news related to publishing technology all around the world.

The Times They Are a-Changin'. And we'd better change accordingly.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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Access to safe water is essential for life. People need water to drink, for cooking, for laundry, dishwashing and personal hygiene. When safe water is not readily available, life becomes extremely difficult.

While the tap water was not safe on the night of May 1 and into May 2, there was a rush on bottled water in stores all over the area. Along with the rush for safe water came reports that store chains and owners were taking advantage of the situation and overcharging customers. According to the Boston Globe, one resident of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood found a case of water being sold for more than $52 in a 7-Eleven store in her community.

Water should be a guaranteed right for all and it should be free. But under capitalism, it is a commodity sold to make a profit. Those who cannot afford the asking price must simply suffer.

Many truck drivers and grocery store workers in the Boston area were called in and forced to work on Sunday, their day off, in order to meet the city's demand for bottled water. With jobs under constant threat in our current economy, these workers likely did not feel that they could say "no" to "requests" from their bosses to work these extra hours.

On May 3, it was announced that local towns in the area would distribute water to residents for free. The locations for distribution included surrounding suburbs and towns but not a single location within the city of Boston. Working people within the city, many of whom do not have access to a car, had no way to access these free supplies.

The clamp that broke and caused the crisis was less than 10 years old, said officials of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. According to the Boston Globe, the state Water Infrastructure Finance Commission met for the first time after the crisis was over to discuss the water system, which probably needs billions of dollars in upgrades and repairs.

The recent emergency may seem like an unusual event. However, lacking access to safe tap water is not a new scenario to many working people in and around Boston. An organization called Massachusetts Global Action has found that people who live in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, which are low-income communities of color, are 10 times more likely than residents of wealthier neighborhoods to experience a water shutoff as a consequence of bill non-payment. Further, as the proportion of people of color increases in a city ward, there is a disproportionate likelihood that water will be shut off in a resident's home if a bill is not paid, according to Massachusetts Global Action. So while all 2 million people in the Greater Boston Area experienced this water crisis together, it is a constant threat for many working people in the city.

Water is a human right that should be guaranteed to all people. This "crisis" revealed that it is not guaranteed to the working people of Boston, nor is it freely available to most working people around the country. We must fight back against the system of capitalism that puts a price on a most basic and necessary resource for human survival, water.

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Francisco Castaneda came from his native El Salvador to the United States to work. After a 2005 conviction, he was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has jurisdiction over non-U.S. citizens.

Immediately after his incarceration, Castaneda began complaining of a bleeding lesion on his penis. Despite the advice of medical staff at the facility, who believed the growth could be cancerous, the U.S. Public Health Service refused to schedule a biopsy, labeling the procedure "elective." Instead, they offered him ibuprofen, antibiotics and additional underwear.

After almost a year of Castaneda pleading for treatment, the U.S. Department of Immigration Health Services scheduled a biopsy only after the growth spread, cancer became obvious and a prisoners' rights group agitated for action.

The results of the biopsy confirmed cancer. But before the results came back, Castaneda was released from ICE custody so the government would not have to pay for his treatment. As a result of the neglect he suffered at the ICE facility the cancer had spread elsewhere in his body. He had only a short time to live.

Represented by Public Justice and supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and others, Castaneda sought to sue the health officials responsible for neglecting his health and violating the constitutional prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment," rather than simply suing the federal government itself. By law, the government's liability costs would not be nearly enough to cover the medical costs incurred by Castaneda and his family in the desperate attempt to save his life, let alone compensate for his suffering and his family's loss.

After his 2008 death, Castaneda's family continued the fight, with both a federal judge and a U.S. Appeals Court ruling that the suit against the health officials could go forward. The government itself admitted culpability in Castaneda's death, but the Supreme Court disagreed with the lower courts, citing a 1970 law prohibiting lawsuits against health officials. Recently appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the court's opinion.

Gabriel Eber, a staff attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project, said, "The Supreme Court has unfortunately closed the door on an important avenue of accountability for the gross mistreatment that immigration detainees across the country have suffered."

Working-class prisoners in the United States, including people yet to be tried in court, usually suffer from degrading and inhumane conditions. People caught in the web of immigration detention, especially Latin Americans, suffer particular injustices. Sometimes without charges, they are separated from their families and face indefinite incarcerations. The specter of deportation is constantly held over their heads, and periodic raids are used to frighten workers into accepting the worst of working and living conditions. Mistreatment by government personnel is common; the Castaneda case is a prime example of this, but also points to the capitalist state's role in terrorizing immigrant workers--with no mechanism for accountability by abusive personnel, prisoners can freely be treated cruelly.

The PSL stands with all immigrants in demanding immediate and full legal rights!

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Economic boycotts can be very powerful and change the world for the better. Sadly, too few Americans use their personal spending power to advance worthy goals. An immediate opportunity is for people to stop buying BP gasoline. After all, it is clear that BP acted irresponsibly and likely criminally in using offshore oil drilling technology that posed enormous risks to public and worker safety as well as our natural environment in the Gulf of Mexico and possibly far beyond.

Make BP suffer where it hurts, where it can truly harm them. Send a clear signal that we will get revenge as consumers with an environmental conscience. An immediate boycott of BP could do much to make the company compensate the incredible number of people that will suffer very much because of the humongous oil spill that should have been prevented. We cannot depend on BP acting responsibly; nor can we count on the government or the courts for delivering timely justice.

So simple. While you may not have opportunities to stop spending in Arizona you are more likely to stop spending at BP outlets. If you can influence decisions by others to stop spending in these two ways, then do it with strength and passion.

There is a Boycott BP page on Facebook. Show your support. Over at the Public Citizen website you can sign a petition: "Take the Beyond BP Pledge! Drive a car? Like the occasional fountain drink? Send a clear message to BP by boycotting its gas and retail store products. Don't spend a cent of your hard-earned money to feed the bottom line of a corporation that has a sordid history of negligence, willfully violates environmental regulations, and is spewing thousands and thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. I pledge to boycott BP for at least three months." Public Citizen has also created a Facebook group "1,000,000 Strong to Boycott BP."

"Boycott BP into bankruptcy" - said Cindy Sheehan. Amen.

A short while back John Antczak on Huffington Post complained that there is "no apparent sign of a consumer backlash at the pump like the boycott triggered by the Exxon Valdez spill 21 years ago." He also noted that "owners interviewed by The Associated Press across the country say it's been business as usual since the April 20 explosion on a rig off Louisiana began unleashing 200,000 gallons of crude a day." However, this too must be noted: It took 40 days for outrage to coalesce into a one-day national boycott of Exxon stations.

Note that n the West, BP sells gas under the long-established Arco brand.

According to BP's website, there are more than 10,000 BP-branded gas stations in the U.S. and 1,500 under the Arco name. BP says it sells more than 15 billion gallons of gasoline in the U.S. every year, second only to Shell.

Americans seem to find far too easy to justify buying at BP or Arco because of convenience or low price. But everyone should see this choice as a moral one. If you continue to pump money into the BP coffers you are acting immorally, stupidly and anti-environmentally. Either you have a conscience or not. Make the marketplace work to punish those that deserve to be punished.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn at delusionaldemocracy.com.]

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In a May 9 piece, Times columnist Thomas Friedman denounces workers in the US and Western Europe for believing in the "tooth fairy" and expecting government services without paying for them. In America, Friedman says, the baby-boom generation, which supposedly had inherited the prosperity of the post-war years, had "eaten through all that abundance like hungry locusts."

"After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things away to voters, it's now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics."

Describing what he has in mind, two days later Friedman wrote about his meeting with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in a rooftop restaurant in Athens. Praising Papandreou for defying mass protests, the Times columnist hails the government for carrying out a "revolution," including raising the retirement age and slashing wages and pensions for public sector workers, imposing regressive consumption taxes and wiping out two-thirds of the country's publicly owned companies.

Another May 11 article, appearing on the front page of the Times, is entitled, "In Greek Debt Crisis, Some See Parallels to U.S." Its author, David Leonhardt, led the newspaper's campaign to promote Obama's health care overhaul, explicitly supporting limits on medical treatments ordinary people could receive. ("In truth, rationing is an inescapable part of economic life").

"It's easy to look at the protesters and the politicians in Greece--and at the other European countries with huge debts--and wonder why they don't get it," Leonhardt writes. "They have been enjoying more generous government benefits than they can afford...

"Yet in the back of your mind comes a nagging question: how different, really, is the United States?... Both countries have a bigger government than they're paying for. And politicians, spendthrift as some may be, are not the main source of the problem.

We, the people, are."

It is rich to hear demands for sacrifices and lectures about "the people" living beyond their means, particularly from the likes of Leonhardt and Friedman. The latter, who is paid $50,000 per speaking engagement, is married to the heir of a multi-billion dollar real estate fortune. According to the Washingtonian magazine, the couple owns "a palatial 11,400-square-foot house" in suburban Washington, DC, valued in 2006 at $9.3 million.

In these circles it is taken for granted that massive cuts must be imposed on the living standards of the working class, but not a word is said about the hundreds of billions that are funneled into the personal fortunes of the financial aristocracy and the subordination of the entire economy to increasing their piles of wealth.

The events of the last several years have revealed to the world that the greatest burden on society is not ordinary working people but the anti-social activities of an unproductive and parasitic financial elite. The grotesque consumption and appropriation of social wealth by this oligarchy is not a minor factor in the crisis of the global capitalist system itself.

The bankrupting of whole countries--chiefly through the transferring of the bad debts of the financial speculators onto the books of various governments--is being used to demand austerity from workers and ever-greater riches for the elite.

The four biggest US financial firms--Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase--made money from trading every single day during the first quarter of the year, according to their financial filings. The banks, which all benefited from the Wall Street bailout, reaped hundreds of millions in profits from betting on the movement of currency, commodity and sovereign debt markets, including in relation to Greece.

At the same time, the value of corporate shares has risen, chiefly through a campaign of job cutting, wage and benefit concessions and a staggering 3.8 percent increase in worker productivity in 2009. As a result, corporate CEOs, who took stock options in lieu of pay increases when profits were down, are now cashing in, according to an Associated Press report, entitled, "America's top CEOs are set for a once-in-a-lifetime pay bonanza." Yahoo's Carol Bartz, for example, received a $47.2 million package during her first year on the job, 90 percent of which came from stock awards and options.

While these vast personal fortunes have been made, there has been no recovery in the wages and benefits workers have lost during the recession. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that real wages fell last year by 2.7 percent in Japan and Ireland, 1.1 per cent in Germany and 0.8 percent in the US.

The unbridled greed of America's ruling elite--and the complete subservience of the political establishment, from Obama on down, to its needs--can only be compared to the ancien régime in France. The parasitism and extravagance of the aristocracy became a major factor in the country's breakdown, and ultimately the eruption of the French Revolution in 1789.

Workers must reject the demand for austerity. The working class did not create this crisis and must not pay for it. Instead, the ill-gotten gains of the ruling elite must be confiscated and used to meet the interests of society as a whole, instead of gutting social programs and destroying jobs.

This must include a multi-trillion dollar program of public works to put the unemployed to work--at decent wages and full medical care--to rebuild the cities and suburbs, repair the nation's infrastructure and provide high quality housing, medical care and education for all.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the founder of the Fourth International, Leon Trotsky, argued in the Transitional Program that it is "impossible to take a single serious step in the struggle against monopolistic despotism and capitalistic anarchy--which supplement one another in their work of destruction--if the commanding posts of the banks are left in the hands of predatory capitalists. In order to create a unified system of investment and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material, resources--and not merely paper and bureaucratic resources--for economic planning."

The nationalization of the banks, however, will produce positive results, Trotsky explained, "only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the exploiters into the hands of the toilers."

For this to be realized the working class must build its own mass political party, independent of and irreconcilably opposed to the two parties of big business, and dedicated to the fight for a workers' government to replace capitalism with socialism.

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It has now become abundantly clear that the nearly $1 trillion package cobbled together by European finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund was not merely aimed at staving off the bankruptcy of Greece and other European Union member states gripped by sovereign debt crises.

It was designed to effect a massive transfer of social wealth from the masses of the population to the international banks and investment firms. And it is to be paid for by compelling governments across the continent to implement the kind of draconian attacks that have brought hundreds of thousands of Greek workers into the streets in strikes and mass protests.

The European bourgeoisie is acting on the cynical adage of "never let a crisis go to waste." It has seized upon the dramatic events in Greece and the threat of a worldwide financial meltdown, largely the product of the financial elite's own speculative activities, to ram through an assault on conditions of life for European workers that is without precedent since the continent lay in ruins at the end of World War II.

An unannounced corollary to the agreement on the bailout package reached in Brussels early Monday was the immediate implementation of austerity measures in Spain and Portugal, whose public deficits have made them the targets of international financial speculators seeking super profits by bidding up interest rates on the countries' debt offerings.

After the Spanish stock market rose a dizzying 14.4 percent on Monday, "It has belatedly dawned on Spaniards that the Iberian peninsula, not Greece, is the main target of the financial 'bazooka' unveiled by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund," the Financial Times commented Wednesday.

With the euro zone's third largest public deficit, Spain has been increasingly targeted by financial speculators and forced to pay ever higher interest rates to secure foreign credit.

The country's social democratic Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero went before parliament on Wednesday and announced a series of austerity measures, including: a 5 percent pay cut for public employees, followed by a wage freeze; the freezing of most pension payments; the elimination of the so-called cheque-bebé, a 2500-euro government subsidy for families with new babies; elimination of a program funding elder care and public funding for prescription drugs.

Also to be slashed are over 6 billion euros in public investment, including on public transportation projects. Billions more will be eliminated in funding to local governments and development aid, necessitating still further layoffs and cutbacks.

Under conditions in which the country's official unemployment rate already stands at over 20 percent, the austerity program will mean millions more being thrown on the unemployment and a further turn by the country's economy towards slump as consumption is curtailed.

Portugal followed suit on Thursday with its own proposal for across-the-board cuts in public spending and increases in regressive valued-added taxes.

"If we fail to show we can implement credible measures to cut the deficit, the tap of overseas financing will be turned off," Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, Portugal's finance minister, told members of parliament during a debate on the proposed austerity package.

The social democratic government of Prime Minister José Sócrates did not spell out where the budget ax would fall, but indicated that it would include reductions in funding for local governments, and that the plan comes on top of already announced measures that include an elimination of public sector jobs, cuts in unemployment benefits, a freeze on salaries, and the sale of publicly owned enterprises.

The European Commission, speaking for the European and international banks, warned Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark and Finland Wednesday that their budget deficits have grown too large, and that they will be subjected to "excessive deficit procedures" (EDPs), imposing deadlines for slashing public spending.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund, working together with the EU, has approved the latest tranche of a "rescue package" for Romania, or more precisely for international financial interests holding Romanian debt.

The condition for releasing the latest outlay from the 20 billion euro package (12 billion euros have been paid out thus far) was the government's approval of an economic plan to reduce the public deficit to 4.4 percent of GDP by next year, compared to 7.2 percent for 2009.

The Romanian government produced a proposal for a devastating round of budget reductions that includes cutting public workers' pay by 25 percent and slashing state pensions by 15 percent. It is estimated that the austerity measures could mean the wiping out of as many as a quarter of a million jobs.

The announcement provoked demonstrations by workers and pensioners throughout the country and scenes of older retired workers clashing with security forces in the capital of Bucharest. Strikes have been called for next week.

The official unemployment rate in Romania already stands at 10 percent, while according to some estimates fully two thirds of the population is living at or below the poverty line.

These unprecedented attacks are to be carried out throughout Europe. In Germany, Roland Koch, deputy leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party and considered a likely candidate to succeed the ailing Wolfgang Schauble as finance minister, warned that no cutbacks could be "considered taboo" as Germany confronts its own 10 billion euro fiscal deficit, as well as the cost of its 123 billion euro contribution to the EU rescue package.

Koch, the minister president of the state of Hesse, called for reconsidering a policy that provides for kindergarten for all children under the age of three. The proposal has provoked outrage. "Anyone who starts talking about such cuts is acting like an arsonist," Christine Haderthauer, Bavaria's social affairs minister, told the Passauer Neue Presse. "If we have to take the red marker specifically to the areas of education and family, we're playing the lottery with our future."

Meanwhile, economists are predicting that the decline in the value of the euro will slash the real wages of the working class in Germany and throughout Europe. "We can expect inflation to rise sharply over the next few years," German economist Wolfgang Brachinger told the British Guardian. "The euro is losing value, and consumers will have to dig deeper in their pockets as a result."

In Britain, with the new Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition just beginning to unveil its right-wing agenda of "emergency" measures, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, stated that there could be no delay in implementing a deficit-reduction program.

King described the crisis in Greece as an opportunity to "tackle the excessive fiscal budget deficit." He added, "The bigger risk at present, given the experience of the last two weeks, would be for a new government not to put in place clear and credible measures to deal with the fiscal deficit."

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Obama administration's chief budget official sounded a similar note, warning that Washington must take action to slash its deficit, which is expected to exceed $1.5 trillion this fiscal year, or "wind up facing the sorts of choices that Greece now faces."

"I would prefer to be addressing this sooner rather than later," said Peter Orszag, the White House budget director in an interview Wednesday with the Reuters news agency. Orszag declined to discuss specific measures, saying that the administration wants to allow a bipartisan commission on the deficit formed by Obama to complete its work.

The panel is taking aim at so-called entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is co-chaired by Alan Simpson, a former Republican Senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, a former Clinton administration official and investment banker. Bowles sits on the board of directors of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street investment firm, where he chairs its compensation committee, approving eight-figure salaries and bonuses for top executives.

That such an individual could combine these two roles underscores the class character of the economic policies being pursued, not only by the Democratic administration of Barack Obama in the US, but by governments throughout Europe and internationally. All of them are attempting to impose the full burden of the financial crisis on the backs of the working class, while transferring massive amounts of social wealth to the financial parasites who are responsible for it.

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Afghanistan remains the starkest illustration of how poor countries are used, then betrayed when their usefulness runs out. But Afghanistan is not an exception; US relations with many other countries, including Pakistan, Somalia and the Palestinian Authority remain hostage to this very model.

Yemen is now emerging as the newest casualty. Its government is desperate to hold on to the rein of power, amid corruption, extreme poverty and untold Western pressures. Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country's president of the last thirty one years, has impressively negotiated his political survival through mounting challenges. The 1994 civil war left many thousands dead, and despite the north's 'victory' the discontent of the south never waned. More, a Houthi revolt in the north is long running. Its latest manifestation lasted for sixth months and caused many deaths, most of which remained unreported. A mass migration of hundreds of thousands (270,000 by the recent estimates of the United Nations World Food Program) coincided with or followed the fighting. This is now temporarily in check, thanks to a fragile ceasefire.

According to some analysts, the ceasefire in the north could allow the central government in Sanaa to tend to the challenge growing in the south. Victoria Clark, author of the recent book Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes claimed that, "Southern disaffection has gone beyond the point of no return...Saleh's biggest mistake would be to crack down on southerners as hard as he has tried to do on the Houthi rebels."

However, under immense (and increasing) western pressure, Saleh is likely to crack down. Western governments, led by the US and Britain, run out of patience fairly quickly when the leaders of a poor, fragmented country opt for dialogue - even when such a choice might actually result in long-term political stability. When Afghan President Hamid Karzai merely mentioned of the possibility of engaging the Taliban, it generated much rebuke. A similar scenario happened in Pakistan. When Palestinian factions achieved the Mecca Agreement in February 2007 to mend their differences, the US immediately conditioned its financial backing of Mahmoud Abbas, and the agreement was successfully disintegrated. In the same vein, any Yemeni attempt at reaching out to the disaffected forces within the country, including tribes, opposition parties, and the various militant offshoots has been dismissed as an attempt to appease the terrorists.

Following a plot to blow up a US airliner over the city of Detroit on Christmas Day, the US renewed its interest in Yemen - in a predictable way. The administration of President Barack Obama issued an order early April authorizing the assassination of a US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric linked to the plot. It seems like the Bush years all over again.

US Special Operation Forces have been at work in Yemen for years, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Yemen was then declared "an important partner in the global war on terrorism," and it remains so, whenever there is a need to chase the elusive militant groups partly or wholly linked to al-Qaeda.

The violent perusal of US enemies in Yemen comes at a heavy cost. On one hand it has undermined the central government, which is being increasingly challenged from the north, the south and the center. Naturally, no self-respecting government would allow its territories to be used either as breeding grounds for militants, or as a hunting ground for foreign forces. A raid involving US cruise missiles at an alleged al-Qaeda camps in December 17, 2009 killed dozens, including 23 women and 17 children, according to Yemeni sources.

Indeed, Yemen is to a great extent a battlefield in which the central government is hardly the central player. However, the so-called 'war on terror' has presented many self-seeking forces in Yemen with a golden opportunity to extract wealth. Much has been 'invested' to beat al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP). But little has been spent elsewhere, for example, in providing sustenance to the hundreds of thousands victimized by the ongoing violence.

When problems become insurmountable and there is no effective system of accountability in place, corruption becomes rampant. It is no wonder that Yemen ranks 154 of the 180 countries examined in the Transparency International Corruption Index. Corruption is often an outcome of poverty and lack of accountability, and it also contributes to them. Yemen is unable to escape this vicious circle.

Since Yemen is not officially an occupied country, donor countries can easily disown their financial promises. Such promises are only made when Yemen is set for some military operation or another, or to prop up the central government's own proxy war on terror. However, when the Yemeni people are in genuine and dire need for help, Yemen becomes such a distant subject. It begets pity, at best, but no action.

According to the World Food Program (WFP), 7.2 million people - about a third of the country's population - are suffering from chronic hunger. Almost half of them require immediate food assistance, but fewer than half a million are receiving it. They have been directly affected by the policies of western governments, and the central government's own involvement in proxy wars on militants, tribes and other disaffected Yemenis.

How much money is the WFP is asking for in its latest appeal? A meager $103 million, out of which only $27 million has been received. A Tomahawk cruise missile - celebrated as both cheap but effective - costs around $600,000. The cost of the operation that killed dozens of innocent Yemenis last December could have, in fact, fed millions in need.

This is not a matter of mathematics; it is common sense. The ongoing miscalculations in Yemen are securing the very environment that lead to poverty, corruption, anger - and ultimately militancy and violence.

According to Emilia Casella, spokeswoman for the WFP, "people have three other options after that -- revolt, migrate or die.". Sadly, it is what millions of Yemenis are already doing.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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On 25 April 2010, representatives from a host of organisations and nations with the clout to shape policies and millions of lives around the world gathered for a Roundtable at the headquarters of the US Millennium Challenge Corporation in Washington. Among them were representatives from the World Bank Group, Japan, the US, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), African governments and the African Union Commission. Their stated aim was to 'facilitate a dialogue among government representatives, multilateral agencies, civil society, and the private sector to further explore progress and advancement of ongoing work related to principles for responsible agricultural investment.'[1]

Others prefer simpler language. They describe the form of agricultural investment under discussion at the Roundtable, which involves large-scale land acquisition for industrial-style agriculture in African and other developing countries, as a global 'land grab'. They say there is no way it can be 'responsible' because it threatens food, seed and land sovereignty of family farmers, social stability, environmental health and biodiversity around the world.[2]

According to Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN, the international NGO that has been drawing the world's attention to the land-grab issue, the Roundtable was 'a smoke and mirrors show to dampen the escalating social backlash threatening land grab investors.' He was one of the activists who travelled to Washington to protest in front of the Roundtable venue in Washington. Well over 100 farmer, civil society and non-governmental organisations and broad-based coalitions around the world have signed onto the campaign, 'Stop land grabbing now!'.[3]

The investors and the proponents of this kind of agricultural investment in Africa deny it is a land grab.[4] They say that the investments are positive, providing jobs and infrastructure, posing no threat to food security even if the food and agrofuels they produce are for export. Such a stance is understandable; it would be unrealistic to expect an objective assessment of such foreign direct investment from the nations, corporations, investment banks and funds, and billionaire tycoons that stand to profit from it.

What is perplexing, however, is that the same kind of rhetoric is coming from some whose job it is to protect Africa's farmers' rights and their farmland from exploitative foreign takeover. By this, I mean African heads of state and other elected representatives of the people, as well as some holding key positions in Africa's regional economic and political bodies.

Take, for example, the views of Sindiso Ngwenya, secretary general of Comesa, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. He calls the agricultural investment in the region, particularly by Gulf States, a 'win-win' partnership.[5] Egypt's minister of investment, Mahmoud Mohieddin, says that if foreign investors exploit an African country, it's the fault of the country itself because individual countries have the obligation to protect themselves. In the words of Minister Mohieddin, 'If your country doesn't provide this kind of policy priority in its investment policy, don't blame those who are coming to exploit and extract. The issue of responsible investment lies with the government and all of these things should be established.'[6]

The question is: Are African governments being responsible and putting protection of their own people ahead of, or at least on par with protection for the investors? Listening to some African leaders, it doesn't look that way.[7] Some defend the investors' acquisition of land in their countries, saying it is 'virgin' or 'under-utilised' or 'uncultivated' or 'degraded' land and they applaud the 'modernisation' of agriculture with agribusiness that is heavy on the use of imported seed and environmentally destructive machinery, chemicals and irrigation. This suggests they know precious little about the importance of fallows and the resilience and diversity of agroforestry systems, or about sustainable agriculture and the knowledge base of their own farmers in using soil, tree, water and genetic resources wisely and productively, particularly in the face of climate change. It certainly shows they have not read or understood the world's most comprehensive study of agriculture, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). It was done by 400 scientists over many years and it showed that agro-ecological farming is the best - the only - sustainable approach to land use.[8] So did the recent study by the United Nations Environment Program on the appropriate response to the food crisis and to climate change.[9]

Even less comprehensible is that some African leaders seem to be prostrating themselves at the feet of the investors, competing to outdo each other to court them with generous tax holidays and concessions. Such giveaways cast doubts on how cash-strapped African governments will benefit at all from such investments.
So the next question is: Why are Africa's leaders so eager to sell out their own farmers by leasing their precious land (water, soils and other natural resources) to foreign interests? Is it just because of their own lack of understanding of the value of agro-ecological agriculture and environmental sustainability? Or are they also being influenced by imported ideology and neo-liberal ideologues from major international financial institutions? It appears the answer is both of the above.

THE WORLD BANK GROUP AND FOREIGN INVESTORS FIND FRIENDS IN SIERRA LEONE

Take the case of Sierra Leone. Its president, Ernest Bai Koroma, says that he wants to run his country 'like a business' and that his background in the private sector as an insurance broker gives him the know-how to do that.[10] President Koroma recently praised the economic and political reforms that have made his country 'climb 20 places in the World Bank's annual Doing Business rankings in the last three years, and made Sierra Leone one of the top 5 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for investor protection and the ease of starting a business.'[11]

The importance of 'investor protection' surfaces frequently in interviews with President Koroma's business-friendly team. His special advisor on the private sector, Oluniyi Robbin-Coker, formerly of Citibank and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC), refers to it so often during an interview about large-scale land acquisition and agricultural investment in Sierra Leone that I finally ask him if the government is so busy protecting investors that it is neglecting to protect itself and its people.

'We have to take a long-term view and a broad view,' he replies. 'So in the short term, we may have to make some concessions in order to get the businesses up and running and profitable.' He refused to say just what incentives or tax holidays the government of Sierra Leone was offering to Addax Bioenergy for its 'flagship' agricultural investment in the country, a giant sugarcane plantation to produce ethanol for export to Europe, to fuel European vehicles. Addax Bioenergy is part of the Addax & Oryx Group of Swiss billionaire, Jean Claude Gandur, who has a long record of oil and mining business in Africa.[12]

Even if Robbin-Coker wouldn't divulge what concessions had been made for Addax Bioenergy in Sierra Leone, the website of the Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA) said that agricultural investors enjoyed a 10-year corporate tax holiday (although that information later disappeared from the SLIEPA website, coincidentally, after I quoted it in the media).

SLIEPA itself makes an interesting study. According to its enthusiastic director of investor promotion, Raymond Kai-Gbekie, SLIEPA was established by an act of Sierra Leone's parliament in 2007 and is financed by the IFC and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). Like other such 'one-stop-shops' for investors that the IFC has been setting up in African nations (and around the world), SLIEPA's mission to 'assist and inform investors and exporters' may initially look almost banal.[13] How it assists investors, however, is more telling. SLIEPA boasts that a new Investment Code has gone into effect, which 'was designed to provide more protection for companies investing in Sierra Leone ... full foreign ownership is allowed ... there is no discriminatory economic or industrial strategy against foreign investors, and no limit is imposed on foreign ownership or control.'[14]

Kai-Gbekie becomes very animated when he recalls his meetings with illustrious billionaire investors, royalty and dignitaries who attended last year's Sierra Leone Trade and Investment Forum, partly organised by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's 'charity', the African Governance Initiative. Asked why the forum to promote and sell Sierra Leone's assets to the world was held in London rather than in Freetown, Kai-Gbekie replies, 'As a nation, backed by an ever-ready and energetic private-sector-led president, we had to go to London to make ourselves known, that we have no business being poor, and that we have 5.4 million hectares of land and less than 20 per cent is under cultivation.'

He admits there is 'a lot of controversy' on whether it is wise to invite, even bend over backwards to woo investors to lease huge tracts of Sierra Leone's farmland to produce agrofuels for export in a country still trying to regain its own food security after a long civil war. Then he adds, 'Against this backdrop we had to look for hired guns, brought in by IFC, two gentlemen, Simon Bell and Julien Haarman, they were here and they came up with strong arguments.'

So, SLIEPA and the IFC were using 'hired guns' to come up with 'strong arguments' to promote large-scale land acquisition for agrofuel production - from palm oil and sugarcane for export to Europe. One of them, Simon Bell, who presented the 'Sugar Opportunity in Sierra Leone' at the London Forum, was described as an 'advisor to the Government of Sierra Leone on Sugar Investments'.[15]

But the IFC with its one-stop-shops for investors and 'hired guns' within government ministries is just one of the tools the World Bank Group employs to open up the continent to direct foreign investment and press for reforms that benefit and protect foreign investors. There is also the IFC's Investment Climate Advisory Service (FIAS), which 'helps governments implement reforms to improve their business environment, and encourage and retain investment.'[16]

Yet another is MIGA, the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. MIGA protects investors from losses caused for a host of reasons, including if a government were to take political action, say, to protect its own citizens when it sees an investor causing harm or social and environmental upheaval.

'MIGA acts as a *potent restraint* on potentially damaging government actions,' says DeRisk Advisory Services, an authorised marketing agent for MIGA. 'MIGA's leverage with host governments frequently enables the agency to resolve differences.'[17] [emphasis added]

With such powerful World Bank machinery working on behalf of the investors, and working so closely with and within African governments, it certainly seems that the playing field has been systematically tilted to favour the investors rather than local people. The Oakland Institute says the IFC and FIAS have been instrumental in promoting foreign access to developing countries' land markets, threatening food security and local populations, and it calls for an investigation into the workings of the IFC and FIAS technical assistance and advisory services.[18]

Meanwhile, African governments themselves and their one-stop-shop investment agencies seem to have become the investors' most vocal cheerleaders.

That is certainly the impression Raymond Kai-Gbekie gives in the IFC- and DFID-backed SLIEPA office in Freetown. He dismisses my suggestions that the two IFC 'hired guns' promoting investment in land for agrofuels in his country might not be the most objective sources. Then he launches into another round of praise for both his president and the Addax Bioenergy project.

'I want to tell you the time for change is here,' he says. 'We have a president who launched an agenda for change and that agenda for change is a package for even the poor.' Kai-Gbekie sees the Addax project as part of this package, and tells me that it will have '6,000 employees'.

This figure contradicts ones that other officials have given for the project and it is one of many contradictions that abound about the Addax project. While Kai-Gbekie told me it would employ 6,000 people, a few weeks later a press release from the Office of President Koroma stated that the Addax project would assure 4,000 jobs and cost US$200 million.[19] The same press release quotes Addax Bioenergy managing director Nikolai Germann as saying it would take '20,000 hectares of land'. But the Addax Bioenergy website says it will involve 10,000 hectares and cost about 200 million Euros, employing more than '2,000 people'.[20] President Koroma says that it will cost US$400 million and involve 30,000 hectares.[21] The official Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessment (ESHIA) done by a South African consulting company for the Addax project says it will involve 15,500 hectares and directly employ 2,200 people.[22] Oluniyi Robbin-Coker, the president's special private sector advisor, told me it would eventually cover 40,000 hectares.

In 2008, Addax Bioenergy's project manager, Andrew Turay went to Europe to give a presentation at the European Parliament Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuel Production in Tropical and Subtropical Countries. In his presentation he said the project would cover 26,000 hectares.[23] And he made it clear the ethanol production was for the European market.

Yet in 2009, Turay told me that the ethanol would be for 'local use and an export crop.' He said that the sugarcane could produce both ethanol and sugar. He added, 'We import a lot of sugar into this country', implying that Addax could help Sierra Leone reduce those sugar imports. He also told me the project would produce between 30 and 60 MW of renewable energy from sugarcane residues, which would be pumped into the national grid. However, the Addax website says that the generation plant will be able to export (sell) about 15 MW to the national grid, and makes it clear that the sugarcane is for ethanol production only and the ethanol is for export.

Turay told me the Addax project would be producing ethanol for 'the next 100 years'. Member of parliament for the project area, Martin Bangura, told me Addax would employ 4,000 people directly and that the initial lease was for 50 years, renewable for 21 years.

All of these are contradictions are coming from the people who are speaking on behalf of the project, who should, in theory, know of what they speak and be sure they are offering the public accurate information.

The Honourable Martin Bangura calls himself the 'champion' of Addax because he is the 'bridge' between Addax and his constituents. He tells me that to build confidence between the project and the people he sometimes had to 'sleep two or three nights in villages'. His idea of consultation with the local people is apparently to offer them all kinds of reassurances, provided to him by Addax, that the project would bring only benefits. Although he claims he read the ESHIA, he seems unaware of the potential risks listed in the report. Asked about the potential health and environmental risks of the spraying of pesticides and herbicides on the plantations, the heavy use of fertilisers, the run-off into rivers and onto the pockets of land around them on which local people were assured they would still be able to farm their rice, Bangura responds by saying that Addax had set up 'suggestion boxes' and given local people one month to submit their concerns or suggestions. A woman in one of the villages in the area points out to me that the suggestion boxes 'make no sense' since the majority of the local people cannot read or write.

In villages in the project area, even among those young men who say they are eager for the project to start so they can be employed, I find no one who has any idea how much land or what lands are involved in the project. A local chief in the area, whose responsibility as custodian of the ancestral lands should really have propelled him to protect them from foreign takeover, has already accepted a job driving a tractor for Addax. Asked if he has any concerns about the potential noise, pollution, and disruption to local communities, farms and lives, he replies that he is 'very happy' because he now earns '200,000 Leones (about $US50) bulk' a month and 'besides, at the work site they have electricity and we don't have to pay to charge our mobile phones.'

I meet women farming on the land, producing enough income to send their children to school and care for their families, who aren't even aware the project is coming. No one I meet in the area is aware that there will be large-scale use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers on the sugarcane plantation that could affect their health or the health of their crops in surrounding lands, or that some communities will have to be resettled. No one has read the weighty ESHIA - hardly surprising with an illiteracy rate of close to 90 per cent and no access to the document. Some are afraid to speak to me at all for fear of repercussions from those who are promoting and hope to benefit from the project, either because of a job or by leasing land, for which Addax will pay US$12 per hectare per year, in a complex arrangement that divides it among landowners, District and Chiefdom Councils and the national government.[24]

The ESHIA identifies several 'issue/impacts' - on human health, on the natural ecosystem, involving contamination of aquatic resources and soils by pesticides and fertilisers, that are described as 'moderately severe' despite recommended 'mitigation measures', which would have to be closely and independently monitored throughout the life of the project. It also points out that because the project is seeking funding from European development banks, it has been geared to meet 'Performance Standards' on environmental and social sustainability, as laid down by none other than the World Bank agency that has been so active in promoting the land deals - the IFC.[25] The proverbial fox not just guarding but also setting the rules for the hens and the henhouse?

Given the chronic lack of resources in Sierra Leone for monitoring other extractive industries - particularly its diamond sector - one has to ask if it's realistic to believe that the government will be able to carry out the requisite independent and credible monitoring of the Addax project.[26]

GENUINE 'RESPONSIBLE' AGRICULTURAL INVESTMENT WOULD PROTECT FAMILY FARMERS AND FARMLAND

The Addax Bioenergy project in Sierra Leone is just one example of the agricultural investment on-going in that country, where at least three more European companies are each seeking to lease 40,000 hectares for palm oil for agrofuel for export. And it is just one relatively modest case in Africa where hundreds of large land deals have already been signed and sealed, giving foreign investors and nations control over many millions of hectares of African farmland.

But the Sierra Leone case does reveal much about the way the land deals are being made, the contradictory information being given out about them, what local people are actually being told (and not being told) about the high stakes involved. It also reveals the powerful machinery of the World Bank Group at work inside African governments that promotes the land deals, and the considerable powers of the investors awash in capital to sway government and public opinion.

Most importantly, it helps explain why, even if it is the obligation of African governments to protect their own people from exploitative investment - as Egypt's minister of investment says - instead some seem intent on protecting the investors who are coming to their countries to 'exploit and extract.' Protection for local people, their land, soil, genetic resources and their water, has been whittled away piece-by-piece under the tutelage of the World Bank Group and its donor partners.

Until African governments recognise the immense potential of their own farmers and their sustainable, diverse family farming systems, that are so desperately in need of genuine 'responsible' agricultural investment to assure food and seed sovereignty and access to micro-credit and markets, it seems likely they will continue to protect and favour the powerful investors - and that their own rural populations will pay the terrible price of the land grabbing.

* Joan Baxter is a Canadian journalist, development researcher and science writer, and an award-winning author who has lived and worked in Africa for 25 years. Her most recent book, Dust From Our Eyes, was shortlisted for the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in the US.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] 12 April 2010. Japan, US and AU to host 'Roundtable on Responsible Agricultural Investment. http://bit.ly/aQkrUS
[2] Stop Land-grabbing immediately. 7 April - 19 May 2010. Campaign of FIAN (Fighting Hunger with Human Rights): 'Do not support the principles of 'responsible' agribusiness investment promoted by the World Bank'. http://www.fian.org/cases/letter-campaigns/stop-land-grabbing-immediately
[3] Stop land grabbing now: Say NO to the principles of 'responsible' agro-enterprise investment promoted by the World Bank. http://farmlandgrab.org/12200
[4] Dulane, Abdirashid. 11 April 2010. No 'land grab' in Ethiopia. Japan Times
Virgo, Paul. 18 Nov. 2009. To Grab, Or To Invest. IPS News. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49317
[5] Bladd, Joanne Bladd. 15 April 2010. Arabian Business. http://www.arabianbusiness.com/586105-gulfs-farmland-policy-seen-as-win-win-partnership-for-africa
[6] Ibid
[7] Ramkumar, K.S. 7 Aug. 2008. Ethiopia - Zenawi offers huge land to Saudis to grow cereals. Arab News. http://archive.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&article=112524&d=7&m=8&y=2008
[8] International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). http://agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=IAASTD%20Reports&ItemID=2713
[9] 2010. The Environmental Food Crisis: the environment's role in averting future food crises. A UNEP Rapid Response Assessment. http://www.grida.no/publications/rr/food-crisis/
[10] BBC News. 18 Sept. 2007. New Sierra Leone leader sworn in. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6998687.stm
[11] Bai Koroma, Ernest (President of Sierra Leone). 22 March 2010. Time for Africa to Get Serious About Investment. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ernest-bai-koroma/time-for-africa-to-get-se_b_508463.html?view=print
[12] Helman, Christopher. 15 Oct. 2007. Trouble is my business. Forbes Magazine. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1015/099.html
[13] http://www.sliepa.org/
[14] http://www.sliepa.org/doing-business
[15] DFID and IFC. 18 Nov. 2009. Agenda: Sierra Leone Conference: Trade and Investment Forum. http://www.sliepa.org/sites/default/files/documents/Agenda_SLCTIF1_2009.pdf
[16] FIAS, The Investment Climate Advisory Service. http://www.fias.net/ifcext/fias.nsf/Content/Home
Daniel, Shepard with Mittal, Anuradha. 2010. (Mis)investment in Agriculture: the role of the International Finance Corporation in global land grabs. The Oakland Institute. http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/misinvestment_web.pdf">
[17] Political Risk Insurance. DeRisk. Reducing investment risk in frontier markets and assets. DeRisk Advisory Services.
[18] Daniel, Shepard with Mittal, Anuradha. 2010. pp 12 and 35
[19] The Press Secretariat, Office of the President, Sierra Leone. 21 Jan. 2009. Sierra Leone: U.S.$200 Million Bioenergy Project for the Country - 4,000 Jobs Assured. Concord Times
[20] http://www.addax-oryx.com/AddaxBioenergy/Addax-Bioenergy-Questions&Answers.pdf
[21] Bai Koroma, Ernest (President of Sierra Leone). 22 March 2010. Time for Africa to Get Serious About Investment. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ernest-bai-koroma/time-for-africa-to-get-se_b_508463.html?view=print
[22] Sugar cane to ethanol project, Sierra Leone. (Draft) Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessment. October 2009. http://www.cesnet.co.za/publicdocs.htm
[23] Turay, Andrew. 12 June 2008. Africa's potential of biomass and production of biofuels under EU sustainability criteria. European Parliament, Workshop: Sustainable biofuel production in tropical and sub-tropical countries. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/studies.do?language=EN p 17.
[24] Sugar cane to ethanol project, Sierra Leone. (Draft), p 159
[25] Daniel, Shepard with Mittal, Anuradha. 2010.
[26] Smillie, Ian (editor). Oct. 2009. Sierra Leone: Everyone wants to be in control and no one is. Diamonds and Human Security Annual Review. Partnership Africa Canada. pp 14 - 18
Baxter, Joan. 2010. Dust From Our Eyes: an unblinkered look at Africa. Hamilton, Canada: Wolsak & Wynn. Pp 236 - 244.

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Despite some initial apprehension - owing to the fact that Goldstone is a self-declared Zionist with links to Israel - many justice and peace advocates were comforted by the man's past record. He was a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

In April 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Goldstone to lead the mission of investigating war crimes committed by Israel in the devastating war in Gaza between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009. Goldstone insisted that the mandate must also include alleged violations committed by Palestinians. At the end, he was asked to set his own mission's mandate, a reflection of the level of trust placed in him by the UNHRC.

The report's findings were published in September 2009, providing one of the most vivid, sober and unmistakable recommendations ever issued by a UN mission since Israel began its open-ended campaign of massacres and violations on the territorial sovereignty and human dignity of the Palestinian people and its Arab neighbors.

What has been shocking for Israel and its supporters is the nature of the report's recommendations. It urges the international community to "start criminal investigation in national courts...where alleged perpetrators (of war crimes) should be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognized standards of justice." But more than this, the anger in Israelis and Zionists everywhere has largely been inspired by the fact that Goldstone is supposed to be 'one of them'. He cannot be easily derided either as a 'self-hating Jew,' nor can he be accused of anti-Semitism, the ready-to-serve warrant of anyone who dares criticize Israel's criminal conduct.

My own interest in Goldstone is motivated by three reasons. First, Gaza is still suffering under the very conditions that Judge Goldstone so aptly described in his report. Nothing has happened since then to ease the pain of the victims, nor to heed his call for justice.

Second, there is the ongoing 'controversy' over the man's wish to take part in his grandson's bar mitzvah in South Africa. He has now been forced to negotiate with a group of South African Jewish leaders in order to participate in this coming of age ceremony. South Africa's chief rabbi, Warren Goldstein, accused Goldstone of being a liar whose report is 'delegitimizing Israel'. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies accused Goldstone of 'selling out'.

It behooves Rabbi Goldstein to remember that it is only the barbarous killing of thousands of innocent civilians that is 'delegitimizing' Israel. As for 'selling out,' Goldstone is indeed a 'sell out' as far as any blind tribal affiliations are concerned, affiliations that seem to matter more to the Jewish Board of Deputies than the cause of justice, fairness, equality and peace that are enshrined in all major world religions and philosophies, notwithstanding Judaism.

That leads to the third reason that compelled the revisiting of this subject - Norman Finkelstein's most recent volume, 'This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion.'

Finkelstein is not an ordinary author. His readers know well that one rarely finds so many strong qualities in a single writer: compelling academic research, unbending moral clarity, lucidity in style, and a refusal to dehumanize the subject and the victim. 'This Time We Went Too Far' will serve in academic and human rights circles - as Goldstone will serve a similar purpose in the legal arena - as the categorical indictment of Israel's brutal policies in Gaza. More, it will forever shame those who have allowed titles, money, prestige and, again, blind tribal affiliation to prevent them from seeing the untold inhumanity that took place, and continues to take place in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. Sadly, as such cruelty perpetuates, so do the diatribes of Israel's apologists. Finkelstein is no stranger to vile attacks from Israel's diehard friends, and Goldstone will also eventually get used to it.

Finkelstein positions his book within proper historical contexts. He summons the events that lead to, coincided with and followed the Israeli war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, which also killed and wounded thousands, and destroyed much of the country's civilian infrastructure. The similarities are too stark, but are made much clearer by Finkelstein's patient evaluation of both events. Moreover, he revisits the Israeli war and invasion of Lebanon of 1982, revealing much of Israel's bizarre but predictable behavior.

Finkelstein provides lengthy and immaculate research that highlights the repellent propaganda which preceded and followed the massacre in Gaza. Although he makes various references to the Goldstone mission and report earlier in the book, he dedicates most of the book's epilogue to the Goldstone report and its many consequences. His revelations and analysis are encouraging in that they suggest that things are in fact changing. Israel, a rouge state by any reasonable standards, will never reclaim its fictitious old status as a beacon of progress and democracy. No amount of lies, intimidation or blackmail could sell Israeli war crimes as self-defense, or smear Israeli critics as anti-Semites. The book makes a very convincing case to back up this assertion.

"The times they are a-changing," wrote Finkelstein. True, and that is a most impressive achievement that was made possible by the likes of Jimmy Carter, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Richard Goldstone, Richard Falk, John Dugard, Finkelstein himself, and the innumerable authors, journalists and bloggers who tirelessly worked to document the truth.

But it is also the courage of the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere that made it possible for us to take such stances. Our efforts dwarf in comparison to their courage, resilience and sacrifices.

Finkelstein's book is a testimony to all of that, and much more.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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The media has largely kept quiet on the human impact of the disaster, with only the occasional local paper bearing a story on one or another of the missing workers.

One of those killed on the rig was Karl Kleppinger, 38, of Natchez, Mississippi, who leaves behind a wife, Tracy, and a 17 year-old son, Aaron. The World Socialist Web Site spoke with the Kleppingers' attorney, Steve Gordon, whose law firm, Gordon, Elias, & Seely L.L.P., is representing the family against British Petroleum, rig operator Transocean, and other rig subcontractors.

"The human tragedy has been less visible, because the workers who were killed came from all over the Gulf Coast, from Texas, Louisiana," Gordon said.

Gordon said that Kleppinger was a "simple man" who had fought in the first Gulf War before beginning work on oil rigs.

"Karl was a floor hand, worked for Transocean for 10 years," Gordon said. "He never missed one hitch." Gordon said that Karl once volunteered to rescue a deep-water drill ship in the gulf and helped save the vessel from going under, even though he was never trained as a diver.

The family is suing the company for damages under the Merchant Marine Act, also known as the Jones Act, which requires the owners of ships and oil rigs to pay reparations to families killed in "unseaworthy" craft or under unsafe conditions.

Gordon said that the Kleppingers' employer, Transocean, bears the main responsibility for his death, but that other parties are guilty of negligence, including BP and Halliburton, which was contracted to do cementing work on the rig.

"The impetus of these companies is profit, not safety," Gordon said. "As a result, a horrific event occurred that will affect the lives of a lot of people, and certainly the environment for decades."

"The companies like to say that there is a safety culture." Gordon added, "But the safety culture is subordinate to the profits culture."

Gordon said that in the immediate aftermath of the explosion survivors were held offshore and not allowed to talk to their families until 3:00 in the morning on Thursday, 29 hours after the blast.

"The company lawyers took statements from them and would not let them talk to their families," Gordon said. "So for about 17 hours they played around with these guys. They're not even admitting they did it."

Gordon said several other lawsuits are being launched by survivors and the families of the victims.

Thus far BP has admitted responsibility for all environmental damage due to the spill, but the company has refused to accept responsibility for its role in the deaths of the workers.

The men killed in the disaster leave behind mourning families and communities. They include:

• Adam Weise, who was mourned at a vigil attended by hundreds of people in his community of Yorktown, Texas, last week. "Adam was my baby, just 24 years old," the man's mother, Arlene Weise told reporters.

• Aaron Dale Burkeen, a 37-year-old resident of Neshoba County, near Philadelphia, Mississippi. A local paper reported that Burkeen was responsible for getting the other crew members to safety before leaving, but was unable to get off the rig in time. He is survived by a wife and two children, ages 14 and 6.

• Donald Clark, 49, of Newellton, Louisiana, was scheduled to leave the rig on April 21, the day after the explosion.

• Roy Kemp, 27, Jonesville, Louisiana, leaves behind two daughters, one three years old, the other three months old, and his wife, Tracy.

• Jason Anderson, of Bay City, Texas, also leaves behind two children.

• Stephen Curtis, 39, of Georgetown, Louisiana, is also survived by two children. He had been working in the oil industry for 17 years, following in the footsteps of his father, Howard, who worked as a diver-welder for 34 years.

• Gordon Jones, 28, of Louisiana, leaves behind a son and a pregnant wife, Michelle.

• Blair Manuel, 56, of Gonzales, Louisiana, worked as a chemical engineer on the rig. He had three daughters and was engaged to be married.

• Dewey Revette, 48, from State Line, Mississippi, worked for Transocean for 29 years as a driller, and was also a father.

• Shane Roshto, 22, was from Franklin County, Mississippi. His widow, Natalie Roshto, has also launched a lawsuit against Transocean, BP, and Halliburton.

These men add to a large death toll on Gulf Coast oil rigs in recent years, giving the lie to claims that offshore oil drilling is now a safe industry. A recent review by federal regulators found that on Gulf of Mexico oil rigs there have been, since 2001, 69 workers killed, 858 fires and 1,349 injuries.

A search of its web site reveals that the White House has issued no statement of condolence for the victims of this most recent disaster.

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Earlier, at Tiananmen Square, I had watched throngs of people giddily roam the vast expanse, snapping endless photos in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, in the Imperial City and around every monument in the Square.

A formation of about 10 soldiers was suddenly in tatters when I asked if I could take a photo with them. Their excitement seemed to surpass mine.

None of this should by any means take away from the seriousness of the violent crackdown at the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989. That date should be remembered and lessons must be gleaned. But why the reductionism? When one thinks of Tiananmen, why does one only conjure visions of hordes of protesters and gangs of soldiers? The bloody scene is used time and again to single out China as an anti-democratic regime, juxtaposed conveniently against Western 'democratic values'.

One hardly ever reads positive news from China, or any other 'non-Western' countries - unless an agenda exists for promoting selective positive news from those countries, for example, a supposedly successful election in Afghanistan conducted under the auspices of Western armies.

In Thailand last week I saw no signs of the Red Shirts, or the Yellow Shirts either. I did, however, see some shirtless Thais. Considering the heat and humidity, this was not surprising. The point remains that aside from a standoff at a major Bangkok shopping center, the rest of the metropolis seemed to operate as normal. A Thai man struggled to communicate his political views on to me in English. I had found him watching a video on some social network website. The video featured a dog and a cat, the cat representing the Red Shirts, and a dog, the current government. They barked, meowed and hissed, but they didn't physically engage. The man laughingly commented, "This is how things are in Thailand." Then, in a more somber tone, "It's all about power and control; no one cares about Thais who cannot afford a shirt - red, yellow, or otherwise."

True, but it also seems that Western media cares little about these countries, outside of a very narrow context. The story of China is only worthy if it involves government restriction (e.g. of Google), or economics, i.e. how China's economic growth will affect Western economic recovery. Even if the story is related to art rather than politics, somehow it finds its way back to the same old theme, for example, the government censoring struggling artists.

Once the Red Shirts and the government sort out their problems, Thailand will certainly disappear off our radar. It would take an economic crisis, rigged elections, or even a tsunami to bring it back as a story worth telling. In the meantime, the country will return to its convenient role for the West - a cheap destination for adventure-seeking travellers with some money to spare, a topic in blogs advising ways to get more money for your buck, or baht, and clever ways to dodge Thai con artists.

China and Thailand are the norm, not the exception. In a recent discussion with a Reuters editor, I complained about the fact that every story on Malaysia had some kind of negative undertone. Example include: Muslim, Christian clashes over the use of the word "Allah"; the trial of Anwar Ibrahim; the ugly politicking. The news makes it easy to quickly imagine Malaysia as the most dysfunctional and unfortunate society on earth.

This was not the impression I got during my last visit to Malaysia. It is, in many respects, a thriving society. It has its internal politics, like anywhere else, but essentially Christians and Muslims seem to be getting along just fine, as they have been for many years.

Media channels - especially those dispatching their news from various Western capitals - focus not simply on sensational news, but they also intentionally sensationalize news, and purposely relay the news so as to be understood within Western contexts. Thus 'democracy', 'elections', 'government restrictions' and 'terrorism' are the usual buzzwords.

Sadly, the south is also stereotyped in the south itself. Newspapers in non-Western societies depend on coverage provided by Western news agencies for their international news. An Indonesian friend recently commended on my 'bravery' for going to South Africa. For him, South Africa is just 'Africa,' where 'primitive' people, along with lions and other wild animals prey on innocent white tourists. Thank you, Hollywood, for perfecting the art of stereotype.

Similarly, some people show utter disbelief when they discover that Iran is one of the world's busiest travel destinations - not necessarily for Americans or Israelis, but for people across the globe. Yes, Iran has much to offer in terms of culture, history, scenery and societal achievements. There is far more to the country than clashing soldiers and youth, or fiery statements pertaining to nuclear weapons, Israel and the Holocaust.

A few years ago, in Stockholm, I asked a group of officials to tell me the images that popped in their heads when they thought of Palestinians. I asked them to be honest, assuring them that nothing they said would offend me. But when I heard back from them, I was indeed very offended. The images were unfailingly gory. Even the 'positive' images amongst them were disturbing and stereotypical.

The western media will continue to reduce non-Westerners, for they have a vested interest in doing so, and it has become habitual. A first step in overcoming this would be to empower our own local and regional media, and to create rapports amongst them. We can only challenge the abhorrent narratives about us when we start to present our own truth and experience, and support others to do the same.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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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.

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Sometimes there are statistics that you really need to meditate on for awhile. They open the door to critical thinking about American society. They shed light on a host of hot political and public policy issues. This is especially true for rich versus poor issues, taxes, justice and equality. First, note the number of households in the United States: now at 115 million, which equates to an average of 2.6 people per household.

Now, think for a few moments and guess the answers to this question: What fraction of households have assets of $1 million or more and what fraction will pay no federal income tax for 2009?

Take a moment, think seriously about what these two fractions might be. To have net assets of $1 million or more certainly signifies people at the top of the economic ladder, but is a far greater number than the superrich, because a million bucks is not what it used to be. A lot of ordinary people seeing themselves as middle class, but making good incomes and probably older, even with lower house values, can have wealth at this level.

And to pay no federal income tax certainly covers people at the bottom of the economic spectrum, but not necessarily just the very poor. They too may see themselves as middle class or, for some, the working poor. For example, for 2009, a family of four with two children under 17 could have made $50,000 and escaped paying any federal income tax because of various tax credits and other benefits. Many two income households could avoid paying federal income tax, because of low but rather typical salaries.

Here are the answers to the above question. Households with $1 million or more in net assets number just 7.8 million or 6.8 percent of the national total. Households that will pay no federal income tax for 2009 number 54 million or 47 percent of the national total.

Thus, there are about seven times as many households paying no federal income tax, nearly half the nation's households, than having $1 million or more in assets.

If a high income rather than assets is considered, then note that about 16 percent of households have annual incomes of $100,000 or more. This means that a lot of households with pretty high incomes have not accumulated the wealth level of $1 million in assets. Households with incomes of $250,000 or more, however, number just under 2 percent of the nation's total. This is the group that will see higher taxes from the new health care reform legislation and now pays about half of all taxes. This group equates to about 2.3 million households and 6 million people that really are rich in terms of both wealth (assets) and income. These people can afford to pay more taxes because they have benefitted disproportionately from past tax cuts and probably are not hurting much in this recession.

All these numbers shed some light on the considerable economic inequality that has gotten steadily worse in recent years. Yes, the rich have become richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class devastated, probably worse than ever, because the current Great Recession for millions of people is really just as bad as the Great Depression - financially and psychologically. Over the past 30 years the lowest income people are actually making less now, after adjusting for inflation, and CEOs at the largest companies went from making 35 times to over 300 times more than their average workers.

Take away the no income tax and high asset households and you have about 46 percent left or 53 million households with about 138 million Americans. This is a better view of the shrinking, at-risk middle class, households trying to survive in a cruel society with high economic insecurity. These people should be more worried about sinking into the lower class, no income tax paying group, than dreaming about rising up into the wealthy high tax paying class. The bitter truth is that upward economic mobility has largely become a myth, like the American dream, more like winning the lottery than a reasonable expectation from working hard.

Maybe all this explains why there are so many angry, anti-government Americans attracted to the tea party movement, and firmly entrenched independents fed up with both major political parties because they more serve corporate rather than public interests. With an enormous national debt, high unemployment that will not go away, and increasing number of people losing homes and needing free food things are likely to stay bad or get worse for a lot of people.

Dwell on this: Do you really think that voting in different Democrats or Republicans will return the nation to a healthier condition? And this: Does having a positive attitude about the future require delusional thinking, or heavy drug use to avoid thinking about it?

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

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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.

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The sale follows months of negotiations between DMC executives, Detroit Mayor Bing, Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano and Vanguard. As part of the agreement the city of Detroit and county and state authorities are pledging to create a "renaissance zone" that will free Vanguard from virtually all taxes.

The sale of DMC is part of a national drive to subordinate every aspect of health care to the demands of private profit. It will inevitably mean that the health care safety net, already severely strained by a huge increase in the number of uninsured, will be further eroded.

The move is also part of Bing's campaign to privatize city services and downsize and depopulate broad sections of the city. Detroit Medical Center has long served as a place of last resort for those without medical insurance. Nonprofit hospitals are required to provide a certain minimum of uncompensated care and other benefits to the local communities they serve to maintain tax-exempt status.

Nashville, Tennessee-based Vanguard has purchased 15 hospitals over the past 10 years in four states, turning them into for-profit operations.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said he was "elated" by the agreement. "To be able to get the private sector and this organization to come together to make this kind of commitment and investment in the city of Detroit is a watershed day," Bing said. "No doubt about it."

DMC CEO Mike Duggan hailed the agreement, saying it would permit the system to compete more effectively. "The nonprofit hospital model is killing health care in the city of Detroit," he declared.

Vanguard says it will invest $850 million in capital improvements over the next five years at DMC hospitals. DMC Board Chair Steve D'Arcy called the deal, "the largest single private investment in the city's history." He said the conversion to a for-profit model would allow the DMC to compete with suburban hospitals.

The DMC operates eight Detroit-area hospitals with 1,734 licensed beds and has annual revenues of $1.9 billion. It is affiliated with the Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute.

Access to health care in Detroit has declined drastically over the past several decades. In 1995 there were 12 nonprofit hospitals in the city. Now there are only six, four of which are run by the DMC. In 2007, St. John Detroit Riverview Hospital closed, the only hospital on Detroit's impoverished east side.

While Vanguard says it is committed to keep all the system's hospitals open and to maintain its policies on charity care for 10 years, there is little doubt that the conversion of the DMC to for-profit status will have a serious negative impact on the delivery of health care to the uninsured and underinsured In Detroit, the poorest big city in the United States.

The largest shareholder in Vanguard is Blackstone Group, a private equity firm that has played a significant role in the restructuring and downsizing the auto parts industry.

Private equity firms like Blackstone are notorious for focusing on short term gains for wealthy shareholders, slashing jobs and shutting down less profitable operations of the companies they take over. Blackstone reported profits of $329.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The plan to sell DMC to a for-profit hospital chain evoked expressions of concern from health care professionals because of its implications for the provision of health services to the poor.

Addressing the growing national trend toward the conversion of nonprofit hospitals to for-profit entities Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator and CEO for Physicians for a National Health Program commented, "The people who run the hospital do their best to placate the people who own the hospital. More often than not it's based on denial of care to sick people."

He continued, "Once you go for-profit, you can pretty much do whatever you want. You can limit services, you can exclude people; not in emergencies, but you can define your patient load." For-profit, or investor-owned, hospitals, he said, "aggravate intensely the shortcomings of the American health system."

The tax abatement to Vanguard for the purchase of the DMC will further starve Detroit of revenue in the face of a $300 million plus deficit. The city administration is in the midst of a drive to slash city services, including a proposal to shut down services in some of the most impoverished areas of Detroit.

As part of his proposed cuts Mayor Bing is considering the closure of the Herman Kiefer health complex in Detroit that serves some 2,000 people daily, providing the only access to poor Detroiters for vaccinations, HIV testing, substance abuse treatment and other services.

Meanwhile, Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb has announced plans to shut down another 45 public schools while encouraging the expansion of charter schools.

This author also recommends:

Mayor plans to relocate poor residents to "downsize" Detroit [9 March 2010]

The Blackstone IPO: $4 billion payday for private equity bosses

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In a white-dominated world, that may seem counterintuitive. In the racial arena, what do we white people have to be afraid of?

There are lots of things to fear in this world, of course; race is not the only aspect of life in which people face injustice and inequality. A majority of people of all colors (including working-class and poor whites) struggles economically in a predatory corporate capitalist system, and all women, regardless of race, cope with gender discrimination and the threat of sexual violence in a male-dominated world.

But what fears could white people have as white people?

Understanding the fears behind the racial politics of both conservative and liberal whites can help guide strategy for changing a society in which wealth and well-being are still tied to race. And make no mistake, there is still a racialized gap between white and non-white America on measures of wealth and well-being--income, home ownership, graduation rates, access to health care, infant mortality, etc. In fact, the gap between white and black America on some of these measures is greater today than in the immediate aftermath of the major legislative achievements of the civil rights movement, and on some measures the rate of improvement is so glacial that it will be decades, if not centuries, before we reach equality. The legislative achievements that ended legal apartheid in America were a great victory, but the economic apartheid that remains is a reminder of our failures.

Put bluntly: The United States abolished a formal apartheid system but remains a white-supremacist society. After more than a decade of writing and speaking about these issues, which has sparked lots of feedback from all political angles, here's what I have concluded about white folks and our fears.

Aren't We Special?

For conservative white people, the dominant fear is of someday living without the privilege that comes with whiteness. Polite conservatives defend the primacy of "Western civilization." More reactionary whites are openly racist about the threat that non-white peoples pose to "our way of life." Both versions defend the existing distribution of wealth and power, even though many of the working-class and poor whites who endorse such views have access to precious little wealth or power. Race is used by white elites today, just as it was in the nation's formative years, to drive a wedge between people who would otherwise come together to challenge those elites. Divide-and-conquer strategies, it seems, never go out of style.

Liberals are quick to denounce both the thinly veiled and the openly reactionary conservative racism. But what of the fears of liberals? White liberals might reject the very idea that they are afraid, citing their support for diversity and multiculturalism. But my experience suggests that while white liberals reject assertions of white supremacy, many fear the loss of white centrality. They are willing to renounce the idea that white people are superior, as long as they are allowed to live comfortably in a world where white is the norm.

In short, both the conservative and liberal positions are based on the same underlying assertion: "I'm white, and I'm special." Conservatives are more likely to say it openly, while liberals tend to offer platitudes about racial justice while avoiding the risks required to make good on anti-racist principles.

What remains obscured is the distinctly uncivilized nature that Europeans and European Americans exhibited during their barbarous conquest of much of the world. The inherently fragile sense of white self-importance that emerges from that history is at the core of white fears--at some level, we all know that the truth of the depravity of white supremacy belies claims of white superiority.

In the institutions that adopt the liberal view, diversity is just fine (as long as whites remain in control) and multiculturalism can flourish (as long as white norms remain dominant). Institutions defined by the values and practices rooted in white Europe can open up to non-white people, as long as we white people remain comfortable. In such a white-defined liberal world, "people of color"--abstracted into a single group, erasing the particularity of people--are welcome, even sought after, to prove that we have transcended white supremacy.

Getting Uncomfortable

This analysis of the dynamics of mixed-race settings is hardly original. Non-white people have long recognized that white liberals are happy to engage with folks who aren't white as long as their white-centric worldview isn't threatened, and that white groups are happy to have non-white members as long as the power dynamics don't change.

I observe all this not from some arrogant high ground, but as someone stuck in the same dynamic, struggling to get out. I know that for all my writing and political work on racial justice, I still feel most comfortable in settings where my understanding of the world defines the interaction, no matter the racial composition of the group. Rather than pretend otherwise, I start with that reality and search for ways to move forward.

A first step for me has been to question the value of the seemingly endless "race dialogues" that are popular in white liberal groups. In the pseudo-­therapeutic setting of such dialogues, with more talk about personal healing than about political change, white people are guaranteed that we won't be forced out of a white-defined world. White-dominated institutions--corporations, nonprofits, universities, government agencies--are happy to sponsor such dialogues, diversity trainings, and multicultural events, precisely because they don't threaten the fundamental distribution of wealth and power.

I have been involved in many of those events myself, as a facilitator or a participant, and I have learned from them (typically as much from my failures as successes). The most important lesson I take away is that race dialogues are not enough. As long as we stay confined in a safe world that doesn't challenge power, we guarantee failure--if our goal really is to change the distribution of that power.

There's no easy recipe for this kind of challenge, but we move in the right direction when we seek out places where we don't feel comfortable, looking for relationships in which we can help change the dynamic. For me, that means putting myself in situations where I have to face my fear of being seen--or, more accurately, being seen-through--by non-white people. What if I step into those uncomfortable spaces and non-white people see the ways in which I hang onto some sense of my own supremacy/centrality? What if they see the ways in which I haven't shaken off my racist cultural training?

A desire to confront that fear has led me, over the past year, to organizing efforts with the Workers Defense Project. It's a local group that advocates for workplace justice for immigrant workers, addressing problems such as wage theft within a larger social justice framework.

This project has forced me to cross lines around race and ethnicity, class, language, and age. The members and staff are predominantly Latina/Latino and working class. They speak Spanish and/or English, while I'm monolingual in English, and the leaders of the group include a number of people who are at least two decades younger than me.

The collaboration between WDP and the Third Coast Activist Resource Center (a predominantly white group to which I belong) to buy and renovate a building for a progressive community center has gone forward with explicit conversations about all these differences and how they affect decision-making. The trust necessary to move forward has been built slowly over time, and I'm aware that the WDP staff and members are watching for signs that we are serious about establishing a truly egalitarian relationship.

As tricky as this Latina/Latino-white collaboration can be, we also recognize that a successful community center with progressive politics cannot leave out African Americans, the third largest racial group in Austin. That means not just casting around for some black people to add to the mix, but engaging in serious discussions with people from that part of the community to find out what kinds of collaborations are needed and possible. Austin is a white-dominated city, but that's no guarantee that black and Latina/Latino groups will automatically come together; such alliances have to be built as carefully as any other. For us white folks in the mix, our contribution is to use the resources we have to aid in that process--not trying to control it, but also not pretending to be detached.

While there is a lot of dialogue necessary in this work, the dialogue is focused on a common goal: to provide office space for organizers, rehearsal space for artists, meeting space for the community, and a place for people to get to know each other. That common goal doesn't mean we will naturally, or easily, put aside differences, but it means we all have a tangible stake in our collective success.

My interest in this project flows from moral and political principles--a belief in the dignity of all and the struggle to eliminate hierarchy in all forms. But I would be naïve or dishonest if I pretended that was my only, or even my most powerful, motive. In the end, I have committed to this project out of selfishness--I would like to claim my full humanity before I check out of this world. To do that, I have to move beyond the framework of conservative versus liberal and adopt a truly radical politics.

I have a choice: I can be white--that is, I can refuse to challenge white supremacy or centrality--or I can be a human being. I can rest comfortably in the privileges that come with being white, or I can struggle to be fully human. But I can't do both. Though the work is difficult, the choice for those of us who are white should be easy.

Robert JensenRobert Jensen wrote this article for America: The Remix, the Spring 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Robert, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is author of The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege and his latest, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice. He is co-producer of the new documentary Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing. Contact information and articles at uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen.

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This might be my own limited interpretation of what activism means. I was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp where the daily struggles of the community included challenging military occupation while attempting to survive under the harshest of circumstances. Activism then involved civil disobedience, general strikes, confronting armed Israeli soldiers with stones and slingshots. But it also involved much more than that.

Activists in my refugee camp, whether they're identified as Islamist, secularist, socialist or any other name, ensured the community remained unified in the face of adversity. They did not always succeed, but efforts were abound. Activists provided sustainable community support to families with sons and daughters that were killed in clashes or incarcerated in Israeli prisons. They rebuilt people's homes after they were demolished by Israeli dynamites or bulldozers. Some activists even offered free haircuts to those who couldn't afford them.

Activism, as I understood it, was largely a unifying, pro-active force that kept the struggle and resistance alive. It was the ingredient that allowed the Palestinian people to maintain their relevance to the conflict, despite the brutality of their enemy and the self-serving nature of their elites.

The elitism in Palestinian society led to a breakdown in unity, culminating in the bloody consequences of the Fatah-Hamas clash. Still, despite all the attempts to undermine it, Gaza remains standing. This cannot be attributed to any factional decision or political diktat, but only to the spirit of its people, a spirit predicated on internal cohesion and a clearly defined purpose.

When I left the refugee camp, my true culture shock was in witnessing the lack of a real sense of community in the places where I lived. These were mostly in Western societies, bustling cities full of nameless people trying to advance their own lot in life, or, in the case of working-class people, to survive. Due to the nature of my work, I also travelled to numerous countries in Middle East, Southeast Asia and parts of Africa. I found it interesting and uplifting to see how societies ravaged by poverty, military occupations, civil war, sanctions, and natural disasters tended to somehow also be the most communal, forward-thinking and effective at problem-solving.

In poorer societies, entire communities can in fact be classified as "activists". They don't necessarily have websites or hold regular meetings. Some draw their strength from holy books, ancient philosophies or traditions. Their dialectics are often straightforward rather than academic. A child from Gaza who lost her family in its most recent war on the Strip said through gushing tears that her loss would not weaken her resolve to free her country. Today she is being raised by neighbors and hopes to be a journalist.

While organizing in support of the Palestinian struggle is not an easy task in most Western societies, it is still an essential one. Israel is armed and financed by US and other Western governments. It is they who hold the political key to reining in the Israeli military menace that has tormented Palestinians for generations. The activists in the West who organize in support of the Palestinians also unwittingly contribute to their suffering. Their taxes are used to arm Israel, their votes in elections validate the very parties who shield and defend Israel's crimes, and their media consumption feeds the very corporations that taint the victim as aggressor. Activism, at least in the Palestine-Israel context, is not a matter of choice in Western societies; it is a moral responsibility.

Over the course of the last 15 years, I have come across some of the world's most passionate, compassionate and sincere individuals. I can only express good things about that. But I have also become disheartened and disappointed. "Leftist" groups insist on placing Palestine into its anti-imperialist campaign merely as a rally cry, as opposed to a substantively unique issue that needs a substantively unique strategy. Disenchanted "leftists" endlessly quarrel. Some cannot even stand the sight of one another. There are the anti-Zionist Jewish groups, and the anti anti-Zionists Jewish groups. There are those who believe that the pro-Israel Zionist lobby almost exclusively dictates Washington's policies on the Middle East, and those who believe that the lobby is getting its way simply because their agenda is consistent with Washington's existing agenda. Different groups have their own meetings, petitions, rallies and merchandise, often competing with or rejecting each other. Take any issue pertinent to pro-Palestinian activism and you will find vastly differing factions that won't converge or meet.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with diversity of opinion. But when diversity becomes polarizing to this extent, the entire project loses its original value. The public disagreements may stimulate academic discussion, but they can be demoralizing and alienating when it comes to actually bringing change.

I myself strongly believe that the pro-Israel lobby has the upper hand in Washington foreign policy regarding the Middle East, and that only a one state solution can resolve the ongoing crisis and provide a semblance of justice for Palestinians. I also believe an affective boycott and divestment campaign is a must for reining in the belligerent Israeli government. While these are my own views, I still believe it is important to listen to those who disagree with them, partly or fundamentally. After all, our strong beliefs of today are only the outcome of intense discussions and dialogues in the past.

Activism should not be bound by mere personal affiliation, and nor should it unreservedly embrace or accept ideological dogmas. An activist is an ambassador to his cause; yes, he or she must be morally focused, but there should also be a willingness to serve as a unifying force, and to strategize and organize accordingly.

The day our publications, newsletters, websites, conferences and rallies include all sorts of opposing views, without slander and intimidation, will be the day that we can be sure a cohesive community of activists is in the making, a community able to achieve good things. Without this, no campaign will be effective enough to make major policy shifts, in Washington or anywhere else.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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Responsible mainly for intelligence collection and covert operations, including paramilitary activities, it is one of the three institutions in the Israeli Intelligence Community. The other two are known as Aman and Shin Bet tasked for military intelligence and internal security respectively. Together, these three agencies are responsible for a long string of covert operations including assassinations of opponents, spying on friends and foes alike and tracking down and killing the Nazis of the yore.

On January 19, 2010, life was snuffed out of one Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room in Dubai. Traveling without bodyguards, he was en route to Bangkok. Allegedly, Mossad was on his spoor from Damascus, tracking him finally to his hotel room in Dubai. A team of at least 27 suspects, carrying fake or fraudulently obtained passports from various nations, seven of which assumed the names of Israeli dual citizens, worked in tandem to carry out the hit. So professional was the hit that for days Mabhouh's death was ascribed to natural causes.

According to a detailed report in The Daily Mail on Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had personally congratulated members of the Mossad team that allegedly killed Mabhouh ahead of their departure to Dubai.

The Mossad normally conducts its tasks flawlessly. Traces of its involvement usually do not surface for years. Not this time, however. The whole exercise, though successful, started stinking to high heavens within days.

UAE, a tiny oil rich emirate in whose city Dubai the hit was carried out, broke the news of the assassination and that forged Irish, British, German, Australian and French passports were used by some of the suspects in the slaying of the Hamas commander. The UAE, an otherwise pacifist country, has bared its teeth at Israel and continues to pull layers off the ugly deed with each passing day.

Israel neither confirms nor denies the killing. Mossad chief Meir Dagan, in the meanwhile, sees no reason to resign over assassination in Dubai, and Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to ask him to, according to a close associate of the Israeli spymaster. World embassies, however, continue to reverberate from the incidence.

The British Embassy in Israel says a special police investigator has been flown in to meet with the dual British-Israeli nationals whose British passports were used in the assassination. Israeli ambassador to London Ron Prosor met the head of Britain's diplomatic service, Peter Ricketts, after being called to a meeting at the Foreign Office. Britain has publicly urged Israel to cooperate fully with its investigation into the apparent use of counterfeit British passports by suspected Israeli assassins.

Ireland followed Britain in summoning its Israeli ambassador to explain how passport details of three Irish citizens were used by an Israeli group of suspected assassins. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has condemned the assassination of Mabhouh and called for the truth about the killing to be established.

The suspected 27-person hit team also includes three individuals using allegedly fake Australian passports sparking an outrage among Australians. The Israeli ambassador to Australia was promptly sent for and reportedly warned that the Australian government expects Israel's full cooperation in the investigation. The Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was quoted saying by The Australian newspaper, "I made it crystal clear to the [Israeli ambassador] that if the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend."

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd went a notch higher according to the local news media. He warned, "We will not be silent on this matter.....Any state that has been complicit in use or abuse of the Australian passport system, let alone for the conduct of an assassination, is treating Australia with contempt, and there will therefore be action by the Australian government in response."

With the assured backing of its time tested patron, the United States of America that shoots down UN resolutions even on bad wording for its protégé and for the moment stands silently by, whether or not Israel will heed these warnings is anybody's guess. According to anofficially acknowledged list, despite similar warnings in the past, Mossad's list of accomplished assassinations is rather long. Here are just a few prominent names on that list;

Abdel Wael Zwaiter, a Libyan embassy employee and a PLO representative was killed in Rome on Oct 16, 1972. Ghassan Kanafani a Palestinian writer was killed in Beirut that same year. Wadie Haddad, a PFLP (Polpular Front for Liberation of Israel) commander, was killed in Germany in 1978. Ali Hassan Salameh, a high-ranked PLO leader, was killed in 1979 by a car bomb in Beirut. Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the pro-Syria faction of the PLO, was shot in front of a casino in Cannes in 1979. Yehia El-Mashad , an Egyptian nuclear scientist, was killed by Mossad agents in his room at the Méridien Hotel in Paris in 1980. Mamoun Meraish, a senior PLO official, was shot in his car by Mossad agents from their motorcycle in Athens in 1983. Atef Bseiso, a Palestinian official, was shot several times in the head at point blank range by two Mossad gunmen in his hotel room in Paris in 1992.

Hatikva, Israel's national anthem, inspires millions of Jewish people the world over. Its first four lines read:

As long as deep in the heart, The soul of a Jew yearns, And forward to the East To Zion, an eye looks

Many eyes, some dead some still alive, now look to Zion and its patron to explain how one country can act as an international thug, take another people's land, kill them when they struggle to get a piece of it back, stop at virtually nothing, and, this time, draw five other countries into the bloody games of espionage that it plays and gets not a rap on the knuckles where a sledge hammer is long due.

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Professor Zinn dared to challenge the way history was told and written. In fact he went as far as to defy the conventional construction of historical discourses through the pen of victor or of elites who earned the right of narration though their might, power and affluence.

This kind of history might be considered accurate insofar as it reflects a self-seeking and self-righteous interpretation of the world by a very small number of people. But it is also highly inaccurate when taking into account the vast majority of peoples everywhere.

The oppressor is the one who often articulates his relationship to the oppressed, the colonialist to the colonized, and the slave-master to the slave. The readings of such relationships are fairly predictable.

Even valiant histories that most of us embrace and welcome, such as those celebrating the legacy of human rights, equality and freedom left behind by Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela still tend to be selective at times. Martin Luther King's vision might have prevailed, but some tend to limit their admiration to his 'I have a dream' speech. The civil rights hero was an ardent anti-war champion as well, but that is often relegated as non-essential history. Malcolm X is often dismissed altogether, despite the fact that his self-assertive words have reached the hearts and minds of millions of black people throughout the United States, and many more millions around the world. His speech was in fact so radical that it could not be 'sanitized' or reinterpreted in any controllable way. Mandela, the freedom fighter, is celebrated with endless accolades by the very foes that branded him a terrorist. Of course, his insistence on his people's rights to armed struggle is not to be discussed. It is too flammable a subject to even mention at a time when anyone who dares wield a gun against the self-designated champions of 'democracy' gets automatically classified a terrorist.

Therefore, Zinn's peoples' histories of the United States and of the world have represented a milestone in historical narration.

As a Palestinian writer who is fond with such luminaries, I too felt the need to provide an alternative reading of history, in this case, Palestinian history. I envisioned, with much hesitation, a book that serves as a people's history of Palestine. I felt that I have earned the right to present such a possible version of history, being the son of Palestinian refugees, who lost everything and were exiled to live dismal lives in a Gaza refugee camp. I am the descendant of 'peasants' - Fellahin - whose odyssey of pain, struggle, but also heroic resistance is constantly misrepresented, distorted, and at times overlooked altogether.

It was the death of my father (while under siege in Gaza) that finally compelled me to translate my yearning into a book. My Father was a Freedom Fighter, Gaza's Untold Story offered a version of Palestinian history was not told by an Israeli narrator - sympathetic or otherwise - and neither was it an elitist account, as often presented by Palestinian writers. The idea was to give a human face to all the statistics, maps and figures.

History cannot be classified by good vs. bad, heroes vs. villains, moderates vs. extremists. No matter how wicked, bloody or despicable, history also tends to follow rational patterns, predictable courses. By understanding the rationale behind historical dialectics, one can achieve more than a simple understanding of what took place in the past; it also becomes possible to chart fairly reasonable understanding of what lies ahead.

Perhaps one of the worse aspects of today's detached and alienating media is its production of history - and thus characterization of the present - as based on simple terminology. This gives the illusion of being informative, but actually manages to contribute very little to our understanding of the world at large.

Such oversimplifications are dangerous because they produce an erroneous understanding of the world, which in turn compels misguided actions.

For these reasons, it is incumbent upon us to try to discover alternative meanings and readings of history. To start, we could try offering historical perspectives which try to see the world from the viewpoint of the oppressed - the refugees, the fellahin who have been denied, amongst many rights, the right to tell their own story.

This view is not a sentimental one. Far from it. An elitist historical narrative is maybe the dominant one, but it is not always the elites who influence the course of history. History is also shaped by collective movements, actions and popular struggles. By denying this fact, one denies the ability of the collective to affect change. In the case of Palestinians, they are often presented as hapless multitudes, passive victims without a will of their own. This is of course a mistaken perception; the Palestinians' conflict with Israel has lasted this long only because of their unwillingness to accept injustice, and their refusal to submit to oppression. Israel's lethal weapons might have changed the landscape of Gaza and Palestine, but the will of Gazans and Palestinians are what have shaped the landscape of Palestine's history.

Touring with My Father was a Freedom Fighter in South Africa, in a recent visit, was a most intense experience. It was in this country that freedom fighters once rose to fight oppression, challenging and eventually defeating Apartheid. My father, the refugee of Gaza has suddenly been accepted unconditionally by a people of a land thousands of miles away. The notion of 'people's history' can be powerful because it extends beyond boundaries, and expands beyond ideologies and prejudices. In that narrative, Palestinians, South Africans, Native Americans and many others find themselves the sons and daughters of one collective history, one oppressive legacy, but also part of an active community of numerous freedom fighters, who dared to challenge and sometimes even change the face of history.

South Africa has; Palestine will.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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Economic inequality and the myth of Reagan trickle down logic are shown by new data from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. The report noted: "What has been missing from the public debate over the labor market crisis is an honest and detailed analysis of which American workers have been most adversely affected by the deep deterioration in labor markets." The researchers found a correlation between household income and unemployment rate in the last quarter of 2009: Look carefully at these numbers and see how unemployment rises as income drops:

$150,000 or more, 3.2 percent

$100,000 to 149,999, 8 percent

$75,000 to $99,999, 5 percent

$60,000 to $75,000, 6.4 percent

$50,000 to $59,000, 7.8 percent

$40,000 to $49,000, 9 percent

$30,000 to $39,999, 12.2 percent

$20,000 to $29,999, 19.7 percent

$12,500 to $20,000, 19.1 percent

$12,499 or less, 30.8 percent

Ten times worse unemployment in the lowest class than in the highest class! Truly amazing and disheartening, don't you think? And you can also infer that in some hard hit geographical areas the poorest people and people of color are being even more adversely impacted. And don't think for a minute that things have really improved in 2010.

The report summed up the situation: "A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom...of the income distribution; a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top." People at the top remain winners no matter how bad the whole economy. Why? The wealthy Upper Class controls so much of the political system and benefit from countless government policies. They may lose something in an economic meltdown but not enough to suffer significantly.

Conversely, those at the bottom of the economic system with no political power are experiencing something as bad as the Great Depression, with no end in sight.

What pundits don't emphasize is that government policies that do not target lower income groups are a failure and disgrace. Worse than destroying the middle class, we are creating a Lower Class like that found in third world countries. Indeed, compared to places like China and European nations, America's poor are suffering about as badly as anyone on the planet, except for a few dismal places like Haiti. Needing food handouts, losing homes, missing health insurance, and lacking jobs mock the American Dream.

Wait; there is even more bad news. When underemployment is factored in -- part time workers that want to work full time, and those who have stopped looking but want a job -- the picture gets even worse. In the lowest group, the underemployment rate was 20.6 percent, compared with just 1.6 percent in the highest group. So the total in the lowest class is 51.4 percent (3.7 million people) compared to 4.8 percent in the wealthy class (530,000 people). Also consider that last November nearly 20 percent of all men between 25 and 54 did not have jobs, the highest figure since the labor bureau began counting in 1948.

Now you know why the constantly noted official jobless rate for the nation of 10 percent and 17 percent when underemployment is counted are a joke, or is it a purposeful deception, like a truth bubble?

How can jobs be created for the lower economic classes? You hear very, very few new ideas from politicians. It comes down to federal spending that better targets job creation to the lower income groups, and waiting for more general consumer spending, especially by the more affluent, to create more low level jobs, mostly in service areas. But we need specifics and better legislation.

Consider this green energy fiasco. A huge amount of federal stimulus money provided for building wind farms. It is creating jobs in Chine to build wind turbines, not in America. In fact, 80 percent of such federal funding is going overseas. All because Congress and the White House did not ensure a made-in-America requirement. Was a backroom deal made to keep China happy so that they would keep loaning us money?

When the poorest people suffer so disproportionately as compared to the wealthiest, perhaps only violent revolution will fix America's dysfunctional, broken and delusional democracy. Will President Obama cite the above frightening data in any public forum to make the case for stronger federal efforts? What do you think?

The high numbers for the lower income people mean that no amount of government action, in even five years or more, will solve jobless problem, because no amount of economic growth can possibly create enough new jobs. The US would have to produce 10 million new jobs just to get back to the unemployment levels of 2007 - impossible for many years. So, politicians will keep making things look better by citing the national average.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

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