Diplomatic triumph as Obama authorises Iranian nuclear strike against Israel

News just in from The Guardian.  Obama is thrilled with his diplomatic triumph whereby Iran is happy to launch a nuclear strike against Israel and Netanyahu is happy because he really does have something to be unhappy about.  It looks like win-win for Obama.

More detail from Hurry up Ha'aretz's diplomatic correspondent, Sarah Hannahs Braun in Tel Aviv.  "I am happier than I have ever been in all my years as Israel's Prime Minister" said Binyamin Netanyahu (or "Bibi").  "I really have something to be unhappy about and so I cannot contain my joy."

"Well, if you're happy I'm happy" Hannahs Braun told Bibi "though I am sure I would be equally happy no matter what you were happy about even if it was a completely opposite thing."

Obama thank you for supporting our apartheid state

A wonderful tweet from @Dalal:

#Obama thank you for supporting our Apartheid state: #Israel#ObamaInIsraelyoutu.be/nfIcql9DJPI
— Dalal (@DalalAlrmuny) March 23, 2013

See? Great stuff.

Obama visits

Barack Obama, Chief Marketing Officer of US Arms Inc., the greatest arms and war conglomerate history has ever known, visited the offices of the company's important subsidiary, Israel. The US spends over 50% of its discretionary public budget, about 5% of its GDP, on war and armed repression. With 41% of global "defense" expenditures (actually, money spent primarily on repression), and five time more than its nearest competitor, the US dominates the market of death. In global arms transfers to developing countries the US ranked first with $56.3 billions in 2011, over thirteen times more than its nearest competitor, Russia. All actual military conflicts take place in "developing" countries, which therefore account for nearly 80% of all weapon transfer agreements, and the US holds nearly 80% of that lucrative market. The biggest client is in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia was the recipient of $33.4 billions in arms transfers in 2011, mostly for good coin. Historically, the Middle East accounts for about 50% of all weapon transfers to developing countries. In both relative and absolute terms it is the most important "defense" market. And we didn't even mention oil. Oil money (namely primarily the money consumers and businesses in the rest of the world pay for energy), over and above the profits of the oil industry itself, is the source of income that funds practically all arms that get bought in the Middle East, and concomitantly the use and threat of use of these weapons helps keep the price of oil high and the profits flowing.

The President of the US is the man in charge of coordinating maintaining the health of American economy, of which a key component is the safety of these profits. So he came to the Middle East, which is the pivot area of these profits, and talked about peace. What did you expect that he talks about? Do you expect the chief officers of Big Tobacco to talk about cancer when they make public addresses? Do the expect the CEO of Apple to extol the virtues of working employees to the point of suicide? Naturally, the President spoke about peace. Peace is lovely.

If one likens the US to a company, Israel is reporting to the marketing department. Some big business make money in Israel, but in the larger scheme of things it is peanuts. Israel is less a profit center than a freebie that drives up sales in other departments. Iran is a case in point. Few if any policy makers in their right minds want to invade Iran. Plus, the Iranian rulers have no substantial disagreements with the US and have repeatedly sent feelers with offers to join the US dominated world. Their conditions, essentially, staying in power and having some security guarantees, are not significantly different than what every pro-US junta in the world expects. But it is obvious from the consistent blocking of every possibility of dialogue that the US prefers Iran to remain in a belligerent relation. In the words of Michael Axworthy, 'the US and other western countries are not yet willing to take yes for an answer.' All those arms the Saudi state buys must have a reason. And reason number one is the Iranian threat. Iran, however, builds its influence in the region, in particular its ability to threaten the cohesion of pro-American regimes, by hyping up its enmity with Israel and  supporting Hizbulla. Peace in Palestine might be the start of a chain reaction that ends, God forbid, with Saudi Arabia no longer needing so many weapons, and, just as worse, not having the oil revenues to pay for them. But I hope you won't lose sleep over such a nightmare scenario. Let me just point out how good US foreign policy has been at keeping the pot of war simmering on low heat with the occasional boil-over and spill. Just trust Obama. He obviously knows how to handle this.

It feels different to those in the simmering pot.

Obama came to Israel to manage the conflict, that is, to keep it simmering, while preventing it from boiling over. Netanyahu represents a tendency in Israeli society that is insensitive to the American preference for slow cooking. His key constituencies make both money and symbolic capital directly from the process of colonization. That has led to some stormy relations. But the US arms industry needs Netanyahu, because it is ultimately the heat that his policies generate that keeps the pot simmering. The problem is having the right "thermostat," control mechanisms to hold Netanyahu and the settlers behind him in check. That is where Israel's famous "peace camp" comes in. Israel's "peace camp" has no deep interest in peace. It represents the segment of Israeli society, affluent, Ashkenazi, that isn't invested directly in the on-going colonization and is most aligned with and attuned to American interests. Its own fortunes depends on the US, and even more so, on access to the Western world. A sour face by a US President can send Israel's "peace camp" into weeks of morbid self-doubt.

The White House was undoubtedly pleased that Netanyahu had been weakened by the last elections. It could have been better, but it could also have been worse. Obama did not come to Israel to advance peace, but to give a boost, a 'hang in there,' to the Israeli "peace camp." Every word he said, especially the tepid, allegedly "pro-Palestinian," parts of his speech, was, no doubts intentionally,  music to the ears of Israel's "peace camp," to assure them of their importance and to maintain and bolster their ability to serve as as brakes when the US needs to lower the heat. The message was not directed at Palestinians, except those few Palestinians who are the junior business partners in the peace industry, those who would be tasked with repressing any third intifadah, and are therefore as keen as their Israeli partners on acting as a thermostat for the US weapons industry.

There was however a message also for Palestinians and their supporters in the US and the world. Richard Silverstein called it "Drop dead," evoking New-York City Ford era debt crisis. This is inaccurate. To those that expected him to help them, namely, the PA and such, his message was the very opposite, to keep going on the same path that leads nowhere. The US cannot afford them quitting. But to those who have given up on the US or who understand what the US is really about, the message was different. It was not "drop dead," since, unlike the former, they had no expectations of help. It was more like 'don't even think about it.' Obama practically read aloud from Israel's declaration of independence, mentioning every item on the checklist of Zionist talking points, from the Biblical land rights of Jews, through the holocaust, and to the "villa in the jungle", that democratic oasis of techno-prowess in the blooming desert that Israel fancies itself. That Obama felt it necessary to spell out at length so much that is supposed to be taken for granted was a backhanded compliment to a decade of Palestinian activism that has succeeded in calling these talking points increasingly in question. Obama's 100% Zionism performance was a step into the breach, expressing a complete rejection of that radical critique of Israeli settler-colonialism. It was calibrated to demoralize.

In that, Obama continues the role he played from his very election, both domestically and internationally, as the hegemonic fixer following Bush's decade of naked power, coming to offer a soothing yet firm no to any thought of escaping the American juggernaut  To those who had their eyes opened by Bush's blunt indifference Obama offers a blue pill, extending an invitation to recreate the fantasy of a kinder US, with its "values" and its "principles" and its "vision," but with lowered expectations and no meaningful change. To those who refuse, there will be nothing but cold steel.

Rabeea Eid, the Palestinian student who bravely heckled Obama and confronted him with the truth of his policy, challenged that demoralizing performance:

"Did you really come here for peace or to give Israel more weapons to kill and destroy the Palestinian people? Did you happen to see the apartheid wall on your way here? There are Palestinians sitting in this hall. This state should be for all of its citizens, not a Jewish state only. Who killed Rachel Corrie? Rachel Corrie was killed by your money and weapons!” (EI)

As Eid said later, "the most important part is for this visit not to go on in a normal manner." This empire is not in the mood for compromise. Why would it, when repression not only defends profits but is profitable in itself?

For those fawning over Obama's empathy and vision while complaining of "the lack of substance," seriously, expecting the Chief Marketing Officer of US Arms Inc. to bring peace to the Middle East is like expecting Silvio Berlusconi to usher in a new age of gender equality. Get real!

__________
Ah, and then there is that circus elephant in the room, the famous Jewish lobby, which plays an important role, just like Obama, the Saudi Royals, Iran.  Everybody plays a role. Money doesn't flow naturally. It takes work. And that work isn't done by magical elves. it is done through various institutions that support and reflect each other and by people who actually intervene through them at various points to avert whatever risks bringing the system to a halt. It just doesn't play the kind of role that those invested in the fantasy of a pure, innocent America, subverted by foreigners, imagine it plays.

Bibi loses 69% of the US Jewish vote

 That's my interpretation of a Jewish Telegraphic Agency post reporting that 69% of American Jews voted for Obama.  But Bradley Burston in Ha'aretz thinks it's not all doom and gloom for Netanyahu:

Netanyahu made little secret of his preference for a Romney victory during the hard-fought U.S. race. Pundits have suggested that an Obama victory could spell retribution for Netanyahu, with a second-term White House free to exact payback on the prime minister as he seeks re-election.

But Netanyahu may believe that he has found a way to use the American election – and Obama - to his advantage.

Running hard for re-election, Netanyahu may have a world to gain, and nothing to lose, by continuing to thumb his nose at the president, and get away with it.

Until late last month, Netanyahu and his Likud party were seen as virtually invincible in his campaign for re-election in the January 22 election. But since stunning his own party faithful by tying the Likud's fate to that of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's secularist Yisrael Beiteinu party in a surprise merger, Netanyahu has lost precious ground in opinion polls, ground he cannot afford to lose.

If the prime minister is to reverse the trend, he will need to appeal to the sectors of his base that appear to be slipping away, in particular potential Likud voters, who describe themselves as religious or traditional in orientation. Polls announced on Israeli television stations on Tuesday pointed the way to a possible Netanyahu strategy based on exploiting Israeli displeasure with, or distaste for, Obama.

Now I don't suppose it makes much difference in terms of governance who wins the Israeli or American elections. I do find it interesting that a clear majority of Jews in the USA weren't swayed by anti-Obama campaigning which revolved around where the two candidates stood on Israel.

Anything but Obama (Awesome does as awesome is)

Rebbeca Solnit is awesome. So awesome that her mere Being revolutionized our existence. Indeed, since her awesomeness burst into my life, the sun shone in a more intense yellow, the mid-range of birdsong got a distinctive oomph, and the hot water in my shower celsiused up two degrees. Last month she finally got to explain her awesomeness in a manifesto of sorts. After spending a hefty amount of time rebuking those nattering nabobs of negativity, a.k.a. the left, for being the killjoys that we are, you know, the ones that find the fly in every ointment, point out the glass is half full, bark at the passing caravan, mourn the twilight at the dawn of a new day, analyze old reality while you are busy creating new realities, etc. etc. please add your favorite Reaganite and south stock in trade cliché, she finally got to explain her activist credo.

Nine years ago I began writing about hope, and I eventually began to refer to my project as “snatching the teddy bear of despair from the loving arms of the left."... To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart. There are really only two questions for activists: What do you want to achieve? And who do you want to be? And those two questions are deeply entwined. Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style. (http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175598/tomgram%3A_rebecca_solnit%2C_we_could_be_heroes)

Quite instructively, there is nothing there about that old question. "What needs to be done?" Bolshevism is out. Awesome is in. You just are, and the power of positive thinking, or hope, which consists of imagining the world as you want it--like those corporate hopefuls who go to sleep listening to tapes that repeatedly say "I'm smart and charming, and I inspire confidence,"--will simply transform the world in your image. How long before Walmart hires this up and coming Jedi Knight as a motivational speaker for its workforce?

Mind you, this awesomest manifesto chides the left for not thinking about strategy. Because you see, Awesome does have a strategy. Vote Obama! That's the bottom line. So much for putting lipstick on a junk bond.

But Awesome supports Obama. Not, to be sure, because he too is, let's just face it, so awesome. Although maybe that's a factor. On the contrary, as she says, "every four years we are asked if we want to have our foot trod upon or sawed off at the ankle without anesthetic." Thus, in the end, all this positive thinking produces the ability to choose one's poison. Nothing more. We cannot possibly aim at something better, because that would be a failure to recognize the little joys that life, no matter how terrible things are, still offers, like the joy of watching Romney concede live. And what a joy that would be? Because, you see,

We are facing a radical right that has abandoned all interest in truth and fact. We face not only their specific policies, but a kind of cultural decay that comes from not valuing truth, not trying to understand the complexities and nuances of our situation, and not making empathy a force with which to act.

What a crock! So the whole thing we thought that the problem was power we were totally wrong. The real problem is that people just aren't awesome enough!

Romney is the big danger we face? Romney is a villain from Central Casting. Lex Luthor would have been a more viable candidate. When the plutocracy really wanted to win the elections on a Republican ticket, they chose candidates like George Bush and Ronald Reagan, who were fake alright, but who were also good actors. They knew how to look like they cared. Romney doesn't even have Bush's capacity to pretend he's human. His job description was to lose while scaring the *  out of people. If he has a real shot for getting elected, it is because the US presidential election is becoming like a bad version of "the Producers." But Solnit can't see behind appearances. That would be, again, to fall for that old leftist past time of "critique," which only leads to bad drinking habits, personality disorders, and just a general inability to enjoy life.

Who really is the enemy of truth and fact, a plutocrat who represents plutocrats or a fake progressive who uses radical slogans in the service of destroying everything that threatens Wall-Street profitability? If truth is what matters, isn't Obama, who campaigns on false promises and a completely bogus record, the real enemy of "truth and fact"? If cultural decay there is, is not the Republican bible thumping the negative of progressives who champion the power of vapid positive thinking while acting as Wall-Street's vote aggregators? The right has nothing to offer. And never has. Who wants to live miserably? Who wants to be poor? Who wants to be ignorant? Who wants to live in constant fear? The only real promise of the Right, its real force, the source of its ability to mobilize, has always been that it was the lesser evil. That's not a very new argument. St. Augustine makes in his 'City of God'. We're just not good enough to enjoy freedom and so we need to be oppressed to save us from ourselves. And who makes that argument better than a Left that gives up all claim to speak the truth, that cheers for someone who spent four years making hell more hellish for billions of people, in the name of opposing "cultural decay"? Is there something more toxic, more corrosive of a culture, of truth, than passing in silence the mass murder of strangers because it is convenient? Is there something more destructive for a culture of truth than shilling for a servant of the 0.0002% in the name of helping the most disadvantaged, as Solnit does?

this page's 300 likely readers reading this cannot harm Obama's chances, but I sure wish it would. Romney isn't the enemy. Romney is a cartoon that the enemy produces to scare us. Whoever wins the White House, plutocracy will run the show for the next four years. The vote counts only in that by refusing to vote between two plutocrats, voters can signal to each other that they reject the whole nine yards of it. That's not much. But that's the most one can get from Presidential elections right now.

Glen Greenwald spent the last four years chronicling the reconstruction of the US as an open air Super-max. But as a libertarian liberal, Greenwald does not understand that this is not the result of bad politicians. As capital prepares for crisis,and as Greece is the model of how every Western governing elite is going to handle a deep crisis of profitability, give and take some details, the maximum security state is a necessity of capitalism. Civil liberties (for white folks--others never really had them) are no longer compatible with capital accumulation and it is not a difficult guess to figure out which gets thrown overboard. The fundamental issue is not civil liberty but accumulation, who gets richer and how. Here is an insightful set of articles about Obama's role in accumulation, and why Obama is not even the lesser evil. In fact, he is probably the bigger evil.So far, he has been a worse President than George Bush. Please share with people who consider voting for the candidate from Goldman Sachs.
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/03/why_is_the_left_defending_obama/
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/

Obama: the Sequel

Presidential debate or an itinerary from Birthright Israel? Let Florida decide

I'm not the slightest bit interested in these presidential debates but Deborah Maccoby just sent this link to a Forward blog to the Just Peace UK list and the line I lifted for my headline made me laugh:

This late in the campaign, everything is about swing states – and the foreign policy debate was largely about Florida, where moderate Jews could well decide who gets the state’s 29 electoral votes.

On those grounds, on the basis of issues important to Florida Jews, President Obama won this debate, but in a bizarre, looking-glass sort of way in which the candidates seemingly exchanged personalities. Mitt Romney sounded like Obama: reasonable, measured, and knowledgeable about foreign policy. Barack Obama sounded like Romney: making strong rhetorical points with little attention to detail.

On Israel, for example, it was Obama who struck first, citing his support of the Iron Dome defense system, and using the phrase “stand with Israel” numerous times. Romney, meanwhile, sounded like a Democrat: arguing for peace talks with the Palestinians, and a measured approach to Iran.

So too on the emotional issues likely to resonate with the bubbes and zaydes of Palm Beach County. Could anyone have predicted that President Obama would invoke the holocaust in his discussion of the State of Israel? And yet that’s what he did, noting that on his trip to Israel, he visited Yad Vashem (the holocaust memorial, he explained to the non-Jewish voters who happened to be watching the debate too), whereas Romney went to fundraisers.

But that’s not all – this debate was often a lesson in Israeli geography. Obama visited Sderot. Romney visited Hertzliya. What’s next: Obama prefers Sima’s meorav Yerushalmi, but Romney likes Sami’s. At times it was hard to tell whether this was a presidential debate or an itinerary from Birthright Israel.

 Here we go.

Need help viewing?  Try here.

Bibi beggars belief

This has always been the case of course but I didn't get round to doing a post, when it was news, about Sarkozy and Obama pouring their hearts out to each other about what an indignity it is having to deal with Netanyahu, in Obama's case, every day.  An article in today's Ha'aretz has given me the excuse to dust off the old news and to run an alliterative headline which I always enjoy:

If the law enabled putting leaders on trial for serial defrauding of the public and obtaining support through deception, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be keeping company with Moshe Katsav in prison. The former president has been convicted of raping women who were his subordinates and misuse of his authority. Netanyahu is having his nefarious way with Israeli democracy and using his status in order to lead Israeli society astray, all the way to diplomatic and economic isolation. From there it is but a short way to regional war and apartheid - the only question is which will come first. Yet nevertheless, a whole country is continuing to give in willingly to a liar who does not cease to harass and endanger it.

Silly article really but that's my excuse for revisiting the Sarkozy, Obama, Netanyahu business out of the way.

There's another article in today's Ha'aretz describing Obama's side of the conversation with Sarkozy as a "gaffe" which I suppose leaving the microphone on was.  Apparently Obama has acknowledged the "gaffe" but

“With respect to the ‘hot mic’ in France, I'm not going to comment on conversations that I have with individual leaders,” Obama said in Hawaii.

But the thing about the affair which troubled me most was this:

Several journalists, including a few from large media organizations, heard the initial exchange between Obama and Sarkozy but did not initially report it, agreeing among themselves that to do so would be a violation of journalistic ethics.

Now how on earth does it violate journalistic ethics to report that two presidents who support Netanyahu in everything he does don't actually believe a word he says? Surely it is more of a violation of their calling that journalists agree among themselves to cover up such a newsworthy report.

No depth too deep for Obama

I'm not talking about Obama's ludicrous speech to the UN on Abbas trying to find somewhere to sit in Manhattan.  It's this article from yesterday's Daily Beast (Newsweek) about how it was Obama, not Bush, who sold bunker buster or deep penetration bombs to Israel.

While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters, Newsweek has learned.

In an exclusive story to be published Monday on growing military cooperation between the two allies, U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just several months after Obama took office.

The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying political relations between the two countries in public.

The Lawyers, guns and money blog asks some interesting questions about this as to whether the shipments were military or political.

The military logic is that the Obama administration believes that Israel should be better equipped to strike hardened Iranian nuclear facilities. That’s it; these are the only targets Israel might consider attacking in the near to medium term that would require such ordnance. One way to read this is that the administration thinks that an Israeli strike on Iran would be a good idea. This may be possible, but the administration doesn’t appear to have been doing much else in order to push Israel into an attack.

So that leaves political.  Maybe Obama was looking for a policy result from Israel but,

Bibi has consistently given Obama the finger on policy, and has made his support ofObama’s GOP opponents about as clear as possible. Obama has no leverage; no GOP President will reduce the level of military aid sent to Israel, and Bibi finds a Republican administration preferable for a variety of reasons.

So

This leaves the impact on Iran, and on Israel’s domestic supporters. To borrow another phrase, the whole point of politicized arms shipments to Israel is lost if you keep it a secret. Even if we accept the premise that Israel’s US constituency could in some sense be satisfied by bunker buster shipments, it’s hard to see how secretshipments help solve the problem. Perhaps the logic was that since someone had to know, elite level signalling would serve to insulate Obama from attacks. This again means that, effectively, Obama was dependent on Bibi’s goodwill for the plan to work. Good luck with that. The Iran problem is essentially the same; Iran can only be intimidated by things it knows about. It’s possible that some US negotiator somewhere showed some Iranian diplomat a packing slip for the bombs, but that strategy works whether or not the US actually ships the weapons.

And so we’re left with the question that has too often characterized the Obama administration: For this bad policy executed incompetently, what’s the balance between bad and incompetent? On the upside, at least Eli Lake has been uncovered as the administration shill he’s always been.

Simple ineptitude? Can that really explain the policies of the most powerful state on the planet?

Obama and the Arab Spring

What about Yemen?

Hmm, Yemen. There have been anti-government protests there but Yemen is sufficiently under-reported for Obama to be more open in his support for the dictatorship.

See this "Day of Rage" vid:

Now consider Obama's reaction. From The Independent:

The US embassy in Yemen called on opposition groups today to refrain from "provocative action" and talk to the government following large street protests in the impoverished Arab country.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis took part in peaceful protests for and against the government on Thursday during an opposition-led "Day of Rage", a day after President Ali Abdullah Saleh offered to step down in 2013.

"We strongly urge the opposition parties to avoid provocative actions and respond constructively to President Saleh's initiative to resolve differences through dialogue and negotiation," the US embassy said on its website.

So where are we now? Beginning 2011. Pres offers to stand down in 2013. So only two years (maybe three) to refrain from provocative actions.  That's ok then.

Obama, Mubarak and the Brothers

I'm just trying to piece reports together here.  I said before that I think Obama will try to co-opt the Brotherhood.  Then I heard/saw on Channel 4 news that Obama is backing Mubarak though I couldn't find that report in so many words on the C4 news website.  And now Voice of America is saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is in talks with Mubarak's Vice-President:

Egypt's largest opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, says it will begin talks with with Egypt's Vice President Omar Suleiman on the public's right to protest safely and the possible exit of President Hosni Mubarak, who has held office for 30 years.

Suleiman has met with other opposition supporters, but this would be the first time the Muslim Brotherhood has taken part.

Could be something, could be nothing but I think it is something.

Does the name 'Abdelaziz' rattle you?

It did rattle a lot of Obama supporters who came to listen to and to applaud Obama's corporatist policies in a town hall in Tampa. Who would have believed that this name would be so unpopular in Florida? Listen for yourself. Laila Abdelaziz, a Palestinian student at Tampa University, is strongly booed by the audience after merely stating her name and affiliation: audio track. Obama then has to calm the audience down. Mind you, this blatant racism comes from the most "progressive" sector of the U.S. electorate, Obama's politically involved base, people who self-selected by attending this town hall meeting.

Things would have been so much better if she just said her name was Cohen.

Abdelaziz, who had actually volunteered for Obama's campaign, went on and asked a pointed question:

"My question is, um- Last night you spoke in your State of the Union address you spoke of America's support for human rights...Then, why have we not condemned Israel and Egypt's human rights violations against the occupied Palestinian people? And yet we continue supporting them financially with billions of dollars from our tax dollars?" (WMMF)

Good question. You can listen to Obama's reply on the track above, (or the video below, which unfortunately does not include the initial boos). It is not a pearl of wisdom, and as Abdulaziz later told the radio station, he effectively did not answer her.

But I would like to highlight the beginning of Obama flat footed, inarticulate, mendacious (a vibrant democracy? Not even a sick democracy like the U.S. is) and unintelligent answer:

"The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries...

Wow! We got used to Obama channeling Bush's policies, but here he is also channeling Bush's torture of the English language. What the hell does this sentence mean?

If I were inclined to deep parsing, I would have said that the President meant exactly what he said, namely, that the trouble with the region is itself. In other words, the region sucks, and has sucked for "centuries". The people there are just, well, the way they are. Clearly, if that's the case, one might solve the problem by taking the Middle East out of "the region", i.e., making the region (i.e., the Middle East) less Middle Eastern (for example, by ethnically cleansing it and putting there a lot of Jews from Brooklyn instead), or at least by imposing on it the oh-so enlightened dominion of Israel and the U.S. Beneath the incoherence there is a clear affirmation of crude Orientalism. Small wonder Obama doesn't mention occupation. From this orientalist perspective, occupation, far from being the problem, is in fact the solution.

Of course, one can be charitable towards Obama and read it as merely total incoherence that comes from having nothing to say after he had abdicated all pretense to pressure Israel into making the mildest of conciliatory gestures.

Bravo Laila Abdelaziz!

(UPDATED)

A couple of readers tell me that I am wrong and the booing at the beginning was because of sports rivalry. Given that, the title and first paragraph are in doubt. The audio is there, so make your own judgment. It's one thing I'd love to be wrong about.

Abunimah on Bush lite

Here's a perceptive Comment is free piece by Ali Abunimah:

Once you strip away the mujamalat – the courtesies exchanged between guest and host – the substance of President Obama's speech in Cairo indicates there is likely to be little real change in US policy. It is not necessary to divine Obama's intentions – he may be utterly sincere and I believe he is. It is his analysis and prescriptions that in most regards maintain flawed American policies intact.

Though he pledged to "speak the truth as best I can", there was much the president left out. He spoke of tension between "America and Islam" – the former a concrete specific place, the latter a vague construct subsuming peoples, practices, histories and countries more varied than similar.

I quickly skimmed the first page of comments and there was an openly anti-Jewish one quite early on:

Obama's Chief of Staff is named Rahm Israel Emmanuel.

Did you really think Obama was going to say anything different from George Bush?

Skimming down further I see an offering from a commenter calling himself Schachtman, who I have good reason to believe is actually Dr David Hirsh of Engage:

Ali Abunimah would rather dream forever of a one state solution than have an actual 2 state solution.

Oh dear, assuming that Shachtman is indeed Hirsh, this self-styled "anti-racist campaign[er] against antisemitism" has failed to notice an antisemitic comment and failed to realise that the so-called two states solution, at best, simply recasts a a racist situation. In fact, given what we now know of Gaza, if two states really does become passed off as a solution, life could get even worse for the Palestinians who would then be captives of their own, albeit imposed, leadership.

I did post a comment of my own, using the name "Ilan". I'm only posting it here because the editor of comment is free seems to take order from either David T or the Zionist Federation. In other words, it might get disappeared:

This is very strange. There is an openly antisemitic comment in this thread, as follows:

Obama's Chief of Staff is named Rahm Israel Emmanuel.

Did you really think Obama was going to say anything different from George Bush?

And yet none of the usual suspects seem to have noticed it. You see, having a Jewish name does not mean that a person automatically supports Israel. In the case of Rahm Emanuel, we know that he supports the racist war criminals of the State of Israel because he volunteered for the its army back in 1990. We also know that his father is a hardcore anti-Arab racist because his racism is a matter of public record but that has nothing to do with his Jewish name either. It does speak volumes for his upbringing though.

But I see one of the usual suspects has come here to denounce Ali Abunimah for wanting Israel/Palestine to be a state for all of its people rather than have most of the country run for the world's Jews and not for the people who actually come from there.

I think this is proof positive, that zionists tend to see antisemitism where it isn't and yet they don't see it where it is.

The same usual suspect seems not to have noticed that most of the article deals with Obama's racist/sectarian take on what Obama calls "Islam". How about if Obama was to speak of America on the one hand and Jewry or Christendom on the other? They would be the ludicrous equivalents of what he actually said. Both would be seen to be excluding Jews and Christians from America. There would be howls of hysterical protests from the usual suspects if he said that of Jews.

Still, this youtube video of Max Blumenthal interviewing young American Jews in Jerusalem suggests that Obama's dismissive take on the world of Islam is still not enough appeasement of Israel for some zionists.

Comments are still open for the rest of today.

Tagging along with all the young Jews

It was the tags on this youtube clip that struck me before I even saw the disgusting video. See them here:

israel palestine zionism racism jews jewish muslim arabs barack obama douchebags frat boys jerusalem

And here's the vid:

How does Max Blumenthal take it with that grin of his? If he answered me I'd be thrilled. I do enjoy his work.

Hey Bibi, wassup?

I got that "wassup?" from Obama at the Correspondents' Association dinner thingy. I don't know where Obama got it from. Anyway, here's Mustapha Barghouti on the Institute for Middle East Understanding website on the issues between Obama and Netanyahu. It's a plea to hurry before the two state solution becomes impossible. I've found it impossible for some time now but let's give the lad a chance:

I cannot recall a more important meeting between an American president and an Israeli prime minister than today's meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Will the Obama administration have the courage to challenge Netanyahu, or will all the talk of change dissolve in the face of a concerted one-two punch from Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee?

I am increasingly convinced that if Obama fails to speak out now, it will doom the two-state solution forever. Further fiddling in Washington - after eight years of it - will consign Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state.

It's now or almost certainly never.

My guess is, it won't be now. My further guess is that there will never be two entities that accurately could be described as states between the River Jordan and the Med.

Durban and the White-Zionist alliance

Like Israel their idol, Zionist organizations have a tendency to win wars, and to become weaker and more deranged with every victory. The Durban Review conference was a Zionist victory of that kind.

The war was long in the planning. Since being cited from racism by the NGO form in Durban 2001, Zionist organizations began meticulously preparing their assault. The target was the bundle of U.N. agencies, NGO's and social movements that used the historic delegitimization of racism in the West to empower victims of racism. From obvious reasons, most if not all of those whose work is devoted to combating racism support Palestinian rights. That is a problem for Zionism. In Durban, the official document, after much wrangling, mentioned Palestinian rights in four innocuous paragraphs that reiterate commitment to the partition of Palestine and that famous "peace process". The document even affirmed Israel's right to security. There was no mention of racism despite this being the subject of the conference. Israel however was not amused by Palestinian suffering even being mentioned in an official document about racism.

A bigger problem at Durban was the adjacent NGO forum, a conference attended by over 2,000 NGOs, whose final declaration contained much stronger (and generally more accurate) language about Israel. No doubt, the NGO forum had some internal problems, but that wasn't Israel's concern. Nor was it antisemitism. No doubt some antisemitic material was distributed at Durban, certainly in the demonstrations around town; perhaps, but only perhaps, in some corners of the NGO forum. But how much? Here is what Cecilia Surasky from Muzzlewatch has to say after being in Geneva:

Coming here myself has made me distrust virtually all reporting of Durban I. Already, I see terms in the media like “hate-fest” and ” the “racist anti-racism conference.” ...I don’t doubt there was anti-Semitic literature and language at Durban I. But was it 90% of the conference, or .09%? I have no way to know. I do know, however, that yesterday’s Sharansky, Voight, Dershowitz session, supposedly on anti-Semitism, was a tour de force of insulting and demeaning anti-Muslim/Arab stereotyping and callousness, infused with Islamophobia, and that not one media account will ever call it what it is. (MuzzelWatch)

The problem for Israel was that its racism was undeniable, and that the overwhelming majority of the 2,000 NGOs gathered in Durban were ready to say so despite strong pressure. What was about to be lost in Durban was the power to shape the discourse, in simple words, hegemony. The Durban NGO forum, while not democratic enough, was too democratic, too open to Southern perspectives, too representative of real world public opinion and too disrespectful of the powerful interests that keep racism alive, among other places in Palestine. The tools of international law, the language of human rights and the delegitimization of racism could become effective.

This was unwelcome not only to Israel, but to a lot in the North, whose current affluence is to a very large extent the fruit of colonial exploitation and racism. The official Durban Conference was discussing slavery and was raising the specter of reparations, not only to African-Americans but also to Africans. A conversation about racism was also becoming a conversation about existing wealth disparities between South and North. Talking about race could be the antidote to the neo-liberal paradigm that blames poverty on the poor. That was scary to a lot of vested interests, especially as the spirit of the Social Forum was learning to speak the language of the international legal system.

Since Herzl's famous "rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism," Zionist organizations know who their natural allies are. Northern powers wanted the Durban process brought down a notch, and they were happy to oblige. A slew of organizations was created or retrofitted for the task, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, U.N. Watch, NGO Monitor, Human Rights First, the AJC, The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and jurists, and others. Their goals: to defund NGOs that support Palestinian rights, to discredit and disrupt those U.N. processes that threaten Israel's right to be racist, and to undermine demands for global justice and accountability that inevitably involve accountability from and about Israel. NGO Monitor spells this out in some detail.

Let's first recognize the Zionist "achievements".

Honest anti-racist NGOs have lost a lot of funding, some of it redirected to Zionist astroturf. The U.N. and the Ford Foundation stepped out of organizing an official NGO Forum in Geneva. An unofficial effort to have an NGO Forum produced a small gathering of ca. 150 NGOs. The organizers did everything they could to exclude the Palestinian issue. They still got no money. The final declaration, despite the best efforts of the Zionists and the organizers, kept the right tone. But it was hardly noticed by the international press bamboozled with an extravaganza of Shoa business starring Elie Wiesel, Bernard Henri-Levy, Alan Dershowitz and others.

The official conference was also disrupted. Nine countries, led by all the genocidal settler colonial states (the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand) joined Israel in boycotting the conference over fears of imaginary antisemitism. Nevertheless, and at least to keep European countries from leaving as well, the official declaration dropped all mention of Palestine beyond reaffirming the anodyne original declaration (as if there was nothing to review in Palestine eight years later). Supposedly, the document avoided mentioning specific victims. In fact, Roma people are mentioned by name, as they should be, and Jews are also mentioned effectively by reference to the Holocaust and antisemitism. People of African descent are mentioned by name, as they should be, and Muslim are mentioned by one unsatisfactory reference to Islamophobia. But neither the new document nor the original it re-affirmed mentions Palestinians as victims of racism, which, given the horrible and deteriorating conditions in Palestine, is frankly absurd. Worse still, under pressure, the document was adopted early, without discussion and without allowing any input from the thousands of NGO that actually work daily with issues of racism.

With ridiculous excuses, the U.N. secretariat banned Palestine related side events at the U.N. during the week on the conference. Only they didn't ban all of them. Only those that wanted to present a Palestinian anti-racist perspective were banned. The U.N. did allow a real anti-Islam and anti-Arab hate festival organized by Zionist organizations. You can get a taste of it (if you dare) with this 10 minutes of Dershowitz explaining why Palestinians are not victims but "heirs to Hitler." It is perhaps ironic, but the word that best describes this discrimination by U.N. officials, discrimination against victims of racism who must listen to racist speech against them inside the U.N. and don't event have the right to respond, is 'racism.'

The press was successfully fed the Zionist talking points. Obama himself described the original Durban declaration as unacceptable. The New York Times editors, abysmally and shamefully ignorant, wrote that "Israel was the only country singled out in the final conference communiqué." (NYT, April 20, 2009 ) Indeed, in that final declaration, Israel was the only country mentioned by name as having the right to security. Newspapers feasted on Ahamadinejad's speech and followed the Zionist talking points, calling the Durban Review conference a "hate-fest" and refusing to publish elemental corrections to Zionist disinformation. Indeed it was a hate-fest, a hate-fest against Palestinians and Muslims in general.

I will leave the question of Ahmadinejad's speech to later and focus here on what looks to me as the other outcomes of the conference.

First, the conference was not destroyed. Thanks to Zionist sabotage, the important and concrete struggles against racism all over the world that this conference was supposed to help move forward have been overshadowed and ignored. Nobody paid attention to them and not much was achieved beyond a watered down reference to religious persecution. The text of the declaration was also watered down significantly. That outcome, supported by the Western press and Western governments, is shameful. But on the other hand nothing was rolled back. Most importantly, the Durban declaration has been reaffirmed, and the various U.N. mechanisms will continue to work with it and advance its specific recommendations.

Second, Zionist organizations exposed themselves as never before as the enemies, not only of Palestinians but of the whole South and of victims of racism everywhere. Their sabotage of the conference, their contempt for the work that it embodies, for the principles it represents and the goals it seeks to achieve left a bitter taste in the mouth of every organization and every human right worker and activist who was there for honest reasons. Navil Pillay, the High Commissioner for Human Rights who presided over the conference, spoke of "a widespread, and highly organized campaign of disinformation...that was so determined to kill the conference." Zionist activists packed meetings, disturbed proceeding, manipulated unsuspecting African groups and exploited Darfur and Rwanda with the goal (in which they ultimately failed) of creating discord and preventing resolutions from being reached. Their dishonesty and unscrupulousness, and their willingness to destroy the U.N. and the whole edifice of human rights laws, is going to be remembered. One would wish that this memory is going to be proactive. But some of it won't be. As Malaak Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, physically assaulted by Zionist goons, said, "the Zionists here are making people hate Jews...I was unfamiliar with the tactics of Zionists. But I got a crash course on it here.” (JTA, April 28)

(Needless to say, Zionism wins by creating antisemitism, so there is nothing really strange here.)

The most noted episode of the Zionist attempt to hijack issues was the U.N side event organized by U.N. watch with a panel of two survivors of genocide from Darfur and Rwanda and a Gay Muslim Indian filmmaker, Parvez Sharma. Sharma quickly understood that he was in fact being used in a racist Islamphobic event as a token gay victim of Islam. And he blew a top. Two Israeli delegates later spat on him. His account of what happened is worth reading in full. I'll cite only a few sentence that lead to the next point.

As the much reviled, almost made-to-be Hitlerian Mr. A. was a few minutes into his speech, the all-Caucasian EU delegations (23 members, we are told) walked out ceremoniously only a few moments after the "humble" (his own term) former mayor of Tehran was pelted with red clown noses, also by Caucasian protestors. But as they made their displeasure known, delegates from African and Asian nations applauded. I wonder if a discussion of race, in terms of skin color, and indeed, the institutionalized racism in many European nations, is even noticed by the White gentleman's club that usually represents European nations at the UN...As Mr. Ahmadenijad walked into his press conference, again a motley crew of twenty-something, entirely White protesters hissed at him with quickly printed signs and hissed, stressing their sibilants: "Racccissst." A British Pakistani man and I were the only two who questioned them on whether they actually had any experience of racism, manifest most simply for both of us in just getting around with our brown skins or Muslim names in most Western nations.

The Durban Review and the Zionist organized but fully Northern supported Islamophobic hate-fest exposed the limits of a friendly and consensual global conversation on race. The white setter states boycotted the conference from the outset. The preplanned and staged white European walk-out further dramatized the global strength of racism and its presence at the very institutes of global governance that are supposed to eradicate it. The divisions in Geneva were visibly about color. The white Western press and punditocracy mostly couldn't notice that the majority brown people stayed in the room and applauded. When they say "the world" they mean Europe.

The Russian diplomat who brokered most of the Durban declaration accused the European states that walked out on Ahmadinejad of intentionally seeking to weaken the conference. In this, European states followed through with the wrecking job that was begun by the Obama administration. Prof. Vernellia R. Randall describes precisely what Obama was at as he negotiated, got his way, and then still boycotted the Conference:

Unfortunately, the Durban Review Conference is being hijacked by governments and members of civil society, including the Obama administration, who may not have the elimination of racism and racial discrimination, especially for African and People of African Descent, as their highest priority. In fact, in just the last week, in response to Obama administration ultimatum, the Durban review committee:

• withdrew language related to reparations;

• removed the proposed paragraph related to the transatlantic slave trade being a crime against humanity;

• removed proposed paragraphs designed to strengthen the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; and,

• overall weakened the efforts related to people of African Descent.

This is devastating. ( Black Agenda Report)

To be sure, there is an official global consensus against racism, and this should not be minimized. It is a hard won achievement. The North participates and supports international institutions and human rights instruments. This anti-racist commitment is not completely false. Today a majority of white people do abhor crude racism and do pay at least a lip service to the elimination of racial discrimination. That is precisely why the Obama administration, the Zionists and the Europeans, in short, the white front, sought to camouflage their support for racism as "anti-racism". But that commitment has limits and the Durban process exposed those limits. Reparations, redistribution, indeed any material setback to the perpetrators and beneficiaries or racism is beyond the pale, in Palestine, but also in general, and certainly in the U.S.

The Durban Review Conference was therefore a moment of truth. Masks fell, and the major faultline reappeared.

Demonstrate at the G20 in London on 1 April

Demonstrate at the G20 on 1 April

Assemble US Embassy, Grosvenor Square at 2pm
The leaders of the world’s big powers will meet at the G20 summit in London on 2 April.
It is Barack Obama’s first visit to Britain. It is our chance to demand a change from Bush’s war policies.

• Get the troops out of Iraq & Afghanistan
• End the siege of Gaza – free Palestine
• Create jobs not bombs
• Stop arming Israel
• Abolish all nukes

Details of transport to the protest

Click to download flyer

Called by Stop the War, CND, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, British Muslim Initiative

Our message will be ‘Yes We Can’. Yes we can end the siege of Gaza and free Palestine, get the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, make jobs not bombs, abolish nukes, and stop arming Israel.

This is a time of slump but the G20 are spending more and more on war. Despite the disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US and Britain are sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

They are spending more in Iraq. The total cost of the war will be around $6 trillion. The US spends $54 billion and Britain nearly £2 billion every year on nuclear weapons.

Most G20 leaders support Israel and refused to condemn the attack on Gaza or the siege. They sell arms to Israel. The US gives more aid to Israel than it gives to any other country. For all these reasons, join us to protest at the G20.

We will also be protesting on Thursday 2 April at the G20 summit, 11am at the Excel Centre.

Called by Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, The British Muslim Initiative and CND

• April 1 (afternoon): Protest March and rally in central London
• April 2: Protest march to G20 conference

Hillary Clinton shows Mahmoud Abbas the size of the future Palestinian state

he will get to be president for life of, if he follows orders and does not get any ideas ...

And this is what Mahmoud Abbas said in reply:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, we welcome Mrs. Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, in her first visit to the Palestinian territories, and we thank her for the positions, the supporting positions towards the Palestinian question, and for what His Excellency President Obama has expressed and demonstrated in terms of such positions, particularly what happened during the Sharm el-Sheikh conference, which – and the support to this vital conference for the reconstruction of the Palestinian territories in Gaza Strip.

And we also thank President Obama for this dynamism and for this vitality, and pushing the peace process forward, whether during the visit of Mrs. Clinton or during the visits of Mr. Mitchell to the region. And we have reiterated to Mrs. Clinton our insistence to move forward with the peace process according to the international legitimacy and the Roadmap plan and the two-state vision and our firm commitment towards that. ( U.S. State Department Press Release)

Obama's first murder

When I was at a much more impressionable age, I saw the famous TV series, Holocaust. I think it was it. But it could have been another similar series. I remember nothing, zilch, from these nine and a half hours of melodrama except one scene, in which the SS character shoots and kills his first defenseless victim. In the version I have in my head, which might be way off the real version, his mentor tells him as he hesitates to shoot, "the first one is always the hardest."

What brought back that fleeting image was William Blum's tribute to Obama's first week in office.

The Obamania bubble should already have begun to lose some air with the multiple US bombings of Pakistan within the first few days following the inauguration. The Pentagon briefed the White House of its plans, and the White House had no objection. So bombs away — Barack Obama's first war crime. The dozens of victims were, of course, all bad people, including all the women and children. As with all these bombings, we'll never know the names of all the victims — It's doubtful that even Pakistan knows — or what crimes they had committed to deserve the death penalty. Some poor Pakistani probably earned a nice fee for telling the authorities that so-and-so bad guy lived in that house over there; too bad for all the others who happened to live with the bad guy, assuming of course that the bad guy himself actually lived in that house over there.

The new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, declined to answer questions about the first airstrikes, saying "I'm not going to get into these matters."¹ Where have we heard that before? (B Blum)

Congratulation Barack, your first murder! You are making us all so proud of you. [wiping a tear from the corner of my left eye]

I want to believe that you hesitated for a brief half second before you said O.K. But don't you worry a thing, "the first one is always the hardest."