An Article by
Ben Tanosborn

Heads or tails, go ahead, you call it! Heads you say? It looks like it came out heads, so we’d better make it two out of three. Damn, heads again! Let’s make it three out of five. Kids’ game, you say? Think again. That’s how grown-up bully nations play this thing we call “the democracy game.”

We are seeing it happen all over in Latin America, Venezuela being most news-worthy because of its colorful leader, Hugo Chávez, and his quips directed at George W. Bush or US’ historical mismanagement of relations with its southern neighbors. But we are also seeing it everywhere else, and with a recent sordid outcome in the Near East.

When Hamas won the Palestinian elections a year and a half ago, Israel and the US just didn’t accept the results. Not because there were irregularities in how the election was conducted, but because the majority of Palestinians didn’t vote “the right way.” And, as a measure of punishment for Palestinians’ lack of docility, both Israel and the United States put an economic chokehold on all Palestinians; also quickly twisting the EU’ arm to suspend aid, thus keeping the pressure on until those politically-illiterate ingrates were ready to capitulate to despair, and bring on a mini civil war - since one cannot conduct a coup on oneself, as the recent altercation has been misnamed.

Abbas’ reaction to Hamas’ takeover in Gaza went by the book (the PA Basic Law, or de facto constitution) when he dismissed PM Ismail Haniyeh, but he acted illegally on all other counts, such as the declaration of an “emergency government,” or the naming of a new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, since this gentleman is not a Hamas party member. And the president cannot rule by decree unless all the elements of such decree are approved by the Legislative Council during its first meeting under emergency conditions, as stipulated in Article 43 of the Basic Law.

Bottom line: the Palestinian Authority has in fact ceased to be courtesy of a fratricidal act of desperation. The Fayyad government cannot be truly recognized as a legitimate government, one representative of the Palestinian people now geographically, and for now politically, divided in two. Although these West Bank power-holders are likely to receive full support from Washington and Tel Aviv, and long withheld tax funds by Israel are starting to be released, negotiations that may originate between this illegitimate group and Israel will not hold water; and the US position will continue to be seen in the same light as that which has shone during the past 40 years.

In every respect the Palestinian Authority, the path to statehood, has been terminated, declared null and void. The introduction to the Basic Law referring to the Palestinian people as its ultimate political authority by being the source of power has extinguished its flame, becoming just poetic history. The reality now faced is that this is 2007, 1428 for most Palestinians, and the gravel path established by the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords was to be “asphalted” within a period of five years, something which has not come to past. Arguably, thanks for the most part to Bush’s inertia on this critical issue, prompted to be sure by the parasitic relations between the United States and Israel.

The two-state solution for Old Palestine (Israel and New Palestine) has now taken a new turn as a two-encampment solution to a people who have been suffering non-stop for almost six decades. Two-encampments: Gaza and the West Bank. back to square one and suffering re-dux.

Shame, shame on us! We have gone from “divide et impera” to “divide et humilito.” Our political effort in the Near East has taken a new approach, from divide and conquer (or divide and rule) to divide and humiliate. There just isn’t another honest way to view it.

When you are the ultimate holder of power, you make up the rules with the game still in progress or even right at the end. But, how long can the US keep flipping coins and declaring that it has won every game? That remains to be answered, but for now, Bush and the State Department have made it pretty clear: the US will not stop anyone from making a choice; they can either play America’s game or, simply, abstain.

Meanwhile let’s just give a decent burial to the Palestinian Authority and the hope it once gave not just Palestinians but peace-loving people throughout the world. Rest in peace, the peace you never had.

© 2007 Ben Tanosborn
http://www.tanosborn.com/

Tags: fatah, gaza, hamas, israel, middle east, palestine
Categories: Commentary
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Copyright 2007 Ben Tanosborn
www.tanosborn.com

Thomas Gray’s maxim stating that ‘ignorance is bliss’ has been both, widely accepted and widely refuted. Proponents and opponents to what that gentleman said, or meant to say, back in 1742 seem to gather with equally opposing strength as centuries pass. Of late, however, the people of Latin America may have given us a replacement to that axiom, coining with their actions a true gem: Bliss is being ignored by the US!

And you know what? They may have come up with an irrefutable truism when we try to make sense of what they mean by that. However, what they are saying south of the border and what we get from America’s corporate press confound us as if originating in Babel. Commentary by so-called experts on Latin America, usually from think-tanks of convenience - those from where most propaganda germinates which serves the needs of both the White House and the State Department - seem to always give us a minority or dissenting view - something which would be acceptable were it not presented as the majority or prevailing view. And that’s basically what we get, minority-imposed views.

Recently I came across an article-commentary typical of what’s being written these days; it was penned by Alejandro Chafuen from Atlas Economic Research Foundation, under a catchy headline, Latin America won’t just sit still and be ignored - Our southern neighbors grow politically restive with U.S. inaction to their legitimate economic worries. What, you say! Is this individual for real or is he just a PR man for the Latin elite?

The fact that George W. Bush has ignored the breaking of political piatas south of the border - way, way south of the Rio Grand - might have made the powerful local elite, and their squire-class of enablers, politically restive in Central and South America; but as far as most of the people who live there, those best described as without a pied - terre in Miami or elsewhere in the States or Europe, these past six years have proven to be a true blessing, bringing a ray of hope for a true beginning of social and economic reform. It’s not an anti-democratic or anti-American trend that is taking place, as we are being led to believe by a shamelessly lying government and a conformational press. What’s happening in the Latin Down Under is not really about us, it’s about them; about people freeing themselves from us, the ‘corporate America’ that has kept the powerless in those nations as permanent beggars, at times mistakenly looking northward for alms.

At this point, all we have seen is nothing more than the unlocking of the gates to allow passage of both political reform and economic equity for hundreds of millions of Latin Americans. Whether or not these peaceful socio-economic revolutions succeed, and to what degree, remains an experimental unknown for now.

What the governments of Ortega (Nicaragua), Chavez (Venezuela), Correa (Ecuador), Morales (Bolivia), Lula (Brazil) - or the more acceptable, to the US government, political evolutions in Chile and Argentina - give us as a bottom line a decade or two from today, assuming the US does not intervene, will determine success or failure and not any ill-founded demagoguery pitting socialism against capitalism. Capitalism, defined as properly regulated free-enterprise, should be able to co-exist and thrive under almost any form of socialism. Only predatory capitalism will shrivel and die a natural death.

One thing we feel safe to bet on: results, no matter how dismal, cannot possibly be as bad as those obtained in the past under predatory capitalism, even if blasphemously camouflaged as free-enterprise; not for 70 percent of the people in the region, perhaps a much higher figure in some nations with larger indigenous population. The people are simply fed up, and have been saying so where it counts: at the ballot box. They are shouting to the four winds: enough!

For almost two centuries, Latin America has been Wednesday’s Child for the US. No sooner had the Iberian colonies asserted their independence in the Americas, that it was made known to them all new nations in the Western Hemisphere - British Canada excluded - were under the protection and foster care, of fair and wise Uncle Samuel. And for almost two centuries, the parasitic relationship between the Northern Giant and the Southern Lilliputians has not changed.

My own personal exposure to this Gringo-Latin relationship started at the tail end of the Alliance for Progress which had began a decade earlier by John F. Kennedy with little in the way of funds, but much hullabaloo and tear-jerking rhetoric to counter what was seen as a possible communist threat from Cuba to ‘US interests.’ An overall failure, since it was unable to meet even the pygmy goals stated in 1961 at Punta del Este in education, health, and economic well-being for most Latin Americans, it is symbolic of what the US had done before, or what has done since in Latin America. The US invested less than $1 per individual per year, and that insignificant figure was not even in net transfers of resources and development.

The Alliance for Progress was little more than a PR job that could not cut the mustard with even the simpletons among economists. Who could believe that the powerful elite would allow any land reform, or more equitable income distribution, or more restrain by the powerful in abusing those who lacked power; the powerful being the team of corporate Yanks and local-elite? Dictatorships multiplied during that period with our consent, and often with our direct help, and for all our freedom-talking rhetoric we helped hang democracy in every town square. As for anecdotes, I have dozens of them, many as an admittedly participant, and where the Agency for International Development (USAID) was but a sad joke. Can anyone fathom the US guaranteeing low interest funding for low cost housing which ended up being owned by top military brass and business elite (Bolivia) or similar projects having the rich as beneficiaries?

Enough! No more PR safety-valves for global exploitation by predatory capitalists and their supporting governments. Doesn’t it make sense that Latin Americans are ecstatic as America, under Bush, pays full attention to the mess it has created in the Middle East ignoring its Latin protege’ Can we, at least this once, let people in other parts of the world determine what’s good for them� instead of homicidally intruding in their affairs?

It would be most difficult to refute that Bliss is being ignored - by the United States!

Tags: bolivia, brazil, bush, cuba, ecuador, foreign entanglements, foreign policy, Global, latin america, middle east, nicaragua, politics, venezuela
Categories: Commentary, Global, Politics, Foreign Policy
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I agree that the hyperbole and rhetoric is deployed by all sides of this issue. However, there is a more fundamental dynamic that seems to be organizing this problem in a manner that prevents the relevant parties from coming under the direction of any form of multilateral internationalism. This condition results from the failure of Israel - similarly to the United States - to recognize international provisions for adjudicating these types of matters; implementations of international law that are nearly universally accepted. The United States, of course, fails to submit itself to very basic standards of international law because officials would be vulnerable to prosecutions for war crimes and other related crimes against humanity. Obviously, Israel is motivated by the same considerations as the United States.

Neo-conservatism is not an ideology that is limited in its scope to the politics of the United States. Neo-conservatism is simply the form that a more general ideology presents itself in the context of United States politics. I would describe this larger ideological phenomenon as the metropolitan discourse of Anglo Empire; an entity with which Israel is in collusion, and, in fact, an extension - a conclusion supported by reference to the Oslo Accords.

Remember, the Middle East assumed its current sociopolitical configuration from a source stemming from the vestiges of a colonialism that was organized and orchestrated not only by the British but by America as well. An example would be the protection of business interests that resulted in the British convincing Eisenhower to cause a regime change in Iran in order to thwart the nationalization of oil resources in that country that were intended to usurped control of the resources from British corporate interests. By helping the Americans procured for themselves a share of the exploits.

To put it in a nutshell, there are larger forces at work - which I am doing a poor job in identifying - that actively seek to prevent any resolution to this conflict, because if the Middle East was to resolve this issue it would effectively create a condition where Anglo interests could no longer impose themselves via a mechanisms, which it currently possesses, functions through its role as a broker of power; a capacity currently assumed through an extension of Anglo Empire that is essentially the Israeli regime.

Russ Cole

Tags: colonialism, foreign policy, hezbollah, israel, lebanon, middle east, neo conservatism, palestine
Categories: Commentary, Global, Russell Cole's Blog, Power, Empire
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American politicians - with the exception of the atypically principled Chuck Hegel - refuse to even consider the possibility that Israel is anything less than fully justified in its ferocious attack upon the country and inhabitants of Lebanon. Apparently, the dehumanizing expression, collateral damage, is a sufficient rhetorical device to effectively obfuscate the destruction of non-combatant human life during military operations that are planned under the auspices of the foresight that such atrocities can likely occur and are in fact probable.

Israeli soldiers, who retain their humanity during the strategic considerations of the Israeli war technicians are not to be endangered through their deployment on the ground until the area has been thoroughly bombarded with artillery and bombs from the air. As it has been announced, Israel will take its time and choose when to actually attempt to occupy the Southern portions of Lebanon. Transparently, an Israeli life is far more esteemed than a Lebanese noncombatant civilian. Of course, Israel in a great gesture of consideration for the Lebanese inhabitants has dropped leaflets warning the indigenous population to leave their homes in order the avoid an impending assault from the American supplied planes dropping ‘high-precision’ American bombs upon the Lebanese that apparently are not precise enough to compensate for the imprecise intelligence of the Israeli war technicians as they coordinate their targets.

I, personally, am too the point of exasperation over the inability of this country, America, to even raise objection to this onslaught. In order for me to express the reasons for my dismay, let us go over the events that precipitated this slaughter. Israel currently detains, against international law, approximately 9000 Lebanese and Arabs in its prisons. In order to barter for the release of these prisoners, held in extrajudicial limbo, the militant group in Southern Lebanon, which formed in response to Israel’s earlier invasion and occupancy of Lebanon, captured 2 Israeli soldiers. Well, I suppose the value of a Muslim life has increased in its evaluation by two fold because it is now worth, approximately, 1/4500th, of an Israeli’s life, because this is what has ‘justified’ Israel’s unrelenting incursions with accumulating ’collateral damage’ into Lebanon.

I have some basic proposals for the general conditions that might eventually lead to an end of this ongoing conflict between Israel and virtually all of its geopolitical neighbors. First, and I borrow this recommendation from Chomsky, Israel can begin by following the Geneva Convention. Second, Israel can unconditionally withdrawal from the West Bank. Third, Israel will end what amounts to the guidoization of the Gaza Strip, as it continues to isolate to the most densely populated area in the World - I wonder why? - from all transactions it might conduct with its neighbors and fellow nationals.

Enough is enough, and I personally am not going to be inhibited from speaking out against this outrage due to it making me vulnerable to these ridiculous accusations of anti-Semanticist. The ”Little Warrior Nation,” Israel, must end this mistreatment of the indigenous inhabitants whom Israel has already displaced from much of their traditional homeland.

I am publicly, at this point, not an anti-Semite, but most certainly, and unapologetically, an anti-Zionist. There is nothing I can really affect with respect to this, but I have seen enough this dehumanization of Muslim life, and I refuse to politely swallow my own vomit any longer as these crimes against humanity continue, and members of my very own country refuse to consider that this should end, right now!

R Cole

Tags: anti war, collateral damage, foreign policy, israel, lebanon, middle east, war
Categories: Commentary, Global, Russell Cole's Blog, Politics, War
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I find it ironic that an ethnicity that has been so toiled by a history of oppression, persecution, and bigotry has so little sympathy for those who suffer under conditions that approximate some of the frightful circumstances that the Jewish ethnicity has found itself, in many varying forms, with respect to its history.

Indeed, many Jews, who espouse a camouflaged guise of the Zionist discourse, possess a metropolitan world-view with respect to the Palestinians and their history in this and the previous century, which amounts to nothing less than victimization as the subjects of the ethnic cleansing practices of an imperial culture, the Israelis.

I would like to perform some historical revision 101 for those who seem to lack the ability to adequately conceptualize the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Palestinians did not voluntarily hand over their homeland to the influx of Jewish colonialist immigrants, occurring under the auspices of Zionism. The Palestinians were systematically routed by the Zionists.

Furthermore, the Palestinians, who were under the rule of the Egyptians and the Jordanians in Gaza and the West Bank, did not launch the second conflict against the Israelis in the last century; rather, it was the Israelites, who struck first upon the Egyptians, whom, according to the Israelis, where about to strike the state of Israel in order to initiated an anti-colonialist struggle; thus constituting what Israel refers to under the rhetorical ploy of an, ‘existential threat.’ Therefore, the Palestinians living in these two occupied territories did not concede their autonomy through some process of military defeat. Instead, similarly to the Checks in the Sudetenland, they came to be occupied by the Israelis due to the foreign-policy decisions of other nations.

Therefore, there is no justification for the state sponsored terrorism enacted by the Israelis against the Palestinians in the occupied territories; (notice the lexiconic relationship between territory and terrorism: they both possess the same stem, TERROR). So, perhaps, now, all those who scream, “Anti-Semite!” when anyone accumulates the necessary courage to speak out against the insidious assassinations conducted by the Israelis, always with a manifold of ‘collateral damage,’ can realize who the real terrorists are with respect to this ghastly situation in the Middle-east.

Perhaps, even, these profoundly insincere people - mostly Zionists and Evangelicals - will begin to realize the symbolic isomorphism, with regards to the significance these two concepts assume within their respective mythologies, between “Reich” and “Zion.”

Russell Cole

Tags: empire, ethniciy, foreign policy, Global, imperialism, israel, middle east, oppression, palestine, Russell Coles Blog, society, Terrorism, war, zionism, zionist
Categories: Commentary, Global, Society, Russell Cole's Blog, War, Empire, Terrorism, Foreign Policy, Imperialism
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