In this BBC report, I saw some quotes used from a former member of the Al-Aqsa brigades whose given name was “Khomeini.” Not surprisingly the young man’s age was given as 29.
It takes me back to when I was working in Beirut in ’78. So many of the Palestinians there were euphoric about the downfall of the (strongly pro-Israeli) Shah. Yasser Arafat incorporated the theme of “Today, Tehran; tomorrow Jerusalem!” into all his rhetoric… Small surprise that this young man’s parents– like, I’m guessing, many others in the Muslim world– gave their son the name of Khomeini that year.
1978 was also the year of the Camp David agreements. I remember that one mother in heavily Shiite South Lebanon gave birth to triplets, and the family were so optimistic about the prospects of regionwide peace after the accords were signed that they named the babies “Carter”, “Begin”, and “Sadat.”
H’mmm. I wonder whether those guys are still walking around with the monickers they were given that year?
(I find it significant that Khomeini Abu Amera, 29, of Jenin never judged it necessary to change his name even during the extremely bloody eight-year war between Iran and Iraq.)
Author: Helena
Welcome new thinking on the Palestine Question
In Washington today former deputy speaker of Israel’s Knesset Naomi
Chazan had some great advice for President-elect
Obama. Noting that Israel’s election comes just 20 days after Obama’s
inauguration, she said Obama should wait 20 days before announcing the
US’s new policy on the Arab-Israeli peace– “but he shouldn’t wait any
longer than 21 days.”
The US might, she said, present its own peace plan. (She didn’t spell out whether Obama should do that right then, or a little later.)
Chazan– who is one of the smartest and most well-grounded people I
know, of any nationality or gender– also argued
convincingly that the whole process that goes back to Oslo and running
right through Annapolis “has dead-ended.” She said the whole way the
“peace process” has been framed and organized since Oslo needs to be
reframed, and gave some excellent suggestions on how to do this.
She was speaking along with Daniel Levy at the New America Foundation,
at an event co-hosted by the strongly pro-peace New Israel Fund, of
whose board she is president.
Chazan provided these three examples of the kind of reframing
she envisaged:
- “We need to recognize
the asymmetry there is both on the ground and at the negotiating table,
between the Israelis and Palestinians, and find ways to rebalance that.
So far, since Oslo, the negotiations have all tended to create a false
idea that there is symmetry between them. There isn’t.” Later,
Levy amplified that point, saying that just leaving the two
sides in a room together to deal with everything through bilateral
negotiations wouldn’t work. Chazan agreed. Both of them said the US
needs to play a much more activist role in the negotiations than it did
in the whole “process” from Oslo through Annapolis. - “We need to go back to looking at the root causes of the
conflict. There’s always been this idea that doing this would be
unhelpful to the negotiations, but actually there are ways it could be
helpful.” Later, in response to a question about the Palestinian
refugee issue, she spelled out that rather than dealing with it just in
a distant and sort of technical way, if the Israeli government would
agree to make some kind of public acknowledgment that Israel’s actions
had “helped to create” the problem and wanted to join with others in
finding a solution, that was the kind of action that could help move
the whole process forward. - “We could also think of trying to separate the issues of
ending the occupation and dismantling the settlements.” In the
discussion period she noted that the fact that settlement dismantlement
had always, in the Oslo-to-Annapolis process, been an explicit item on
the agenda gave the settlers and their supporters a big cause to
mobilize around and, in effect, gave them a veto over the whole
negotiation. “But how about if we didn’t say anything explicit at all
about the settlements or the settlers but just reached an agreement by
which Israel would withdraw completely to the Green Line or a line near
it with negotiated changes, handing the area over in the first instance
to an international or NATO force, perhaps without doing anything
explicit to dismantle the settlements? What would the settlers do then?
They lose their veto.”
Chazan’s visit to Washington is timely indeed. As I noted here
on Monday, when Obama announced his foreign policy team in Chicago
earlier that day, he also made prominent mention of the need to work
rapidly “a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
Continue reading “Welcome new thinking on the Palestine Question”
Burying the SOFA (WA) text: Mission Accomplished?
I just saw Phyllis Bennis on the Real News Network talking about the Obama foreign policy team. She did a terrific job. Except at one point, a couple of minutes in, she made quite a point of saying that the Bush administration “hasn’t shown us the American text of the SOFA”, that they “haven’t made it public”, etc… And therefore that she still didn’t really believe it said that all the US troops would be out by the end of 2011.
But Phyllis! The text of the SOFA (more accurately, a “Withdrawal Agreement,” as it is titled) was posted on the White House website last Thursday.
But actually, the fact that even a savvy, go-getting analyst like Phyllis Bennis hadn’t seen it by the time she recorded the RNN segment– maybe yesterday afternoon?– means that the White House’s strategy of “publishing the text by stealth” seems to have worked!
Last Thursday was, you see, Thanksgiving Day here in America. A great day for the President’s media people to “bury” news that they’re not too happy or proud about…
(I blogged about it on Friday. I guess Phyllis Bennis wasn’t reading JWN either…)
But it’s true that the release of the official English-language text of the SOFA/WA has gathered just about zero discernible coverage in the US MSM. That, despite the fact that this really is, the crowing “accomplishment” of a war that has cost more than 4,200 American lives, drained our country’s treasury, and considerably damaged our standing all around the world.
You’d think the MSM would have had some interest in the final text of the agreement?? But no…
So the burying strategy apparently worked.
The writer of this fascinating AFP article from last Wednesday (Nov. 26) tells us, however, that the timing of the release was not determined only by a desire to ‘bury’ it away from the US news media as much as it was by a desire to ‘bury’ it away from Iraq’s parliamentarians before they held their crucial vote on the agreement later that same day.
The AFP piece said this:
- three officials in Washington said the administration of US President George W. Bush has withheld the official English translation of the agreement to suppress a public dispute with the Iraqis until after the parliamentary vote.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the official English language text of the agreement was designated as “sensitive but unclassified.”
“There are a number of areas in here where they have agreement on the same wording but different understandings about what the words mean,” said one US official.
The White House National Security Council said it had held up the translation’s release until the Iraqi parliament votes.
“We plan to release it soon,” said spokesman Gordon Johndroe. “We are waiting for the Iraqi political process to move further down the road.”
In the event the SOFA is approved, the US could simply circumvent parts of the agreement, said officials.
For example, for the provision that bars the US from launching military operations into neighboring countries from Iraqi territory, the administration could cite another provision that allows parties to retain the right of self-defense — such as pursuing groups that launch strikes on US targets from Syria or Iran.
The provision that appears to require the US to notify Iraqi officials in advance of any planned military operations and seek Iraqi approval for them could also be altered, said the officials.
Some US military figures find the provision especially troubling, although US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, head of the US Central Command David Petraeus and the top US commander in Iraq Raymond Odierno have all endorsed it…
So they’re saying that the “self-defense” provision could be used to over-ride the “not using Iraqi terrain for attacks against others” provision, and that the notification provision could simply “be altered”, unilaterally by the US side at some point?
I doubt if the Iraqis or anyone else in the International community would see matters that way.
Anyway, go back to my post from last Friday to see the points I made there about the “exact” meaning of the all-important Article 24 regarding the “total” nature of the December 2011 withdrawal and the fact that both the Arabic and English texts have been described by the parties as “equally binding.”
Obama’s foreign affairs team and Arab-Israel diplomacy
His foreign affairs team comes, now, as no surprise. But what was welcome in his speech in Chicago today was the prominent mention he made of the need to find “a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
That’s especially welcome, coming a few days after the veteran Clinton-era peace processor Aaron Miller came out swinging with a public argument that an Israeli-Palestinian peace is just too difficult, so Obama shouldn’t even make any effort at reaching it but should focus on brokering a Syria-Israel peace instead.
Let’s hope wiser heads prevail! Significant though a Syria-Israel peace would be, by far the greater worldwide symbolism– and by far the greater actual, continuing human suffering— attaches to the horrible structural and physical violence of the Palestine-Israel conflict.
Plus, once there’s a final peace between Israel and Palestine, an Israel-Syria deal can fall into place extremely easily. (Its parameters have long been well known.)
The reverse is decidedly not the case.
So if a choice has to be made between the two tracks, Obama should plump for the Palestine track as the highest priority.
But here’s an important idea: Why should he feel he needs to make some kind of a contrived “choice” between the two tracks, anyway?
Why not aim at a speedy, grand settlement of all the outstanding portions of the Arab-Israeli dispute, all at once?
This is really not such a radical idea. In the great peace settlements of earlier eras– 1815, 1919, 1945, etc– huge numbers of outstanding disputes, some of them of very lengthy duration, were all resolved together, as a kind of a “package deal.”
Compared with those earlier, continent- or globe-girdling grand settlements, resolving Israel’s outstanding conflicts with Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon “all in one fell swoop” looks very do-able indeed, almost picayune. And right now, with the Saudi peace plan of 2002, there’s a great vehicle for getting into that comprehensive negotiation.
President Obama could also build on the precedent of the 1991, Bush-I-era Madrid peace conference, which also aimed at a comprehensive settlement of all the outstanding tracks of the Israeli-Arab dispute.
One big advantage of this approach, compared with trying endlessly– yet again!– to take partial or incremental steps along each of the tracks separately is that the “pain” of the settlement, in terms of the concessions that all the parties will need to make from their long-held political positions, will be a one-off thing, rather than a scary and continuing “death from a hundred cuts.” Meanwhile, the “gain” of the settlement, in terms of the huge relief the citizens of all these countries will win from the burdens of war, occupation, and international estrangement, will be much more definitive and palpable than any “gain” they could reasonably expect from partial settlements.
Ending the Arab-Israeli conflict in its entirety will also breathe huge new life into the relationships Israel has with Egypt and Jordan, which remain very strained even though both those countries have long had formal peace treaties with Israel.
Ending the Arab-Israeli conflict in its entirety on terms that are fair and enshrine the key principles of human equality, international legitimacy, and a commitment to setting aside all forms of violence will allow Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Israelis, and all the other peoples of the Middle East to breath a huge sigh of relief… to build new kinds of relations with other… and to move into a much more hopeful future.
So that’s why I’m glad Barack Obama put such an emphasis on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s not that the Israel-Syria track is insignificant. It’s not. But it’s a dangerous illusion to think that brokering peace on that track could be any kind of a substitute for doing the hard diplomatic work that’s so urgently needed on the Palestine track.
Actually, it’s an even more dangerous illusion to believe that any “peace broker”– whether it continues to be overwhelmingly the US or shifts to being a more genuinely international effort– has to make a “choice” between pushing on the Palestine track or the Syria track.
Go for the whole grand Arab-Israeli settlement, Obama! That is the way to truly transform the Middle East– as well as our country’s relationship with the whole of the rest of the world.
US-China: A good Bush record
Thomas Christensen, who was deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs in Condi Rice’s State Department from 2006-08, has an informative little piece in today’s WaPo lauding the improvements the Bush administration has made in the relationship with China.
He writes,
- U.S.-China diplomacy has moved beyond managing problems between the two sides to focus on coordinating responses to problems around the world. That was an important and innovative step for both countries to take. The U.S.-China Senior Dialogue on political and security affairs, led by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte, addresses such global issues. Our regional assistant secretaries of state and their Chinese counterparts also hold intensive discussions. Ten years ago, officials in these positions probably wouldn’t even have known each other’s names.
I think this is really good news, and I commend Sec. Rice and the President on having brought about an improvement in this literally world-defining relationship.
Christensen notes the contribution this Washington-Beijing track made to defusing the tensions over North Korea, in particular.
However, he seems a little over-laudatory when he writes that Washington has been working continuously on tamping down Taiwan-China relations by “demanding that the two sides settle their differences peacefully.”
How was that compatible with the $6.5 billion arms sale to Taiwan that Washington announced in early October?
Christensen omitted to mention, too, that the early months of the Bush administration were notably not marked by an eirenic approach to China. (See under “Hainan Island Incident.”) It was only after that incident got resolved through diplomacy that Bush started adopting a stance toward Beijing that was markedly more cooperative than confrontational.
(Or did that shift happen more evidently after 9/11? Help, anyone?)
Actually, I have a niggling concern that Obama might feel the need to shift back some toward a more shrill and accusatory stance towards China. There are lots of longterm human-rights activists in and associated with his emerging administration. But these are overwhelmingly the kind of activists whose (extremely occidocentric) definition of “rights” focuses much more on civil and political rights than on social and economic rights, and who might for this and a number of other reasons judge it a good idea to start getting accusatory towards China…
Israeli analysts prepare next war against Lebanon
In the latest issue of its quarterly journal, Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) carries two (or three) articles debating in some depth whether– in the event of a new war against Lebanon that one writer describes as “inevitable”, Israel should actively target institutions and facilities of the Lebanese state, or just “restrict” itself to targeting Hizbullah.
The plainest case for targeting Lebanese national institutions directly is argued in The Third Lebanon War: Target Lebanon (PDF), by Maj.-Gen. (Retd) Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser to PMs Sharon and Olmert and before that head of the IDF’s planning and operations branches.
A more nuanced view– but one that concludes that launching a large-scale, and possibly also lengthy, ground operation in Lebanon is “inevitable”– is argfued by Yossi Kuperwasser in The Next War with Hizbollah: Should Lebanon be the Target? (PDF). Kuperwasser is a former head of the IDF’s intelligence research division.
Now, I understand that it’s the job of planners within the active-duty military to “plan for the worst.” But it’s fairly depressing that a publication that aims at a broad portion of the international political elite should give so much space to people making arguments completely based on the premise that Israel “has no alternative” but to go to war against Lebanon (or Hizbullah) sometime in the (possibly near) future. In addition to those two technical-military articles, the issue also contains one by Israeli exerts arguing– especially in light of Israel’s experiences during the 33-day war of 2006– that Israel should spearhead an attempt to get the laws of war changed to be more in its favor. (Surprise, surprise.)
Nowhere in this journal is there any hint that actually, within the context of a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace settlement, there is a strong scenario whereby Israel might never “need” to go to war against Hizbullah or Lebanon ever again. (Ah, but if there’s not a salutary little war from time to time, how on earth can all the Israeli military companies that these men doubtless consult profitably with, ever keep their sales and profit figures up?)
Actually, the arguments both men make are really weak. They exhibit strategic short-sightedness, tactical idiocy, and severe historical airbrushing (mendacity.) Perhaps that’s because they’re writing here for an “international”, English-language audience that they expect– based on the rock-star welcome they get in most US think-tanks– will ignore the facts and just lap up every word that they write?
Strategic shortsightedness: Neither Eiland nor Kuperwasser can provide a convincing answer to the question, “Yes, but then what?” regarding all their arguments about how (not whether) to fight another war against Lebanon.
In his piece, Eiland makes a couple of arguments. He notes that Hizbullah has become stronger within the Lebanese state than it was at the time of the 33-day war. (Note, though, that he completely fails to explain that it was precisely the ferocity of the assaults Israel made on Lebanon during that war that spurred, that outcome…) So he concludes from that that, to fatally weaken Hizbullah it will be necessary to damage the Lebanese state a lot, too.
He also argues from the “precedent” of the massive, destructive campaign Sharon waged against the PA in June 2002. He writes that there, the real target was Hamas, but Hamas had won a lot of support from the PA, which had strong political support from the west.
“The US sanctioned an Israeli operation against Hamas,” he writes,
- but had a hard time accepting the operation as Israel planned it – an operation against the Palestinian Authority.
The US at first demanded that Israel leave all West Bank cities (area A) within forty-eight hours. Notable Israeli steadfastness maintained that this time it was impossible to return to the familiar rules of the game whereby only the terrorists are targeted, and the sponsors (the Palestinian Authority) remain immune. Israel’s firmness, which stemmed from a lack of other options, was successful. Israel had to concede on one matter only, stopping the siege of the muq’ata in Ramallah, home to Arafat at the time. On the other hand, the new policy (Israeli control over all Palestinian areas) was well received and commended by the international community.
So, he writes, it would probably be similar with an attack on Lebanon. The “west” might complain a bit at first… but “Israeli firmness” in pursuing its own goals would win the day and even become “well received and commended” by the international community.
His conclusion:
- There is one way to prevent the Third Lebanon War and win it if it does break out (and thereby prevent the Fourth Lebanon War): to make it clear to Lebanon’s allies and through them to the Lebanese government and people that the next war will be between Israel and Lebanon and not between Israel and Hizbollah. Such a war will lead to the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure, and intense suffering among the population. There will be no recurrence of the situation where Beirut residents (not including the Dahiya quarter) go to the beach and cafes while Haifa residents sit in bomb shelters.
Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behavior more than anything else…
Yes, Gen. Eiland, but then what??
So Israel succeeds in completely or substantially destroying the entire physical infrastructure of the state of Lebanon… (Assuming that the post-2008 model “international community” allows it to do this, which I actually doubt.)
And then what?
Israel has a failed state on its northern border and substantial portions of the international community up in arms… And that’s going to “solve” your Hizbullah problem, how?
I believe that Gen. Eiland is urging coordinated use of air and ground force attacks against Lebanon. In which case we could assume that the ground troops might be in control of substntial chunks of Lebanese territory.
Which takes us Back to the Future! Israeli troops bogged down in Lebanon, for 22 long years after 1978, 18 years after 1982.
The very conditions that created and incubated Hizbullah in the first place.
Why should anyone buy your crazy, inhumane, and go-nowhere arguments?
And then there’s Gen. Kuperwasser, who is much more explicit about the need for the “large scale ground operation” in Lebanon, even if he questions whether all the facilities of the Lebanese state as such should be targeted along the way.
Here’s what he writes about the ground op that he argues for:
- If there is another round between Israel and Hizbollah, Israel will not be able to make do with standoff counter attacks on Lebanese targets, and will probably have to launch a large scale ground operation. While Hizbollah will be able to exact a not inconsiderable cost from Israel for such an operation, the IDF has the ability to take control of the organization’s operational territories in southern Lebanon, including north of the Litani River, and if necessary, also in Beirut and the Bek’a valley. Such an operation, together with inflicting damage on infrastructures that serve Hizbollah, is the only one that will stop the firing, create a new reality in the field, and enable examination of the possibility of establishing a different arrangement with regard to relations between Israel and Lebanon in general and the Shiite community in particular.
So, you “stop the firing” of Hizbullah’s rockets onto northern Israel. Okay. And you “create a new reality in the field”… which is one in which Israel is left in control of very large chunks of Lebanese territory…
And then what?
(See my note about the IDF’s post-1978 and post-1982 occupations of south Lebanon, above.)
All Kuperwasser tells us about the political-strategic goal to be sought through this operation is “examination of the possibility of establishing a different arrangement with regard to relations between Israel and Lebanon in general and the Shiite community in particular.” Whatever that means. May 17 agreement, anyone?
These guys are strategic-thinking kindergartners, honestly.
Regarding their tactical skills, they don’t seem much better, either. Eiland writes,
- There is one way to prevent the Third Lebanon War and win it if it does break out (and thereby prevent the Fourth Lebanon War): to make it clear to Lebanon’s allies and through them to the Lebanese government and people that the next war will be between Israel and Lebanon and not between Israel and Hizbollah.
Yeah, well. The military planning required to prevent a war (through deterrence) is quite different from that required to fight one. Actually, Eiland doesn’t seem terribly interested in trying to prevent the next “Lebanese War,” at all. Only, perhaps, the one after that. (See note on the Israeli military industries, above.)
And then, from Kuperwasser we have this truly hilarious and ahistorical explanation of how “the next war” against Lebanon that he favors could actually work out, politically, to help realize the fuzzily defined political-strategic endpoint that he seeks:
- the Israeli goal might be to weaken Hizbollah and strengthen the moderate parties in Lebanon, while damaging the organization’s ability to rehabilitate itself and continue controlling southern Lebanon and presenting itself as the defender of Lebanon, similar to Israel’s strategic objectives in the Second Lebanon War (even if they were not explicitly defined as such). Other objectives in this context could be strengthening moderate elements in the regional system and increasing Israeli deterrence, in part to increase the chances of achieving a favorable peace treaty with Syria and to weaken the extremist elements in the Palestinian system.
Note how he’s effortlessly adopted the misleading and content-free US label of “moderate” to describe what are, actually, pro-US forces within Lebanon. But then see how he is advocating an almost exact replay of what the Israeli leadership attempted to do in 2006: Namely, to attack Lebanon’s civilian state facilities with the aim of turning as many Lebanese as possible against Hizbullah… while “strengthening” Israel’s general deterrent p;ower throughout the region.
It backfired badly in 2006, didn’t it?
Why on earth should anyone assume it might work better next time?
And this brings me to the whole question of these two mens’ extreme historical airbrushing (mendacity).
Actually, from Willem Buiter, I just learned a new word that’s very handy in this context: Publikumsbeschimpfung, which means insulting the intelligence of your audience.
Both Eiland and Kuperwasser insult our intelligence primarily through their reliance on a crucial but completely false assumption about the 33-day war, namely that Israel did not, actually, target any non-military facilities pertaining to the Lebanese state during that war, and, by clear implication, that that very ‘restrained’ approach to warfighting helped deny Israel the victory it could otherwise have won. But just look at the record of that war, including both the roster of the sites that Israel attacked during it– road systems, bridges, civilian factories, a power station– and the extremely bellicose statements from military and political leaders spelling out that “Once it is inside Lebanon, everything is legitimate“, “we will turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years,” etc.
So Eiland and Kuerwasser are asking us to forget all that… Asking us to forget, too, that Israel’s use of massive overkill tactics against Lebanon backfired badly in [’06, and that after 33 days of assaults they were still unable to impose their will on the Lebanese people or their political system.
This, though the war occurred less than 30 months ago.
Publikumsbeschimpfung, indeed. (Taking the public for chimps, perhaps?)
At one level, I suppose we could read these two guys’ fevered and ill-informed writings as further evidence– if evidence still be needed– of the sterility of what passes for Israeli strategic “thinking” in the present era. After all the INSS, formerly the Jaffee Center, is not chopped liver. It’s the flagship of Israeli strategic-affairs think-tanks.
The problem for these guys, and for all their counterparts in the military-industrial complex throughout the western world is that the world has changed a lot in the past 15 years. Foreign wars have become just about unwinnable. Israel’s performance in Lebanon in 2006 is Example A in that regard. They had overwhelming superiority over Hizbullah at every single step on “the escalation ladder.” But still, they were unable to achieve their strategic goals!
So if foreign wars are unwinnable, then people– taxpayers, conscripts’ families, and others– might soon start to ask, “Why wage them? And why invest such a lot of our country’s treasure in the military industries that help us prepare for them?”
But if that were to happen, what on earth would happen to the military industries and their hordes of nicely paid consultants??
A problem, I think, not just for Israel but also for the US, Britain, and the rest of NATO…
But here’s the good news: There are many, many better ways to resolve conflicts and address fears of insecurity than through war.,
Buiter takes on Bernanke for his non-transparency
In his latest blog post today, former ECB chief economist Willem Buiter lays heavily into Fed chief Ben Bernanke for his refusal to disclose vital data about the– now– trillions— of dollars’ worth of actual or potential liability the Fed is exposing US taxpayers to via its latest chummy financial bailout programs.
Buiter bases his criticism on Bernanke’s stonewalling response to a lawsuit Bloomberg News filed November 7 to gain information about the lending the Fed has made to private banks. Blooomberg, he writes, “wants to know the identities of the borrowing banks, how much each one borrowed, and the assets the Fed has accepted as collateral for these loans by the Fed.”
Bernanke has refused, claiming that such disclosure would be “counterproductive.” Buiter gives us this evaluation of what he describes as “Chairman Bernanke’s ‘nyet'”:
- Chairman Bernanke’s arguments for not releasing the requested information are 10 percent correct, 90 percent self-serving Fed-accountability-avoiding twaddle.
Let me start by noting that, even if it were true that revealing the requested information would violate commercial confidentiality, that such a violation would create stigma for the borrowing banks and that such stigma would result in material damage to the stability of the financial system, it would not automatically follow that the information in question should be kept secret. There are things that are even more important than commercial confidentiality, bank stigma and financial stability. Accountability for the use of public money could be one of these things. At the very least there would be a clash of competing public interests. This conflict should not be resolved through a unilateral decision by just one of the interested parties, the Fed.
It is correct that the immediate revelation of the identity of a borrowing bank could be so market-sensitive, because of stigmatisation effects, that confidentiality as regards the identity of the borrower makes sense for a limited period. But for a limited period only. After six months, nobody cares. After a year, nobody remembers. Once the loan has been repaid, the stigma issue is no longer relavant.
The key point is that, for democratic accountability for the use of public money to exist, there has to be certainty that at some point there will be full revelation of the identity of each borrowing institution, how much it borrowed, on what terms, and against what collateral. While there can be a finite (but short) delay in divulging the identity of the borrower, all other information – the amounts borrowed (collectively and by individual anonymous borrowers) should be in the public domain immediately. Even in the most paranoid of worlds, there is no reasonable argument, other than an unwillingness to be held accountable for possible mistakes, for not releasing, instantaneously, the terms on which the borrowing occurred and the nature and valuation of each specific item of collateral offered .
It should be obvious why it is essential that all information be in the public domain, that is required to assess the Fed’s valuation of the collateral at the time the loan was made. This is the information required to assess the magnitude of the ex-ante subsidy the Fed provided to the borrower – the quasi-fiscal subsidy, if any, provided by the Fed, based on the information available at the time the loan was made…
He notes that the pricing function performed by the central banks that are intervening in the current crisis can help to shore up confidence in the entire system– but that Bernanke, like the chiefs of the ECB and the Bank of England, won’t even reveal what models it uses to assign value to the assets it is scooping up (many of which may indeed be highly toxic.)
He comments:
- As long as the models/methods used by the central banks to calculate the theoretical prices are not in the public domain, and as long as we are not provided with the detailed actual valuations/prices of each security accepted as collateral, I will not believe a word I am told. This form of Publikumsbeschimpfung [insulting the audience] by the central banks is simply not acceptable in a democratic society. It is not their money they are playing with. It is our money.
He also notes that as the crisis proceeds, the Fed will be acquiring assets that are ever riskier and riskier, concluding,
- Most of the internationally active US banks are dead banks walking, supported and held upright by a cast of Federal puppeteers with mixed track records. Even with the state support they are receiving or are expected to have access to should the need arise, the creditworthiness of these banks, as reflected in their credit default swap (CDS) spreads and their spreads over US Treasuries (which themselves now have rather larger CDS spreads than they used to have before the crisis) is poor indeed.
That leaves the Fed, and behind the Fed the US tax payer or the beneficiary of existing US public spending exposed to the credit risk on the collateral backing the loans…
I consider the Fed’s stonewalling of the Bloomberg News request for information – the refusal to provide any information because a small component of the requested information was deemed to be commercially confidential – to be outrageous and unacceptable. The same holds for the refusal of the ECB and the Bank of England to put in the public domain their models, methods and myths for pricing illiquid assets.
As regards the specific request of Bloomberg News, a short delay in making public the identities of the individual borrowers (sellers of securities to the Fed) may under certain conditions be justified. All other information (what collateral was offered, what securities were purchased, valuations, terms etc.) must be in the public domain immediately. Central banks have no immunity from accountability for the use of public resources. Congress, the Courts, the media, the tax payer and the public at large should reject Chairman Bernanke’s ‘nyet’ to a legitimate request for information.
Well, let’s see the extent to which the very badly “captured” (by the bankers’ brainwashing) US Congress, courts, and media will be prepared to challenge Bernanke… I am not holding my breath.
Goal of the Mumbai attacks: Sparking India-Pakistan war?
The perpetrators of the recent wave of anti-civilian (i.e. terror) attacks in Mumbai were evidently well organized and well prepared for their mission. It was almost certainly planned as a series of suicide attacks. These indicators point to (but do not prove) the responsibility of Lashkar-i-Taiba, “Army of the pure”, a group that originated in Indian-occupied Kashmir but has also operated elsewhere throughout the subcontinent and in Afghanistan. The nature of their attacks evidently had a strong anti-western and anti-Jewish/Israeli cast to it, along with an even stronger readiness/willingness to kill Indian civilians. Those in the west who have centered on the deaths of westerners– who included two devoutly spiritual followers of a Hindu swami who live near my home-town Charlottesville, one of them a 13-year-old girl– should remember that westerners have made up fewer than ten percent of the deaths confirmed so far, with the rest being Indian citizens.
Given the amount of planning, coordination, dedication to martyrdom, and resources that went into this mission, it must have had a political purpose broader than “simply” killing people (for revenge, or for “expressive” purposes, or whatever.) One possible purpose may have been precisely to try to spur a strong Indian military “counter-attack” against Pakistan that would also– because of the western casualties involved– receive the backing of the US and other western nations.
India may oblige. In fact, its military, security, and political chiefs are meeting right now to decide how to respond to the attacks. On Friday, Indian Foreign Minister already accused unidentified “elements in Pakistan” of being behind the attacks.
Islamabad seems to be bracing for the possibility of some harsh Indian response. Earlier, the Pakistani government had said it would send the head of the powerful (but Hydra-like) ISI intelligence, Lieut-Gen, Ahmed Shuja Pasha to New Delhi to help in the investigation. But now, as the cabinet holds an emergency session in Islamabad, it has also announced it will downgrade the level of that cooperation mission.
I’m sure the Indian government feels itself under a lot of pressure to “do something” forceful and rapid to re-assert an appearance of control over the national situation, to reassure its citizens and its foreign partners, and to “avenge” those who died.
Launching a military attack against Pakistan at this time would be the height of counter-productive folly. It would not solve, but rather would seriously exacerbate, the many problems India already has with its neighbor to the north. The governance system in Pakistan is already extremely shaky and stretched to near collapse. Does the Indian government want to push Pakistan– and with it much of the rest of the subcontinent– over the brink?
Where is the Security Council? It was precisely to deal with and defuse these kinds of crisis that the UN was established. But apart from issuing a pablum-y type of statement yesterday, the SC has taken no action on the crisis. Nor has Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon.
Raed Jarrar discussing the SOFA/WA
Raed discusses the SOFA/WA with Iranian-owned Press TV, here.
Violence in Mumbai, love at home
My condolences to all who have lost loved ones to the terrorist violence in Mumbai. Most of those killed and wounded have reportedly (and not surprisingly) been Indians. But tens of westerners, including US citizens, Brits, and Israelis have also been killed, many of them having reportedly been directly targeted. Each life lost is equally shocking. Each is a loss to the universe.
I’ve had the huge joy of spending much of the past two days with my one-month-old grand-daughter, Matilda. Holding her, and breathing in her baby softness, is a wonderful and restoring thing to do in a world marked by far too much violence. She is so special in every single way. And she has two extremely devoted and capable parents.
But as I appreciate this little person’s special-ness, I am also acutely aware that in a sense she ‘represents’ every other baby, every other person in the world.
All should be equally loved and equally supported.
Unimaginable to think that a baby like her could be targeted for punishment if she happened to be in Mumbai, or in Gaza, or D.R. Congo at this time. Our world is a terrible fractured place. Fractured mainly by the woundedness of all those who wish– and do– violence to others.
Hatred can only ever be overcome by love.