Info, analysis, discussion – to build a more just world
The debate at U.C. Berkeley’s student Senate (ASUC) continued throughout last night, on whether to over-ride the veto the Senate president had cast against the recent divestment bill.
The divestment bill, if passed, would mandate that the ASUC divest from companies that actively support Israel’s occupation of the OPTs and the Apartheid Wall— and that it call on the far richer U.C. system as a whole to follow suit.
Continue reading “Berkeley’s BDS epic continues; Despatches”
More than 500 people have been killed and thousands wounded or made homeless by the 7.1-level earthquake that struck China’s Qinghai province today.
The epicenter was in Yushu, which is a Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture within Qinghai. It is also nearly 4,000 meters above sea-level, so even flying planes in there is complicated, given how thin the air is.
More information is here.
The Chinese state seems to be reacting just about as effectively as any state this massive, faced with such varying levels of economic development could react. It did pretty well in response to that last mega-quake, the Sichuan Quake of May 2008, which killed around 70,000 people. (There’s a good Wikipedia page on that one.)
The big contrast, sadly, is with the effects of January’s quake in Haiti, whose government had nothing like the administrative capacity to respond in a maximally life-saving manner.
Anyway, my thoughts are with the peoples of Yushu, Qinghai, and China in general as they all grapple with with this latest crisis.
Scandals of bribery and administrative and sexual impropriety continue to plague the highest levels of Israeli society. (Not to mention war crimes.)
The latest, about former Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski, is here.
Everyone in the region is asking: When will this nation be politically and administratively ‘mature’ enough to be allowed to govern itself?
After Iceland’s three big go-go banks all collapsed in fall 2008, the country’s parliament (Althingi) established a Special Investigation Commission to investigate and analyze the processes leading to their collapse. The SIC delivered its report to Althingi on Monday.
The English version of its key chapters is here.
A hat-tip for that to Calculated Risk, who wrote, “It has it all – regulatory capture, oblivious politicians, shadow banking, loans to shareholders to buy shares and more.”
Calc also has some informative excerpts from the SIC report in that post.
Here in the U.S., Congress proceeded in a much more stately (= slow) fashion. It did not establish its Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission until May last year, five months after Althingi did so. And the FCIC will not be submitting its report until December 15.
That’s a pity, because we as citizens really need to gain a clear picture of what went wrong in the go-go years– especially if our legislators are to enact new laws to try to prevent another massive meltdown like the one of September 2008. (A resurrection of the Glass-Steagall protections, anyone?)
The FCIC is giving us a bit more information than we had before. But it still feels awfully slow. And many of the banks have returned straight to same kind of predatory practices they were engaged in before.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written a wonderful letter in support of the student activists at U.C. Berkeley who are working to get their student Senate– and beyond that, hopefully, the wealthy University of California system as a whole– to divest from companies that support Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Tutu’s letter is important both because of the immense moral weight of his voice and because of its timing. Tomorrow (Wednesday), the Berkeley student Senate will be having a re-vote on the divestment decision, made necessary by the fact that an earlier 16-4 vote in favor of the divestment was vetoed by the Senate’s president.
Tutu’s letter was preceded by this one, also supporting the divestment campaign, that came from Naomi Klein. (Klein’s position on BDS has been evolving in a good direction, I think.)
Tutu wrote in his letter:
Best of luck to all the pro-BDS activists at Berkeley on Wednesday!
The police helicopters have been droning overhead for a couple of days here in Washington DC, as scores of world leaders sit with Pres. Obama at the ‘Nuclear Security Summit’.
(But not Netanyahu. We’ll come back to him later.)
This morning I was having a meeting with a prominent former U.S. diplomatist who recalled how, back in the first months of the GWB administration, Secdef Rumsfeld had been making a huge issue out of the need for ballistic missile defense, convening summits and the like.
“But then,” my friend said, “it turned out that a bunch of Saudis had discovered that an airplane full of fuel could be even more deadly than a ballistic missile– especially if it had a guidance system as sophisticated as that provided by the human mind… It’s the same thing today. They’re all barking up this nuclear security tree, when there are so many other potentially very lethal materials lying around.”
Oh well. I guess Obama and his people have been trying to make a point… including by convening this gathering to which everyone except Iran, Syria, and North Korea gets invited.
But actually, isn’t that rather a childish “point” to seek to make? “We’ve got more friends than you have! Nanny-nanny-boo-boo!”
… Well, and then speaking of potentially very dangerous actors on the world scene who might one day get hold of the ingredients for nuclear weapons, there is of course Israel.
Oops! My silly mistake! Israel of course already has an advanced nuclear arsenal that may well be one of the three most deadly on the planet.
Just a couple of days ago, I blogged here that, just as the ‘elephant’ of the undue influence that dedicated pro-Israeli political appointees have long had on the making of U.S. Mideast policy is now coming ponderously out of the room of silence in which it was previously caged, then surely it must be time that that other big ‘elephant’ of which no-one in U.S. polite company like to speak– the fact of Israel’s own massive nuclear arsenal– should also be brought into the light of day.
Little did I know that that very evening, veteran Israeli commentator Yaron London was putting finishing touches to an op-ed in which he made exactly that same argument. (English translation here, thanks to Didi Remez.)
London was writing that it is time for Israel to end its long-pursued policy of “nuclear ambiguity”:
Interesting…
One source that London linked to was this news report in Yediot Aharonot on April 10, which quoted a recent Jane’s report on the topic in these terms:
Oh, and then I can’t help but juxtapose that sobering report with the photo in this news report today from Maan News in Bethlehem.
The report starts:
Okay, so the IOF had apparently gone into the Gaza Strip after killing these two guys (and maybe beforehand, as well, in order to kill them?) But anyway, the photo, which was provided by the Israeli military, shows the “heavy armaments” it said it found on their bodies.
Of course, there is absolutely no way of verifying that the men were ever armed with these items, which seem from the photo to include only two folding-stock Klashen’s, eight Klashen bullet-magazines, and some other unidentifiable objects. We have to take IOF’s ‘say-so’ on this.
But even if they were carrying these weapons– let’s think about the armaments the IOF invasion force no doubt had at its command!
What, no pictures of those items?
And then, not far away, is the nuclear facility in Dimona…
How much longer do Israelis think that westerners will continue getting taken in by all their extremely dishonest arguments? Do they think we’re all idiots?
Ray Takeyh, an Iranian-American expert on Iran at the Council on Foreign Relations, had an oped in today’s WaPo that makes the nonsensical claim that,
Takeyh argues in the piece that the U.S. can and should operate on the basis that there is no real “linkage” between the U.S.’s (and Israel’s) ability to maintain or escalate tensions at will with Iran, and Washington’s performance on Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking.
His argument is plagued with gross errors of fact as well as some extremely tortured “reasoning.”
It’s a very dangerous argument, because its effect is to urge Americans not to worry about any possibility of negative fallout from continued escalation– or even, apparently, a U.S. or Israeli military attack– against Iran.
Here is one of the more bizarre parts of his argument:
Um, Ray Takeyh, can you tell me what evidence you’re basing this claim on??
Why does anyone publish this guy’s bellophilic rantings? Why does anyone pay him a handsome salary to sit at the august-seeming “Council on Foreign Relations”?
Nonsense. Just nonsense. But as I said, dangerous nonsense.
Stephen Walt has been getting into a really important online debate with Robert Satloff, the head of the chronically Israelo-centric ‘Washington Institute for Near East Policy’ (WINEP) on the issue of “dual loyalty”– or, as Walt prefers to call it, a “conflict of interest.”
Walt started the debate with a post on his FP blog on April 2 noting a recent news story about Dennis Ross having possibly fallen out of favor a bit within the Obama administration and exploring whether allegations of Ross having “dual loyalty”– to Israel as well as the U.S.– have any merit.
He examined the issue carefully arguing that it’s probably far better to discuss the issue in terms of a conflict of interest, such as may occur in any area of public life– and which is frequently used as a reason to bar someone from involvement in making important judgments in areas in which they have a demonstrated personal interest.
He concluded:
Rob Satloff, the current head of WINEP, struck back– also on the FP wbsite– accusing Walt of “McCarthyism.”
And then on April 9, Walt replied, noting,
Actually, I think Ross was President of the JPPPI. But no matter.
Walt went on to note how unsuccessful the U.S. was during those many years in the 1990s when Ross was the head of Pres. Clinton’s Arab-Israeli negotiating team. (My, doesn’t it looks as if he’s been reading JWN all this time!)
He concluded with this:
Well, M.J. Rosenberg was quite right to call Walt’s takedown of Satloff “delicious”!
In that post, M.J. shares some of his own rich information base on WINEP’s history, too:
So finally, we can all start talking much more openly about the elephant in the room that is the conflict of interest that means that Ross and the rest of the old WINEP/AIPAC crew are not “neutral arbiters” on anything that involves Israel.
Well, as longtime JWN readers know, I’ve been saying that for a long time. But it’s good to have people like Walt and Rosenberg speaking out on the matter, too.
Another thing they don’t go into is the whole myth that Dennis Ross, as such, is actually any kind of an “expert” on anything in the Middle East except Israel. He isn’t. He’s never written a single text anywhere that demonstrates any understanding of Arab or Iranian or Turkish affairs.
Finally, with “nuclear terrorism: etc being the topic of the day in Washington this week, maybe it’s finally time to talk about that other big elephant in the room, Israel’s own huge nuclear arsenal.
A sterling line-up of Palestinian policy analysts has now launched Al-Shabaka (‘The Palestinian policy network’), which looks like an on-line think-tank that will be timely policy papers by these people and others.
The first three papers on the site are:
* How sovereign a state?, by Camille Mansour, who looks at the gaps that, if negotiations start under currently foreseeable circumstances, would still exist between “a ‘moderate’ Israeli position [and] a Palestinian stance guided by the objective of achieving a sovereign Palestinian state, and briefly explores whether these gaps might be bridgeable.
Mansour, a longtime professor of international relations at the Sorbonne and Birzeit University, writes, “The analysis reveals how unlikely it is that a truly sovereign Palestinian state can come about as a result of negotiations in the present circumstances.”
* The Dangers of Disaggregating Sovereignty by Diana Buttu, who was legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team from 2000 to 2005, including during the 2001 round of negotiations at Taba and Israel’s unilateral evacuation from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Buttu is openly critical of the way her former bosses in the PLO leadership conducted the negotiations in that period.
She writes:
* Finally, development economist Samer Abdelnour has a paper titled A New Model for Palestinian Development. The model he advocates has the name ‘Sustainable Local Enterprise Networks.’ A more old-fashioned name for it might be ‘Swaraj’, the name Gandhi gave to the economic model he established when the British were still in India, as a way to build continuing resilience among India’s people, their skill-levels, and the basis of the future independent Indian state.
Abdelnour also asks some good questions about whether the western-aid-dominated and quintessentially top-down model being pursued by Salam Fayyad can actually do what the Palestinians need.
So: a great start from Al-Shabaka. Keep it up, friends!
Tuesday, veteran WaPo columnist David Ignatius published a very insidery report to the effect that Obama is considering rolling out a specifically “Made in America” plan for a final peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
This would– as David noted– be quite an abrupt reversal of the painstakingly incrementalist, strongly ‘CBM’-focused approach pursued thus far by special peace envoy George Mitchell. (It may also signal that Mitchell himself might be on his way out?)
David’s story got picked up on the news side of yesterday’s WaPo, as well as the NYT. The writers of most of these stories made a point of quoting one of the former Natinal Security Advisers Obama has been meeting with as saying that “everyone knows” what the main shape of any possible two-state-based deal would be… Namely, something like the “Clinton parameters”, which was a “take it or leave it” peace plan presented by Pres. Bill Clinton to both sides in late December 2000, less than one month before the end of his presidency.
Last night, Daniel Levy had a piece on The Middle East Channel, in which he writes,
Unlike Daniel Levy, I have grave doubts whether having the U.S. President announce that a “frame of reference” is from here on out U.S. policy would do very much to push anything forward, at all.
Hulloo!! Hasn’t anyone noticed that the world has changed a lot since December 2000? The most salient changes are
Let’s be clear. This whole picture whereby the U.S. has come to be seen by far too many Americans (and some non-Americans) as “the only” power capable of brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace is really out-dated today. Successive administrations in Washington have worked vigorously, and very successfully, ever since the days of Henry Kissinger, to secure and then maintain American domination of the peace diplomacy. (And ways too many American pundits have grown up over the past 35 years with that being their only frame of reference. It just seems only ‘natural’ to them all!)
But it hasn’t worked.
Well, put it this way: It hasn’t worked in terms of securing a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. And it hasn’t worked for the Palestinians, who have seen the misery, dispossession, dispersal, and oppression in which they live continue or increase almost uninterruptedly throughout those 35 years. You might say it has worked, however for those participants in, and supporters of, the whole project of gaining ever greater Jewish colonial settlement in the land of Mandate Palestine, that is, the whole project of Zionism.
It certainly hasn’t worked for the real interests of the American people.
Clearly, it’s time for something new. Like taking the whole issue back to the U.N. Security Council where it rightly belongs, and where it should and can be addressed on the clear basis of international law and international legitimacy. No more of this unworkably complex business of redrawing loopy boundaries around illegal Israeli settlements and requiring millions of Palestinians to simply sign away their rights.
Levy’s suggestion of “deferring closure on all details of, for instance, refugees, Jerusalem’s Old City, and an end of claims” looks like a real non-starter. Right up there with the idea of a “shelf agreement” that Olmert and Livni came up with, during Annapolis. (Remember Annapolis?) Palestinians and Israelis, both peoples, desperately need to see an end to the conflict. And that can be won only by securing final status agreements on all these issues and thereby the settling and end of all outstanding claims.
Can any president in Washington be successful in heading up a process that secures these things? I doubt it. Back to the Security Council.