Haiti, Honduras, and "Obama Derangement Syndrome"

Obama Derangement Syndrome – A persistent delusion, impervious to contrary facts, evidence, and analysis, that the Obama Administration is a fundamental break from conventional US foreign and domestic policy; a common comorbidity is Clinton Amnesia, in which the bleak, violent reality of the Clinton Administration is obscured a rosy, nostalgic picture of Life Before Bush.

(Credit for the term itself goes to Al Giordano of The Field; the definition is mine)

The similarities between the coup currently underway in Honduras and the abortive coup in 2002 in Venezuela have led some, including Venezuela’s main public television network VTV, to ask whether the United States might somehow be involved in the events unfolding in Honduras. Given that Honduras has long served as a base for US subversion and terror in Central America, and that US corporations stand to lose quite a lot from the sorts of reforms the left-leaning nationalist Zelaya administration is likely to implement, it would seem that there is good cause to explore the question.

However, some otherwise sane observers appear to be so infatuated with Brand Obama that even suggesting the mere possibility of US involvement provokes inarticulate tirades. Such is the case of Al Giordano of the Narcosphere-hosted blog The Field. Giordano has referred to those who suggest the possibility of US government duplicity as “dishonest”, “woefully ignorant” “faux-leftists” who need to “Shut up and read the facts before [they] go around spreading falsehoods”.

Why does Giordano feel so confident in dismissing any suggestion of US involvement in a coup carried out by a military that it continues to arm and fund and supported by USAID-funded NGOs such as Paz y Democracia? Because of “Multiple statements from Obama, Secretary Clinton, Ambassador Llorens, the US Ambassadors to the OAS and the United Nations, ALL calling for the reinstatement of Zelaya and declaring that the US doesn't recognize the coup government.” QED.

Giordano – who describes himself and his colleagues as “doing all the heavy lifting to defeat this coup” (a statement that would no doubt delight those who are risking their lives in confrontations with the Honduran military) – has nothing but contempt for those who dare to question the public statements of one of the last governments in the Hemisphere to condemn the Honduran coup, which also happens to be the one government in the Hemisphere to refuse to withhold aid from the Honduran military.

“Sorry, you win no points from me with that kind of delusional and self-serving mode of thought. It's just about reinforcing your world view, isn't it? Facts be damned! You want to believe it, and therefore it is true!”

As I pointed out in the comment that led to that example of what passes for reasoned argument in Giordano’s view, it would not be the first time that the US has publicly condemned something while quietly supporting it. Indeed, this was the exact modus operandi employed by Bill Clinton when a coup by the US-founded and –funded Haitian National Guard deposed elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. While condemning the coup and making a show of trying to reach a mutually acceptable solution, Clinton violated an OAS-imposed embargo in order to continue supplying the National Guard as it slaughtered thousands of Haitian civilians. One of the principal perpetrators of the slaughter, Emmanuel Constant, went on to live under US protection in New York. Extradition requests were summarily dismissed.

This, however, is beyond the pale for Giordano, because “it doesn't help the people of Honduras fighting against this coup. Your opinion, if believed there, would give solace and embolden the coup plotters while demoralizing the civil resistance.”

There are two issues here. The first is an empirical question: is the US involved in the coup (in some way going beyond the continued provision of military aid)? This is a question of fact. It is entirely possible that, despite the history and despite the US interests at stake, the US was not directly involved in the coup itself (that the US arms and funds the Honduran military and provides funds to anti-Zelaya political organisations is uncontroversial). It is likely that we will not have certainty on this score unless and until the documents currently circulating in the State Department and the White House are declassified.

The second is more speculative in nature: What is the practical effect of assuming US involvement based on the available evidence? Contrary to Giordano’s assertion, the fact that a coup is associated with imperialismo yanqui has generally been a rallying point for resistance rather than an impediment. Furthermore, the upper echelons of the Honduran army – far from being swayed by the opinions of outside observers and activists – are in a position to know for sure whether, and to what extent, the US is involved in the coup.

Moreover, the question has enormous practical significance. If the US is involved in the coup, then international protest directed merely at Micheletti and his military retinue will hardly have any more effect than the OAS embargo against Haiti under Cédras – immediately violated by the US – did. In that case, protest would have to be directed squarely at Washington, calling for an immediate end to military aid for the Honduran army and funding for pro-coup groups (referred to in the Orwellian language of Washington as “democracy promotion” activities).

Perhaps sensing that he is coming up rather short in the area of facts (self-serving public statements by government officials do have a tendency to be wrong), Giordano posits that those who have doubts about the Obama Administration’s protestation of clean hands may be suffering from a mental disorder he terms “Obama Derangement Syndrome”.

The term does seem apt, even if not for the field of application Giordano imagines. It is nothing short of amazing to hear the lengths to which avowed progressives will go to defend their image of Obama as fundamentally new and different to everything in the history of US policy, just as many liberals cannot begin to entertain the notion that the antidemocratic cynicism and violence of US foreign policy predate not only George W. Bush’s administration, but his birth. Ultimately, Giordano’s argument boils down to the “idea” that we should believe what the Obama administration says, just as we’re told to believe that he means well on Iraq, health care, Afghanistan, and a host of other issues.

Because it is so illustrative, and to avoid rewriting things I’ve already written, I am including below my comment on The Field, followed by Giordano’s “response” and my reply (which appears not to have made it through moderation - this morning, 1 July 2009, it has shown up on the page):

My original comment:

When a group of generals in the (US-founded and -funded) Haitian army, led by Raoul Cédras, overthrew the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, US President Bill Clinton made all sorts of public gestures of condemnation towards the coup, while at the same time going so far as to violate an OAS embargo to ensure that the army would be supplied with fuel.

Meanwhile, Aristide remained an involuntary guest in the United States, where he remained until he finally agreed to implement the neoliberal economic program of the candidate Washington had supported in the election.

Obama & Co. have accurately described the coup as what it is, and have - albeit haltingly - condemned it. However, Obama has made no move to stop the military aid on which the Honduran army is dependent for its very existence. If military aid were cut off, the coup would grind to a halt. Given how complete the integration of the Honduran army into the US command structure is (indeed, the general that Zelaya fired was a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas), it is hard to believe that they would act without at least the expectation of US support, and even harder to believe that they would continue a coup in the face of US condemnation unless they were aware that it was not meant seriously. There are many such examples in the annals of US foreign policy (Haiti and Indonesia, to name just two prominent ones).

Zelaya is in a delicate position. Although the coup has been condemned almost universally, even by the US, he knows full well that he is dealing with an army that does not take his orders, and cannot be sure that his safety will be guaranteed when he returns to Honduras (particularly considering that Micheletti has ordered his arrest). In these circumstances, any denial by Zelaya that the US was involved in the coup (beyond having armed and trained the Honduran army, which is well documented) is just as likely to be an attempt to avoid angering the US. Plus, even assuming that it is sincere, there is no reason that he would even be aware that the US was behind it (the standard US coup strategy is to give the whole affair the best local facade possible).

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Al Giordano’s “response” (note that the stated moderation criteria for comments include coherency and an absence of gratuitous insults):

Elise - Duck! Here comes some "tough love." Nobody apparently has told you, so I will...
While I agree that nothing "rules it out," I get the sense that you and others have a great psychological investment in "ruling it in," even though you offer zero evidence (other than the circumstantial, "well, it happened in the past so therefore that must be the case now" leap of faith [note that the "leap of faith" is not swallowing official US government pronouncements, but recognising longstanding patterns in US policy].)

Excuse me. I was at the forefront of exposing the US involvement in the Venezuelan coup of 2002 and subsequent attempts. I'm not a "coup denier."

But I find it unimpressive that after three days of stupid dinosaur faux-leftists screeching at the top of their lungs to blame Obama for this coup that not one of you has come up with a single shred of evidence.

And now you say that Zelaya won't or can't say what you insist (without any fact to back you up) is the case?

Are you going to say that Chavez, too, is afraid of Washington? Because after some hours of initially being on the track you're on, he broke from that conspiracy theory, and now worries aloud that "May God protect Obama."

But you're SO INVESTED in NEEDING to believe it's true, that you believe it with no evidence. That's delusional.

And it doesn't help the people of Honduras fighting against this coup. Your opinion, if believed there, would give solace and embolden the coup plotters while demoralizing the civil resistance. But you don't think about that, do you? You just want to believe that Latin Americans aren't capable of doing anything - good or bad - unless big Uncle Sam holds their hand and does it for them [says the man who believes he, and not the Hondurans risking their lives in confrontations with the military, is "doing all the heavy lifting]!

Sor ry, you win no points from me [I hadn't realised it was about "points".] with that kind of delusional and self-serving mode of thought. It's just about reinforcing your world view, isn't it? Facts be damned! You want to believe it, and therefore it is true!

I feel sorry for you. Really.

Meanwhile, we're out here 24 hours a day exposing the coup and getting the facts out there to reverse it. While you're still trying to make claims about who started it. I'll point out that all of Latin America is doing what we're doing, not what you're doing... if "doing" is a word that fits your verbose excuses for non-action on your part.

I might add…

That I posted a series of important updates about the coup today in Honduras. The post was not about what happened outside of Honduras. It was about what happened inside Honduras, breaking the media blockade, to boot.

And what do our three first commenters want to talk about?

Each one of them wanted to instruct me in one form or another that "Obama is the coup plotter."

None of them are listening to the people on the ground in Honduras. So, okay, maybe they don't speak Spanish. But I do, and I'm here translating it for them.

But they're not really interested in what is going on in Honduras unless it can show US involvement in a coup!

I talked about Chavez Derangement Syndrome in the previous post to this one.

Maybe my next should be on Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Two sides of the same coin!

My (apparently suppressed - now published) reply:

I don't see any particular need to resort to ad hominem. My point was merely that the US has provided decisive support to coups and atrocities that the US government has publicly condemned. The idea that a public condemnation of a coup by the US makes it impossible (or even improbable) that the US might be supporting a coup that happens to be very much in its interests is simply not tenable.

It's also worth keeping in mind the timing of the Obama Administration's condemnation. Initially, the only statements forthcoming from Washington were equivocal calls to respect the "democratic process" without any explicit condemnation of Zelaya's ouster. In the meantime, not only the ALBA countries, but the entire hemisphere - including the few remaining countries that don't regularly enrage the US government - unanimously condemned the coup in no uncertain terms.

Only once it was clear that the US was virtually alone in failing to issue an unequivocal condemnation did we start to hear these clear words coming from the Administration.

Does that mean that the US is definitely behind it? No, of course not. There are plenty of other possible explanations for the initial fencesitting (though I have yet to hear anyone propose one). But the suggestion that the Obama Administration, which has explicitly stated that it will continue providing military aid to the Honduran army, might be less than 100% candid, is certainly not so absurd as to warrant personal attacks against anyone who raises the question.

Thus far, your only response to the suggestion of US involvement is that US officials (eventually) made public statements condemning the coup. I do not seem to be the only one who thinks that the analysis should not end there.

Perhaps I should add that I am a native speaker of Spanish and have contact with people throughout Central America, including in Honduras, none of whom seems to consider the issue as clear cut as you seem to.

Iran and Honduras

It is hard not to be impressed by the outpouring of international online support for the people who have been braving massive state violence to protest against – now admitted – electoral fraud in Iran. The sincerity of the international supporters of the reform movement in Iran appears to me beyond doubt in most cases. Equally beyond doubt is the sheer cynicism of politicians in the US, Europe, and Israel, who now express their solidarity for the Iranian protestors despite the fact that, had they already been successful in their efforts to drum up support for another war of aggression against Iran, many of those protestors would be dead now. It also bears mentioning that these same governments not only uttered not one word of protest when the Shah’s army started opening fire on Iranian demonstrators in the 1970s – they continued to send money and weapons to their chosen dictator.

What the supporters of the Iranian demonstrators do not seem to realize, however, is that they have not one iota of influence over the actions of the Iranian government. Whatever else one can say about Iran’s current government, it is not beholden to the West (which, from the point of view of the US government, is precisely the problem). Even if the entire population of the United States and Europe took to the streets in their respective countries calling for an end to the violence against the demonstrators in Iran, the only likely reaction on the part of the Iranian government would be to increase the repression in order to get the flow of information back under control.

This stands in remarkable contrast to the case of Honduras. Two days ago, the elected president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was awakened by armed soldiers in his presidential residence and abducted, and flown to Costa Rica. In blatant violation of the Honduran constitution, which prescribes a specific order of succession, Zelaya’s political rival, president of the Honduran legislature Roberto Micheletti usurped Zelaya’s office and was sworn in as president. The notorious Honduran military has declared a curfew, prohibited the transmission of international cable TV stations, and has abducted several foreign diplomats in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. This coup d’état has been almost unanimously condemned in the hemisphere, with only the US seeking refuge in ambiguity.

There are some key similarities between the cases of Honduras and Iran. In Honduras, as in Iran, an election is at the centre; the coup appears primarily intended to prevent a non-binding consultative referendum on the convocation of a new constitutional convention (asamblea constituyente). In Honduras, as in Iran, the immunity of foreign diplomats has been flagrantly violated. In Honduras, as in Iran, those in power have imposed censorship on all independent media (some of the more powerful media outlets, as in 2002 in Venezuela, have been actively involved in the coup). In Honduras, as in Iran, people have taken to the streets and are, even now, facing off with an army that has been dispatched to shoot at its own people. The Honduran coup, like the Iranian electoral fraud and repression, has been internationally condemned.

That is where the similarity ends. Honduras, unlike Iran, was virtually a US dependency until very recently. Throughout the 1980s, the de facto ruler of Honduras was US ambassador John Negroponte, referred to in Honduras as “Proconsul” (Negroponte later went on to assume the same function in occupied Iraq). It is during this period that the current Honduran constitution, which Zelaya ultimately seeks to amend, was adopted. A minuscule domestic oligarchy, together with the US business interests that control Honduras’ natural resources, has long ruled over a crushingly poor majority. The Honduran army, which is notorious for its brutal repression of the Honduran poor, is dependent on US military aid for its weapons and a substantial part of its budget.

The events in Honduras follow a pattern that is quite familiar in Latin America. A reformist government seeking to end oligarchic rule and dependence on the United States is elected with the support of the poor majority. The US cuts off all aid apart from military aid and funding for political front organisations (e.g., the pro-coup NGO Paz y Democracia in Honduras). The military, using whatever pretext happens to be available, overthrows the elected government and restores the oligarchy and US corporations to power. The US either avoids making any direct pronouncement on the coup or rhetorically condemns it without cutting off, or even reducing, the flow of US weapons that made the coup possible. We have seen variations on this theme in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and, most recently, Venezuela (where the US-backed coup was defeated by a popular uprising within 48 hours). The list would be much longer if we were to include the Asian and African countries that have experienced similar US “democracy promotion” efforts.

Thus, the evidence is overwhelming that the US is behind the coup in Honduras. This means that, unlike in the case of Iran, there is some possibility that domestic and international protest could be effective. The coup would collapse almost immediately without the weapons and money provided by the United States. As a matter of consistency and of the elementary moral principle that protest should be directed toward places where it is likely to do some good, it would seem that the outcry against the coup in Honduras should be equal, if not greater, than the international protests against electoral fraud and repression in Iran. Why, then, is Iran a “trending topic” on Twitter, while Honduras is not?

Iran is an official enemy in the US and Europe. Accordingly, there is no difficulty getting negative portrayals of the country and its government through the filters of the dominant media outlets. Indeed, as the impassioned op-eds about the grave danger of Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program have demonstrated, one need not even bother with the facts as long as one is condemning the Great Satan. Thus, Western governments and mainstream media have done an impressive job of getting the word out and keeping their populations focused on the events in Iran, just as they would if the same thing were happening in any other official enemy state. In the case of Honduras, on the other hand, sustained reporting and exposure are not in the interest of either the US and allied governments or the corporate media. Indeed, it would cost US business interests millions, if not more, if the coup in Honduras were to fail and the elected government restored to power.

This is not to say that the international online supporters of the reform movement in Iran are as hypocritical and cynical as the governments of the US and Western Europe. It appears clear that their concern for democracy and their outrage at the repressive tactics of the Iranian government are sincere. However, it will be up to them to prove that this is the case by directing at least some of their energies toward stopping an affront to democracy that they can actually influence.

For a detailed discussion of the Honduran coup and its background, see:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21817
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21821
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21816

In Spanish:
http://hablahonduras.com/
http://jbcs.blogspot.com/2009/06/adolfo-perez-esquivel-sobre-honduras.html
http://alainet.org/active/31280&lang=es
http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/95351/primeras-lecciones-golpe-estado-honduras

On Crises, Bailouts, and Prosperity

In order to understand what is meant when élites speak of a “crisis”, the rational observer will naturally ask a few basic questions. A first enquiry would concern the situation before the current crisis: what was happening in society before the crisis was declared? By examining the status quo ante, we can gain valuable insight into what does and does not constitute a “crisis” in the minds of ruling élites. Another, related, question concerns the measures proposed and taken by government to respond to the crisis: what is done directly, and what is done indirectly? What is guaranteed, and what is left to chance? It seems entirely reasonable to assume that those things considered by a person or institution to be of crucial importance are the ones least likely to be treated as a hoped-for byproduct of that person’s or institution’s actions. One does not generally leave one’s true priorities up to chance. Further, it is instructive to ask who the principal beneficiaries of the measures taken are, and at whose expense they are taken. The fact that these questions are at best peripheral to the public debate, if they are asked at all, is instructive in and of itself.

The “Non-Crisis”

The years preceding the current crisis were characterised by two key features: increasing poverty, unemployment, and underemployment with stagnating or declining real wages, and sharp cuts in social benefits on the one side, and ever-increasing record profits and massive concentration of wealth on the other. Over 30 million Americans suffered from hunger, 12 million children were so undernourished as to severely impair their physical and mental development, 49 million Americans lacked health insurance coverage, those who did have insurance could only be sure that their “insurers” would spare no expense to deny them necessary treatment, while ever more Americans were forced to depend on various forms of predatory lending to survive. Meanwhile, corporations such as AIG benefited from the dismantlement of the regulatory framework in the form of steadily increasing profits. Economists estimate that between 1980 and 2005, approximately 20 trillion dollars were redistributed upward to the top 10% of the population by income.

This, it bears repeating, was not a “crisis”. This is what was called “prosperity”.

The “crisis” did not begin until the speculation bubble, built as it was on poorly understood, “exotic financial instruments” backed by virtually nothing, predictably popped, causing “record losses” for those who had been celebrating “record profits” for over a decade earlier.

Crisis Management

Based on the above analysis of what is and is not a “crisis” for policymakers, it is not hard to predict the official response to the current crisis. Indeed, the engineers of the crisis (including some, such as Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, and Timothy Geithner, who went on to become the US government's crisis managers-in-chief) were so certain of the governmental response – which has been repeated many times over the past several decades – that they took risks that would otherwise have been suicidal.

Given that the “crisis” lies not in the impoverishment of the population but in the entirely predictable consequences for the financial sector of its irresponsible (and highly profitable) conduct, the response to the crisis should come as no surprise. The immediate response has, predictably, been to pump trillions of dollars, with no conditions and no oversight, into the pockets of those largely responsible for the crisis. While the public justification for these infusions of cash has been the need to restart the flow of credit, there is no such requirement attached to the funds. While this measure has led to jubilation on the stock market, it has not – surprise, surprise – led to any significant increase in the availability of credit. While the recipients of the bailout funds have generally refused to account for their use – understandably, as they are not required to do so – it has become clear that they have generally found other places to spend their free tax money, ranging from bonuses, dividends, and mergers and acquisitions to lobbying efforts to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, which, if passed, would be a first step toward restoring workers’ right to organise.

While one might be moved to ask how badly these companies could possibly be doing if they can afford to spend their public assistance on such things, the media and government have dedicated their energies to concentrating public attention and outrage on the executive bonuses, which make out a minuscule portion of the funds, while the Treasury Department woos investors with the offer to buy up “toxic assets” jointly with hedge funds, while guaranteeing government absorption of any losses incurred. The profitability of the speculative “investment” banks that caused the crisis, then, cannot be left up to chance.

Though the focus of the crisis management might suggest otherwise, the majority of the population has problems of its own, to which the financial sector has added rapidly increasing homelessness and unemployment. This is not to say that the problem has been entirely ignored in Washington, of course, where the Obama administration intends to spend up to $75 billion – less than half of what was paid out to AIG alone (so far!) – to help those of the millions of homeowners facing homelessness who the administration feels have bought their homes in a responsible fashion. Similarly, the administration is acting to protect US auto executives from early retirement by forcing auto industry workers – one of the few groups of workers to have even marginally effective union representation – to accept substantial cuts in pay and contribution-based health care and retirement benefits. It is, of course, only fair that those enjoying continued prosperity should make sacrifices to aid those in crisis.

The hierarchy of bailouts is telling. The speculators who are responsible for the crisis receive taxpayer funds unconditionally and without limitation. When the funds run out, as they tend to do rather quickly, they can always get more. The government protects them from the risks inherent in the highly profitable “toxic assets” they created. The only apparent criterion for receiving these funds is that recipients must be partially at fault for the crisis. When auto executives need assistance, the government is rather less forthcoming. The major auto companies must first submit a plan for the use of the government funds, and be accountable for their proper use. Of course, this is not too onerous a burden for the auto executives, as the “recovery plan” required imposes the bulk of the burdens on the auto workers (the only people whose pay and benefits have been cut as a result of this crisis). Though this is certainly not as good a deal as was offered to the principal architects of the crisis, it isn’t all that bad, either. All that is required is a plan for the future that imposes the burdens squarely on the workers.

For the millions of homeowners facing homelessness due to fraudulent loans offered by shady subsidiaries of “reputable” financial institutions, on the other hand, the situation is rather less rosy. In order to get a piece of the much smaller pie theoretically available to them, homeowners must prove – how is anyone’s guess – that they were not irresponsible in buying their homes. While it may seem a bit odd at first glance to impose such a condition on the main victims of the crisis and not on the architects of the crisis, it actually makes perfect sense: no financial institution or investment banker could possibly meet the burden imposed on homeowners by the Obama administration. If a homeowner facing foreclosure cannot satisfy the government that her past conduct was responsible, her only recourse is to find space in America’s growing tent cities. No plan for the future use of government funds is good enough.

As harsh as the administration’s treatment of soon-to-be-former homeowners is, the rest of the population can expect even less. At best, the Obama administration’s stimulus package will replace the underpaid, non-union, and generally shitty jobs they lost with new underpaid, non-union, generally shitty jobs. For those lucky enough to get one. As much as the Obama campaign talked about passing the Employee Free Choice Act, the Obama administration has been at pains to make it clear that EFCA is not currently on the agenda. This means that union organisation, one of the few effective ways in which workers can improve their wages and working conditions, will remain beyond the reach of most of the population. Similarly, the millions (insured and uninsured) nearing bankruptcy under the weight of health care expenses, can be sure that the one reform that they almost unanimously demand – single-payer health care – is, in the words of one Obama spokesperson, “off the table”. Nor, in our current era of “Billion? Trillion? Who’s counting anymore?” is the subject of student loan and consumer debt forgiveness, which would substantially increase the buying power of the average American and provide a powerful demand-based stimulus to the economy, even mentioned.

To put it in the language of our Orwellian times, then, most Americans will continue to experience unabated prosperity, undisturbed by government interference.

If we were to assume that the crisis consisted of something other than a mere predictable drop in profitability on the part of an industry that produces nothing but profits for itself, a completely different crisis management strategy would emerge. The first priority would be to ensure that no one loses their home or income, or has their utilities shut off, as a result of the conduct of unaccountable institutions that have been allowed to gain control of the economy. FDR did this in the 1930s simply by decreeing a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions, and utility shutoffs. The second priority would be to conduct a massive investigation into the activities that led to this mess, including mortgage-trail audits of all mortgages involved and a full-scale SEC audit of the institutions involved, steps that have thus far been assiduously avoided by the Bush and Obama administrations. Simultaneously, the state could acquire controlling shares in the relevant institutions and use those controlling shares to save the viable and useful segments of the institutions (if any), while letting the remainder go bankrupt (a tactic that would also neatly resolve the bonus issue). Once the situation has been stabilised, the viable portions of the banks could be broken down into small, manageable, locally accountable units, and regulations could be (re-)enacted to ensure that no financial institution ever becomes “too big to fail”.

It all depends on what one considers a crisis.

"An Open Letter To A Citizen Of Gaza : I Am the Soldier Who Slept In Your Home " (Parody)

Today, I happened upon this gem, which I sincerely hope is not what it purports to be. In it, the author, an IDF soldier who, by his own admission, used the home of a Gazan civilian as a military position, brings new meaning to the phrase "adding insult to injury". This is not, as one might hope, an apology for the appalling state in which the attacking Israeli army left the civilian homes it requisitioned (racist graffiti and other vandalism are the norm), but rather a truly nauseating exercise in self-pity and self-righteousness, in which this (probably) teenage soldier presumes to lecture an entire people about proper behaviour and who their "real enemy" is. After barely managing to prevent every meal I have eaten in the past month from coming up at once, I wrote this:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

Perhaps you don’t remember me. I’m the nice young man who kicked down your bedroom door and ordered you to “Get the fuck outta here!”, but faces are hard to remember, I understand, and you seemed much more interested in the barrel of my Galil assault rifle. You Arabs and your weapons fetish!

I thought you might not remember me, so I decided during my off hours to leave you a little memento, as a contribution to understanding between my innocent, noble people, and your almost human people. I really mean that, too! You really are just THIS close to humanity. To the left of the living room window that I expanded for you, I drew a little self-portrait, just so you’d remember me. It’s the one right over the line saying “Arabs into the ovens!” , the stick figure taking a shit on a Palestinian flag. I noticed that you have – or should I say, had – a very nice collection of paintings hanging on your wall. I love art, too! It’s so nice to know that we can connect on these little things.

I just want you to know that I really don’t have anything personal against you people. I think that with a little evolution and a little culling of the herd, you might even be acceptable for continued existence on Earth! My CO always tells me I’m a “rosy-eyed optimist”, but I don’t think that “subhuman” means “subhuman forever”. But I really can’t get past the great resentment I feel at having had to blow up that school where those people were taking refuge. If only you loved your children as much as you hate ours…or whatever it was that Golda Meir once said.

I know, I know: you’re thinking “If you’re such a great guy, why did you shit all over my living room?” How typical of you people not to notice that I put it all together in a neat pile and even put a little piece of paper over it saying “WATCH YOUR STEP”! And in case that isn’t enough to make you appreciate the agony I went through during our latest heart-wrenching exercise of our right to self-defence, I just want you to know that I didn’t shoot your cat for fun. I love cats. No, I shot it out of peer pressure. The guys and I were bored one afternoon when we were almost certain there wasn’t another living being left in your neighbourhood, and they dared me to do it. It seems sad now, I know, but just think of all the cats that have now been freed of their previous families. You’ll find a new one in no time!

I like to think that I have a special sort of empathy for your people. My great-grandfather was in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Of course, the situation is totally different. His desire to resist being slaughtered made him a hero, while yours makes you terrorists.

Ahh, I would love to just muse with you on the ironies of history someday, maybe over coffee and that shisha crap you Arabs like so much, but I have a feeling you won’t accept my olive branch. In fact, I have a distinct feeling that right now you’re thinking “Who does this inarticulate teenager think he is lecturing someone 30 years his senior on good behaviour and gratitude?”

But let’s face it: if you people had gone just a little bit farther away back in 1948 and 1967, we wouldn’t be having all these troubles. We’d have left you alone long ago if you’d just left. You had the chance to be free of our “oppression” just by running as far as you possibly could. You people really never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity! But since you’re here, we’ve felt a need to care for you. You seemed to be developing an obesity problem in Gaza (3 out of 5 adults with a triple-digit weight in pounds!), so we put you on a diet. When your complete lack of self-control caused you to start digging tunnels to smuggle things in that we were keeping away from you in your best interest, we helped you understand that that was the wrong thing to do. And what did you do in response? You lobbed makeshift explosives at areas near where our people lived! The nerve of you people, the gall! If you’re going to lob explosives at us, make sure the fucking things are name-brand and actually work! Anything less is an insult. All we want is peace and to be rid of you peace, and we will be happy to make peace with you the minute your culture evolves to the point where you are capable of it.

Please, try to keep a sense of proportion in your indignity. You may have lost over 1,300 friends, family members, and neighbours because of us, but I lost my INNOCENCE because of you!

Sincerely,

Anonymous soldier who spent an agonising week in your flat.

PS. I really didn’t enjoy leaving your refrigerator open, dropping a lit cigarette on that lovely rug you had, tearing holes in every cushion and pillow in your house, and leaving several pairs of dirty underwear on your dinner table. It was just the necessity of war. I will be in therapy for years over the things I was honour- and duty-bound to do to you, your family, and your people. So often, I wished I could just disappear from the whole thing. But then a pedestrian would come into my sights, and I would wipe away a tear and blow his head off. If you only knew how painful my lot in life is!

Israeli Super-Emetics, Part II

If last week’s “pro-Israel” demonstration was not a powerful enough demonstration of Israel’s latest-generation emetics, Elizabeth Wurtzel has graced the pages of Britain’s Guardian newspaper with an embarrassing display guaranteed to propel your most recent meal out of you at speeds approaching the sound barrier.

It appears that the Guardian, which once appeared to be a quality paper – has deemed it appropriate to offset the attack on the defenceless civilian population of Gaza with one of the more mawkish expressions of American Jewish self-pity in our young millennium.

The headline to Wurtzel’s piece reads: “It is not Israel's action, but the vitriolic reaction to it that has been disproportionate. There's only one explanation: antisemitism [sic]”. Certainly, writers do not always have the last word on the headlines that accompany their work, so it would be unfair to assume that Wurtzel herself feels that this is an accurate summary of either the situation or of her piece (or, come to that, that she is unable to spell anti-Semitism correctly). It is neither. Wurtzel’s piece is long on emoting, but short on anything else, and does not even attempt to show that the worldwide response to Israel’s attack on Gaza is due to anti-Semitism.

Her argument, to the extent that one is discernable, is as follows: It is “artificial” to distinguish between opposition to Zionism and anti-Semitism:

[W]hen there is more than one Jewish state, the world's hatred of Israel might become no different from its exasperation with any other country, but since Israel is the only homeland, and really it is nothing more than six million Jews living together in an area the size of New Jersey, I can't pretend that the problem with Israel is that it's a poorly located country that happens to be at odds with its neighbours and only coincidentally happens to be Jewish. The trouble with Israel is the trouble with Jews. (emphasis supplied)

Never mind that Zionism, as an ideology, has never garnered unanimous Jewish support (which would seem to me a reasonable prerequisite for equating Zionism with Jewry). Never mind that one does not even need to be anti-Zionist to oppose the idea of a Jewish state (a matter that remains contentious amongst the various political tendencies that make up what we know collectively as Zionism). Never mind that (as Wurtzel herself points out later on) it is in fact entirely possible to be Jewish and Zionist and be utterly disgusted with Israel’s policies toward the indigenous Palestinian population. Never mind that Israel is indeed more than “six million Jews living together in an area the size of New Jersey” – 20% more, to be precise, as fully one fifth of Israel’s citizens are not Jewish. Israel is the only state that defines itself as Jewish, and thus “the trouble with Israel is the trouble with Jews”. QED.

Iceland is the only Icelandic state. I think Iceland’s policy of requiring naturalised Icelandic citizens to adopt Icelandic names is absurd. Therefore, I must have a problem with the entire Icelandic people, rather than merely with a law made by people claiming to represent them.

Lest one think this novel idiocy, it is worth recalling that Wurtzel is essentially reiterating the positions taken by both Hitler and Stalin. (1) There is no distinction between the people and the state, (2) National Socialism/Stalinist “Communism” is the national will of the people, as expressed by the policy of the state, (3) THEREFORE, criticism of Nazi/Stalinist policies is an attack on the people. Dr. Freisler would approve.

Wurtzel, it turns out, is “profoundly uncomfortable”. Any attempt to discuss the issue of Israel with anyone “rightminded (and left-leaning)”, we are told, lays bare “the purest antisemitism [sic] since the Nazi era”. Instead of providing examples of such interactions, she goes on to lament that comparisons of Israeli policy with (often strikingly similar) Nazi policies are “de rigueur” (she might add that they are quite commonplace in Israel, particularly amongst proponents of those very Israeli policies).

She is also quite upset that Europeans see “the experience of the Palestinians as a form of ethnic cleansing”. She might have added that the Europeans might have got the idea that the Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed from the fact that leading Israeli historians and policymakers throughout the political spectrum say so quite openly, with Benny Morris, for example, lamenting only that the ethnic cleansing was not seen through to the end.

“Hamas and Hezbollah”, she continues, shunning any supporting evidence, “are thought by the French and British to be social welfare organisations, and Israel is viewed as a terrorist state.” While it would be nice to see some actual figures on how many of “the French” and “the British” hold these views, it is worth noting that those who do see Hamas and Hezbollah as social welfare organisations likely do so because both Hamas and Hezbollah are known for providing schools, sanitation, health care, social assistance, nursing homes, and other much needed social services. Nor would she need to go as far as Europe to hear people say that Israel is a terrorist state. Thomas Friedman just recently praised Israel for using what constitute terrorist tactics under the standard legal definitions (attacks directed at the civilian population in order to achieve political goals). If a terrorist state is a state that routinely engages in terrorism (as defined by applicable law), then Israel certainly qualifies, and the assault on the people of Gaza is a perfect example.

Credulity is further stretched by her bizarre pronouncement that “Here, we honor the linguistic discoveries of Noam Chomsky and otherwise experience him as a quaintly brilliant crank, but in the bookstores in London there are entire sections devoted to his political thought – and he is read as if the distinctions between Leninist and Trotskyite philosophy had genuine consequence in today's world.” There are two possible explanations. Either she has never read Chomsky’s work, and is too lazy to read even a synopsis of one or two of his recent works, in which case she is at best unqualified to comment, or, she is sufficiently familiar with Chomsky’s work to know that most of it concerns US foreign policy and the US corporate media and intellectual culture, with scarcely a single word devoted to distinguishing between Leninism and Trotskyism, in which case she is a liar. In any case, it is interesting to note that she considers political ideologies that were at the centre of much of the history of the twentieth century to be of no contemporary interest.

For those who remain only mildly queasy after the shameful display Wurtzel has treated us to thus far, she decides to shift into high-gear, transitioning seamlessly from American Jewish self-pity to American Jewish self-adulation:

But I think it is this very fact – my attempt to understand both sides – that disturbs me the most. Because trying to see all sides, such an instinct is particularly Jewish. The most vehement critics of Israel and champions of the Palestinians – hello, Professor Chomsky; greetings, Norman Finkelstein – are always Jews: we are always trying in our even, level, thoughtful way to see reason in the behaviour of those who are lobbing rocket grenades at us. As a people, we are hopeless Talmudists, we examine all the arguments and try to sort out an answer. What is both strange and difficult for Jews to watch in the case of Israel is that, as a nation surrounded by enemies, it does not make such calculations; it does not have the luxury of rationality that is eventually irrational. Israel fights back, which is very much at odds with the Jewish instinct to discuss and deconstruct everything until action itself seems senseless. Israel, hell-bent on survival, has learned to shoot first – or, at least, second – and blow away the consequences. Whereas it actually hurts my feelings when someone says something nasty about Israel, or even the United States, for Israelis, this is just the way of the world: they probably manufacture their flags to be flammable. (emphasis supplied)

One might note that there is little evidence in Wurtzel’s piece of any “attempt to understand both sides”, and that, after her shamefully dishonest non-treatment of the assault on Gaza, she attempts to take credit for Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, one of whom she has already completely misrepresented, and both of whom have written things that she has already called “the purest form of antisemitism [sic] since the Nazi era”. One might also note that Israel’s survival has not been in question for decades. The only true danger to Israel’s survival is the lethal combination of Israeli militarism and U.S. enablement. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have been pushed ever closer to the brink of subsistence, in hopes that they might realize, in the words of Moshe Dayan, that “we have no solution. You will live like dogs, and those who wish to leave, can leave.” We are no longer, as the old Jewish partisan song goes, a volk zwischn falendige wend (a people standing between walls caving in); the Palestinians are.

I recently mused that the most anti-Semitic slogan in the world today would have to be “Israel is the state of the Jewish people”. Wurtzel’s piece, which seeks to erode justifiable distinctions between our people and those who commit crimes in our name, is a strong runner-up.

Don't be ashamed you're Jewish - Be ashamed THEY are!

Concert pianist Anton Kuerti recently said that “Israel’s behaviour makes me ashamed of being a Jew.”

I personally don’t think much of being proud (or, come to that, ashamed) of being something that one is by birth. I am neither proud nor ashamed of being Jewish or a U.S. citizen; neither fact is due to any achievement or failure of my own. Both are merely accidents of birth.

But Kuerti’s comment reminded me of an oft-quoted line from Wallace Markfield’s novel You Could Live if They Let You: “Never, never, never be ashamed you’re Jewish, because it’s enough if I’m ashamed you’re Jewish.” The behaviour – which I personally had as little to do with as with the fact of my being Jewish – does not make me ashamed that I am Jewish; it does, however, make me ashamed, or perhaps rather disgusted, that I share that background with the likes of Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Alan Dershowitz, Joe Lieberman, Thomas Friedman, and the rest of Israel’s criminals and their apologists in the media and academia.

It is hard to escape the fact that we Jews - though certainly not only us - are in some pretty unenviable company. We’re reminded of it every time we turn on the TV to see ourselves represented by yet another another thug (Peres, Olmert, Livni, Sharon, Kissinger), sycophant (Friedman), goniff (Madoff), liar (Foxman), or all-round schmuck (Dershowitz, Lieberman). Let’s admit – even if it’s just to ourselves – that it is not a pretty sight. In fact, it’s damned depressing to see some of the most prominent products of the culture that once brought forth (to name just a few) Viktor Frankl, Hannah Arendt, Kurt Tucholsky, Heinrich Heine, Albert Einstein, Maimonides, and Noam Chomsky (even if - alas! – it will take some of us another fifty years to realise why he belongs on the list). Anyone wishing to theorise about vast anti-Semitic conspiracies could have a field day just looking at the people who claim to speak for us all!

And yet, for the most part, we put up with being represented by these people. Some of us even go so far as to jump down the throat of anyone who criticises them even mildly. The rest of us hear the likes of Foxman and Dershowitz and the Israeli government claiming to be our representatives – even going so far as to claim occasionally that it is anti-Semitic to distinguish between us and our purported representatives – and wonder why we always end up being held responsible for what Israel and our other avowed representatives say and do.

In response to criticisms that his many brilliant essays on the German judiciary took the worst judges as representative of the entire group, the Weimar-era essayist and satirist Kurt Tucholsky had the following to say:

My work does not say that the basest member of a group is its representative; he is no more a representative of the group than the most elevated member that the gentlemen would want to have mentioned to their credit. I said that the basest member is characteristic for the standard of a group: the member that the group just barely tolerates. For example:

If a German physician rapes an under-age female patient, and these facts and the perpetrator’s criminal liability are proven beyond doubt, the entire medical profession will distance itself from the man. Even more – they will remove him from their ranks. Thus, the group cannot be judged based on this member. The group cannot help that he was once one of them. They do not tolerate him, they throw him out.

If a German judge takes a bribe, the group will react immediately – all members will want the man kicked out; the ethics hearing would be a mere formality in this case. Thus, the judge who takes bribes is not a prototype of the German judge.

[…]

And as long as the group of judges do not demonstrate against this type of judge, even if it is merely in the form of serious opposition, as long „the“ judiciary, out of a false sense of collegiality, takes the side of the overrated expert against the “layman” – I will continue to call a German judge a German judge. And I would like that to be understood in the way that a proletarian would understand it – remembering the reports of the Nazi trials [here: trials of Nazis in the 20s and early 30s for political murders and coup attempts, for which they were either acquitted or received absurdly lenient sentences] – when he stands before these judges.

Put differently, as long as members of a group do not clearly shun fellow group members for engaging in a particular sort of conduct, it is reasonable for a person standing on the outside to assume that the group as a whole condones - or, at the very least, does not condemn - that conduct. Unless followed by immediate and public condemnation, a Palestinian might reasonably assume, for example, that Alan Dershowitz is speaking for us all when he calls the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians "a fifth-rate moral issue", or that Tzipi Livni speaks with our overall approval when she threatens Palestinian citizens of Israel with expulsion ("You should seek your future elsewhere."). Nor can the hypothetical Palestinian be blamed for assuming group approval when he sees Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League launch a campaign on behalf of the Turkish government to deny the Armenian genocide, eliciting no condemnation (or even notice). Unless we truly wish such behaviour to be taken as representative of our community, we must act immediately to make it clear that the offending party is acting on his or her own and does not speak for us.

Recent events suggest that at least some of us have begun taking Tucholsky’s words to heart. We are not eternally bound and indebted to the Israeli government and its apologists, nor should we, in a false sense of “ethnic solidarity”, feel obliged to waste our breath defending the indefensible. When we defend – or deny – Israeli crimes and Palestinian suffering, we are doing ourselves no favours. Ultimately, we are merely telling the world that this – be it the assault on the defenceless population of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the use of torture, the various attacks on Lebanon and other countries – is the sort of behaviour we tolerate in members of our community. By defending such crimes, we are in reality telling the world that they meet our minimum standards of acceptable conduct.

Open repudiation of the indefensible conduct of our avowed representatives is the only way to avoid being held personally responsible for it. It is also the only way that justice – without which any “peace” is merely violence by other means – will ever be achieved in the Middle East.

"Pro-"Israel demonstrators demonstrate the latest weapon in the Israeli arsenal - the ability to cause vomiting on command

Jewish demonstrators in New York at a rally in favour of Israel’s eventual self-destruction (what is known, absurdly, as the “pro-Israel” camp) were interviewed for today’s edition of Democracy Now by journalist Max Blumenthal. The views expressed by the demonstrators are nothing short of nauseating.

In my Jewish education as a child, I remember hearing quite a bit about the values held dear by Jewish tradition, among them justice (tsedek) and acts of kindness (gemilut hasadim). As far as I can recall, mindless, proto-fascist jingoism was not amongst them. Alas, this latter value was quite heavily on display at this week’s “pro-Israel” demonstration, which was awash in bluster about Israel’s (US-provided) arsenal and considered declarations of principle such as “Jews kick butt”.

If this had been the only view expressed by the demonstrators, dayenu. Sadly, there was more. One woman described Palestinians as a “cancer” to be excised, while another declared that “the fighting must go on until we’ve wiped them all out.” Others expressed agreement with these re-cast Nazi slogans; if any of the participants dissented, they kept quiet about it. Clearly, "Never Again" means different things to different people.

Another, younger, demonstrator opined that we are witnessing a “repeat of the Holocaust” (I should note, for clarity’s sake, that she was calling the actions of the Palestinians a new holocaust). While I have studied the Nazi holocaust in great detail, I seem to have missed the part where the ZOB fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto were armed with white phosphorus, cluster bombs, Apache attack helicopters, tanks, and F-16 fighters and the SS fought desperately with nothing but ineffectual improvised explosive devices. I’m sure the likes of David Irving and Ernst Zündel will happily sign on to such a declaration.

Our young friend was not given pause, in her invocation of the Nazi holocaust, by the openly genocidal rantings of her comrades. The capacity to recognise irony, it would seem, is not equally distributed throughout the population.

If this is a remake of the Nazi holocaust, it would seem that Central Casting has decided to switch up the roles a bit.

Fortunately, these are no longer the only Jewish voices being heard on the matter. There appears to be a rebellion of sorts afoot in the Jewish community in Israel and throughout the world. Statements are appearing on almost a daily basis, from the US to South Africa, from Jews who are no longer willing to let “Jewish” organisations that have become little more than Israeli PR agencies create the false impression that all Jews are united, Kim Il Sung-style, in support of every atrocity the Israeli government has committed in our name.