Bio-fuelling starvation

Sometimes one can feel overwhelmed by the sheer insanity and insatiable greed of global capitalism. As reports multiply of dire food shortages, riots and civil despair across the globe, America and Europe proceed, ever-selfishly, with biofuel production policies to 'alleviate' global warming.

The US and Europe have been strongly urged to cut back on biofuel crops due to the devastating misuse of farming land for non-food production. Among those criticising the policy is US academic Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Sachs told EU officials in Brussels this week:

"We need to cut back significantly on our biofuels programs...[They] were understandable at a time of much lower food prices and larger food stocks but do not make sense now in a global food scarcity condition...In the United States as much as one third of maize crop this year will go to gas tank. This is a huge blow to the world food supply".

But while Sachs's intervention is laudable, it appears to be a rearguard response to the food crisis rather than a holistic appraisal of why the market for biofuel is being touted by governments and big business as a route to environmental salvation.

The EU has proposed a target of 5.75 per cent biofuel for transport use by the end of 2008. The US want 15 per cent of all transport fuels to come from biofuels by 2020.

But the massive subsidies to promote the industry hide this rather more inhuman equation: the poor go hungry so that cars can keep running - even running 'ethically'. It's the political version of Milo Minderbinder's mad 'syndicate enterprise' in Catch 22. Eco-solutions, corporate style. Was there ever a more graphic illustration of the market's blanket blindness to human suffering and environmental destruction?

The 'case' for ethanol and other biofuel production comes in 'ethical response' to rising carbon emissions. In crude reality, the agri-corporations see it as a lucrative market opportunity; a rush to 'match' the 'new awakenings' of government on the problem of carbon output.

In synchronised form, the fat-cat grocery imperialists are raking in vast profits from the food hikes.

As Joanna Blythman put it in a fine Sunday Herald piece:

"The sums just don't add up. There's a world food supply crisis, the cost of a basket of groceries has shot up by between 10% and 12.5%, yet our supermarkets are recording healthy profits - Tesco's profits last year, for instance, showed a 11.8% rise."

"It seems our retailers are doing very nicely out of the global food crisis, thank you very much, and so are the global agri-business firms, traders and speculators currently raking in fabulous profits. Hungry people are out on the streets from Egypt to Haiti to protest at the rocketing cost of staples, yet Cargill, the world's biggest grain trader, has achieved an 86% increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of this year alone. Meanwhile Bunge, another huge food trader, reported a 77% increase in profits during the last quarter of last year. ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, registered a 67% increase in profits in 2007."

"The IMF and the World Bank pushed countries to dismantle all forms of protection for their local farmers and to open up their markets to global agribusiness and subsidised food from rich countries. Like chiselling snake oil salesmen, they said that a liberalised market would provide the most efficient system for producing and distributing food."

It's a double-whammy for the impoverished and the planet. While compliant Western governments and the IMF mandarins proclaim open food markets for poor countries, with all the debilitating consequences that entails for the latter, biofuel crop production in the affluent West is driving-up prices to those poorer markets, while still encouraging all the standard forms of carbon-based consumption.

Intrinsic to this lies the myth of biofuel as a 'post-carbon' saviour. The short-sightedness of this policy is matched only by the blind-eye greed of the profiteers. And the warnings were all there. As George Monbiot, among others, show, one didn't need the powers of a seer to understand the disastrous implications of biofuel production for food economics and the environment:

"So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 I warned, on these pages, that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats. I received more abuse than I've had for any other column - except for when I attacked the 9/11 conspiracists. I was told my claims were ridiculous, laughable, impossible. Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn't materialise for many years. They are happening already."

Farmers, chemical corporations, governments and errant environmentalists are all now tied-into this false consensus on the market and eco-benefits of biofuels produced from wheat, maize and other staple crops. The impact of deforestation for biofuel palm oil planting is treated with similar myopic indifference. As Monbiot notes:

"But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel."

More recent studies offer conclusive evidence that biofuel is not just an eco-palliative, it's a completely false economy, contributing to even more greenhouse gases after land clearance and other wasteful variables are factored in:

"“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University."

Encouragingly, both Cuba and Venezuela have come out in vociferous opposition to US-led biofuel production, pointing to the catastrophic impact of misused land, food shortages and global starvation.

If only the US and EU shared these same human and environmental concerns. As usual, it's profit and greed which comes before pollution of the atmosphere and starving children.

John

Media connivance and an exchange on anger

Media Lens have just published a damning Alert, Flexible Friends on the failure of elite journalists and editors to divulge crucial truths to the public. They note:

"[I]n the autumn of 2002, former CIA analyst Mel Goodman told Observer correspondent Ed Vulliamy that the CIA believed Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Goodman was speaking out at a time when such revelations might have derailed Blair’s plans to go to war the following spring, with unknown consequences for Bush’s war plan. Over the next four months, Vulliamy submitted seven versions of the story for publication - The Observer, led by Alton, rejected all of them."

Letters from the ML Editors to Alton and Vuillamy on the affair have, thus far, been met with evasion or denial.

The piece prompted a number of critical comments and letters, as well as a constructive exchange on the appropriateness and use of anger as a form of dissent.

Here's the e-mail I posted to Alton and Vulliamy (no reply, as yet), in response, and a selection of the subsequent debate from the Media Lens board on the anger issue. My thanks to those cited for their thoughtful contributions.

Latest Alert
Posted by John Hilley on April 29:

Excellent Alert, Eds. What a charade that passes for a critical 'media spectrum'.

Dear Ed Vulliamy and Roger Alton,

Media Lens have just produced a compelling set of insights on how editors and journalists serve to suppress truths that may be inconvenient to power, particularly those waging war. One crucial example is how the Observer helped make the case for Blair's war in Iraq, partly through overt support, partly through unconscionable omission of key evidence. I'd be greatly interested to know why the seemingly cast-iron information offered by Mel Goodman regarding the lies over WMD was never published by the Observer.

This is a quite damning revelation, and I hope you have, at least, the journalistic integrity to tell us now why these facts were never divulged to the public.

Regards,
John Hilley

Jonathan Cook responds to latest alert on Roger Alton and the Observer
Posted by The Editors on April 29, 2008:

Dear Davids,

Congratulations on another pertinent alert. I found Roger Alton's claim to you that he did not know about any of Ed Vulliamy's seven submitted reports on the non-existence of WMD in Iraq risible. I worked for several years in the news department of Alton's Observer, and he was renowned for being one of the most hands- on editors in the paper's recent past. He even expected the editors of the "fluffy" features sections, food and health and so on, to keep him closely informed of their main stories.

As for news, he always held a series of conferences with the main news and comment editors every few hours on Thursday and Friday when they discussed the main stories up for the news pages. The running order was constantly revised until the various page deadlines were set from late Friday through to Saturday afternoon. A possible world exclusive along the lines of the Goodman revelations would have been top of the agenda for discussion at those meetings.

No commissioning editor would have dared to make a decision on such a major story, either to accept or reject it, without getting Alton's permission at the conference. In fact, given Vulliamy's deserved standing as one of the paper's best journalists, there would have been some considerable debate about the merits of the article -- unless Alton had made it clear to his senior staff that he would not consider any anti-war articles whatever their credibility.

All best wishes,

Jonathan

Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym on April 30, 2008 (abbr.):

I have a difficulty with that. I still read all the ML Alerts with great avidity, rather as I follow anything by Chomsky, Pilger, and a handful of others; even good old Bob Fisk, despite his obvious naivety about some things (Strange for a journalist. Who'da thought!)...

But when it comes to writing to prominent hacks -- editors or underlings -- I have this serious problem: I admire very greatly the civil and obviously humane tone with which the Davids approach corporate hacks, even when they follow immediately with the most ruthlessly devastating questions -- to which the hacks can only produce honest answers, if at all, on strict off-the-record conditions, as the current Alert makes very clear. However, I just can't summon up this kind of feeling in myself.

I've been taken kindly to task by David E [ML Editor] about this before, and given the suggestion that I need to practise at it. True enough. But I think that the Davids must be made of morally sterner stuff than me. In my mind is this implacable idea that people like Roger Alton are indeed slippery, career-prioritising liars, who won't balk at criminal service to the principle criminals in ‘our’ criminal state machine...

The media keep us foxed, confused, crucially un- or misinformed, enough of us enough of the time, to prevent a critical mass of outraged citizenry ever from forming...

Believing all this, as I do, and believing also that most of the worst hacks most of the time slip greasily away from our polite strictures without much actual change in the systemic corruption and massive violence of the power structure, I despair of continuing with polite, compassionate conversations with them. Weakness, I dare say, but it's a genuine feeling. Lately, unable to find an honest compassion in myself towards these villains (oh sure, I can fake it. But that's what it would be: fake) I've stopped contacting them directly. Ranting angrily at them is useless, even counter-productive, clearly; just self-indulgent.

So in the end, I look at the hit-record for Medialens, and I think: The best that I can do is to contribute comment, analysis and unearthed pertinent facts to the Message Board, and assume that that will trickle into the subterranean pathways of these things, via the minds of all the lurkers who read without showing themselves, quite a few of them, it seems, professional hacks in the corporate media. In that way, you have to hope, you can have some kind of positive effect, even if talking affably to the calloused editor-level trusties of corporate hackdom seems to be no more useful than shovelling smoke. Bad level of nihilistic pessimism this morning, I’m afraid. It’ll pass……

Posted by Miriam (Miriamcotton) on April 30, 2008:

You are not alone Rh. Politness has its limitations and its pitfalls. It can be stifling and oppressive too - in fact hugely counterproductive at times, imho. We are capable of anger for good reason. It's not axiomatic that every expression of anger is 'a bad thing'. Justified anger has a meaning and worth that should not be ignored. In the right context, it deserves full expression.

Posted by John Hilley on April 30, 2008:

Sorry, can't agree, Miriam and Rhisiart. I can think of no more powerful and effective approach than the kind of calm, forensic questioning of Alton and Vulliamy employed by the Editors.

Yes, we can and should feel strongly about these kind of deceptions. But angry rants only get in the way of the task in hand. I also find it a struggle at times, looking at pictures of dead, anonymous Palestinian children. But there's more to be gained from patient, evidence-building challenges. I suppose we should be striving for a kind of contained, measured, focused resolve rather than dispiriting, blind-rage anger.

The powerful are well used to handling these latter angrier manifestations. Indeed, it serves their purpose. Think of how Israel actually seeks to provoke the Palestinians into hatred and violence, thereby providing the pretext for deeper repression.

And, yes, it is vital that we keep writing to, and rationally questioning, people like Alton, thus having all their words on record. This provides us with an archive of the complicit, a set of references which not only indicts them, but, hopefully, makes others in such positions realise that they won't be able to support future warmongers with impunity.

Cheers,
John

Posted by Miriam (Miriamcotton) on April 30, 2008:

Sorry John, not persuaded - calm and rational have their place but they are not more effective where they are affected in the face of extreme provocation or in extreme circumstances. They can come across psychotic and forced.

Telling a person to stay calm when they have just witnessed/experieced something vile is to add insult to injury, imo. I also dislike the way in which those who advocate politeness in the face of all things often seem to believe they are on higher moral ground. (I'm not adressing that to you personally, by the way - or to anyone on this MB.) If people prefer to do it like that, that's all well and good but there needs to be some respect for other forms of feeling and opinion.

In the example you give, quite frankly, if the IDF provoke anger by indiscriminate killing or military activity, then it is positively inhumane to wag fingers at any victims who retaliate in kind. Rather, we should join with those victims in understanding and supporting the detpth of feeling displayed - and not victimise them further by blaming them for behaving like the rational human beings that they are.

We are capable of anger for good reasons and bad. The same thing applies to calmness. All of these approaches have their place in the human scheme - setting one approach above another is to distort and/or deny our nature.

Posted by John Hilley on April 30, 2008:

Thanks, Miriam.

I see your argument, but still think it mistaken. You say:

"In the example you give, quite frankly, if the IDF provoke anger by indiscriminate killing or military activity, then it is positively inhumane to wag fingers at any victims who retaliate in kind."

Yes, it certainly would be inhumane if we were just to wag our fingers at the oppressor. But, of course, it's about much more than passive remonstration. It's about acting with calm determination, using all our tactical resources, to stop that oppression.

"Rather, we should join with those victims in understanding and supporting the detpth of feeling displayed - and not victimise them further by blaming them for behaving like the rational human beings that they are."

We're not victimising them further. We're showing practical solidarity with them. And we're certainly not blaming them for acting in the way they do, even if that's a resort to resistance through violence. Rather, we're doing everything we can to show what lies at the bottom of their desperate reactions to repression.

None of this is best achieved through a consumed mindset of hate, anger and vengeance. And remember that it's those being oppressed who actually hold the moral high ground. Our task, in support of such causes, is to show this to be the case by consistently exposing the false morality of the oppressor and their media apologists.

Cheers,
John

Posted by The Editors on April 30, 2008:

What you're describing is very familiar to me, RhG - plenty of people posting here must be familiar with what you're feeling.

I think at the heart of it is the idea that there are individuals out there who are consciously, perhaps with knowing cruelty, subordinating the welfare of others to their own self-interest. The idea is that they are totally responsible for that cruelty and are therefore to blame, and in fact to be hated, for their actions.

I think the guiding interest behind most crap, or corrupt, journalism is simply self-interest. It's not that these people are looking to do harm - they probably don't care much but they'd probably rather not do harm if they could avoid it - it's just that they're looking out for themselves, or maybe they've convinced themselves that the actions and policies that are best for them just happen to be best for everyone else. But their concern is actually for themselves, for their financial security, comfortable lives, high status and so on - they actually don't care much about the consequences for other people, who seem sort of irrelevant, only half real.

It's awful to be so casual about other people's suffering, but where does the idea come from? It comes from a huge range of influences in society that train them to 'look after number one', to reject concern for others as naive, sentimental, futile. They think it brings real personal loss with zero real benefits for someone else: 'So I make a stand and get fired - big deal! Someone else will just take my place.'

Nobody invents the ethical value system into which they're born - we are all the product of millions of influences beyond our control. Roger Alton is not solely to blame for Roger Alton, as it were.

By the way, I interviewed Alton, Rusbridger, Snow and Hugo Young a few years backs over the phone - I remember thinking at the time that Alton was by far the nicest, most down to earth, friendly guy. He wasn't a monster, at least on the phone. But I think his actions ahead of the Iraq war were really disastrous, incredibly harmful.

So what I've said doesn't mean we don't try to hold Roger Alton to account; it doesn't mean we don't try to stop people doing harm. What it means, on reflection, I think, is that it's just not realistic to hate someone on the basis that they are fully choosing to do harm. Even a monster can be forgiven to some extent because even a monster is like a psychological mosaic made up of causative 'tiles' over which (many of them) he or she had absolutely no control. Alton didn't choose his genes, his family, his social background, his friends, his education, his society, and so on...

Again, that doesn't mean we don't try to challenge him, to stop him doing harm. I personally just think this is realistic - I think hatred is based on an imaginary idea about people being 100% self-invented and self-controlled.

Then there are other issues to do with anger. When we're angry with the monsters we feel just awful - it's a hideous state of mind to be in. Often when I lose motivation or hope, I just need to check to see what has made me angry.

In terms of activist effectiveness, I think it's very clear. People know instinctively that an angry mind is out of control, unreliable, and likely to be hugely biased. The first thing that happens when you get angry is you filter out everything that contradicts your anger (the stuff above, for example). So exploding with anger inflicts enormous damage on your credibility with the public.

And if you're making, by mainstream standards, very unusual and challenging arguments about, say, the media operating as a propaganda system - forget it, the public is certainly not going to trust a raging, out of control, blinkered mind. And of course the journalists have the perfect excuse to write you off as a 'loony lefty', someone not genuinely interested in the issues but just venting some personal disorder. And the anger tends to go nuclear - you can't pen it in because, by definition, your mind is out of control. Soon you're erupting with friends, activist colleagues, family, everyone. So it's just awful.

Anger also destroys compassion, concern for others (even for friends and family), and compassion is the main psychological force opposing the self-interested greed driving the journalists were complaining about!

But these are just ideas, people can decide for themselves if they have merit - it's not a question of everyone needing to accept them; people can do what they want, obviously.

Best wishes
DE

Posted by Miriam (Miriamcotton) on April 30, 2008:

But as with any emotion, there are degrees of anger - any emotion, including love, taken to blind excess will be destructive. Anger has had a very bad press - undeservedly so in some respects. There are those who believe that any manifestation of it, no matter how justified, is wrong/ill-advised etc etc. Sometimes anger makes people incoherent, rash and foolish - but so can all the other emotions we are capable of -including an excess of studied calm and politeness in the face of extreme circumstances.

Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym on April 30, 2008:

I'm not making my position clear, I can see. I don't actually want to defend anger. I do think it's a pretty useless emotion. Miriam is making a case for it in some circumstances, but I'm not sure that I agree.

What I was trying to express mainly is this sense of despair about it all. I'm not at all surprised by David(E)'s description of Alton as a nice-seeming bloke. And I already share that understanding that even monsters -- which I doubt that he is -- ultimately deserve some compassionate insight into what makes them as they are -- at the same time that we oppose resolutely what they do.

I already see too what David E describes, have seen it many times for myself, that it's more this failure of insight, failure of a larger understanding, failure of sufficient depth of empathy and compassion, which makes people -- hacks and others -- fall short in magnanimity, and a determination to act with uncompromising charity and strict intellectual honesty, come what may.

The evidence presented in the Alert suggests that Alton thought back to his behaviour around Ed V's submissions, felt a bit uncomfortable about it, fudged up an excuse, and -- as we do -- persuaded himself to believe it before he tried to persuade the Eds. Small lies, entirely commonplace. All too grubbily human, though not particularly monstrous -- Until you remember that a few dozen, a hundred or two British hacks taking this Slack-Alice line with themselves, keeping nose clean and career simmering, taking the cheerful, soft, comfily slipshod approach with accuracy and truth, meant that the commons of Britain were not quite stirred up to the point where Blair and gang didn't dare to go against our popular will, and thus the Joint Chiefs in Washington couldn't quite see their way to saying to Cheney and Rumsfeld: "Mr. Vice-President, sir, Mr. Secretary, sir, we have to disagree. If necessary, gentlemen, we might have to disagree a little forcefully. Without the Brits on board, gentlemen, and with our current force levels,,,,,"

And so somewhere between a million and two million SW Asians are dead dreadfully and untimely, and millions more have their lives in ruins. (Remember the excoriating story of Umm Abdallah in an earlier Alert, who was training to be a suicide bomber, because of all the children and other close family that she'd lost -- terribly -- at the hands of the aggressors?) At the very least we owe it to those poor devils -- our absolutely equal fellow humans -- that the truth be owned publically, that the guilty people be tried for their crimes and be obliged to make extended amends, personally, that we collectively admit, apologise, beg forgiveness and offer reparations.

I crash about violently between the knowledge of these dreadful stories, and the knowledge of the ordinariness of the people whose very ordinary derelictions of duty allowed this to happen. I can't find the point of stability that allows John H and Joe E and the Eds and one or two others to speak to these jerks with the calm, compassionate authority, backed up with killer accuracy that does indeed, as John says, give these Kindly Ones such power to penetrate through to the naked conscience that's there, sure as hell, even in the very worst of them.

Will Shakespeare knew it, and showed it with piercing clarity even to doubting Thomases like me. It's always there. But what I'm saying is that it just takes greater magnanimity than I can muster reliably to find that calm, and speak with that friendly compassion even to the shittiest of the self-serving shits.

Sorry folks. This is just me maundering on about my own short-comings. Wish I could find a way to speak as John does, or the others, but it eludes me. Too much bleeding, useless anger -- and angst.

Posted by Miriam (Miriamcotton) on May 1, 2008:

Well said Rhysiart - that's a valid expression of justified anger in my opinion.

Posted by John Hilley on May 3, 2008:

Thanks Rhisiart, Miriam and David for those illuminating comments. I find it very useful to exchange thoughts on how our emotional capacities for anger and, often, hate, can be rationalised and channelled. The key factor, for me, is always whether those expressions are based on reasonable compassion rather than a debilitating desire for angry action or hateful vengeance.

My distinct impression is that none of you are motivated in those ways. Quite the contrary.

Still, I think there's much, or more, to be gained by a practiced sort of calm and determined mindset. The key issue is how we can most effectively speak and act in ways which are useful to those at the receiving end of power.

I took part in a little workshop at the Faslane peace camp yesterday, discussing the Palestinian question with interested activists there. One thing that really struck me was the calm and studious ways in which some of these young people considered the problem and what they could practically do to raise awareness. While we all acknowledged the long-term nature of such campaigns, and the dispiriting feelings they can cause, it ended on a very upbeat, optimistic note, much of that to do, I think, with the kind of rational and compassionate view that's best adopted.
As with this exchange, it was a helpful lesson on how we can cultivate a more mind-balanced and effective approach to such seemingly intractable issues.

I'll save these exchanges at my blog for future reference.

Peace and harmony,
John

Suffer the little children

Mes’id Ahmad Eid Abu Me’tiq (1 year)

Hana Ahmad Eid Abu Me’tiq (3 year)

Rudeina Ahmad Eid Abu Me’tiq (4 year)

Saleh Ahmad Eid Abu Me’tiq (5 year)

And may the media apologists open their shameful eyes and atone for their own criminal complicity.

John

People in an unhappy state

Are there parallel lessons on peace and happiness to be drawn from political and personal life?

Here's one that comes usefully to mind: you can't build your own happiness on another's unhappiness.

Market life conditions us into believing that we will feel better in ourselves if our competing peers, neighbours, even friends are in some way less well-off, unfulfilled and, basically, unhappier than us.

We may proclaim altruistic emotions to the contrary. But consider how happy, for example, any 'professional salaried' person would feel about the idea of pay and status parity with someone 'lower down' the 'economic ladder.' Or, how we often seek more punitive retributions for prisoners and lawbreakers. Or, why we can feel 'happy elation' when a rival football team loses. Don't we derive a range of quiet satisfactions, often darkly pleasurable ones, from other people's relative unhappiness, subordination, even suffering?

Someone recently told me how unhappy they were on learning that their long-lost ex-partner had formed a 'happy' relationship with someone else. It wasn't a bitter response, just a feeling of despondency at their own presumed 'failures', 'inadequacies' and, thus, sense of 'unhappiness' relative to their ex. Their 'decreased happiness', in effect, had been seemingly influenced by the thought of the other's 'increased happiness'.

Of course, the hurt and sadness of broken and hostile relationships can stay with and affect people for a lifetime. In all kinds of social and political situations. Emotional healing may require patient forms of mediation. Some may prefer the 'comfort' of the bitterness. But the person seeking a truly happier life will, more rationally, opt for the view that calm and benevolent thoughts towards a 'conflicting other' will benefit all parties in the long run, particularly themselves. In short, one's own emotional well-being can be greatly enhanced by genuine compassion for others, even adversarial others.

This undermines the view that power over another can ever constitute a basis for balanced, sustainable peace and harmony. The realisation of such may, of course, be a long-term and tortuous goal. But even the attempted cultivation of that mind-balance takes us a considerable way to experiencing more positive, happier feelings within.

In other words, it's within one's own head and heart that such things need to be resolved. Not through the projection of negative feelings or actions against others.

Hatred, vengeance, acquisitiveness, jealousy and other personally-indulgent traits can give us a rush of temporary 'satisfaction', a feeling of power and control over others, but it can never truly deliver inner contentment. And it will always contain the latent prospect of more animosity and troubled feelings to come.

The 'unhappy state'?

Can a country and its collective people, by a similar logic, ever be a peaceful, content or 'happy' entity while it dominates another? The answer, again, would seem to be no.

The state 'itself' is, of course, an unhappy construct by regular definition, premised on selective interest and the 'exclusive' recourse to violence. Yet, the 'unhappiness of the state' as a set of offices is only made possible by the people who occupy and politicise those agencies. The wicked policies which people enact in the name of their state is often inversely related to their own personal unhappiness and lack of compassion for others.

Thus, when we look at Israel's sixty years of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and calculated murder of the Palestinians, do we see a state, a system, a body politic, a people, content, balanced and 'happy' in itself? Or do we see the same familiar evasions of social 'contentment', ersatz 'security' and delusional 'happiness' based on power over another?

It's hard to think of a state or state system that hasn't, ultimately, come to an unhappy crisis point over its occupations and persecutions: the US in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Britain in Ireland, Indonesia in East Timor, China in Tibet, the US/UK in Iraq, Israel in Palestine. History shows that oppressive states and empires may 'enjoy' the economic and geopolitical 'fruits' of their terror. But, in the longer run, the satisfaction of power and control is still transient and illusory, fostering suffering, genocide and respondent violence in the process. The 'unhappy state' lives on a diet of false and insatiable gratification, the Zionist state of Israel being a prime example. And the unhappiest states of all are the ones mired in psychopathic dismissal of another's persecution and unhappiness.

The personification of that unhappiness is evident in the leaders of such states. How happy a man, deep-down, is Tony Blair? Or George W Bush? Or Ehud Olmert? We see the public persona, the 'at one with myself' 'self-reassurance', the 'religious and moral conviction' of their acts. But behind this veil is the disturbed reality of the unhappy psychopath.

Happiness in resistance?

Is there greater emotional and moral 'happiness' to be derived from resistance to such oppression. Yes, but, again, it helps if those resisting can recognise the mental and emotional malaise of their oppressor. This is not just about showing compassion towards one's oppressor - difficult as that is as a human exercise. It's about recognising how a certain kind of resistance actually disempowers the oppressor while empowering all with a more constructive, mutual and happier view of how to resolve conflict.

But, as Mustafa Barghouthi asks: "what sort of resistance"? His answer shows that while specified forms of armed resistance can be seen as "legitimate", the more rewarding, inclusive and, ultimately, 'happier' form lies in non-violence:

"Armed resistance to occupation is legitimate and legal under international law, under the strict condition that it does not target civilians. But as someone who truly believes in the sanctity of human life, and as a doctor who always puts human life first, I have an inherent belief that non-violence is a fundamental philosophical choice.

Besides this, in a more practical way, I think that armed resistance is a narrow and elitist approach, involving only a select few and leaving the rest of the people out. And it is based on the assumption that armed force is the only force that exists in the world."

Barghouthi also makes this salient point about the selective presentation of Palestinian resistance by the media - usually labelled 'militant' and 'extremist' activity, rather than 'resistance' - and the multiple other ways in which resistance can be effectively expressed:

"This choice may seem utopian after sixty years of conflict and so much violence and bloodshed. But this is only an appearance, because the media only reports on acts of violence, creating the misleading impression that violence prevails. This is exacerbated by the dominant Israeli narrative which consistently portrays Palestinians as aggressors and not as a people under occupation struggling for freedom, justice and independence.

In truth, Palestinians are masters of non-violence. They have been resisting the all-pervasive violence of a forty-one year old military occupation every day since it began. Forty-one years of resilience, of silent and stubborn efforts to live a normal life, to work, to raise children, to love and to exist, simply to exist, despite the hundreds of checkpoints, the incursions, the arrests, the killings, the house demolitions, the land dispossession, the discriminatory laws, the arbitrary and unjust actions of the Israeli military.

In such a situation building a school, choosing to become a doctor, cultivating your ancestral olive grove are all acts of resistance."

In seeking justice and peace for the Palestinians, it's helpful, if difficult in these dark times, to see that any 'happy resolution' of their suffering will more likely come about through non-violent resistance. As the peaceful mass protests in Gaza and recent 'breakout' through Rafah show, it is, quite simply, the most powerful and attention-building form. Moreover, as Israel's dismissal of Hamas's genuine truce shows, this kind of resistance is the most alarming for the oppressor, for it completely undercuts their own false claims of peaceful intent, revealing themselves to the world as wolves in sheep's clothing.

People like Barghouthi see very acutely how that kind of hateful and unrelenting oppression is best challenged. It's the Gandhian method. It's the Buddhist way. It's the most rational means of exposing injustice and mobilising public opinion. And it's the form that will not only bring about, albeit in time, a just resolution, but a happier political and social mindset that everyone can benefit from.

This may seem like a utopian worldview. Conflict and ill-feeling are inevitable facts of life, many will say. This is true, of course, but only in the sense that we also possess all the necessary capacities for dealing with disharmony and strife. It's within ourselves and our collective consciousness. Unhappiness and suffering are constants. But there's also the countervailing constant that we have the power, will and means to overcome unhappiness and construct resolutions from the most seemingly despairing of situations, both in our internal and external lives.

In each regard, competitive self-interest is a dead end. Warmongering and profit-driven elites retain a vested interest in having us believe otherwise. But that, again, only serves to reveal their own underlying insecurities, delusions and unhappiness. Just as in personal life. Part of our quest for happier minds and polities lies in persuading unhappy people and states that nothing useful or long-lasting, emotionally or politically, is ever built on hatred, fear and power over others.

In peacetime.

John

Israel is a serial killer

Two children lie dead in a Gaza lane, their bodies bloodied and mutilated, their battered bicycles, alongside, also now still and lifeless. The boys were 'caught-up' in the IDF's deliberate attack on local Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, yet another victim of Israel's ruthless purge on inconvenient media. Nine journalists have been killed and 170 wounded by Israeli forces since September 2000.

The dead kids were among five children killed by the IDF in assaults on Gaza, which have seen 29 lives lost over these past few days alone. Over 800 Palestinian children have been killed since the start of the second intifada in 2000, some 22 per cent of the total tragedies.

For Israel and its complicit allies, they are just statistics, numbers on lists, nameless human beings with no valid identity or worth for their cold assassins perched safely in their armoured vehicles and political offices.

What kind of killing and killers are we dealing with here? The 'accidental' loss of infants by 'careless' soldiers? The 'necessary' removal of juvenile 'subversives' by Israel's 'defensive' forces?

Or another possibility: the child victims of a serial murdering state which takes deep psychological gratification in expressing power over its victims?

This is just the latest confirmation that Israel is waging a campaign of concerted terror on Gaza. And it fits squarely with the view that Gaza itself is being used as a mass concentration camp and laboratory within which to test and hone the multiple instruments of Israeli repression.

That terror also includes the calculated murder of children. And I use the word "calculated" here in its immediate sense. The primary target in this instance may have been a sincere man intent on reporting Israel's killing of children and other mass brutalities. But the boys lying at this scene of carnage also serves, like the slaying of the cameraman, as a chilling message from the serial killer state: I can take lives at my discretion, and I want you to know and feel that fear.

The psychopathic state knows, of course, that it may face a certain degree of 'diplomatic condemnation' over such actions. However, this is Palestine, where life is deemed not only cheap but usually not worth reporting by most of the Western media. And even when it is, the familiar "Israel says" line on the targeting of "militants" is always to the fore as a ready excuse.

Israel also, according to such reports, often "regrets" such deaths - which, translated from official-speak, means it regrets having been caught in the act of premeditated murder.

But even this paltry mitigation conceals a more disturbing calculus of serial murder. The 'reason' for eliminating journalists and cameramen doing their job of exposing Israeli war crimes is abundantly clear. But why target children? There appears to be a more deep-rooted perversion afoot here.

The psychology of occupation is premised on the daily reality of the occupied facing potential death and trauma at the hands of power. And the worst possibility of that terror is the prospect of one's children being killed or wounded. In the eyes of power, killing children becomes the most potent means of inflicting fear and punishment. Officials can deal with the public reaction, such as it is courtesy of an indifferent media. But the principal purpose of maintaining terror is served.

Here at 'home', kids are murdered, often horrifically, by individual killers. We express our obvious horror. Our little ones go missing and media-driven campaigns are initiated to help recover them. We see our children's vulnerabilities to harm from disturbed adults as the darkest of all nightmares.

Yet, men in uniforms extinguish the lives of Palestinian infants with brutal 'precision' weapons and we lower our heads in silence. Perhaps with a nod of disapproval or sadness, but not with the sense of outrage reserved for 'our' children.

In a sane world, Olmert and his fellow killers would, alongside Bush, Blair and their cohorts, be detained for psychiatric investigation, their ruthless and morally oblivious mindset treated as akin to the psychopathic serial killer.

Yet, the suggestion of such is treated as risible in 'our' society. 'Our' politicians and soldiers can't be viewed as such.

But why the polite distinction? The clue, of course, is in the 'our' pronoun, indicating the conscious and subconscious ways in which 'we' come to value the lives and well-being of those close to 'us', whether in familial, social or cultural settings.

Just as we are indoctrinated by the idea of respectable politicians and the legitimacy of their actions, however deadly, so are we imbued with the ideology of respectable militarism: 'proud regiments' and 'our boys' 'getting the job done' 'over there'.

Military life corrupts, particularly the minds of the already impressionable, violent and bigoted. The bit about 'hearts and minds', 'civil protection' and 'peace enforcement' may be sincerely evident in the beliefs and testimonies of soldiers. But this can't disguise the culture of barbarity they live with and help foster.

This mantle of respectable militarism is, in turn, mediated and promoted through the wider cultural prism. Amid the glowing praise for the world-touring Black Watch stage production, the Sunday Herald's theatre critic Mark Brown had the integrity to make this central and timely point:

"The production also lacks political courage. The overwhelming tenor of the piece (not least in the emails which a senior Black Watch officer sends home to his wife) is one of criticism of the politicians who ordered the Iraq War, but something dangerously close to glorification where the imperial history of the Black Watch regiment is concerned.

The famous "uniforms" scene (in which a soldier takes us on a tour of Black Watch deployments past) sanitises the dirty business of colonialism. If the play's international engagements had included Nairobi and Ramallah (where people remember the brutal events in which the Black Watch were involved), I suspect it would have received a less fulsome welcome than was the case in New York and Sydney."

Which, with that reminder of Britain's own dark deeds in Palestine, returns us to the real purpose of Israel's current terror and serial execution of children.

Would the media confer the same kind of respectable status on a serial killer after the slaying of yet another set of victims? What makes such state-military actions exempt from being viewed as serial murder? Why are the executive planners of such slaughter not only absolved, but slavishly consulted on why their actions were deemed 'necessary'?

"Might is right" was the evil rationale of the Nazis, a dogma which the 'civilised' West have supposedly rejected in their promotion of 'humanitarian' and 'ethical' foreign policies. Yet, on close inspection, theirs is really just a dressed-up version of the same supportive 'logic'.

That sense of Western might permits and encourages Israel in its god-like omnipotence over weak and vulnerable Palestinians. And it secretes in Israel's psychopathic mindset a calculated understanding of how to effect its state terror to full advantage.

None of this is remotely up for discussion in BBC and other liberal analysis of the conflict. The very idea of castigating 'our' politicians and military in this way is unthinkable. Meanwhile, the serial killers of Palestinian children remain safely at large.

John

Remembering Deir Yassin

9 April 2008 marked the terrible events of Deir Yassin, sixty years after 254 of the village's Palestinian men, women and children were massacred by Zionist forces.

You didn't hear anything about it on the BBC. You didn't see any recognition of it by the US, EU and other 'civilised' Western governments. And you certainly won't find any message of regret over it from a state which has sought to bury the truth of this and multiple other atrocities with all those murdered Palestinians.

For Israel, its allies and their media stenographers, Deir Yassin doesn't merit special commemoration. But it's a name, a village, a place, a painful memory still firmly fixed in Palestinian consciousness.

Drawing on Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and other key sources, a fine article from Ronnie Kasrils reminds us that Deir Yassin was part of the Zionists' calculated campaign of pogroms, which is why every person of conscience should be protesting over Israel's 60th 'birthday':

"The atrocity at Deir Yassin is reflective of what happened elsewhere. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has meticulously recorded 31 massacres, from December 1947 to January 1949. They attest to a systematic reign of terror, conducted to induce the flight of Palestinians from the land of their birth. As a result, nearly all Palestinian towns were rapidly depopulated and 418 villages were systematically destroyed.

Israel will soon mark the 60th anniversary of its establishment. In so doing, Israelis and the Zionist supporters would do well to acknowledge the reasons why, for Palestinians and freedom-loving people throughout the world, there will be no cause to celebrate. Indeed, it will be a period of mourning and protest action; a time to recall the countless victims that lie in Israel's wake, as epitomized by the suffering inflicted on the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, the original site of which is ironically located just a stone's throw away from where the present day Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, was built."

Meanwhile, a who's who of war criminals, corporate tyrants and celebrity apologists will be flown in to mark Zionism's big birthday bash next month:

"Shimon Peres, Israel President Shimon Peres is bringing in top personalities from around the world to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday. United States President George W. Bush, Barbra Streisand, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev and Rupert Murdoch are among those expected to attend a May conference focusing on Jewish and Israeli contributions to humanity....The list of confirmed guests also includes Henry Kissinger, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, former Czech President Vaclev Havel, Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, Google founder Sergey Brinn, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman, Ratan Tata, chairman of India's Tata group, U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson, and Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, a country with no diplomatic relations with Israel." (Associated Press, 9 April 2008.)

While Bush, Blair and Kissinger pose with Olmert for the hall of infamy, statisticians can, at least, use the gruesome spectacle to number-crunch the millions who have perished through their collective war crimes.

Meanwhile, an American Jew with a more studious and moral understanding of Israel's historic 'contributions' has been decisively omitted from the great guest list. Professor Richard Falk of Princeton University recently compared Israel's efforts to murder, subjugate and contain the Palestinians as reminiscent of the Nazis' treatment of the Jews. Falk is about to take office as a special UN investigator on Palestinian rights, replacing John Dugard, another prominent critic of Israel's occupation. The response from Tel Aviv has been predictable:

"The Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it will not allow the United Nations official appointed to investigate Israeli-Palestinian human rights to enter the country, after he stood by comments comparing Israelis to Nazis. Richard Falk is scheduled to take up his post with the UN Human Rights Council in May, but the Foreign Ministry said it will deny Falk a visa to enter Israel, Gaza and the West Bank". The Foreign Ministry spokesperson called Falk's comments "unacceptable and, in fact, a little strange." "To compare Israel to the Nazis is not just a total falsehood, it's also a personal insult to everybody," he said, adding that the choice of Falk is indicative of the Human Rights Council's negative attitude toward Israel."(AP, 9 April 2008.)

One might more reasonably suggest that Israel's own descent into Nazi-type barbarism is the real historic insult to the six million murdered Jews. The other uncomfortable fact here for Israel is that Falk says this not only as an esteemed academic but as a Jew himself, adding massive empirical and emotional weight to the claim.

Other persona non grata feeling Tel Aviv's ire include ex-US president Jimmy Carter. Author of a book comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa, Carter has now committed yet another 'gone native' sin by announcing his intention to meet the Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal in Syria. The possibility that Carter might be engaging constructively with a key player in the conflict cannot, of course, be countenanced by Olmert and his birthday select.

The bash goes on here in Britain, too, hosted by a range of notables and apologists, from the Queen to local civic leaders. Next month in East Renfrewshire, near Glasgow, the local council will commemorate 'the founding' with a celebratory gathering while flying an Israeli flag from its chambers.

Uncomfortably for the Lord Provost, Alex Mackie, and his fellow organisers, people of conscience will also gather outside their shameful assembly to commemorate the Nakba, serving to remind those inside of the ethnic cleansing, apartheid and murderous occupation that's still going on.

Deir Yassin should, like Sharpeville in South Africa, be etched in not just Palestinian consciousness. It's anonymity is a 'testament' to the Israeli propaganda machine's long-standing efforts to suppress the shameful truth of its ethnic cleansing. The dignitaries leading the birthday plaudits wouldn't like the occasion to be 'marred' by inconvenient reminders of these dark events. But, for Deir Yassin and all the other massacres of Palestinians, past and present, this is a party that deserves to be spoiled.

John

The BBC demonises Hamas, part....

The BBC's 'pp Boaden unit' would appear to be 'expanding'. Not just in staff ratio to cope with the multiple complaints of establishment bias, but in its apparent recruitment of more 'creative' 'pps' to fine-tune and defend the bias.

Further to my exchange with the BBC on their labelling of Hamas as "militants" comes this reply to another Media Lens contributor:

"Hamas and the recognition of Israel
Posted by Sonmiani on April 1, 2008

The following is a copy of Helen Boaden's reply to an e-mail I sent her following up John Hilley's correspondence with her concerning the BBC's repeated misrepresentation of Hamas not being prepared to recognise the State of Israel:

Dear Sonmiani,

The quotes attributed to Khaled Meshaal, may indeed be a straw in the wind, but they are strikingly similar to comments by previous leaders which have not led to any change in the organization's stance and they do not, per se, seem to indicate formal recognition of Israel.

For example, on 17 June 2003, Abdul Aziz alRantissi gave an interview to the English language Israeli newspaper Haaretz in which he suggested that a 'long term truce' could be possible without recognition of Israel: "'No one can guarantee that Hamas will be able to bring about tha land's liberation within 100 or 200 years. Without dramatic changes in the region, it will be impossible. We can't tell our people to continue in an unequal struggle But we also can't tell them to give in.'

This led Rantissi to a view that has hitherto been associated with those defined as the movement's "moderates" - if Israel would withdraw from all the land it captured in 1967, dismantle all the settlements and enable an independent Palestinian state, 'there will be an end to the struggle, in the form of a long-term truce.'"

But the signals from Hamas are not, and have never been, unambiguous. For example, in December 2002, Sheik Yassin predicted Israel's destruction by the year 2025 (see BBC News Online, 6 June 2003).

Since forming the government, Hamas has been under intense international pressure to recognise the state of Israel. The international community, led by the Quartet (the US, UN, EU and Russia) issued the Hamas government with three obligations - to renounce violence, recognise Israel and recognise all past agreements with Israel. Hamas certainly appeared to accept the vision of a Palestinian state based on the territories occupied since 1967 in a 'National Conciliation Document' agreed in June 2006. But it has not fulfilled the other demands made upon it, nor indeed renounced its charter which, for example, declares that the "liberation (of Palestine) is an individual duty, binding on every Muslim wherever he may be."

Yours sincerely
pp Helen Boaden Director,
BBC News

Sonmiani comments:

"Clearly she has missed the vital point about the timing of recognition, which Hamas has made clear must be dependent upon negotiations, and she has made no mention of the UN's recognition of the right of an occupied people to resist their occupiers, or, consistent with all BBC reporting on this subject, of Israel's far greater use of violence. Furthermore, her claim that Hamas' stated position (that it is prepared to recognise Israel subject to conditions) is ambiguous is not the point. The BBC consistently fails to report the position - indeed misrepresents it as being opposite to that stated, irrespective of any ambiguity."

Indeed. These replies seem determined to demonise Hamas as an unambiguous enemy of peace. There's a similar blanket refusal to countenance the idea that Hamas might be reluctant to 'recognise' - in Israel's and the West's demanding use of the term - a state engaged in the ethnic cleansing and continuing oppression of the Palestinian people.

That doesn't mean Hamas are unprepared to negotiate a peace deal with an oppressor it is seeking to resist. Indeed, Hamas has consistently offered a long-term truce, or hudnah, to set the process in motion, an offer rigidly refused by Israel. Nothing of these mediations and nuanced politics appears to distract the BBC from its one-dimensional view of Hamas as terrorists beyond the 'diplomatic' pale.

It is also notable that the above reply makes no mention of the assassinations of Al-Rantisi in 2004 and Sheik Yassin just before him - Israeli actions condemned by then UN Secretary Kofi Annan. Yes, Al-Rantisi advocated armed resistance. But the key contextual word here, "resistance", has no apparent place in discussing the strategy he advocated.

Besides failing to note the background reasons for Al-Rantisi's thinking, it's also disingenuous and lazy to portray his and Yassin's past statements as indicative of Hamas's evolving situation.

Much of this relies on the BBC's and wider media's spurious and selective interpretation of the 1988 Hamas Charter, an effectively rhetorical document released to coincide with the movement's formation, but which took little account of the group's wider feelings, the changing political environment or the more practical factors involved in any proto-negotiation process.

These critical points are specified by Azzam Tamimi in his definitive book Hamas: Unwritten Chapters (Hurst & Co, 2007). Tamimi describes how the Hamas leadership:

"are increasingly convinced that the Charter as a whole has been more of a hindrance than a help. Many would admit that insufficient thought went into the drafting and publication of the Charter. Once it had been drafted, Hamas institutions inside and outside Palestine were never adequately consulted over its content. According to Khalid Mish'al [head of the Hamas political bureau] the Charter was rushed out to meet what was perceived at the time as a pressing need to introduce the newly founded movement to the public. Mish'al does not view it as a true expression of the movement's overall vision...He sees the Charter as a historical document, which gives an insight into Hamas's original philosophy at the time of its establishment. However, it 'should not be regarded as the fundamental ideological frame of reference from which the movement derives its positions, or on the basis of which it justifies its actions.' " (pp 148-149)

None of this more complex and revealing picture can be detected anywhere in the BBC's version of the Hamas 'worldview'.

I've already sent two notable illustrations of Hamas's more mediated position to the BBC. Here's a more recent statement to that effect from Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal:

"Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said that his movement supports the united Palestinian position that calls for the establishment of a fully sovereign state within the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, and refugees’ right to return.

In an interview published yesterday in Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, Meshaal referred to the 2006 prisoners’ document as proof of this. “There is a Palestinian document and in it all organizations say they agree to a state in the 1967 borders.”

The prisoners’ document, also known as the National Reconciliation Document, was drafted by members of different Palestinian factions held in an Israeli prison, including Fatah and Hamas. It calls for the “establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital on all territories occupied in 1967.”

The Damascus-based leader said the Palestinian position had received a vote of consensus during the national accords of 2006 and that this position is considered acceptable to the Arab world. He called on ordinary Israelis to pressure on their government to stop aggression against the Palestinians in light of this document."

(Also carried by Haaretz.)

Why, then, does the BBC (in contrast to Al-Jazeera) persist in its own use of extremist language to castigate Hamas? Why is it so eager to embrace and promote the 'non-recognition' agenda set in stone by Israel, the US, EU and Quartet? And why does it refuse to employ appropriate and consistent language to characterise the much more crucial issue of Israel's illegal occupation and campaign of terror?

Serious, honest answers to these questions are unlikely to be forthcoming from the pp Boaden sanctum. And that makes the BBC a complicit party in prolonging the conflict and suffering of the Palestinian people.

John