Obama's Israel

Casual enquirers at our weekly Palestinian stall often ask why America doesn't just apply the necessary pressure on Israel to effect a just settlement for the Palestinians. Sometimes it takes that kind of elementary question to remind us of the root causes and continuation of the Palestinian predicament.

A little explanation of Washington's massive financial, political and ideological backing for Israel and its apartheid policies usually helps to illuminate. Yet, even those loosely aware of America's dark hypocrisies on matters of 'freedom and democracy' are often taken aback at the scale of this patron-client enterprise.

Lately, a more particular variation on the question has been posed: will Barack Obama, if elected, bring some of that pressure to bear. The question is usually tinged with a sense of hope. Yet, as we've seen, the signals suggest little room for optimism.

Obama's victory speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), 4 June 2008, was a reaffirmation of where he, and political America at large, stands in relation to Israel:

"Let me be clear..Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper. But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided".

Many observers will likely read this as a pragmatic electoral play to the US Zionist constituency: once elected, a less Israel-friendly politics will prevail, with some sort of 'gentle leaning' on Tel Aviv to agree a just settlement for the Palestinians.

The recent dress rehearsal of mass Israeli F-16s adds another dark dimension to where the warmongering policy is situated, vis-a-vis intimidation of Iran and the last manic hours of the Bush presidency. For some liberal analysts, Obama's election is an immediate imperative.

Yet, can we really foresee an Obama White House as the catalyst for meaningful change in the US-Israel relationship? Will his election presage a less indulgent view of Israeli belligerence towards Tehran? On the Palestinian ground, will he advocate for key 'final status' concessions like the removal of all West Bank settlements?

Alas, as the 'undivided Jerusalem' pledge would indicate, the dual-speak of US-Israeli policy would appear to negate such prospects.

Haven't we been here many times before? Here's an informative reminder of Bill Clinton's tenure for those hopeful of an Obama assertiveness once in power:

"Throughout the Arab world, Clinton’s election was heralded. Those who opposed the Iraqi embargo said that Clinton would represent a fresh look at the sanctions. It soon became evident that it was business as usual. Under the Clinton administration, more Iraqis died than in the two military actions by a couple of Bushes. Here we go again. Barack Obama is the posterperson of the left and of those who want to see the Arab world get a fair shake in dealing with Israel. The same statements abound: "He’ll change when he’s in office;" "We know he’s not ideal, but he represents a new look in politics." Many Arab-Americans are putting Obama on a pedestal. Unfortunately, that pedestal has already begun to crumble."

Realistic hope should never be sacrificed to cynical despair. But, as with the 'redemptive' promises of Blair, we should, at least, be alert to how such 'bright new saviours' come to display rapacious capacities for warmongering. Unlike Blair, Obama, of course, opposes the war in Iraq. But he does so not because it's basically immoral and illegal, but because it's fundamentally unwinnable.

The principal home truth for Americans and the world at large is Obama's reassuringly safe pair of hands. His is a candidacy endorsed, financed and lauded by corporate America. Nothing he may do once in office is likely to upset that set of crucial interests. Indeed, as the financial system lurches towards deeper structural crisis, the hegemons of Wall Street appear ready once again for the 'soft' version of world domination. From Clinton to Bush, neo-conman to neo-con man, the political managers of the corporate order know what's expected of them. Mr Obama will be no exception.

Pilger sees the Obama 'coming' as 'Liberalism's last fling' - which reminds one of Gore Vidal on how FDR's 'liberal interventions' once helped save capitalism. Elucidating the stakes for a 'new' Democrat version of capitalist democracy, Pilger offers this sober comparison with Robert Kennedy:

"In the US, where unrelenting propaganda about American democratic uniqueness disguises a corporate system based on extremes of wealth and privilege, liberalism as expressed through the Democratic Party has played a crucial, compliant role."

"What is Obama’s attraction to big business? Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy’s. By offering a “new”, young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party – with the bonus of being a member of the black elite – he can blunt and divert real opposition. That was Colin Powell’s role as Bush’s secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent."

"The vacuities are familiar. Obama is his echo. Like Kennedy, Obama may well “chart a new direction for America” in specious, media-honed language, but in reality he will secure, like every president, the best damned democracy money can buy."

Reviewing his tough words on Latin America, Pilger provides this further reality check on Obama's hawkish tendencies, all in the traditional war-making spirit of past Democrat leaders:

"It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates. Obama's difference may be that he feels an even greater need to show how tough he is. However much the colour of his skin draws out both racists and supporters, it is otherwise irrelevant to the great power game. The "truly exciting and historic moment in US history" will only occur when the game itself is challenged."

Dogs and tails

Challenging the Israeli game in Palestine, and America's continued participation in it, returns us to the key dynamic shaping the 'special relationship'.

In his latest book, Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (Pluto Press, 2008), Jonathan Cook offers an incisive reading of the US-Israeli dialectic.

Refining the Mearsheimer and Walt thesis of the Jewish lobby's 'tail' wagging the US policy 'dog', and incorporating Chomsky's core views on how US interests remain the predominant factor in US policy-making, Cook argues that the true relationship is actually one of mutual interests and benefits - in effect, the tail and the dog are wagging each other. This, for Cook, is amply illustrated by the common agenda envisaged and cultivated by Israel and the US neo-cons:

"Israel persuaded the US neocons that their respective goals (Israeli regional dominance and US control of oil) were related and compatible ends...Israel's military establishment started developing an ambitious vision of Israel as a small empire in the Middle East more than two decades ago. It then sought a sponsor in Washington to help it realise its vision, and found one in the neocons. The Jewish neocons, many of them already with strong emotional ties to Israel, may have been the most ready to listen to the message coming from Tel Aviv, but that message was persuasive even to the non-Jewish neocons precisely because it placed US interests - especially global domination and control of oil - at the heart of its vision." (pps 90-91.)

Cook goes on to detail the antecedents of this evolving relationship, a not always smooth or fluid one - as with certain policy tensions between Carter and Begin in the seventies. Yet, while dynamic, it has always been subject to the basic assumption that Washington would never take serious reprisals for Israel's conduct.

Cook cites, for example, the Johnson administration's hushing-up of the Israeli air force attack on the US spy ship, Liberty, during the 1967 war, killing 34 US sailors. Israeli defiance, even of this kind, could always be tolerated because "on strategic issues Israeli policy was seen in Washington as according with larger US interests." (p 99.)

And, as Cook shows, it's that deep convergence of interests which lies at the heart of the present theatre of conflict in the Middle East. In essence, both the US and Israel are intent on destabilising the Arab world as part of a joint enterprise in regional authority and energy controls. In particular, Washington wants ownership and control of Iraqi oil, allowing it an enhanced position over OPEC, as well as the geopolitical muscle that goes with that military presence. Tel Aviv, in turn, sees its mission to expand into Palestinian land as dependent on its ability to subvert surrounding Arab states. Israeli and US neocon calls to bomb Iran are, thus, of mutual significance.

Again, this agenda has not been without tension. As Cook argues, while "the Israeli-neocon plan for remaking the Middle East was about undermining the oil states", the interests of Big Oil were not necessarily best-served through this strategy of chaos. One broad scenario it fears, notes Cook, is the possibility of a shift from Sunni to Shia majority influence across Iraq and Iran, and with it a displacement of Saudi Arabia as the key OPEC state, a development which many of the major oil businesses oppose given their profit-guaranteed agreements with OPEC countries.

Nonetheless the neocons have, at this late point of the Bush presidency:

"succeeded in setting in motion a process of destabilisation that was providing a taste of what they intended and what Israel want for the region." (p 121.)

Whatever the contingencies and unravelling to come for the Middle East, there's a dark truth to Cook's view of how the Israeli-US neo-con project utilises insecurity, provocation and division to pursue their joint interests.

Israel's lockdown of Gaza and enforced separation from the West Bank has been a central part of this agenda, allowing it to use the Occupied Territories as a military and human laboratory for US-Israeli policing of the region.

And, as Obama's reassuring speech to the AIPAC elite suggests, those same strategic fundamentals will continue under a Democrat administration. There may be moderations to the policy with Obama at the desk. But they will be moderate alterations, paying dutiful lip service to Israel's version of a 'two-state solution'.

Never say never, of course. As other international pressures are brought to bear, we're also seeing a qualitative change in public and political perceptions of the issue. With the Hamas-initiated ceasefire, Israel has - again - been put on the back foot, effectively forced to acknowledge the gathering criticism of its occupation and blockade of Gaza. Despite the usual skewed media reports of 'Israeli scepticism' over Hamas's intentions for peace - it is, as always, Israel who will seek to destroy it in order to maintain its military imperatives.

Yet, it's that same intransigence, aggression and compliance in a policy of inhuman expansion which also keeps both Israel and the US on the wrong side of the legal and moral fence. That's what they can never disguise. Ultimately, theirs is a politics of domination and coercion which, as history shows - in South Africa, Vietnam, East Timor and other brutalised places - can't be sustained. Indeed, one might reasonably argue that, in Gramscian terms, the US-Israeli project is in a state of hegemonic crisis, failing in popular legitimacy and international authority.

As the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust showed, might can never be right, truth can never be suppressed, compliance can never be hidden. There will, in due course, be a rightful, truthful exposure of Palestinian suffering. One ex-Democrat president, Jimmy Carter, has taken a laudable position on expediting the cause. If Obama, while actually in office, was willing to act upon Carter's denunciation of Israel's apartheid policies that day could be much sooner. If only.

John

Palestine, violence and the 'two sides' narrative

Isn't the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians just tit-for-tat violence? Aren't they just as bad as each other? Surely there's two sides to the story?

Such are the loaded and feeble impressions we're fed of the illegal occupation, daily atrocities and international compliance over Palestinian suffering.

Politicians and journalists alike utilise this narrative to spin the issue, typically characterised as a 'relentless conflict' of two irreconcilable, warring sides. It's a standard set of messages, bordering on cliché, dutifully popularised by the mainstream media and received by the public as 'balanced truth'.

In practice - as I had occasion to remind an insistent enquirer at our weekly Palestinian stall - it's a bogus distraction from the actual truth of a grossly one-sided persecution.

Yes, Palestinians resort to violence, in response to Israeli violence. But it's not a 'violence of equals' - as the overwhelming might of Israel's US-gifted arsenal plainly shows. Nor is it just Palestinian reaction to the latest Israeli 'incursion' - media-speak for state-military murder. Rather, it's a violence of continued resistance to generations of Israeli violence.

For the oppressor, that violence serves an explicit purpose. Israel not only breeds violence through its occupation, it actually needs that violence to manage and pursue the Zionist project of territorial, political and ideological expansion.

The more searching question is how, or whether, the Palestinian case is advanced through violence. And this takes us on to a more qualitative engagement of the violence issue.

Here's a useful reminder from Chomsky on the case for a non-violent response:

"My opinion all along has been that the Palestinian leadership is offering Israel and its US backers a great gift by resorting to violence and posturing about revolution -- quite apart from the fact that, tactical considerations aside, resort to violence carries a very heavy burden of justification. Today, for example, nothing is more welcome to Israeli and US hawks than Qassam rockets, which enable them to shriek joyously about how the ratio of deaths should be increased to infinity (all victims being defined as "terrorists"). I have also agreed all along with personal friends who had contacts with the Palestinian leadership (in particular, Edward Said and Eqbal Ahmad) that a non-violent struggle would have had considerable prospects for success. And I think it still does, in fact the only prospects for success."

Chomsky's thoughts, of course, transcend the standard condemnation of Palestinian violence and the 'two-sides' distortion. The question, rather, is how much more effective would the Palestinian case be if based solely on non-violence?

Chomsky's views on the matter prompted this recent exchange at the Media Lens board (June 8 2008).

Posted by Stephen Soldz in reply to "Re: Chomsky's view on violence in Palestine"

The question Chomsky is raising is, are the Palestinians willing to forgo the easy boost to self-esteem from launching a few rockets in exchange for a possible long-range victory. I certainly understand the impulse behind the violent strategy, but its total failure should be clear to all. It should be clear by now that the Palestinians cannot defeat the Israelis militarily. In fact, they can only be an irritant aiding the most repressive and regressive forces in Israeli society. The greatest threat to the occupation would be a mass movement demanding among the occupied voting rights in Israel. A reasonable two-state solution would then appear to be a "moderate" compromise.

Posted by Jimbob in reply to "Re: Chomsky's view on violence in Palestine"

One problem with this argument is that the Palestinians have tried non-violent protest before (the first intifada, and before the war in Lebanon in 1982) and been met with just as much brutality. If you look at the majority of anti-colonial struggles then violence and the threat of violence has proved fairly effective.

Posted by dereklane in reply to "Re: Chomsky's view on violence in Palestine"

I know I'm repeating myself, but for the last hundred years or so Aborigines in Australia have more or less practised a non-violent protest (fear of reprisal may have had more than a little to do with it - the slightest revolt gets met with armed military, threatening and beating men, women and children). It has got them nowhere.

A non-violent oppressed minority is easier to ignore, and to manipulate with token gestures and allegations and assault of character; easier to erode culturally, mentally, physically. You need the will of a Buddhist monk to maintain the strength to remain passive in the face of continuous barbarity, and most people in the world do not have that (me included). I don't condone the violence, but I think its fanciful to suggest their cause would be any further advanced without it.

cheers,
Derek

Posted by John Hilley in reply to "Re: Chomsky's view on violence in Palestine"

I take your point entirely, Derek, about the historical plight of the Aborigines, though I suspect they would have met the full force of white violence with or without armed resistance.

The case for a non-violent response in Palestine is, to my mind, a tactical one. Israel, as we've repeatedly seen, will go to any lengths to provoke the Palestinians into violent action, thus maintaining the pretext for 'retaliatory' 'self-defence' - the repressive modus operandi of the occupation.

Chomsky (as with the late Said) is essentially correct in his analysis. Despite Western support for Israel, there's a growing awareness of the Palestinians' case internationally, significantly highlighted by people like Carter, Tutu, Dugard et al. Hamas need to capitalise on that. Indeed, one can see that strategy evolving in the Hamas offer of a hudna.

No one who seriously understands the Palestinians' desperate predicament can easily condemn their resort to violence. But we must consider how best to advance that cause, a process which involves highlighting and isolating the real practitioners of mass violence - the Israeli state. Peaceful exposure of Israel as an apartheid state akin to South Africa will bear greater fruit than any token military response.

John

Posted by dereklane in reply to "Re: Chomsky's view on violence in Palestine"

"there's a growing awareness of the Palestinians' case internationally, significantly highlighted by people like Carter, Tutu, Dugard et al."

That's the real point, isn't it? That now - when recognition of the Palestinian genocide/oppression is growing (rather than hidden or ignored) - the next step to take is the non-violent path (perhaps a long term ceasefire). Without the international knowledge of their plight, such a step might just prove to be a slow suicide, but with it, it might make their case even stronger. Hard, of course, to implement - Hamas, like any government, doesn't have the last word on what Palestine's citizens do.

I can see it working more from a 'from now on' perspective, just not so from the idea that had Palestinians not indulged in violence across the years, they would be further advanced to a positive end to their oppression today. To many people, the highlighting of Palestinian suicide bombers in the media hasn't resulted in the standard media reaction of 'how barbaric those Palestinians are', but the more obvious question of 'well, what could drive a man to do such a thing?' - a question that leads invariably to enlightenment on the issue. In that sense, however gruesome and reprehensible (where innocent people suffer), it has worked.

cheers,
Derek

Posted by JJ in reply to "Re: Chomsky's view on violence in Palestine"

I don't wish to appear reductive but shouldn't non-violence be a goal entirely on its own merits and in a moral context rather than a tactical one? Apart from anything else, a non-violent policy founded on tactical motives would surely prove unstable and unlikely to last for any length of time. Any political advances from a non-violent approach are the result of its moral strength, so the morality at the heart of the issue should be catalyst, rather than trying to sneak a non-violent approach through the backdoor, as it were, based on tactical reasons.

Posted by Miriam in reply to "Re: Chomsky's view on violence in Palestine"

Recognition of the Palestinian cause has been almost entirely the result of the efforts of Palestinian people themselves to promote awareness of their plight. It's a pity that 'big name' recognition now seems to carry more weight when it comes to taking advantage of the heightened recognition they have achieved.

I agree that non-violence should be a matter of principle rather than tactics. But that said, it's surely inhumane not recognise the severe provocation caused to Palestinians by Israel's actions - along with the disgusting complicity of the US, the UK, the UN (despite all manner of ineffectual hand wringing). Isn't retaliatory violence in that context not a matter of regret but of inevitability - if not outright necessity?

Posted by John Hilley in reply to "Re: Chomsky's view on violence in Palestine"

I think you're fundamentally right here [JJ]. Non-violence is a moral imperative in itself. It's also the most human form of action. The suggestion of its tactical value really stems from a basic recognition that violence is already an understandable reality here.

My point, thus, is not to invoke or 'preach' the case for non-violence in a situation where it's almost inevitable, but to argue that the Palestinian cause would be better served through a non-violent response.

I also take Derek's point that the actions of suicide bombers may have caused many to ask 'what drives them' rather than resort to outright denunciation. However, there are two key sets of forces always encouraging the latter reaction: the mainstream media and the Israeli state itself. Both, as I've said, help provide and maintain the pretext for deeper repression and 'legitimation' of the occupation.

One of the things that continues to terrify Israel is the prospect of mass peaceful civil protest, as happened recently during the 'Gaza breakout'.

The 'big names' may be late in coming to the cause. But their voices do count, serving, alongside all the grassroots work of ISM and others to shame and isolate Israel. Desmond Tutu calling the blockade of Gaza "an abomination" is part of the critical process of building international awareness.

John

Reinforcing the 'two-sides' agenda

As suggested, images of Israeli violence against Palestinians have the power to shock and bring home the reality of that "abomination". The trouble is that it can't happen without sustained coverage of Israeli violence. And here, again, we see the crucial role of the media in fostering the 'two-sides' narrative.

This is evident even where reports of brazen Israeli violence are given more 'serious' space. The BBC recently applauded themselves for airing disturbing pictures of an old Palestinian lady and her husband being viciously beaten by baseball-stick-wielding Israeli settlers.

It was, indeed, a shocking piece of footage, captured by a young Palestinian with a hand-held video camera. The film, then passed on to the BBC, has correspondent Tim Franks relate the obvious brutality of the incident.

Yet, despite this, and the report's reference to Palestinian land rights, Franks's concluding words return us to the safe, 'objectivity' of the 'two-sides' context:

"Violence against Jews as well as Palestinians has long scarred this place. Video may now may be giving us a new and raw view. But for most people here, the only answer - a political deal - remains out of sight."

It may seem a 'fair' and 'balanced' conclusion: violence is occurring 'on both sides', everyone is "scarred" and a settlement between these adversaries seems a distant promise. But, while much of this is evident, such statements help reinforce the notion that 'one side is as bad as the other'.

Here was a film which could have been used to explain the true extent of settler brutality in Hebron and other places of Palestinian suffering. Instead, it felt like a token nod to the Palestinian 'side' of the 'argument'.

Why, moreover, have the BBC been failing to shoot such daily images themselves rather than relying on civilian witnesses to highlight this supposed "new and raw" reality?

Last week, the Israeli army used live rounds against peaceful demonstrators at Bil'in. The week before, three visiting European envoys were injured by tear gas and a tear gas round. Neither story, apparently, merited any coverage by the BBC.

In truth, there is no 'two-sides' to the occupation and murder of Palestinians by the Israeli state. Just as there was no 'two-sides' to the Holocaust and mass murder of Jews by the Nazis. We can have philosophical debates about man's inhumanity to man. But, fundamentally, the ethnic cleansing and systematic murder of peoples comes down to an examination of one-sided power. There's the oppressor and the oppressed. And those who portray it as a two-sided affair merely enhance and legitimate the one-sided dominance of the oppressor.

If the BBC acknowledged even a fraction of the massively disproportionate violence visited on the Palestinians every single day, the public might be some way forward in understanding that raw reality. Instead, the 'two-sides' narrative serves to obscure the truth, prolong the violence and further empower the Israeli regime. That's a form of complicit violence in itself.

John

Michael White and 'people like us'

It's often instructive to see leading liberal journalists use crude simplifications to disguise their establishment leanings and analytical deficiencies.

Thus, from on high, comes this all-knowing proclamation from the Guardian's chief political editor Michael White:

"It's always simple to MediaLens and Noam Chomsky, that's fine if it makes them happy - or is the goal unhappy? - but the world is usually more complex..."

White was posting his closing response over George Monbiot's attempted citizen's arrest of John Bolton at last week's Hay Book Festival. His rationalisations of Bolton's presence and warmongering arguments served a useful purpose in revealing to many, including erstwhile Guardian readers, White's, and the Guardian's own, true colours over the war and slaughter in Iraq. It's another timely reminder of how war criminals like Bolton and Blair have been sheltered by moral contortions and in-house platitudes at Farringdon Road.

But the exchanges also helped expose White's own delusions of grandeur in dismissing those supposedly unfit to challenge his kind of 'professional journalism'.

Thus, Noam Chomsky, a man widely credited as probably the finest intellectual of his age, has his millions of studious words on the subject of Iraq and such issues casually dismissed as "simple". Likewise, with the many forensically-documented articles and comments from Media Lens. One can only presume White's similar contempt for other learned anti-war writers like Pilger and Dahr Jamail.

Yet, for White, Bolton is also afflicted by a similar inability to see this "complex" world picture. Thus, White deploys another variation of the 'simpleton' line to address and excuse Bolton's criminal intent:

"For Bolton to say he has no opinion points to a wider myopia. Bolton - whom I have heard before - strikes me as the kind of American who does not know much about the big world outside nor its long and diverse history. He seemed to lack sympathetic imagination to consider the other point of view."

So, Bolton is also deemed ignorant of the 'big picture', the only difference being, for White, Bolton's neo-con 'simplification' as opposed to Chomsky's/ML's leftist "simple" worldview.

White's claim that Bolton "does not know much about the big world outside" shows, in itself, a shocking poverty of analysis. But it also indicates the kind of self-assured and self-delusional world many senior journalists inhabit.

In truth, Bolton knows precisely what's going on in the "big world outside". To think, or argue, otherwise is to reduce his co-planning and co-execution of a wilful war of aggression to that of 'ignorant bystander'.

Indeed, Bolton's long-standing calls for pre-emptive attacks on North Korea and other Axis of Evildom tells us all we need to know about the workings of this calculating, mercenary mind.

White also takes issue with those comparing Bolton and his warmongering associates to the Nazis. Yet, White's 'the Nazi comparison is too simple' rebuke is another grandstanding device, allowing him to dismiss the central issue of Bolton's actual criminality, prosecutable under the same Nuremberg laws designed to address Nazi war crimes. As I noted at the ML board, White's 'objections' to Bolton are, thus, diluted to a set of minor political differentials, never the possibility that he could be a war criminal.

White's defence of Bolton's invite and statements at Hay demonstrates the central function of the liberal media in whitewashing illegal wars and occupations like Iraq and Palestine. Indeed, devious politicos like Bolton and Blair depend critically on the liberal circuit for their respectable standing - the quid pro quo being the type of favoured access White enjoys to Downing Street and the New Labour loop.

And with that privileged door to power comes a kind of incredulity that such 'all-knowing' journalists could be questioned by 'novice' activists on their reporting of political life. Thus, White dismisses one excellent activist/correspondent present at the Hay 'arrest' with the term "people like you".

Oliver Kamm recently handed-down another such grand dismissal in claiming that:

"ML operates in effect as a "care in the community" scheme for numerous species of malcontent..."

White, Kamm and 'people like them' might not like this uncomfortable reminder about 'people like us', but it was millions of the latter who, at the outset, saw the blatant lies people like Blair and Bolton were peddling, a set of warmongering fictions which people like White, for all their professional status and journalistic kudos failed, or affected not to, see.

Michael White would have us believe that his worldview eschews the "simple" in favour of the "complex". The more useful possibility is that people like White are unable or unwilling to see their own self-regarding place in the elite firmament and how their privileged words serve to mystify and excuse the simple truth that people like Bolton are scheming criminals. Reassuringly, there's always people like us to remind people like White of their elitist myopia.

John

Solidarity as love

What useful synonyms might we seek for the word 'solidarity'? How about 'love'?

More obvious examples occur, of course - 'commonality', 'mutuality', 'collectivity', among others.

But I think love is a much-neglected intimate of the term, suggesting a close coupling of ideals, values and consideration for each other.

Love as solidarity invokes feelings of care, safe-keeping and protection, a sharing spirit, a desire to hold dear, to cherish that which supports and enhances the common good. From kind friendship to being there in times of sickness and adversity, it's a bonding of hearts, minds and souls. These are universal human attributes which inform all situations, from social communities to personal partnerships.

It's the manifesto for a true politics of love. Whether it's state relations or intimate relations, politics is about power and how we choose to exercise or restrain ourselves from its misuse. From the cabinet room to the war room, the board room to the newsroom, the living room to the bedroom, we face moral choices about how we regard and treat each other. Do we idolise profit and greed or idealise sharing and generosity? Do we trust our leaders or ourselves? Do we support unholy war or foster 'holy' love?

Deep down, I believe that people are more inclined towards the peace, love and solidarity end of the social and emotional spectrum. It's the self-interested market system which keeps people atomised and mercenary. Divisive competition inhibits us from evolving in more altruistic ways. The capitalist disorder has no use for 'romantic' notions of love as solidarity. Instead, we're urged to see our lives as a set of privatised 'goals'. We even come to regard our partners as market commodities to be discarded or 'upgraded'.

It's part of the crude individualism that constrains feelings of solidarity and love. For the power elite, love as solidarity is an uncomfortable impediment to market desires. And the corollary to that is the language of hostility, conflict and hate.

This week we learned about the kind of 'solidarity' urged by George W Bush as he rallied the troops in Iraq:

"Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

Or how about this in the same spirit of belligerent 'solidarity' from the faltering Hillary Clinton:

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president we will attack Iran...In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

So much for reaching out in a spirit of dialogue, tolerance and engagement. Clinton's brand of 'tough love', amplifying her eager solidarity with Israel, is of the exclusive 'us' variety. It's also, as with her political peers, the 'solidarity-speak' of corporate America.

Heading homewards on an overnight train from Barcelona last week, I had the interesting experience of being berthed alongside two pleasant young American lads on their first trip to Europe. And, of course, the chat turned to politics. Rather sheepishly, they confessed their support for John McCain, at least aware of the relative antipathy to that kind of allegiance this side of the Atlantic. It seemed not to occur to them that their Republican hopeful and his new proto-hawks are concerned only with a grasping love of power and a quest for imperial domination over others.

What interested me more, though, was the insularity of their understanding, some of it, in this case, the apparent product of how 'political science' is taught in US colleges. Their main 'worldview' seemed fixated on how America will deal with its own global 'problems', not about the wanton killing and chaos it is visiting on other people and places. Their thoughts were not overtly hateful. Quite the contrary. But they registered a kind of imbued indifference, a desensitisation, to 'external' suffering, as though the province of political life can only be about power, brinkmanship and gain rather than a praxis of solidarity and love.

Wandering the seductive streets of Paris later that day, a more hopeful sense of solidarity came to mind, conjured around the iconography of 'liberty, equality, fraternity' - and, yes, romantic love. It all rests on a set of heady ideals, of course. But - in optimistic contrast to my train-travelling McCainites - it still encourages the enduring belief that we are ever-capable of something much more giving, much more caring, much more loving.

And, sitting reflectively at the Seine, a little piece of special verse came back, reminding me of how love speaks as a kind of solidarity in all its life-experiencing facets:

"To hold her in my arms against the twilight and be her comrade for ever - this was all I wanted so long as my life should last...And this, I told myself with a kind of wonder, this was what love was: this consecration, this curious uplifting, this sudden inexplicable joy, and this intolerable pain." (Anon.)

In the perennial spirit of love as solidarity, past, present, future.

John

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