In Defence Of Socialism

2003-06-19T21:27:00.000-04:00

Selective morality props up blanket immunity.

Israel enjoys blanket immunity because the great majority of so-called
international leaders, thinkers, pundits, academics and journalists practice
selective morality when it comes to Israeli attacks on Palestinians and
those who offer sympathy to their struggle for freedom and
self-determination.

When Israeli civilians are killed their tragedies make international
headlines. The loss of life is described with heart rendering details of
loss and mourning. Images of blood, agony and suffering are abundant. Words
like attacks on civilians, murder and brutal killing are used to describe
their deaths.

On average Palestinian civilians deliberately killed by the Israeli Army and
armed Jewish settlers, if they are covered by the media at all, are usually
news-in-brief items, relegated to paragraph 14 of section D. Their cause of
death is usually described as being shot (by whom we are not told) or
"caught in a cross- fire," as if their deaths were the result of some
"natural disaster" or "accident." We are almost never told that the majority
of Palestinians killed are unarmed innocent civilians. We do not hear their
names, the stories of their precious lives or witness the mourning of their
families. We do not get a snapshot into THEIR devastation, destruction and
heart rendering tragedies.

Does the world condemn equally? Is it only wrong when an Israeli dies? Are
we all created equal, but as Orwell says, some of us are more equal than
others?

And I return to Rachel Corrie's sentiment that somehow "they wouldn't dare
kill an American." If there is one thing I have learned about this conflict
is that they do dare, because when it comes to Israel's crimes there is
always an exemption.

Take for example the bombing in Tel Aviv. Kofi Annan said he "condemns in
the strongest possible way" the attack calling it a "morally reprehensible"
act.

The next day, the Israel Army killed a dozen Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,
including a two-year-old toddler close to where Rachel was crushed. Kofi
Annan's response was that he was "deeply disturbed by Israeli military
incursions" (not terrorist attacks). He did not find this morally
reprehensible. Nor was there any condemnation.

Israel has a right to exist but are Palestinians given that same right? That
is never debated. Israeli deaths are murders. Palestinian deaths are
inconvenient.

It is never an issue to address the Palestinians "legitimate security
concerns" or the right to live in secure borders, FREE from occupation. Only
Israelis have these moral and human rights. Palestinian must accept diapers
and humanitarian aid and be grateful little natives for whatever carrot
Israel or the US throws them.

This selective morality props up blanket immunity.

2003-05-29T02:28:00.000-04:00

The Children's Teeth

Uri Avnery

17.5.03

One of the most progressive Jewish principles of old is now being put to the test: "In those days they shall say no more, Â‘The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge'. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge." (Jeremia, 31.)

A suicide bomber kills himself. Should his orphan children be punished for that?

The Israeli army of occupation says: Yes, indeed! Furthermore, anyone who helps the children is a criminal, an accomplice, a supporter of terrorism. If the potential suicide bomber knows that his family will starve after his death, he might shrink from committing the deed. But if he knows that somebody will take care of his family, his readiness to become a martyr will be strengthened.

That is to say: "The fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children's teeth shall be set on edge. Every one shall die for his fathers iniquity, the teeth of his whole family shall be set on edge."

In recent times, this logic has frequently been acted upon. When Stalin's secret police arrested a man as an "imperialist spy", his family was dispersed, his wife sent to the Gulag and the children to the party's orphanage. The Nazis created the term "Sippenhaft", meaning that the whole family is responsible for the acts of any of its members. Until now, such methods were associated with totalitarian regimes.

Even if this method were effective, if starving the wives and children of suicide bombers deter others, we must still say: No. We cannot allow our state to behave like this, just as we do not take hostages and shoot them or wrap the corpses of suicide bombers in pigs' skins, as has been suggested by some (to prevent them from entering paradise). In the final analysis, that is not wise, either. The prophets of Israel were no fools.

And to the matter at hand: This week the leaders of the Islamic Movement in Israel ("Northern Branch") were arrested. The huge propaganda apparatus of the army and Security Service, which controls all our media, accused them of "helping Palestinian terrorism".

Two days later, the mountain gave birth to a mouse (as the Hebrew saying goes). The main accusation against the Islamists was that they are supporting the family members of suicide bombers and other "martyrs". The police officer in charge declared that, beyond that, there is no evidence of support of terrorism. All in all, the only offences allegedly discovered were of an economic nature, such as money laundering. "Economic offenses", and for that such a gigantic operation!

The arrests were conducted like a military operation against a dangerous enemy. In the middle of the night, a convoy of 800 police rolled into the township of Um-al-Fakhem, accompanied by a company of reporters and photographers. Policemen in bulletproof vests surrounded the homes of the "suspects", all of them respected public figures. Snipers were at the ready, as the policemen burst in and dragged the leaders out of their beds.

The climax of the operation was the arrest of the head of the movement, Sheikh Ra'ed Salah. His father was dying in hospital, the Sheikh was lying next to him to give him support in his last hours. The policemen woke him up and took him out in his underclothes to the waiting photographers, as we saw on TV. If they wanted to humiliate him, they failed. The dignified bearing of the Sheikh put the policemen to shame. His father died a few hours later, alone.

I must disclose here that I am not entirely objective where Sheikh Ra'ed is concerned. Ten years ago, in the winter of 1993, when Yitzhaq Rabin expelled 415 Islamic activists and left them in a deserted field on the Lebanese border, we set up protest tents opposite the Prime Minister's office. With us in the tent was Sheikh Ra'ed. For 45 days and nights in the fierce cold of snow-covered Jerusalem, we lived together - the Sheikh and his followers, I and my spouse Rachel and a changing number of guests, Jews and Arabs. We spent hundreds of hours talking about everything under the sun, and the Sheikh taught us a lot about the Kor'an and Islam, especially its tolerant face.

I admit that the Sheikh, who was 34 years old at the time, charmed us. Unlike the stereotype of a religious extremist, he was full of humor. He is a wise person. In daily life he was pleasant, courteous and modest. I was impressed by his leadership style: early in the morning he got up and started to clean the area around the tents. His men were quick to join him. No orders, no requests.

This does not mean, of course, that I accepted his ideas. I reject any religious regime. I support the total separation of religion from politics, between church (or mosque or synagogue) and state. Religious fanaticism is completely alien to me. That did not prevent me from liking Ra'ed Salah. End of personal note.

The solidarity of the Arab citizens of Israel with their kin in the Palestinian territories in their struggle against the occupation seems to me quite natural. I understand their feelings and their desire to tender humanitarian aid. All the more so as Gush Shalom, the movement to which I belong, collects money and sends food to the beleaguered Palestinian villages and refugee camps, as an act of solidarity. This can also be construed as "aid to terrorists" - after all, if the army wants to starve the population into surrender, who are we to alleviate their hunger?

Clearly, all these are pretexts. One does not send 800 policemen just to prevent children from getting bread or to arrest people laundering money. If so, what was the real aim?

The Sharon government is now engaged in an all-out struggle to destroy the Palestinian people as a national entity. The re-conquest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the enlargement of the settlements at a frantic pace, the building of the "separation walls" that will cut off about half of area of the West Bank, the daily assassinations and other killings, the starving of the population, the wholesale demolition of homes and the building of bypass roads - all these are meant to beat the Palestinian people into submission and to break their will to resist.

Sharon is now opening a second front. The million and a quarter Palestinians who are Israeli citizens were not directly involved up till now. A lot of declarations of support for their compatriots beyond the Green Line, some humanitarian actions, here and there some individuals who actively helped bombers. All in all, very little, under the circumstances.

Sharon is going to change that. The attack on the Islamic Movement is the beginning of a concentrated onslaught that will drag the "Israeli Arabs" into the bloody fight. Breaking the back of this population is aimed at driving the Palestinians deeper into despair. It is, of course, convenient to start with the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, because it is the most distant from the Jewish public. It does not participate in the Knesset elections. It is easy to create suspicion and to attack it. But let there no doubt: if this operation succeeds, all the other sections of the Arab population, from Azmi Bishara to Hadash, will follow. The recent attempt to get them out of the Knesset was just the beginning. After that, it may be the turn of the Jewish peace forces which support the establishment of a viable Palestinian state in all the occupied territories.

Let there be no illusions: Sharon's final goal is turning the whole country, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, into an exclusively Jewish state. In this vision there is no place for Arabs, whether in the occupied territories or in Israel proper. Whoever opposes this vision is an enemy (if an Arab) or a traitor (if a Jew).

Therefore, paradoxically, the struggle over Sheikh Ra'ed, the religious extremist, is also a battle for the future of Israel as a democratic, secular and liberal state.

2003-04-24T00:37:00.000-04:00

Lesson number one: never underestimate the power of the dollar. Numerous defense experts predicted bloody battles in Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan. But the Taliban has disappeared almost without a trace offering only minimal resistance. All large cities and towns Â– ideal places for close-quarters combat where the enemyÂ’s technological superiority offers few advantages Â– were abandoned with little resistance. Resistance offered to the US troops in Baghdad didnÂ’t even qualify as a face-saving show. Everyone is still wondering whyÂ… Taliban is far from extinct: if anything, we see increasingly more action in Afghanistan as the weather gets warmer and more coffins with US soldiers head to Ramstein and to Dover. And we have never really seen the Taliban destroyed: the number of killed and captured Taliban troops was nowhere near the pre-war strength of the regimeÂ’s forces. Most of the Taliban fighters have simply switched sides and now support the US forces. Or maybe not.

In a way this situation is repeating itself in Iraq: disappearance of the Iraqi army and its equipment; cities absolutely unprepared for long-term defense; stiff initial resistance followed by organized total withdrawal. Just like in Afghanistan the pre-war rhetoric in Iraq promised the US a bloody hell should they come into the country. And initially it seemed like this promise may come true. Despite predictions by many military analysts Iraq actually offered stiff resistance during the first two weeks of the war. But then something happened Â– first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq Â– and all resistance melted away. Some are even talking about some secret mind-control weapon used by the US.

But it seems that the only mind-control weapon Â– and a very effective one Â– that Washington has is the good old dollar. Why fight for victory when you can buy it? ItÂ’s not a waste of money Â– itÂ’s an investment. In Afghanistan it was an investment in BushÂ’s image as the protector of the world against the threat of terrorism; while in Iraq the reasons are far more trivial. In return you get stability, oil and many other benefits not immediately apparent to non-business types. For example: the loot from Baghdad museums Â– a well-planned out operation to free the Iraqis from the national heritage of their oppressed past. Maybe this is the future: a humane war when one side has too much money and the other side Â– not enoughÂ… But there are still some problems to works out (like civilians getting killed and similar small issues).

The question of what exactly happened (and is still happening) in Iraq remains open. One may argue that some sort of a deal might have been reached between the US and the top Iraqi military commanders to secure the Iraqi armyÂ’s surrender. I am not saying this is not possible. But I am saying that there is no evidence to support this theory. WeÂ’ve heard about entire divisions and army corps surrendering, yet, officially the US claims just under 10,000 POWs (many of which are already known to be civilians and paramilitary fighters). Just a reminder, IraqÂ’s pre-war army strength was put at between 350,000 and 402,000. And we are yet to see captured IraqÂ’s military hardware in any significant numbers Â– at least a few thousand tanks and APCs. The keyword here is Â“thousandÂ”.

What supports the theory of a wartime deal between the US and the Iraqi military commanders? Of all the reportedly captured Iraqi government officials there is only one military commander: Muzahim Sa'b Hassan al-Tikriti, IraqÂ’s air defense commander. Gen. Zuhayr Talib Abd al-Sattar al-Naqib, the former head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence surrendered on his own accord and hardly qualifies as an army commander. Top command of the Iraqi army Â– all branches including the Air Force and the Republican Guard Â– have escaped capture somewhat miraculously, considering that, according to Pentagon, the entire Iraqi army has surrendered. What else? Absence of any significant numbers of Iraqi military hardware: Pentagon does not want to show large number of intact equipment realizing that doing so would let the cat out of the bag and turn the glorious victory into an under-the-table arrangement. Finally, the public opinion seems to support this theory of a wartime deal between the Iraqi and the US commanders.

Nevertheless, significant evidence goes against the theory of a wartime deal between Iraq and the US and instead suggests a pre-war arrangement. First, many defense analysts point to complete absence of any serious defenses in Baghdad, Tikrit, and most of the other large Iraqi cities. Significant defenses were deployed in Umm Quasar and it took the coalition forces more than two weeks to capture this borderline village with the population of about 1,200. Defense around Basra were formidable and held the British forces at bay for weeks. Defenders in An Najaf and An Nassiriyah held back the US assaults for many days. One may counter that Saddam did not expect the US troops to get to Baghdad at all, let alone so quickly. But he did! Saddam practically invited the US troops to Baghdad, where they should have gotten embroiled in urban fighting. US troops did not arrive to Baghdad quickly. If anything, the coalitionÂ’s military progress on the ground was much slower than expected by most military analysts. In any case, Iraq had years to prepare for the war, which was inevitable since G.W. came to power in the US.

Another interesting aspect of the war is the Iraqi leadership: with the money and influence available to SaddamÂ’s government they could have been anywhere by now. But they are in Iraq. And this goes for Iraqi officials of all levels Â– from the top figures like Tarik Aziz to mid-level Baath functionaries. Some will argue that this supports the first theory of a wartime deal between the US and the Iraqi army: SaddamÂ’s government simply had no time to escape. This argument holds no water: did Saddam expect to defeat the US? Hardly. The fact the active part of the war lasted for as long as it did is in itself quite an accomplishment by the Iraqi military but mainly by the Fedayeen irregulars. Even if we are to suppose that the Iraqi army held out in Umm Quasar, Basra, An Najaf, An Nassiriyah and other places for two weeks while a deal was negotiated, a conspiracy on this scale would have been impossible. Iraqi army numbered hundreds of thousands of which we have seen just a fraction. There are thousands of top- and mid-level commanders many of whom are loyal to Saddam and have no reasons to expect anything good from the US occupation. Many of these commanders and troops have been accused of genocide against the Kurds. Those military commanders who might have considered a deal with the US would be too afraid to act in the society characterized by clan loyalties, all-embracing fear and mistrust of everyone and everything. Several military commanders corrupted by US dollars? Entirely possible. An entire army in a secret deal with the Anglo-American coalition? Absolutely out of the question.

2003-04-10T07:13:00.000-04:00

We said it would be a nightmare

Alexander Cockburn - Creators Syndicate

04.09.03 - Baghdad's hospitals admit a hundred casualties an hour and have run out of anesthetics. Surgeons try to numb up mangled children with short-term pain-killers, but even these are in dwindling supply. Iraqi families who fled into the desert face 100-degree temperatures and no water. U.S. tanks inflict mayhem and slaughter in Baghdad's streets.

From Umm Qasr and the Faw peninsula, through Basra to Baghdad, it's a scene of devastation, with every bridge and guard post adorned with civilian cars riddled with bullets by jumpy U.S. soldiers. There's no "fog of war" where the disaster of daily life in Iraq (what's now swaddled in that virtuous bureaucratic phrase "humanitarian crisis") is concerned. Reports confirm what all sane forecasts predicted of a U.S. attack: It is a catastrophe for the Iraqi people, particularly the poor.

A few days ago, the BBC featured a vivid interview with Patrick Nicholson of the British charity Catholic Agency For Overseas Development (CAFOD). He's just returned from Umm Qasr, where he found the humanitarian effort in the British-occupied area to be a "shambles." "From the TV pictures of Umm Qasr, I had been led to believe it was a town under control, where the needs of the people were being met. The town is not under control. It's like the Wild West. And even the most major humanitarian concern, water, is not being adequately administered.

"Everywhere I went, the local people asked me for water. I went into the two rooms occupied by a family of 14, they were drinking from an oil drum half full of stagnant, dirty water. It was water I certainly would not have drunk. The little girl was very malnourished, skeletal, and in my experience as an aid worker I would say she had less than a week to live."

Given this, plus the sort of horrors reported from near Al Hillah about Iraqi civilians sliced to ribbons by U.S. cluster bombs, can one imagine that an Iraqi puppet government is going to be greeted with cheers and bunting by Iraqis? Take Kenan Makiya, based at Harvard and one of the more prominent people in Ahmed Chalabi's group of exiles, the Iraqi National Congress.

On March 24, Makiya described his emotions at the news that Baghdad was being bombed: "The bombs have begun to fall on Baghdad … those bombs are music to my ears … the explosion of a JDAM can sound beautiful." Probably more beautiful when contemplated from the sanctuary of Harvard Yard than in the maternity hospital in Baghdad a U.S. missile hit last week.

"My friends in the opposition," Makiya went on, "are gathering in Kurdistan with the Iraqi National Congress and in Kuwait with Jay Garner's office. [The retired US general, intended as postwar Iraq's proconsul, noted for the public vehemence of his support for Israel.] I should be there with them, but I am told I have to stay. I am needed here, to keep touch with Washington. I cannot stand it. All I have to think about is whether or not the U.S. government is going to once again betray the Iraqi opposition."

Makiya is right to be apprehensive. It was he who personally assured George Bush before the U.S./U.K. attack that the invaders would be greeted with cheers and roses. The U.S. high command has no doubt adjusted its estimate of exactly how closely people like Chalabi and Makiya are attuned to the sentiments of the people of Iraq, who probably do not appreciate the scenario Makiya recently shared with the American Enterprise Board (at a symposium) of a "federal, non-Arab demilitarized Iraq." Such a federal Iraqi government, Makiya went on, "cannot be thought of any longer, in any politically meaningful sense of the word, as an Arab entity."

Assessing the surprising extent of resistance, the U.S. ultra-hawks are now circulating the idea that Iraq is a "deeply sick" society, not yet ready for "western-style democracy," which will require purgation through lengthy occupation, with all appropriate theft or exploitation of Iraq's assets. Assuming the demise of Saddam's regime, Iraqi national resistance will probably be led by Dawa, which is the Shi'ite resistance group, by the Iraqi Communist Party and perhaps the pro-Syrian elements of the Ba'ath Party, which has retained through years of repression a surprising amount of strength.

How long will U.S. occupation last, given lethal assaults of the sort that killed over 200 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in the Reagan years, prompting rapid withdrawal? From across the border, the Iranians will be pretty good at this sort of game, and of course will be eager to speed U.S. departure. So a flickering U.S. casualty rate (note the disclosure last week of 175 casualties among U.S. special operations forces, post 9/11), as now occurring in Afghanistan, could prompt a Bring the Troops Home call from Democratic contenders such as John Kerry, currently too prudent to do anything but wag the flag.

The future? Most assuredly, the continuation of existing nightmare for ordinary Iraqis for years to come. For a sense of perspective read the grand speeches of the British who entered Mesopotamia in 1917, only to face a concerted uprising by Shi'a, Sunni and Kurds three years later.

© 2003 Creators Syndicate

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14812

2003-03-31T01:03:00.000-05:00

Before the first cruise missile crushed the first skull of the first child killed in the first installment of George W. Bush's crusade for world dominion, the unelected plutocrats occupying the White House were already plying their corporate cronies with fat contracts to "repair" the murderous devastation they were about to unleash on Iraq. There was, of course, no open bidding allowed in the process; just a few "selected" companies -- selected for their preponderance of campaign bribes to the Bushist Party, that is -- "invited" to submit their wish lists to the War Profiteer-in-Chief?.

It should come as no surprise that one of the leading beneficiaries of this hugger-mugger largess is our old friend, Halliburton Corp., the military-energy servicing conglomerate. Halliburton, headed by Vice Profiteer Dick Cheney until the Bushist coup d'etat in 2000, is already reaping billions from the Bush wars -- which Cheney himself says "might not end in our lifetime."

Cheney is an old hand at this kind of death merchanting, of course. In the first Bush-Iraq? War, Cheney, playing the role now filled by Don Rumsfeld -- a squinting, smirking, lying Secretary of Defense -- directed the massacre of some 100,000 Iraqis, many of whom were buried alive, or machine-gunned while retreating along the "Highway of Death," or annihilated in sneak attacks launched after a ceasefire had been called. When George I and his triumphant conquerors were unceremoniously booted out of office less than two years later by that radical fringe group so hated by the Bushists -- the American people -- Cheney made a soft landing at Halliburton.

There, he grew rich on government contracts and taxpayer-supported credits doled out by his old pals in the military-industrial complex. He also hooked up with attractive foreign partners -- like Saddam Hussein, the "worse-than-Hitler" dictator who paid Cheney $73 million to rebuild the oil fields that had been destroyed by, er, Dick Cheney. And while the Halliburton honcho became a multimillionaire many times over, some of his employees were not so lucky -- Cheney ashcanned more than 10,000 workers during his boardroom reign. (At least, he didn't bury them alive.)

Old news, you say? Irrelevant to the current crisis? Surely, now that Cheney has been translated to glory as the nation's second-highest public servant, he is beyond any taint of grubby material concerns? Au contraire, as those ever-dastardly French like to say. At this very moment, while the smoke is still rising from the rubble of Baghdad, while the bodies of the unburied dead are still rotting in the desert wastes, Dick Cheney is receiving $1 million a year in so-called "deferred compensation" from Halliburton. That's a million smackers from a private company that profits directly from the mass slaughter in Iraq, going into the pockets of the "public servant" who is, as the sycophantic media never tires of telling us, the power behind George W.'s throne -- and a prime architect of the war.

This is money that Cheney wouldn't get if Halliburton went down the tubes -- a prospect it faced in the early days of the Regime, due to a boneheaded merger engineered by its former CEO, a guy named, er, Dick Cheney. In a deal apparently sealed during a golf game with an old crony, Cheney acquired a subsidiary, Dresser Industries -- a firm associated with the Bush family for more than 70 years -- which was facing billions of dollars in liability claims for its unsafe use of asbestos. Dresser's bigwigs doubtless made out like bandits from the deal, and Cheney left the mess behind when the grateful Bushes put him on the presidential ticket, but there was serious concern that Halliburton itself would be forced into bankruptcy -- unless it found massive new sources of secure funding to offset the financial "shock and awe" of the asbestos lawsuits.

Then lo and behold, after Sept. 11, Halliburton received a multibillion-dollar, open-ended, no-bid contract to build and service U.S. military bases and operations all over the world. It also won several shorter-term contracts, such as expanding the concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, where the Regime is holding unnamed, uncharged suspected terrorists in violation of the Geneva Convention. With this fountain of federal money pouring into its coffers -- and Bushist operatives in Congress pushing legislation to restrict asbestos lawsuits -- Halliburton was able to hammer out a surprisingly favorable settlement deal with the asbestos victims. The company -- and Cheney's million-dollar paychecks -- were saved. Praise Allah!

Halliburton is just the tip of the slagheap, of course. Daddy Bush's popsicle stand, the Carlyle Group -- which controls a vast network of defense firms and "security" operations around the world -- is also panning gold from the streams of blood pouring down the ancient tracks of Babylon. Junior Bush -- who like a kept woman made his own influence-peddling fortune through services rendered to a series of sugar daddies -- has conveniently gutted the national inheritance tax, swelling his own eventual bottom line when his father joins the legions of Panamanian, Iranian, Afghan, Iraqi -- and American -- dead he and his son have sent down to Sheol.

Never in American history has a group of government leaders profited so directly from war -- never. Like their brothers-in-arms, Saddam's Baathists, the Bushists treat their own country like a sacked town, looting the treasury for their family retainers and turning public policy to private gain. Like Saddam, they feed on fear and glorify aggression. Like Saddam, they have dishonored their nation and betrayed its people.

But the money sure is good, eh, Dick?

2003-03-27T22:35:00.000-05:00

Faced with popular resistance US prepares for slaughter in Iraq

By Bill Vann
26 March 2003
www.wsws.org

With the failure of the Bush administration’s war strategy to secure either the speedy collapse of the Iraqi regime or the support of the Iraqi people, the Pentagon is preparing to dramatically escalate its onslaught against the country’s civilian population as well as its military.

It was announced Tuesday that British Prime Minister Tony Blair will arrive in Washington Thursday for a day of meetings with Bush. In the wake of significant setbacks for both British and US forces, and with a battle pending in Baghdad that may claim many thousands of civilian lives, the conference at Camp David has the character of an emergency war council. The logic of events on the ground in Iraq is pushing the two imperialist powers toward a far bloodier war, with enormous political consequences.

After five days of heavy bombing and the advance of US forces to within 50 miles of Baghdad, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hinted at the mounting difficulties confronting the US and British invaders. “We’re still, needless to say, much closer to the beginning than the end,” he told a Pentagon press briefing. “This campaign could well become more dangerous in the coming days and weeks.”

Rumsfeld was repeatedly questioned as to whether the administration had deceived the American people into expecting a quick and virtually bloodless war of “liberation.”

“Not me,” Rumsfeld replied, disavowing responsibility for promoting the “shock and awe” strategy that was touted to the media by his aides. This strategy was based on the conception that an intense, carefully targeted bombardment could bring about the implosion of Saddam Hussein’s government through either assassination or mutiny, while leaving the Iraqi military largely intact as the basis for a new US-dominated regime.

Its execution consisted of repeated aerial assaults on key “command and control” installations and other sites viewed as centers of power of the Ba’athist party leadership. This has been coupled with a psychological warfare campaign aimed at convincing both the Iraqi people and the military command that the end of the regime was inevitable.

Part of this psychological warfare effort was Washington’s spreading of false reports of the death of Saddam Hussein, the death or defection of his key deputy, Tariq Aziz, and the repeated claims that high-ranking Iraqi officers were in negotiations on the terms of surrender. This was supplemented by the bombardment of the country with some 25 million leaflets urging Iraqis not to resist.

The “embedded” US media also played their part in this effort, presenting an image, beamed to Baghdad, of an unstoppable US armored juggernaut approaching the Iraqi capital at breakneck speed. This was to be coupled with scenes of Iraqi civilians in southern Iraq welcoming advancing US and British troops as liberators, together with the mass surrender of Iraqi military units.

Propaganda versus reality

In less than a week, the contradiction between the underlying assumptions of this strategy and reality have become painfully clear. Underlying this disconnect was the fact that the Pentagon’s political leadership had become the victim of the Bush administration’s own propaganda. The more Washington churned out pretexts for toppling the Iraqi regime and demonized its leadership, the more it came to believe that the regime would simply collapse at the first show of force.

Instead, the key personnel in the Iraqi regime have shown themselves to be quite alive and seemingly confident. Mass surrenders have not materialized—even the Pentagon claims only some 3,500 Iraqi POWs. And, instead of being greeted as “liberators,” US troops have faced determined resistance from irregular forces—including substantial numbers of armed civilians—which have repeatedly attacked military convoys.

There is an undeniable element of heroism in this resistance in the face of overwhelming military power. The claims of the US military—which has done the bulk of its killing with cruise missiles fired from hundreds of miles away and with war planes flying out of reach of Iraqi guns—that the actions of the so-called fedayeen are a violation of “civilized” norms of war ring hollow. The Iraqis are, after all, fighting on their own land against an enemy that—without any provocation—has come from thousands of miles away to conquer them. Under such circumstances, they can hardly be faulted for seizing any means to fight back.

In the small port city of Umm Qasr, which the British claimed to have captured in the first hours of the war, fighting has dragged on for five days, making it impossible to utilize the docks to unload both military and humanitarian supplies. To quell resistance, air strikes and artillery barrages were called in, largely demolishing the town.

In Nasiriya, where at least 10 US soldiers have been killed in the last 48 hours, fierce resistance has continued, despite intense bombing raids.

Basra, which US and British forces initially intended to bypass in the rush to Baghdad, has also been targeted for attack because of Iraqi actions against the invasion force. Iraq’s second-largest city with a population of 1.5 million people, Basra was expected by the Pentagon to welcome the invaders, given its Shi’ite population’s repeated rebellions against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Instead, it became another area of “scattered resistance,” to use the phrase preferred by US military spokesmen.

Iraqi sources reported at least 77 civilians killed by US-British bombardments in Basra, and several hundred wounded pouring into poorly supplied hospitals.

United Nations officials have warned that the city is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, with the lives of over 100,000 children under five at risk because of the lack of safe drinking water. The city’s water supplies and electric power were both cut off as result of the US-British attacks.

Washington and London have attributed the hostile reaction in Basra and the rest of the south to memories of the aftermath of 1991 Persian Gulf War, when George Bush senior urged the Shi’ite population to revolt, but then thought better of it and allowed the Iraqi army to brutally suppress them.

With sketchy reports of renewed anti-government unrest in Basra, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made clear the current Bush administration’s lack of enthusiasm for such a development. “I am very reluctant to run around the world encouraging people to rise up,” he said. Washington is well aware that its plans for a post-Saddam occupation entail the suppression of any popular movement.

Popular anger

Independent observers in Iraq have stressed that the invasion has triggered popular anger among the Iraqi people and a determination to oppose foreign conquest, despite hatred for the regime in Baghdad. Perhaps most striking is the fact that the predicted surge of Iraqis heading for the borders has not materialized. Instead, there has been significant traffic going the other way, with Iraqis living in Jordan, Syria and elsewhere heading home with the aim of fighting the Americans.

The killing and capture of US and British troops in the south of the country, combined with the downing of a US Apache helicopter and fierce battles in a whole number of areas, have led to sharp criticisms from within the military establishment over the strategy devised by the Pentagon leadership.

Senior uniformed commanders had argued from the outset for a much larger military force—the current deployment comprises barely half the number of troops used in the 1991 Gulf War. Rumsfeld and the civilian officials advocated the use of much smaller forces, relying heavily on special operations units and advanced military technology.

To a large extent, these differences were ideologically driven. The extreme right-wing elements that have taken the reins at the Pentagon under the Bush administration have long argued for the unfettered application of military power in redrawing the geopolitical map of the Middle East to suit US imperialist interests. Their mad vision of American military might and free-market economic policies transforming the world excludes any objective estimation of mass popular opposition.

Retired senior military commanders like Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a key commander in the 1991 Gulf War, have publicly criticized the Pentagon for failing to deploy sufficient forces, while active-duty officers have done so privately. Some have blamed the stunning ambush that resulted in the capture of five US support troops and the killing of several others on the failure to deploy additional forces to protect the military’s long supply line from Kuwait.

The headlong rush to the Iraqi capital, ironically described by some military personnel as the “Baghdad 500,” has left a substantial section of the invading military forces dangerously exposed, with significant hostile Iraqi forces to their rear.

The failure to supply additional armored units can be attributed in part to the overwhelming worldwide opposition to the war. In Turkey, this opposition prevented the government from allowing the US military to send in the 4th Infantry Division from the north. Military cargo ships carrying the unit’s armor and equipment are still sailing from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea after the Turkish parliament refused to allow a land invasion from Turkish soil.

Another source of conflict between the uniformed and civilian leadership is differences over the importance of “force protection.” Since losing 55,000 troops and facing a catastrophic breakdown in morale during the Vietnam War, the US military has clung to a doctrine based on the use of overwhelming force, so as to minimize American casualties. Thus, in 1991, the US conducted a six-week air war, pounding the Iraqi military with B-52 bombers before sending ground troops into Kuwait.

“Vietnam syndrome”

As far as Bush and the civilian leaders within the Pentagon are concerned, US military lives are eminently expendable. Indeed, battlefield deaths are to be welcomed as a means of expunging the “Vietnam syndrome,” which involves what they consider a squeamish aversion to American casualties. “Blooding” the American troops is for this administration a necessary step in implementing a policy of “preventive war” on a global scale.

Bush has quite literally lost no sleep over the young people killed in this predatory war. According to White House sources, he is keeping his normal schedule, sleeping soundly every night, reserving ample time for workouts in the gym, and weekending at Camp David. After all, those who are dying are not the children of the corrupt and wealthy elite with whom he associates.

Following the losses suffered by US forces in the south, there are growing indications that the Pentagon is preparing a shift in military strategy and a loosening of the invading forces’ rules of engagement regarding Iraqi casualties, both military and civilian. B-52 bombers flying out of Britain are increasingly being used to hit troop positions south of Baghdad. Some 1,400 air sorties were scheduled on Tuesday. Pentagon sources claimed that elements of the 7th Cavalry killed 300 or more Iraqis in a single engagement, without specifying whether the dead were regular troops or armed civilians.

Rumsfeld, meanwhile, indicated that the US would begin targeting Iraqi television and radio stations in retaliation for the broadcasting of reports on US losses and the airing of footage showing American POWs.

Washington is already fashioning the rationale for mass killings. It has categorized all those civilians resisting US forces as either Iraqi soldiers out of uniform or “terrorists,” as Rumsfeld put it Tuesday. Many of the American soldiers, having been told that they would be greeted with flowers for “liberating” the Iraqis, no doubt feel betrayed. While some will begin to question the justifications presented to them by their commanders and the Bush White House for their presence in Iraq, others will be inclined to vent their anger on the civilian population.

US officials are also citing unspecified intelligence reports that the Iraqi forces are prepared to use chemical weapons once the invaders cross a line south of the capital. Military sources have indicated that faced with a threat of chemical attack, the US military would drop all restraints on attacking civilian areas. Just as “weapons of mass destruction” provided a pretext for the invasion, the claim that such weapons could be used against US troops serves as a justification for the unrestrained use of firepower against heavily populated urban areas.

Even the so-called “precision” bombings have caused the deaths of scores, if not hundreds, of Iraqi civilians. Correspondents in Baghdad report that with each civilian killed and each home destroyed, anger against the American and British forces is growing. They acknowledge that the city’s residents are in no mood to greet the invaders as liberators.

The unraveling of the US military strategy in just five days of warfare represents a colossal failure of the Bush administration’s political perspective. War, as Clausewitz famously stated, “is the continuation of politics by other means.” For this government, however, it is the continuation of gangsterism by other means. The economic plunder and corporate malfeasance carried out domestically is being translated into a predatory war of aggression abroad. In both cases, the pursuit of narrow self-interest by a corrupt ruling elite is leading to catastrophe.

The assault that Washington and London are preparing against Baghdad, a city of five million people and an historic center of the Arab world, will be an act of barbarism comparable to the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet-bombing and napalming of Vietnam, and the war crimes of the Nazi regime in World War II.

The impending military actions will only redouble the revulsion felt by masses of people throughout the world, including within the US itself, for the predatory war launched by Bush and Blair.

2003-03-22T07:07:00.000-05:00

Israel's another war cime

"Rachel, from the town of Olympia, in Washington State, stood before Israeli bulldozers, as they tore down a building that belongs to a "protected person" because no one else, but Rachel and a few of her comrades dared to challenge the Israeli army .."

Rachel Corrie: a victim of Israeli policy and US complicity

By Henry Michaels www.wsws.org
19 March 2003

The more the circumstances surrounding the murder of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American student killed by an Israeli military bulldozer March 16, become known, the clearer it is that the Israeli government bears direct political and legal responsibility, and that the Bush administration is its political accomplice in her death.

Corrie, an extraordinary young woman, was deliberately crushed to death for trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes in the refugee town of Rafah, in southern Gaza.

She is a victim of the Sharon government’s violence in the Gaza Strip, which has gathered pace in tandem with Bush’s preparations to invade Iraq. Not only is the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians being carried out with the tacit sanction of the US government, the US Consulate in Tel Aviv explicitly refused to demand protection for US citizens and other international volunteers trying to halt the bulldozing of houses and killing of innocent civilians.

Two conclusions are inescapable from the evidence produced so far. The first is that Rachel Corrie’s killing was a premeditated act approved by the upper echelons of the Israeli regime—the culmination of a series of confrontations in recent months with International Solidarity Movement (ISM) “human shields.” The second is that the US government is complicit, having rejected repeated requests to intervene on behalf of the volunteers.

Eyewitnesses have refuted Israeli military claims that Corrie’s death was an accident caused by her own actions. Her fellow volunteers have confirmed that she was highly visible to the Israeli soldier who twice drove the giant US-supplied bulldozer over her body.

“She was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and was plainly visible,” Greg Schnabel told journalists. “The bulldozer approached but she stood her ground. Then it pushed up a pile of dirt beneath her feet. She struggled to stay on top of the mound. At that point she was raised up to a level where she was probably looking the bulldozer driver in the eye.”

Based on the reports given by Schnabel and the six other activists who were with Corrie, the ISM media coordinator Michael Shaikh stated:

“The Israeli Army are attempting to dishonour her memory by claiming that Rachel was killed accidentally when she ran in front of the bulldozer. Eye-witnesses to the murder insist that this is totally untrue. Rachel was sitting in the path of the bulldozer as it advanced towards her. When the bulldozer refused to stop or turn aside she climbed up onto the mound of dirt and rubble being gathered in front of it wearing a fluorescent jacket to look directly at the driver who kept on advancing.

“The bulldozer continued to advance so that she was pulled under the pile of dirt and rubble. After she had disappeared from view the driver kept advancing until the bulldozer was completely on top of her. The driver did not lift the bulldozer blade and so she was crushed beneath it. Then the driver backed off and the seven other ISM activists taking part in the action rushed to dig out her body.”

It is inconceivable that an individual Israeli soldier would commit such a crime without prior discussion and approval at the highest official levels, military and civilian. Although Israeli army and settler paramilitary units have been responsible for the deaths of 2,181 Palestinians and the injuring of another 22,218 since September 2000, this is the first time that a US citizen has been killed.

Corrie’s murder was not an isolated incident. A month earlier, on February 14, the ISM reported an incident in which activists were nearly killed after the US Consulate refused to intervene. On that day, seven volunteers (three American, three British and one Dutch) came under Israeli rifle and machine gun fire when they approached bulldozers.

The ISM media office immediately made an emergency call to the US Consulate to request that it alert the Israeli military that international peace activists were coming under fire from Israeli troops and ask for restraint, a standard ISM procedure in such circumstances. The consular representative Ingrid Barzel refused to do so. “We do not accept any responsibility for anyone who ignores our travel advisories and illegally enters the Gaza Strip,” she replied. When a similar request was made to the British consulate, an official promised to phone back, but did not.

Soon after, a bulldozer trapped two activists in the corner of a building, but found its path blocked by rubble. Before it resumed its advance, the two escaped and stood on some barrels next to the building to photograph and film the destruction, but the bulldozer then began ramming the barrels.

Israeli policy

The house demolitions are part of Israel’s “Apartheid Wall” policy toward the Occupied Territories. Palestinian communities are being sealed from the outside world by a massive series of walls, complete with towers from which military sharpshooters can monitor their activities. The wall under construction near Rafah stretches along the entire length of Gaza’s border with Egypt. To give the snipers in the wall’s towers clear fields of fire, the Israeli occupation forces intend to demolish all the houses within 70-100 meters of the wall.

Rachel Corrie died trying to save the home of Dr. Samir Nasrallah, who had engaged in no hostile activities and had been charged with no offence. His house was demolished because, like 600 others that have been bulldozed in Rafah, it lay within Israel’s planned “security strip.” Nasrallah was offered no compensation or alternative housing and had no right of appeal to a court.

Despite Israeli government claims, the vast majority of demolitions have nothing to do with alleged terrorism. According to UN figures, less than 600 of the 10,000 houses demolished since the occupation began in 1967 involved security suspects. The policy, designed to leave families homeless, impoverished and traumatized, is illegal because international law forbids the demolition of houses by an occupying power.

During February, Israel forces nearly set a new record for killing Palestinians, mostly civilians, in a single month. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli assaults killed 82 Palestinians, 50 in the Gaza Strip and 32 in the West Bank, and wounded another 616.

Just two days after Corrie’s death, Israeli troops killed 11 Palestinians, including a toddler and a 13-year-old boy, in raids on the Gaza Strip. In one raid, some 30 armored vehicles with bulldozers and infantry advanced several hundred meters into the Nusseirat refugee camp just south of Gaza City.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has stepped up the killing since his re-election in January, particularly in Gaza. The Israeli military has conducted unprecedented armored operations there, repeatedly attacking deep into refugee camps. Sharon appears to be preparing a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip to complement the reconquest of the West Bank last April.

Continuing Palestinian resistance in Gaza stands in the way of Sharon’s scheme to confine the Palestinians to small, disconnected apartheid-style Bantustans surrounded by hundreds of Israeli settlements. With the Bush administration poised to invade Iraq, Sharon has evidently calculated that the time is ripe to reoccupy Gaza, even if it provokes further suicide bombings, which his government can use as a pretext for even larger actions.

US complicity

Rachel Corrie went to Palestine, in part, because she strongly opposed the US war against Iraq and understood that Israeli aggression was likely to increase when the US attacked. In one of her last emails to her family, sent on February 7, she wrote:

“I’ve been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the ‘reoccupation of Gaza.’ Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren’t already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region, then I hope they will start.

“People here watch the media, and they told me again today that there have been large protests in the United States and ‘problems for the government’ in the UK. So thanks for allowing me to not feel like a complete Pollyanna when I tentatively tell people here that many people in the United States do not support the policies of our government, and that we are learning from global examples how to resist.”

Her message also expressed some of the horror and compassion that motivated her actions:

“I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States—something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons.”

Corrie’s friends and colleagues have been joined by Amnesty International in demanding an independent investigation into her death. After initially shrugging off the killing, the US State Department has cynically called for an Israeli government inquiry, but refused to condemn the incident. Likewise, the Israeli military has now promised an investigation, while still declaring in advance that Corrie’s death was not intentional.

Any inquiry conducted by Israeli military or civilian authorities will be a sham, conducted with the Bush administration’s connivance. A United Nations investigation would be no better, as last year’s cancellation of its inquiry into the Jenin refugee camp massacre demonstrates. Every crime carried out by the Israeli government has been whitewashed with Washington’s assistance.

Amnesty International and other international, Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups have reported repeatedly on Israel’s use of lethal force without regard to civilian lives—its indiscriminate attacks on civilians, extrajudicial executions and unwarranted destruction of civilian property by bulldozers and other equipment, resulting in deaths of innocent bystanders. The US State Department’s own Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2002 confirmed many violations and cited US-supplied helicopters, fighter aircraft, anti-tank missiles and flechettes being used as weapons to commit human rights abuses.

The Sharon government’s atrocities can continue only because they have the backing, explicit or tacit, of the White House. Only a truly international tribunal, completely independent of Washington and other governments, can lay bare the truth of Rachel Corrie’s death and the Israeli regime’s record of war crimes.

2003-03-22T06:58:00.000-05:00

Baghdad’s Night of Terror

By Robert Fisk, The Independent

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s main presidential palace, a great rampart of a building 20 stories high, simply exploded in front of me — a cauldron of fire, a 100ft sheet of flame and a sound that had my ears singing for an hour after. The entire, massively buttressed edifice shuddered under the impact. Then four more Cruise missiles came in.

It is the heaviest bombing Baghdad has suffered in more than 20 years of war. All across the city last night, massive explosions shook the ground. To my right, the Ministry of Armaments Procurement — a long colonnaded building looking much like the facade of the Pentagon — coughed fire as five missiles crashed into the concrete.

In an operation officially intended to create “shock and awe,” shock was hardly the word for it. The few Iraqis in the streets around me — no friends of Saddam I would suspect — cursed under their breath.

From high-rise buildings, shops and homes came the thunder of crashing glass as the shock waves swept across the Tigris River in both directions. Minute after minute the missiles came in. Many Iraqis had watched — as I had — television film of those ominous B-52 bombers taking off from Britain only six hours earlier. Like me, they had noted the time, added three hours for Iraqi time in front of London and guessed that, at around 9 p.m., the terror would begin. The B-52s, almost certainly firing from outside Iraqi airspace, were dead on time.

Police cars drove at speed through the streets, their loudspeakers ordering pedestrians to take shelter or hide under cover of tall buildings. Much good did it do. Crouching next to a block of shops on the opposite side of the river, I narrowly missed the shower of glass that came cascading down from the upper windows as the shock waves slammed into them.

Along the streets a few Iraqis could be seen staring from balconies, shards of broken glass around them. Each time one of the great golden bubbles of fire burst across the city, they ducked inside before the blast wave reached them. At one point, as I stood beneath the trees on the corniche, a wave of Cruise missiles passed low overhead, the shriek of their passage almost as devastating as the explosions that were to follow.

How, I ask myself, does one describe this outside the language of a military report, the definition of the color, the decibels of the explosions? When the Cruise missiles came in, it sounded as if someone was ripping to pieces huge curtains of silk in the sky and the blast waves became a kind of frightening counterpoint to the flames.

There is something anarchic about all human beings, about their reaction to violence. The Iraqis around me stood and watched, as I did, at huge tongues of flame bursting from the upper stories of Saddam’s palace, reaching high into the sky. Strangely, the electricity grid continued to operate and around us the traffic lights continued to move between red and green. Billboards moved in the breeze of the shock waves and floodlights continued to blaze on public buildings. Above us we could see the massive curtains of smoke beginning to move over Baghdad, white from the explosions, black from the burning targets.

How could one resist it? How could the Iraqis ever believe with their broken technology, their debilitating 12 years of sanctions, that they could defeat the computers of these missiles and of these aircraft? It was the same old story: Irresistible, unquestionable power.

Well yes, one could say, could one attack a more appropriate regime? But that is not quite the point. For the message of last night’s raid was the same as that of Thursday’s raid, that of all the raids in the hours to come: That the United States must be obeyed. That the EU, UN, NATO — nothing — must stand in its way.

No doubt this morning the Iraqi minister of information will address us all again and insist that Iraq will prevail. We shall see. But many Iraqis are now asking an obvious question: How many days? Not because they want the Americans or the British in Baghdad, though they may profoundly wish it. But because they want this violence to end: Which, when you think of it, is exactly why these raids took place.

Reports were coming in last night of civilians killed in the raids — which, given the intensity of the Cruise missile attacks — is not surprising. Another target turned out to be the vast Rashid military barracks, perhaps the largest in Iraq.

But the symbolic center of this raid was clearly intended to be Saddam’s main palace, with its villas, fountains, porticos and gardens. And, sure enough, the flames licking across the facade of the palace last night looked very much like a funeral pyre.

22 March 2003

2002-10-27T08:08:00.000-05:00

The notion that the US 'war on terror' will defeat terrorism is a sick joke

By Tariq Ali*

The consequences of 11 September remain visible on several fronts. Psychologically, the American empire has constructed a new enemy: Islamic terrorism. Its practitioners were evil, the threat was global and, for that reason, bombs had to be dropped unilaterally and wherever necessary. The leaders of the United States wish to be judged by their choice of enemies rather than the actual state of the world, leave alone the concrete results of the 'war against terrorism'. Politically, the United States decided to use the tragedy and re-map the world. Its military bases now cover every continent. The largest of these is situated in one of the tiniest states: Qatar in the Persian Gulf. There are 189 member states of the United Nations. There is a US military presence in 120 countries. Domestically, the Bush administration sought and obtained extensive new powers to curb dissent and to detain and deport suspects at will. On the East Coast alone, over a thousand immigrant workers of South Asian origin were arrested and deported to their countries of origin, without any outcry in the mainstream media.

A year on, what is the balance sheet of the war? With the help of its Pakistani creators, the Taliban regime was overthrown without a serious struggle, though approximately 3000 innocent Afghan men, women and children perished under the bombs. For the West, these lives were not even worth half as much as those of the US citizens who died in New York and Washington. No memorials honouring innocent victims will be built in Kabul. The torture and mass execution of prisoners of war leaves many liberal supporters of 'humanitarian wars' unmoved. However, despite all this, the central aim of the military operation, which was the capture ('dead or alive') of Osama Bin Laden and his confederates and the physical destruction of Al-Qa'eda, has still not been accomplished. On 16 June 2002, The New York Times reported:

"Classified investigations of the Qa'eda threat now underway at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead the war might have complicated counter-terrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area."

Nor has the imperialist occupation of Afghanistan led to stability, peace or prosperity in the region. The character of the Afghan government is symbolised by the fact that the US-backed leader, Hamid Karzai, asked for and received bodyguards consisting exclusively of US soldiers. He did not feel safe being guarded by Afghans. The lack of trust is mutual. The factions of the Northern Alliance who rule outside Kabul dislike Karzai and would despatch him overnight if they could do so without incurring retaliatory bombing raids. To preserve this regime the United States will have to maintain a permanent military presence. In other words democracy, human and social rights, etc, are as remote as they ever were.

The 'wider geographical area' includes neighbouring Pakistan. Washington's closest ally is the country's newest military dictator. The first Afghan War (1979-89) required a Pakistan general prepared to play the Islamic card. Zia-ul-Haq obliged. The result was the creation of the Taliban. This time the events required a secular general to help demolish the Taliban. Enter General Musharraf (or Busharraf according to local wags) who has institutionalised the Pakistan army as the country's major political party, accountable only to itself and the Pentagon. The Pakistan army is the proud possessor of nuclear weapons and has the ability to use them. Likewise India, the regional hegemon. A nuclear tussle over Kashmir has frightened the rest of the world but not the generals in India and Pakistan. The policy-makers in New Delhi are ready to accept Washington's dictates globally if they are permitted to mimic the empire locally. So far permission has been refused and the presence of US soldiers and pilots in Pakistan acts as a safeguard. But for how long?

While the 'war against terror' has destabilised South Asia, it has buttressed Israel still further. If the United States had been serious in its oft-stated desire to stop the flow of recruits to organisations like Al-Qa'eda, it would have. Ariel Sharon has been supported by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in his attempt to obliterate the political identity of the Palestinians -- what a dissident Israeli historian, Baruch Kimmerling, has referred to as 'politicide'. The blank cheque given to Israel by the US Senate and the House of Representatives is without precedent in recent history. The result has been spectacular. Since September 2001 over 100,000 Palestinian refugees have fled to Jordan. Sharon does not even try and conceal the fact that his aim is a major ethnic cleansing ('transfer') of the Palestinians from the West Bank. Gaza will be transformed into a modern equivalent of an Indian reservation. This is being done by a combination of direct physical force and by making everyday life unbearable for the Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Even if these plans succeed, the notion that they will help defeat 'terrorism' is a sick joke. The brutal punishment being inflicted on the Palestinians for refusing to accept Israeli suzerainty can be seen every day by the entire Arab world on Al-Jazeera television. Till now the Arabs have watched and suffered in silence, but this passivity is deceptive. There is growing anger and signs of unrest in every capital. There have been large demonstrations in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The region could erupt if the 'war against terror' is extended to Iraq.
There is no support for this war anywhere in the Arab world. A near-universal view is that if waged and won, far from being seen as a deterrence, it would greatly facilitate the growth of mass support for terrorist groups. Even Kuwait has expressed serious concerns and suggested that in the current climate a war would be an act of political ineptitude. The reason for this is simple. The large-scale sufferings of the Palestinians are not perceived as being simply the work of Israel. Many Arab intellectuals see Israel as the biblical ass whose jaw has been borrowed by an American Samson to destroy the real and imagined enemies of the empire. This is also a popular perception and the opening of a third front in the infinite war that could have far more serious consequences than the shenanigans in Afghanistan. These have destabilised South Asia and Saudi Arabia. The consequences of invading an oil-rich Arab state to create a puppet regime are not quantifiable. In the wake of September 11, the United States won near-universal support from states and governments when it went to war in Afghanistan. This unanimity, dented by disagreements on Palestine, is now confronting serious problems as the time for a new war against Iraq approaches. Here, unlike Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, the West is divided. Apart from Blair and Berlusconi, no other European leader is keen on the project. Schroeder, Chirac and the Scandinavians have made this perfectly clear. They are unlikely to hinder the United States, but nor will they stop the growth of a mass anti-war movement. German public opinion is strongly opposed to the idea.

Even in Blairland a majority of the population is now opposed to the war. A list of unusual suspects have expressed their opposition in disdainful and disparaging tones. These include serving and retired generals and the odd field- marshal, not to ignore the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Will he bless the bombers in the fashion of his predecessors? Seems unlikely. Nor will he be isolated. An ICM poll in The Guardian (19 March 2002) revealed that 51 per cent of the British public is opposed to a war. The sample discovered that of these 6 per cent were Lib-Dem voters, 48 per cent were Conservative supporters and 46 per cent voted Labour. In line with this mood, the mass-readership Daily Mirror has been campaigning regularly against supporting Washington's adventure. Its editor has, till now, managed to ignore the bullying calls from Downing Street and the defence secretary. And public opinion in the United States is also extremely uneasy about this one. The Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, former chief of US Central Command, has sounded the tocsin to warn against simple- mindedness. He is offended by the aw-shucks-I'm-just-a- simple-patriot tone and diction affected by a mass of Congressmen and Senators and warns:

"There are congressmen today who want to fund the Iraqi Liberation Act, and let some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London gin up the expedition. We'll equip a thousand fighters and arm them with 97 million dollars' worth of AK- 47s and insert them into Iraq. And what will we have? A Bay of Goats, most likely."

Nonetheless opinion polls in the US suggest that 60 per cent favour sending in the daisy-cutters, but the figure drops to 36 per cent at the suggestion that the US should go in alone. In this respect, Blair is not an unimportant fig-leaf. Of course, the Democrats could stall an assault by insisting on a War Powers Resolution and voting against it, but they would be guided by opinion polls. If they abandoned their noisy bi- partisan patriotism, they could win support from maverick Republicans (Armey, Lugar) who have already voiced misgivings about an attack on Iraq.

Another factor that could stop the war-drive would be a sudden, steep plunge on Wall Street, as opposed to a gradual decline. Then there is always the possibility that Baghdad would allow 'UN' inspection teams back into the country, complete with CIA sleepers. This would necessitate reverting to the charge of complicity with 9/11, something which nobody believes.

The question is: why is the current regime in the United States so determined to wage this war? Here there are three considerations. The first is that Iraq, a rich oil-producer, remains outside the control of the United States. The second is the size of its army... it is now the only force in the region that could threaten greater Israel. And thirdly there are domestic considerations. To wean the pro-Zionist Jews away from the Democrats is an important tactical goal and the Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party make no secret of their unflinching support for every Israeli atrocity. The Old Testament decrees that the Land of Zion belongs to the Jews.

The months following the anniversary of 9/11 will be dominated by the dynamic of two developments: preparation for war on Iraq and the deterioration of the economy. The interaction of these two will decide the shape of the global conjuncture over the next few years. The great thinker-president and his hard-core advisers appear to have broken decisively from the Clinton formula of the '90s: American supremacy plus allied support plus permanent deregulation equals global governance accompanied by third-way rhetoric. This formula appears to have been ditched. Leaving aside the moral question as to why an unjust war would become just if backed by the Security Council, it's perfectly possible for the United States to secure UN Security Council support to invade Iraq. The French could be bribed and the Chinese offered some concessions on Taiwan to secure their abstentions. But Cheney and Rumsfeld clearly regard these methods as abhorrent. They know perfectly well that Anglo-American bombing raids of Iraq of the last 15 years have bypassed the Security Council with impunity. They are the leaders of the world's only empire and they will behave accordingly. Some of the Bush ideologues in the media compare Washington to ancient Rome. It is a permissible fantasy, but they should remember that (a) the Romans never expected to be loved and (b) that Rome, too, fell.

As for me, I prefer Goethe's maxim: 'The world only goes forward because of those who oppose it.'

* The writer is a British political activist and writer. The above extract from his book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, published by Verso.

2002-08-23T00:51:00.000-04:00

Marx letter to his father when he was 19 years old(Part II)

Here, above all, the same opposition between what is and what ought to be, which is characteristic of idealism, stood out as a serious defect and was the source of the hopelessly incorrect division of the subject-matter. First of all came what I was pleased to call the metaphysics of law, i. e., basic principles, reflections, definitions of concepts, divorced from all actual law and every actual form of law, as occurs in Fichte, only in my case it was more modern and shallower. From the outset an obstacle to grasping the truth here was the unscientific form of mathematical dogmatism, in which the author argues hither and thither, going round and round the subject dealt with, without the latter taking shape as something living and developing in a many-sided way. A triangle gives the mathematician scope for construction and proof, it remains a mere abstract conception in space and does not develop into anything further. It has to be put alongside something else, then it assumes other positions, and this diversity added to it gives it different relationships and truths. On the other hand, in the concrete expression of a living world of ideas, as exemplified by law, the state, nature, and philosophy as a whole, the object itself must be studied in its development; arbitrary divisions must not be introduced, the rational character of the object itself must develop as something imbued with contradictions in itself and find its unity in itself.

Next, as the second part, came the philosophy of law, that is to say, according to my views at the time, an examination of the development of ideas in positive Roman law, as if positive law in its conceptual development (I do not mean in its purely finite provisions) could ever be something different from the formation of the concept of law, which the first part, however, should have dealt with.

Moreover, I had further divided this part into the theory of formal law and the theory of material law, the first being the pure form of the system in its sequence and interconnections, its subdivisions and scope, whereas the second, on the other hand, was intended to describe the content, showing how the form becomes embodied in its content. This was an error I shared with Herr v. Savigny, as I discovered later in his learned work on ownership, the only difference being that he applies the term formal definition of the concept to "finding the place which this or that theory occupies in the (fictitious) Roman system", the material definition being "the theory of positive content which the Romans attributed to a concept defined in this way", [5] whereas I understood by form the necessary architectonics of conceptual formulations, and by matter the necessary quality of these formulations. The mistake lay in my belief that matter and form can and must develop separately from each other, and so I obtained not a real form, but something like a desk with drawers into which I then poured sand.

The concept is indeed the mediating link between form and content. In a philosophical treatment of law, therefore, the one must arise in the other; indeed, the form should only be the continuation of the content. Thus I arrived at a division of the material such as could be devised by its author for at most an easy and shallow classification, but in which the spirit and truth of law disappeared. All law was divided into contractual and non-contractual. In order to make this clearer, I take the liberty to set out the plan up to the division of jus publicum, which is also treated in the formal part.

I

2002-08-12T01:39:00.000-04:00

Marx letter to his father when he was 19 years old(Part I)

Dear Father,

There are moments in one's life which are like frontier posts marking the completion of a period but at the same time clearly indicating a new direction.

At such a moment of transition we feel compelled to view the past and the present with the eagle eye of thought in order to become conscious of our real position. Indeed, world history itself likes to look back in this way and take stock, which often gives it the appearance of retrogression or stagnation, whereas it is merely, as it were, sitting back in an armchair in order to understand itself and mentally grasp its own activity, that of the mind.

At such moments, however, a person becomes lyrical, for every metamorphosis is partly a swan song, partly the overture to a great new poem, which endeavours to achieve a stable form in brilliant colours that still merge into one another. Nevertheless, we should like to erect a memorial to what we have once lived through in order that this experience may regain in our emotions the place it has lost in our actions. And where could a more sacred dwelling place be found for it than in the heart of a parent, the most merciful judge, the most intimate sympathiser, the sun of love whose warming fire is felt at the innermost centre of our endeavours! What better amends and forgiveness could there be for much that is objectionable and blameworthy than to be seen as the manifestation of an essentially necessary state of things? How, at least, could the often ill-fated play of chance and intellectual error better escape the reproach of being due to a perverse heart?

When, therefore, now at the end of a year spent here I cast a glance back on the course of events during that time, in order, my dear father, to answer your infinitely dear letter from Ems, allow me to review my affairs in the way I regard life in general, as the expression of an intellectual activity which develops in all directions, in science, art and private matters.

When I left you, a new world had come into existence for me, that of love, which in fact at the beginning was a passionately yearning and hopeless love. Even the journey to Berlin, which otherwise would have delighted me in the highest degree, would have inspired me to contemplate nature and fired my zest for life, left me cold. Indeed, it put me strikingly out of humour, for the rocks which I saw were not more rugged, more indomitable, than the emotions of my soul, the big towns not more lively than my blood, the inn meals not more extravagant, more indigestible, than the store of fantasies I carried with me, and, finally, no work of art was as beautiful as Jenny.

After my arrival in Berlin, I broke off all hitherto existing connections, made visits rarely and unwillingly, and tried to immerse myself in science and art.

In accordance with my state of mind at the time, lyrical poetry was bound to be my first subject, at least the most pleasant and immediate one. But owing to my attitude and whole previous development it was purely idealistic. My heaven, my art, became a world beyond, as remote as my love. Everything real became hazy and what is hazy has no definite outlines. All the poems of the first three volumes I sent to Jenny are marked by attacks on our times, diffuse and inchoate expressions of feeling, nothing natural, everything built out of moonshine, complete opposition between what is and what ought to be, rhetorical reflections instead of poetic thoughts, but perhaps also a certain warmth of feeling and striving for poetic fire. The whole extent of a longing that has no bounds finds expression there in many different forms and makes the poetic "composition" into "diffusion".

Poetry, however, could be and had to be only an accompaniment; I had to study law and above all felt the urge to wrestle with philosophy. The two were so closely linked that, on the one hand, I read through Heineccius, Thibaut and the sources quite uncritically, in a mere schoolboy fashion; thus, for instance, I translated the first two books of the Pandect [3] into German, and, on the other hand, tried to elaborate a philosophy of law covering the whole field of law. I prefaced this with some metaphysical propositions by way of introduction and continued this unhappy opus as far as public law, a work of almost 300 pages. [4]

2002-08-08T02:52:00.000-04:00

EXPLOITATION

There are three main concepts which are needed to understand socialist or marxist conceptions of justice (such as they are): exploitation, alienation and the "needs" principle. Kymlicka, in line with his overall concerns, tries to interpret these concepts as marxist ways of cashing out the idea of "equal concern". Hence, the marxist criticism of liberalism is that insuring formal equality fails to treat each with equal concern. But it must go further than this, of course; it must show that formal equality plus the difference principle fails to treat each with equal concern. And this it must trace back to private ownership. Private ownership does not treat each with equal concern, but Rawlsian liberalism allows it; so Rawlsian liberalism fails to treat each with equal concern.

A. EXPLOITATION AS EXTRACTION OF SURPLUS VALUE.

Consider, first, exploitation. Perhaps "unequal concern" here will mean that with private ownership, some are exploited and others not. So people are treated unequally. Many, perhaps most, marxists hold that capitalism exploits labor, and that this is what is wrong with capitalism, why it is unjust. But what is exploitation, and why is it wrong? Kymlicka's account of this view of socialist justice actually accepts some elements of a liberal conception (viz., rights), while adding the idea of exploitation. On this view, capitalism is theft. Capitalists receive value that they have no right to because they do not create it. In contemporary terms, in a capitalist economy, managers run factories and the like (the means of production) so as to maximize profits to shareholders. Those shareholders, however, do no work to produce anything at all. So they receive the fruits of work without working. If we accept the (liberal) assumption that each person has a right to the product of her labor, then capitalists exploit labor in the sense that they violate their right to the product of their labor. Notice that this comports very well with Nozick's intuitions of self ownership. If we own ourselves, we own our talents and abilities, we own the latter only if we own what we produce. But capitalism is in some way incompatible with our owning what we produce. So it is incompatible with self-ownership.

B. EXPLOITATION AND COERCION.
But why should labor have a right to its product? Marx thinks of "exploitation" as simply the extraction of surplus labor. The problem is that, though labor is exploited in this sense, it is not clear why this is necessarily unjust. After all, labor may be giving that value to the capitalist. So most marxists add the idea of "forced" labor to exploitation. Labor is forced to give up part of the product it creates, and this is to say that there is no viable alternative to laboring under these conditions. But is the forced transfer of surplus value exploitation? That is, is

(1) X exploits Y if and only if X forces Y to transfer some of the value of Y's product to X
a good definition of exploitation? It is good just in case it is reasonable to suppose that whenever X exploits Y, X forces Y etc., and whenever X forces Y, etc., X exploits Y. But, intuitively at least, X may well exploit Y even if X does not force Y, etc. Suppose, for instance, that the alternative to working is not starvation and death, but mere subsistence. It still seems that X might be exploiting Y in extracting surplus value from him, but X does not really force Y to work under those conditions. So (1) is too weak a definition of exploitation.
Moreover, it is equally possible that X may extract surplus value from Y by force and yet not exploit Y. What if laboring under conditions in which the alternative is death by starvation is part of a universal apprenticeship to becoming a capitalist who will force others to work? Then it is difficult to see how X exploits Y, since his doing so enables Y to soon become able to force some Z to work (in apprenticeship. Think here of congressional aides, for instance.) Moreover, suppose X extracts surplus value by force from Y only to give it to Z who is infirm? Then taxation to support the infirm will be exploitative; but this is absurd.

C. EXPLOITATION AND NEEDS.
One way to deal with these problems this: Extraction of surplus value may well be exploitative even if that value does not belong to the worker. Rather, it is exploitative if and when it violates the "needs principle". The capitalist doesn't need it, while others do. Indeed, G. A. Cohen finds (1) objectionable because it is based on the libertarian assumption of self ownership: What is exploitative about private ownership on this view is that someone takes something she has no right to. But marxist exploitation does not imply that the value of the product goes to someone other than the person who rightfully owns that value. It implies that the value of the product goes to someone other than the person who needs that value:

(2) X exploits Y if and only if X extracts surplus value from Y by force and the surplus goes to someone who does not need it.
The problem with (2) is that it no longer follows that capitalists necessarily exploit workers. For what if the capitalist does need the surplus (say, he is infirm)? Perhaps it is still exploitation since the capitalist does not receive the surplus because he needs it; he receives it because he owns the means of production. Yet the worker does not receive the product of labor because she needs it, in capitalism; she receives it because she works for it. So, absurdly, owners would be no more exploitative than workers in a capitalist system. Moreover, some people (e.g., women) have been and are forced not to work in many capitalist economies; will they be exploiters on this account if they receive subsistence by taxation?
Roemer and Arneson suggest this alternative:

(3) Y is exploited if and only if Y would be better off withdrawing Y's labor and per capita share of external resources.
On their view, surplus transfer is permissible when it is not produced by unequal access to the means of production. And "unequal access" is determined by (3). So on their view, workers would be better off by withdrawing from capitalist economies; therefore, they are exploited. But what about support for the infirm--that is, the transfer of surplus from workers to non-workers who can't work? In a system in which part of Y's product goes to Z, who is infirm, Y would be better off withdrawing from that system. So it looks as if such a system, which supports the infirm who cannot work, is exploitative. Y would be exploited because of her natural talents and abilities (her capacity to work), even under a socialist system which supported the infirm (and children, etc.) But Roemer and Arneson deny that it is exploitative, since the transfer of surplus here is supposedly not a result of unequal access to the means of production. They want, in other words, a system which supports the infirm within the confines of (3). And one can do this simply by endowing the infirm with capital.
Nevertheless, the problem with this view is that, the existence of exploitation depends on what people are entitled to by way of self ownership and external resources, as defined by (3). But then exploitation becomes simply one form of distributive injustice, one form of inequality, not what injustice or inequality is, as marxists hope. Moreover, it is no longer clearly an alternative to Rawls. And, anyeay, nothing will be inherently unjust about wage labor on this view, contrary to the initial marxist conception of exploitation. If the infirm are endowed with ownership of capital, then distribution will be endowment insensitive. This will not be exploitative on (3), since it will not arise from an unequal distribution of capital--i.e., one that violates (3).

Exploitation, in fact, is simply one form of unequal access to the means of production; unemployment, being forced not to sell one's labor, and so on are others. Exploitation cannot provide a radical critique of capitalism, since it neglects many of those who are worst off under capitalism, viz., those who are prevented from working.

2002-08-06T22:30:00.000-04:00

How Can the World Witness Israel's crime against humanity and Yet Do Nothing?

By Amelia Peltz

I admit it. I'm guilty. Guilty of what, you may ask? Well it might seem strange, but guilty of not writing. Of not doing more to adequately chronicle all that has been taking place in Palestine during the past few weeks. Not just in Ramallah, but throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

Aside from being chronically exhausted from heat and stress, I have been struggling with a certain sense of depression. Whenever I sit down in front of my computer to write I feel so inadequate as though my words can never--and will never--make a difference. Who am I to think that I can do anything to change the horrible, if not criminal, situation that has encompassed the lives of the Palestinian people?

But there is another issue too. I am aware that my "reports" often come across as sounding angry and accusatory and I fear that some people may have taken my past diatribes personally. Please understand that my anger is not directed at any of you, despite the fact that my writing style might lead you to believe otherwise. I do not intend to alter or "water down" what I have to say, but realize that my anger (no matter how valid or invalid it may be) is a lament at the lack of compassion and humanity that I face on a daily basis.

So, full of reproach at my unwarranted sense of self-pity, I sat down this evening to try and put emotions into words.

I am writing this letter on a Saturday evening--a day of the week when many people are preparing for a fun evening out with friends and loved ones. As I write, my desk periodically shakes due to the sounds of gunfire and tank shelling.

Israeli soldiers are driving through the deserted streets of Ramallah shouting "Mana ata jawaal, Mana ata jawaal" -- you are under curfew. Periodically they catch someone trying to break curfew and either detain them or shoot in the air--like just a moment ago on the street in front of my house.

You may not believe this, but I cannot remember what it must be like to have the freedom to do something as simple as taking a walk, let alone enjoy a Saturday night out with friends. I now consider myself lucky if curfew is lifted for a few hours so I can go to my office and meet with my colleagues, then dash to the market to get a few days worth of fruits and vegetables before curfew is slammed down on us once again.

And I am lucky. I have a job that pays me even on the days I am home under curfew (fortunately I am able to do a lot of my work from home). I have money to buy food and medicine. My house has not be invaded and destroyed. My partner has not been arrested, though the threat remains every day that the situation could change and he will end up in the notorious Naqab prison along with our dear friend, Majed.

Once again, Majed was arrested and incarcerated along with over 1,700 other Palestinian men. He is suffering from a disease in his eyes that will undoubtedly leave him blind by the time he is released.

Recently there has been an international chorus of voices, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and USAID, proclaiming the grim reality that there is a humanitarian crisis facing the West Bank and Gaza. I will add my little voice to this international chorus -- there is a humanitarian crisis facing the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza! I don't know how much more strongly this can be emphasized, I really don't.

And my words certainly cannot do justice to these facts taken from a recent USAID report (I can send this report to anyone who is interested) and a report by the Middle East Research and Information Project (which I have attached at the end of this letter):

.75% of the population is living below the poverty line, which means they are living on less than $2 per day . Unemployment rates have skyrocketed to an unprecedented 62% . Over 2 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza are living under curfew .

Approximately 50% of all Palestinians are dependent on food assistance from the FAO or UNRWA in order to feed their families . Communicable diseases are spreading, due to lack of medical care and improper sewage disposal (garbage cannot be removed while under curfew) . During a recent survey of 300 households in Nablus, none were found to have an adequate supply of safe drinking water . 21% of children are suffering from acute malnutrition.

The numbers only tell half the story. The other half is told through the looks of desperation and despair that are evident in the eyes of people who are struggling to survive.

Two weeks ago I went to Jenin. Last week I was in Gaza. I left both cities ill, physically and emotionally. And I am ashamed that I cannot find the words to tell you about the widespread poverty and destruction. But what can be said that will do any justice to the lives of people who are struggling to survive under a brutal occupation and ceaseless war?

But survive they do. For so many, it is an awful existence -- being dependant on food aid, relying on life savings to buy medicine, dodging bullets and ducking tank shells just to stay alive for--how long? a day? a week?

Many have said that the Palestinian resistance is being crushed. While it is not nearly as strong as it was a year ago, I can assure you that the resistance is alive and well. But it is taking on new and creative forms, too.

For example, I heard a story the other night that in a part of the city of Bitounyia (southwest of Ramallah) every night a certain time, the residents bang as loudly as they can on pots and pans so as to annoy the Israeli soldiers. Often in the evenings around my neighbourhood, children come out to fly their homemade kites.

One night, I counted over 50 in the sky! And of course non-violent demonstrations and marches in the streets still continue, even if they are on a small scale. Despite their non-violent nature, these protestors (of which I am one) are always met with tear gas, concussion grenades and live ammunition.

These acts of resistance are our survival strategies.

I was recently interviewed by a British news agency that is working on a report describing life, such as it is, in the West Bank. The last question that the reporter asked me was how long this situation can last.

"Before what?", I replied. "What else do you want! How much more suffering and death do we half to endure before we can compete for a spot on the evening news?"

But these, in my opinion, are not the right questions to ask. What we should be asking is how, despite the enormous might of inhumanity inflicted upon Palestine, do people continue to survive? And, more importantly, how can the world be a witness such suffering--not just in Palestine, but on a global scale--and not act upon it?

Sometimes, my only survival strategy is to cry. At the end of the day, after the demonstrations have ended, the curfew is imposed, bullets pierce the night sky, and dreams of peace with justice seeming like a childhood fantasy, tears are the only comfort. They are small drops of humanity, struggling to claim their place in the world.

Amelia Peltz is an activist currently living in Ramallah. If you would like to send her a short email of solidarity/support we know she would be grateful. Her email is atpeltz@attglobal.com

2002-08-04T01:08:00.000-04:00

"The real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity."

Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877

2002-07-30T01:47:00.000-04:00

MARXISM AND JUSTICE.

The idea is this: Socialists may well accept a conception of liberal justice, say, on the model of Rawlsian difference principle, etc., and then criticize capitalism on the grounds that it is not just according to that standard. But most socialists find liberal justice to be flawed in its very conception. Amongst these socialists are some who think that justice is not a virtue of a political and economic system at all. The very idea of each receiving a "fair go" at resources implies that those resources are scarce (otherwise, why think anything I take might be "unfair" to others?) or that I am unconnected and unconcerned with others who might need those resources (otherwise, why think that I would be so heartless as to remove from others what they need?). This sort of socialism, I think, is quite implausible. Marx, of course, thought that a communist society would be free of "class" conflict and scarcity. But the latter is especially implausible, and the former, while ridding a community of some important conflicts, leaves in tact personal conflicts. Such personal conflicts would still seem to warrant some idea of justice. And, as Kymlicka argues, there is no warrant for supposing that a "higher" form of community must be rid of the idea of "rights". There is no conflict between exercising one's rights and communal attachments of any kind.
Other versions of socialism which reject liberal justice, but accept some alternative socialist account of justice. That account is based on the ideas either that capitalism is unjust because exploitative of workers or unjust because alienating to workers. It is this last form, what seems to be the most plausible form, of marxism we will consider.

2002-07-30T01:38:00.000-04:00

Self-Ownership, History and Socialism: An Interview with G.A. Cohen I

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

Q: Your career to date seems to be divided by interests into clear phases: phase one in the theory of history and phase two in political philosophy. The first phase culminated in 1978 with the publication of Karl Marx’s Theory of History (1): the book which is usually held to inaugurate analytical Marxism, and created in any case something of a revolution in the study of Marx . But you have recently described the Damascene experience which had already occurred in 1972, when the first news to reach you of Nozick’s work roused you from your ‘dogmatic socialist slumber’ concerning values (2) . There began a phase of intense involvement with questions of political philosophy and, above all, an engagement with the work of Robert Nozick, culminating this year in the publication of Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality. We should like to begin by asking you why, as a socialist, you came to see Nozick’s work as so challenging?

A: :I’ve tried to answer that question in the Introduction to the Self-Ownership book. The answer is that the libertarian edifice can be erected on the foundation of a standard socialist conception of exploitation, according to which a person counts as exploited just in case he or she produces things which others appropriate without his or her uncoerced agreement. Libertarians are right that such appropriation occurs in any kind of welfare state, because there’s a coerced extraction of product from producers by the state, part of which is then distributed to people who produce nothing. Libertarians thereby take what is in its origin a progressive notion of exploitation and put it to reactionary use.

Q: In the struggle by serfs against feudal lords who extracted labour from them with no contract or agreement, the slogan ‘The fruits of a person’s labour belong to himself or herself’ was an historically progressive one. The difficulty is that Marxists and other socialists have maintained that slogan into an era when different battles are on the agenda. The fundamental egalitarian idea is that people should have comparable opportunities for fulfilment in life regardless of what they can produce or have produced. Socialists have not thought through the anti-egalitarian implications of the standard conception of the exploitation of the worker, which is a matter of his not getting the fruits of his labour. You can reach libertarian conclusions by drawing out some of those implications and turning them into a reactionary theory.

A: I thinks that’s why, at the deepest level, I was so arrested by what Nozick had to say. But I only came to realise that some years after I was arrested by Nozick. At the time, at the conscious level, the thing that I found disturbing was, quite simply, the challenging quality of Nozick’s arguments.

2002-07-29T01:20:00.000-04:00

What to do the week after the Revolution has always been a poser for socialists. No doubt rallies, marches, speeches, the Internationale and the amazement of the bourgeoisie will fill the first few days, and the weekend will be no trouble, but, inevitably, Monday --- Red Monday, let us call it --- will arrive: and then what? Every sect of socialists gives its own answer, and these vary greatly in specificity and plausibility. The first ones, such as those of Fourier and Saint-Simon, were both pretty specific and pretty implausible (just between us, Fourier was a raving loon). Since then they have tended to become either less specific or more plausible. Marx devoted his energies to analyzing and attacking capitalism, and was strategically vague about its successor. Most Marxists followed this wise example, and there was even a tendency to think that there wouldn't be a problem, that by the time Red Monday arrived, what needed to be done would be obvious and simple, merely book-keeping and stock-filling. As late as September 1917, for instance, Lenin wrote like this in his pamphlet State and Revolution : ``The accounting and control necessary for this [``the first phase of communist society,'' immediately following the overthrow of capitalism] have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost and reduced to the extraordinarily simple operations --- which any literate person can perform --- of supervising and recording, knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic, and issuing appropriate receipts.''
That this bears no resemblance to what the Bolsheviks actually did on Red Monday goes without saying, and not just because Russia had a dearth of literate persons on the Bolshevik side. This vision ignores the economic problem, which is that of deciding how to use limited resources, how to make allocations. What emerged in Russia after Red Monday did, in fact, make allocations, and it's worth remembering that for a long time it seemed to the outside world to make them very well; up to the '70s, Western economists were at pains to show that, appearances to the contrary, capitalism actually did work better: or about as well: or anyhow had redeeming social values not captured in national accounts like the GNP (said national accounts, incidentally, grew out of the Soviet planning system). For quite some time many socialists regarded Soviet-style central planning as a specific and plausible solution to Red Monday.

2002-07-29T01:16:00.000-04:00

A Brief History of the Labour-Theory-of-Value III

In considering the implications of these refutations of Marx’s value theory, it is important to recognize their origins in the ‘value controversy’. As Itoh recently suggested, the value controversy is more than an ‘internal debate among Marxians’ in so far as it involves a ‘three-way confrontation among neoclassical, neo-Ricardian and Marxian schools’ (1992, p.53). The controversy originated in the conceptual and mathematical framework set out by von Bortkiewicz and turned on the question of whether Marx’s two aggregate equalities - total profit and surplus value, and total price of production and value - could be made to determine prices simultaneously (Sweezy, 1966). Then, in the 1970’s, neoclassical theorists initiated a critique, showing that Marx’s values transform to prices only under unrealistic assumptions of zero surplus value, or a uniform organic composition of capital in all industries. Following this line, Morishima explored the implications of input-output analysis for mathematical understandings of the transformation problem, albeit at ‘some expense of its “historical” [labour theory] aspects’ (Morishima & Catephores, 1975, p.309). Finally, Sraffians entered the fray, with their claim that if equilibrium prices can be deduced from physical data of reproduction, Marx’s labour theory is in any case redundant as a price theory (Steedman, 1977). According to Itoh, these ‘criticisms had an unexpected effect among young Western scholars, who now realized that Marxian economic theory, no less than neoclassical or neo-Ricardian economics, might be worthy of mathematical analysis’ (1992, p.59).

In Itoh’s view, Sraffian theory acted on the value controversy like a ‘double-sided mirror’ reflecting inconsistencies in both neoclassical and Marxian economics: in this sense, ‘fundamental methodological differences among contemporary Marxian theorists arose from ‘their reactions to other perspectives within the triangle’ (1992, p.53). The views of the analytic school represent one contemporary reaction to the neoclassical/Sraffian critique, the assumptions of which are implicit in Roemer’s argument that the labour theory of value is either ‘false’ or imprecise or irrelevant, so Marxian theory would be all the better for mathematical reconstruction. An alternative reaction aims to refute the redundancy critique by stressing the principle virtue of Marxian theory: its focus on capitalist relations of production. According to this view, the labour theory of value - unlike the Sraffian and neo-classical approaches - is not a model for the determination of equilibrium prices, but a model designed to reveal the social relations based human labour that lies behind the phenomena of prices (Hunt, 1990; Lebowitz, 1988, 1994; Mandel & Freeman, 1984; Medio, 1972). If an explanatory principle underlies the task of economics as a social science, then far from being redundant, the labour theory of value is essential (Itoh,1992, p.60).:

what is at stake is really a question of what the proper tasks of theory are: is the social content of the labour theory of value to be considered a virtue in its own right, apart from the issue of its logical correctness or consistency? This question is not amenable to a formal “scientific” solution, but it is not even admitted as a question within the narrowly limited methodological scope of neoclassical and neo-Ricardian theories.

2002-07-29T01:14:00.000-04:00

A Brief History of the Labour-Theory-of-Value II

Defending a position very similar to Elster’s, Roemer (1989a, p.384) provides the following summary of Marx’s economic theory and its late twentieth century reconstruction:

Marx thought that the easiest way to explain how the surplus was produced was to assume a labor theory of value - that is, that prices of commodities were proportional to the amount of labor embodied in them. Exploitation took the form of workers producing goods embodying more of their labour than was embodied in the wage goods that they received in return, that surplus labour became monetized through the price system in a simple way because prices were assumed to be just proportional to the amounts of labor embodied in commodities. But it has long been known that equilibrium prices in a market economy are not proportional to the amount of labor embodied in goods; it was therefore necessary to ask whether the Marxist theory of accumulation could be made more precise even though the labor theory of value was wrong. This has been done during the last twenty years, by applying techniques of input-output analysis and general equilibrium theory, by Michio Morishima and others. It is, in my view, a winning point for Marxism that its theory of capitalist accumulation can be liberated from the false labor theory of value. Some Marxists, however, persist in viewing this reconstruction as heretical, dispensing as it does with the labor theory of value.

2002-07-29T01:12:00.000-04:00

A Brief History of the Labour-Theory-of-Value I

Jon Elster concluded his Making Sense of Marx with the claim that ‘It is not possible today, morally or intellectually, to be a Marxist in the traditional sense’ (1985, p.531). Acceptance of this statement depends, of course, on what is meant by traditional Marxism. Elster makes it clear that what he means by traditional Marxism is that ‘intellectually bankrupt’ and ‘non-scientific’ economic theory associated with the labor theory of value, the theory of the falling rate of profit, and ‘the most important part of historical materialism’, the ‘theory of productive forces and relations of production’ (1986, p.188-194). In place of these redundancies, Elster proposes a new Marxism founded upon logically consistent microfoundations (1982). To achieve this reconstruction, he explicitly favours the tools of neoclassical analysis; a ‘truly scientific’ methodology that posits the existence of economic institutions (for example, prices and markets), then attempts to show that they are compatible with the actions of individual agents who engage in rational calculated satisfaction-maximizing exchanges.

2002-07-28T01:07:00.000-04:00

SLAVOJ ZIZEK, the Giant of Ljubljana, is like the great brain of Goethe's fairytale "The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily". In this revolutionary and allegorical tale (reputedly inspired by Mozart's Magic Flute) there are two lands separated by a river. There are only two ways to cross the river. One is by ferry, and the boatman is a kind of sadist that exacts bizarre tribute for the occasion. The other is to wait for the giant to appear and appropriate his shadow as a type of liminal bridge -- perhaps a metaphor for the umbra (or penumbra) of semi-consciousness and imagination.

Zizek, as this giant (or giant brain), has cast a very long shadow indeed in what can only be termed "cultural studies" (though he would despise the characterization). He is effectively the most brilliant purveyor of Lacanian mischief, and, as a follower of the French "liberator" of Freud, Zizek's Lacan is almost exclusively transcribed in mesmerizing language games or intellectual parables. That he has an encyclopedic grasp of political, philosophical, literary, artistic, cinematic, and pop cultural currents -- and that he has no qualms about throwing all of them into the stockpot of his imagination -- is the prime reason he has dazzled his peers and confounded his critics for over ten years. He is also a legendary trickster (having learned his craft as part of the communist nomenklatura in Slovenia), a kind of Don Quixote for unrepentant Marxists and scourge of liberals, social democrats, new-age "obscurantists", multi-culturalists, and ... You get the picture.

Be continued

2002-07-26T22:55:00.000-04:00

Marx argued that liberal individualism only established formal rights and liberties while allowing material inequalities that make those rights and liberties meaningless. For instance, we are all have a right to take a Caribbean cruise every year. But since few of us have enough money to do so, that right is meaningless. Having enough money to exercise that right makes that right worth something. Hence, the worth of a right consists in having sufficient material conditions to exercise it. But liberals have often denied that supplying the material conditions for the exercise of rights is a matter of justice. So, marxists complain, the equal rights established by liberalism are worthless.
This criticism, by itself, does not apply to Rawlsian liberalism, which attempts to make formal rights meaningful through the Difference principle. The question, then, is what does marxism have to offer over and above Rawls?

The answer is, I think, its opposition to private ownership. Marxism is obviously directly opposed to capitalism. By "capitalism" we will mean an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production. This does not mean that marxists are opposed to personal possessions. Rather, it is private ownership of capital that they oppose. But why? Perhaps they believe it is unjust.

2002-07-24T02:26:00.000-04:00

Sharon’s latest war crime: Gaza missile attack kills 15

By Chris Marsden and Jean Shaoul
24 July 2002

At least 15 people, including nine children, were slaughtered by an Israeli missile attack on a residential building in Gaza on the morning of July 23. The military head of Hamas, Sheikh Salah Shahada, was the target of this attack.

The dead children were reported to be aged between two months and 13 years.

An estimated 145 people were injured in Israel’s latest war crime, a dramatic extension of its established policy of political assassinations that show complete disregard for the safety of innocent men, women and children. Still more people could be buried under the rubble.

Another seven Palestinians have been killed in Israeli operations in the previous two days.

Anger welled up at the attack and there were clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers on duty near the Gush Katif Zionist settlement during which two Palestinians were injured.

A group representing 13 Palestinian nationalist and Islamic factions called for a mass demonstration against Israel at a collective funeral for the 15. The call met a response from thousands of Palestinians, some carrying rifles.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, dismissed criticism of the attack, describing it as a “great success”, while Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said, “What we are doing is self-defence.” One government spokesmen even claimed that Shahada was planning a terrorist atrocity that could lead to “thousands of dead”.

Prior to the outrage, there were clear indications that Hamas was in fact discussing calling off its campaign of suicide bombings in the event of an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The previous day, Monday July 22, the spiritual leader and founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, had said his organisation would consider halting suicide attacks on Israelis if Israel withdrew from West Bank cities and “stop your aggression, demolishing homes. Release prisoners and stop assassinations. Once the occupation and all those measures against our people stop, we are ready to totally study stopping martyrdom operations, in a positive way.”

Now, Hamas has warned of revenge attacks.

The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of trying to sabotage international efforts to secure a withdrawal of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) from Palestinian territories. Earlier the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz had reported a security plan proposed by Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razek Yehiyeh to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres promising to end terrorist attacks after a full withdrawal from all seven towns and cities to the lines Israel occupied before the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada.

Once again Sharon has responded to Palestinian overtures with a violent provocation. It is by no means the first in recent days.

In Nablus last Friday July 19, Israeli security forces arrested 21 relatives of two militants whom Israel accuses of having organised suicide bombings and announced that it would expel them from the West Bank and deport them to the Gaza Strip, which is now enclosed behind an electrified fence and serves as a virtual prison for more than one million Palestinians. No charges have been brought against any of the 21 detainees.

The Israeli authorities have accused Hamas member, Nasser al-Din, of organising the July 16 attack on the bus at Emmanuel settlement that killed nine people, and Ali Ahmad al-Ajouri, a militant from a Fatah organisation, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, of organising the July 17 double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed three people. The two wanted men are believed to be in hiding.

The Israeli armed forces also demolished the homes of the two suspects, which they justified on “security grounds”, leaving dozens of people homeless with neighbouring houses suffering extensive damage.

According to the B’Tselem human rights group, Israel deported 1,522 Palestinians between 1967 and 1992 when the measure was halted. This is the first time, however, that it has attempted to deport suspected terrorists’ families who had no connection with their relatives’ activities.

The move met with worldwide condemnation of Israel, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and even from United States State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher. But Labour’s Shimon Peres lent his support to the plan, which he justified as a way of denying bombers a “supportive environment”.

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad threatened retaliation with a new wave of suicide bombings “everywhere in Israel” if Sharon went ahead with the deportations.

In the face of this backlash, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said the government could only deport the relatives of terrorists or their commanders if it could demonstrate a link between the detainees and the terrorist attacks. That was as far as the legal system was prepared to go. It seems likely that the Attorney General’s fig leaf will allow Sharon to deport some of the 21 detainees arrested July 19, based upon ‘evidence’ derived from questioning of the detainees by Shin Bet (Israel’s security forces) after giving them only 12 hours notice.

On the very same day as his government supposedly climbed down at the Attorney General’s request, Sharon ordered the police to immediately begin deporting 50,000 illegal foreign workers, including Palestinians and Jordanians over the next 12 months. A special force of 150-200 policemen will be established and later integrated into the “migration authority” being set up by the Interior Ministry and charged with deporting 100,000 illegal foreign workers by 2005.

Israel justifies every atrocity it commits as either retaliation for suicide bombings, or a measure to prevent them in its own “war against terrorism”. Writing in the July 22 Washington Post, Jackson Diehl made the correct observation that the suicide bombings are a political godsend to Sharon’s government in that they “have managed to cloak and protect” Sharon’s latest burst of Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza. He notes that since Sharon took office less than 18 months ago, 44 new settlement sites, including more than 300 units, have been established in the West Bank, including nine in the past three months. The government’s budget calls for $64 million in subsidies this year to induce Israelis to move to settlements, plus $19 million in funding for settlement development. Nine roads are being built for use by the settlements, at a cost of $50 million. Tenders have been submitted for the construction of 957 new units in the settlements.

It is this broader perspective of eliminating any possibility of a Palestinian state, however small, discontiguous and truncated, being established that dictates Sharon’s policy of constant provocations and war crimes. Whenever there is the faintest possibility of negotiations to calm the situation, the IDF is instructed to carry out some incendiary measure or other aimed at turning up the heat once more.

2002-07-22T23:19:00.000-04:00

Bush's "speech" in defence of Israeli crimes against humanity

By Prof. Edward Said

Even by the terribly low standards of his other speeches, George W Bush's 24 June speech to the world about the Middle East was a startling example of how an execrable combination of muddled thought, words with no actual meaning in the real world of living, breathing human beings, preachy and racist injunctions against the Palestinians, an incredible blindness, a delusional blindness, to the realities of an ongoing Israeli invasion and conquest against all the laws of war and peace, all wrapped in the smug accents of a moralistic, stiff-necked and ignorant judge who has arrogated to himself divine privileges, now sits astride US foreign policy. And this, it is important to remember, from a man who virtually stole an election he did not win, and whose record as governor of Texas includes the worst pollution, scandalous corruption, the highest rates of imprisonment and capital punishment in the world. So this dubiously endowed man of few gifts except the blind pursuit of money and power has the capability to condemn Palestinians not just to the tender mercies of war criminal Sharon but to the dire consequences of his own empty condemnations. Flanked by three of the most venal politicians in the world (Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice), he pronounced his speech with the halting accents of a mediocre elocution student and thereby allowed Sharon to kill or injure many more Palestinians in a US endorsed illegal military occupation.

It wasn't only that Bush's speech lacked any historical awareness of what he was proposing, but that its capacity for extended harm was so great. It was as if Sharon had written the speech, amalgamating the disproportionate American obsession with terrorism to Sharon's determination to eliminate Palestinian national life under the rubric of terrorism and Jewish supremacy on "the land of Israel". For the rest, Bush's perfunctory concessions to a "provisional" Palestinian state (whatever that may be, perhaps analogous to a provisional pregnancy?) and his casual remarks about alleviating the difficulties of Palestinian life brought nothing to this new pronouncement of his that warranted the widespread -- I would go so far as to say comically -- positive reaction elicited from the Arab leadership, Yasser Arafat leading the pack as far as enthusiasm is concerned.

Over 50 years of Arab and Palestinian dealings with the US have ended in the rubbish bin, so that Bush and his advisers could convince themselves and much of the electorate that they had a god-given mission to exterminate terrorism, which means essentially all the enemies of Israel. A quick survey of those 50 years shows dramatically that neither a defiant Arab attitude nor a submissive one have made any changes in US perceptions of its interest in the Middle East, which remain the quick and cheap supply of oil and the protection of Israel as the two main aspects of its regional dominance.

From Abdel-Nasser to Bashar, Abdullah and Mubarak, Arab policy, however, has undergone a 180 degree turn, with more or less the same results. First there was a defiant Arab alignment in the post- independence years inspired by the anti-imperialist, anti-Cold War philosophy of Bandung and Nasserism. That ended catastrophically in 1967.

Thereafter, led by Egypt under Sadat, the shift took place that brought cooperation between the US and the Arabs under the totally delusional rubric that the US controls 99 per cent of the cards. What remained of inter-Arab cooperation slowly withered away from its high point in the 1973 War and the oil embargo, to an Arab cold war pitting various states against each other. Sometimes, as with Kuwait and Lebanon, small weak states became the battleground, but to all intents and purposes the official mind-set of the Arab state system came to think exclusively in terms of the United States as the pivotal focus for Arab policy. With the first Gulf War (there is soon to be a second) and the end of the Cold War, America remained the only superpower, which instead of prompting a radical re-appraisal of Arab policy drove the various states into a deeper individual, or rather bilateral, embrace of the US whose reaction in effect was to take them for granted. Arab summits became less occasions for putting forth credible positions than for derisory contempt. It was soon realised by US policy-makers that Arab leaders barely represented their own countries, much less the whole Arab world; and, in addition, one didn't have to be a genius to remark that various bilateral agreements between Arab leaders and the US were more important to their regimes' security than to the United States. This is not even to mention the petty jealousies and animosities that virtually emasculated the Arab people as a power to be reckoned with in the modern world. No wonder then that today's Palestinian suffering the horrors of Israeli occupation is just as likely to blame "the Arabs" as he is the Israelis.

By the early 1980s all parts of the Arab world were ready to make peace with Israel as a way of ensuring US good faith towards them -- take, for example, the Fez Plan of 1982 which stipulated peace with Israel in return for withdrawal from all the occupied territory. The March 2002 Arab summit replayed the same scene for the second time, this time as farce it should be added, and with equally negligible effect. And it is precisely from that time two decades ago that US policy on Palestine completely changed its bases, for the worse. As former CIA senior analyst Kathleen Christison points out in an excellent study published in the US bi-weekly Counterpunch (May 16-31, 2002), the old land-for peace formula was given up by the Reagan administration, then more enthusiastically by Clinton's, ironically just at the time that Arab policy generally and Palestinian policy in particular had concentrated their energies on placating the US on as many fronts as possible. By November 1988, the PLO had officially abandoned "liberation" and at the Algiers meeting of the PNC (which I attended as a member) voted for partition and co-existence for two states; in December of that year Yasser Arafat publicly renounced terrorism and a PLO-US dialogue was begun in Tunis.

The new Arab order that emerged after the Gulf War institutionalised the one-way traffic between the US and the Arabs: the Arabs gave, and the US gave more and more to Israel. The Madrid Conference of 1991 was based on the premise -- for the Palestinians -- that the US would recognise them and persuade Israel to do the same. I recall vividly that during the summer of 1991, along with a group of senior PLO figures and independents, we were asked by Arafat to formulate a series of assurances that we required from the US in order to enter the about-to- be-convened Madrid conference which led (although none of us knew it) to the Oslo process of 1993. In effect Arafat vetoed all our suggestions for US guarantees. He only wanted assurances that he would remain the main negotiator for the Palestinians; nothing else seemed to matter to him, even though a good West Bank-Gaza delegation headed by Haidar Abdel-Shafi was proceeding with its work in Washington facing a tough Israeli team that had been instructed by Shamir to concede nothing and to extend the talk for 10 years if necessary. Arafat's idea was to undercut every one of his own people by offering more concessions, which essentially meant that he made no prior demands on either Israel or the US, just so he could remain in power.

That, and the prevailing post-1967 environment, solidified the Palestinian-US dynamic into the by- now permanent distortions of the Oslo and post-Oslo period. To the best of my knowledge, the US never called on the Palestinian Authority (nor any other Arab regime) to establish democratic procedures. Quite the contrary, Clinton and Gore both publicly approved the Palestinian State Security courts while on visits to Gaza and Jericho respectively and little emphasis, if any, was placed on ending corruption, monopolies and the like. I myself had been writing about the problems of Arafat's rule since the middle 90s, with either indifference or open scorn as reactions to what I had to say (most of which proved to be correct). I was accused of a utopian lack of pragmatism and realism. It was clear that for the Israelis and the Americans, as well as the other Arabs, there was a concert of interests that made the Authority what it was, and which kept it in place as either an Israeli police force or, later, the focus of everything that Israelis loved to hate. No serious resistance to occupation was developed under Arafat, and he continued to allow bands of militants, other PLO factions, and security forces to run rampant across the civil landscape. A great deal of illicit money was made, as the general population lost over 50 per cent of its pre-Oslo livelihood.

The Intifada changed everything, as did Barak's tenure which prepared the way for Sharon's re-entry on to the scene. And still Arab policy was to placate the US. A small sign of this is the change in Arab discourse in the United States. Abdullah of Jordan stopped criticising Israel completely on American TV, referring always to the need for "the two sides" to stop "the violence". Similar language was heard from various other Arab spokesmen from major countries, indicating that Palestine had become a nuisance to be contained rather than an injustice to be righted.

The most significant thing of all is that Israeli propaganda, American contempt for the Arabs, and Arab (as well as Palestinian) incapacity to formulate and represent the interests of their own people has led to a vast dehumanisation of the Palestinians, whose enormous suffering on a daily, indeed hourly and minute by minute basis has no status at all. It is as if Palestinians have no existence except when someone performs a terrorist act, and then the entire world media apparatus leaps up and smothers their actual existence as breathing and sentient people with a real history and a real society by holding over them an enormous blanket saying terrorist. I know of no such systematic dehumanisation in modern history that even approaches this, despite the occasional dissenting voice here and there.

What concerns me finally is Arab and Palestinian cooperation (collaboration is the better word) in the dehumanisation. Our tiny number of representatives in the media at best speaks competently and dispassionately about the merits of the Bush speech or the Mitchell plan but in no way do any of them that I have seen represent the sufferings of their people, or their history, or actuality. I have spoken often about the need for a mass campaign against the occupation in the US, but have finally come to the conclusion that for Palestinians under this dreadful, Kafkaesque Israeli occupation, the chances of doing that are small. Where I think we have a hope is in trying (as I suggested in my last article on Palestinian elections) to establish a constituent assembly at the grass roots level. We have so long been in the position of being passive objects of Israeli and Arab policy that we do not adequately appreciate how important, and indeed how urgent, it is for Palestinians now to take an independent foundational step of their own, to try to establish a new self-making process that creates legitimacy and the possibility of a better polity for ourselves than now exists. All the cabinet shuffles and projected elections that have been announced so far are ridiculous games played with the fragments and ruins of Oslo. For Arafat and his assembly to start planning democracy is like trying to put together the pieces of a shattered glass.

Fortunately, however, the new Palestinian National Initiative announced two weeks ago by its authors Ibrahim Dakkak, Mustafa Barghouti, and Haidar Abdel- Shafi answers exactly to this need, which springs from the failure both of the PLO and groups like Hamas to provide a way forward that doesn't depend (ludicrously in my opinion) on American and Israeli goodwill. The Initiative provides for a vision of peace with justice, co-existence and, extremely important, secular social democracy for our people that is unique in Palestinian history. Only a group of independent people well grounded in civil society, untainted by collaboration or corruption, can possibly furnish the outlines of the new legitimacy we need. We need a real constitution, not a basic law toyed with by Arafat; we need truly representative democracy that only Palestinians can provide for themselves through a founding assembly. This is the only positive step that can reverse the process of dehumanisation that has infected so many sectors of the Arab world. Otherwise we shall sink in our suffering and continue to endure the awful tribulations of Israeli collective punishment, which can only be stopped by a collective political independence of which we are still very capable. Colin Powell's good will and fabled "moderation" will never do it for us. Never.

2002-07-22T23:09:00.000-04:00

Why Socialism?

By Albert Einstein, in Monthly Review, May, 1949

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has--as is well known-- been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed toward a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and--if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous--are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half-unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society. Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supranational organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?"

I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?

It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society--in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence--that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word "society."

It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished--just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human beings which are dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.

Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time--which, looking back, seems so idyllic--is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.

I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not view dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his makeup are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor--not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production--that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods--may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call "workers" all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production--although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. In so far as the labor contract is "free," what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the "free labor contract" for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present-day economy does not differ much from "pure" capitalism. Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an "army of unemployed" almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult sociopolitical problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

2002-07-18T01:58:00.000-04:00

Eugene Victor Debs, (1855-1926), American labor and political leader, who five times was the Socialist candidate for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. An activist in the labor movement of the 1890's, he later turned to radical politics to express his dissatisfaction with economic and social conditions.

Labor Leader

Debs was born in Terre Haute, Ind., on Nov. 5, 1855, the oldest son of immigrant parents from Alsace. He began work at the age of 14 in the railroad shops of Terre Haute and soon became a locomotive fireman. Although he quit railroading in 1874, he became an officer in the local lodge of the struggling Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in 1875. Laboring tirelessly to build the organization, Debs in 1880 became secretary- treasurer of the national Brotherhood and editor of the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine. He also had a promising career in DEMOCRATIC politics, serving as Terre Haute city clerk (1880–1884) and in the Indiana state legislature (1885–1887). Then the increasingly militant Brotherhood claimed all his efforts.

Having failed to gain cooperation in collective bargaining among the various craft-based brotherhoods, Debs took the lead, in 1893, in founding an industrial union -- one open to all railroad employees. His American Railway Union was the country's largest union and had considerable success in several labor contests, but it was destroyed in 1894 in the violent Pullman strike. Convicted for contempt of a court injunction during the strike, Debs served six months in jail in 1895, during which time he declared himself a convert to socialism.

Socialist Leader

Debs was the Socialist standard-bearer in the presidential elections of 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912; in 1912 he received 901,255 votes, or about 6% of the total. For his vehement opposition to U. S. entry into World War I, Debs was convicted in 1918 under the Espionage Act and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. As an inmate of the Atlanta penitentiary, he ran for president again in 1920 and won 919,801 votes, about 3.5% of the total. In 1921, President Warren G. HARDING commuted his sentence; although he was released, he did not regain his CITIZENSHIP. In his last years, Debs wrote a series of newspaper articles on prison conditions and was editor of the Socialist weekly Appeal to Reason. He also wrote a book, Walls and Bars (1927). He died in Elmhurst, Ill., on Oct. 20, 1926.

2002-07-18T01:55:00.000-04:00

E. V. Debs
Statement to the Court
Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act
September 18, 1918

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions…

Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change—but if possible by peaceable and orderly means…

Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison…

I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.

In this country—the most favored beneath the bending skies—we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…

I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all…

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.

There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. They are waiting, watching, and working hopefully through all the hours of the day and the night. They are still in a minority. But they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time. The feel—they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greates social and economic change in history.

In that day we shall have the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every nation with every other nation on earth…

Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.

I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.

When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.

2002-07-15T00:32:00.000-04:00

In this weblog I try to develop a comprehensive defence and nuanced articulation of a from of radical egalitarianism.