General News

Obama vs. Netanyahu: Shootout at the Ramat Shlomo Corral

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It all seemed to start when Vice-President Biden, in Israel to promote the “peace process”, was greeted with the announcement of further Israeli expansion into the historically Palestinian Ramat Shlomo, in East Jerusalem. The US fired back on all cylinders, with Biden, Clinton, and General Petraeus questioning Israel in an unprecedented way. In return, the Jerusalem Post accused Obama of “repeatedly humiliating our prime minister.” And since he’s critical of Israel, Obama must be (according to Hagai Ben-Artzi, Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, anyway) an anti-Semite. The dust was still thick in the air, as American leaders made it clear that they loved Israel, it’s just the actions of the Israeli government with which they have difficulty.

Culture

Hitler, the Second Time as Farce

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History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Karl Marx Growing with two parents who escaped the Holocaust, from Germany and from Austria, there was no ambiguity in my mind about Adolph Hitler or the Holocaust. He was evil, to an extent beyond any other person, and the Holocaust was an event, sui generis, beyond any other event. For years my dreams were inhabited by desperate attempts to escape jackbooted storm troopers who were searching for me, or trying to survive after having been captured by them. I was horrified at other evils, but this lay beyond them, as the far marker of human cruelty In political debate that made me very wary of cheap comparisons to the Nazis or Hitler.

Culture

Writer, Writing, Reader: Un Ménage à Trois

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I have always thought my best writing happened when I didn’t think about the audience, but instead got taken over by the words I was shaping. When I became so involved with the passion of what needed to be said, so entranced by how best to birth it into the world that I lost my sense of self and there was only the process of trying to shape the words on the page so that they embody the idea that lay just the other side of perception. The audience didn’t enter into it at all. Perhaps on a later draft, I’d look at the piece and recognize a reference that was so obscure that no reader would get it, and so it had to go. But for the most part, the dance was between the words and my ideas, and the audience were wallflowers, watching perhaps but obscured by shadows.

General News

The Government versus the Law

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One of the most read pieces on this blog in the last week is Eli Zaretsky’s “Proto-Fascist Elements in America Today.” It’s a powerful piece, and I disagree with it only in two regards: I don’t think the problem is particularly American, and I don’t think it’s about fascism. Zaretsky’s concerns certainly apply as much to Canada and the UK as they do to the US. And the core of what is wrong with what is happening in these countries isn’t a potential slide into proto-fascism, it’s that what is making that possible is the destruction of the legal protections that were once taken for granted. Paul Craig Roberts, in CounterPunch, cuts to the heart of the issue:
The greatest human achievement is the subordination of government to law.

General News

More Voices Acknowledge That One State is Now the Main Focus

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Two months ago, I discussed on this blog how the sun was setting on the two state solution in Israel. At the time it felt a bit hypothetical; while Palestinian leaders and commentators were saying that a single state was the only solution, I didn’t find many in the mainstream (neither Stephen Walt nor Philip Weiss can yet be characterized as “mainstream”) who were saying anything in favour of the idea. But suddenly, things have changed and there’s all sorts of talk about it. In The Nation, Harry Siegman (former executive director of American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America) writes a stunning piece that concludes that an “externally imposed solution” is the only route to two states, and that without such intervention only a single state solution is possible. Here’s a taste of the piece: Israel’s relentless drive to establish “facts on the ground” in the occupied West Bank, a drive that continues in violation of even the limited settlement freeze to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself, seems finally to have succeeded in locking in the irreversibility of its colonial project.

General News

Acting To Protect National Insecurity

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Once again, a bungled terrorist attack produces bungled security responses. One can’t help but wonder if there is a final solution hidden in the minds of these people: if they can just make flying so difficult and arduous that no one does it, then there won’t be any airborne terrorism, will there? I can’t be alone in wishing that one politician, in some country, would point out that your chances over the past ten years (including 9/11) of being killed by lightning are 20 times greater than being killed by air terrorism. And the number of lives that might be saved if the energy directed at malicious airplane passengers were instead focussed on drunken car drivers boggles the mind. Though for serious mind-boggling it’s the new horror film: invasion of the body scanners.

Environment

Some Thoughts on the Winter Solstice

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Winter solstice is time of greatest darkness, which of course is why so many cultures have festivals of lights at this time. But in our culture the lights have gotten over the top, with thousands of lights blazing as you walk down the road, and when you get to the mall at the end of the road (all our roads may not lead to Rome, but most lead to a mall) the lights have become so bright there are no longer any shadows. That’s a profound loss. In the shadows lie our deep fears, and this time of the year traditionally allowed us to look at those fears, to name those shadows, and to learn how they connect to us. If we don’t connect to our shadows, we never grow up, and (like my namesake) we can only live in never never land.

Culture

Dystopia and Datopia?

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Soma or Big Brother? Destruction or distraction? For years “Brave New World” was balanced against “1984”, as though those two works defined the opposite ends of the dystopian spectrum, a spectrum one might presume to be exclusively in shades of grey. And though such an opposition ignores the many other fine works describing the range of hand-baskets in which we may be hell-bound, the pairing offered a useful metaphor. For many, the final word on the debate was Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” which in 1986 argued brilliantly that it was Huxley, not Orwell, whose map more accurately charted our society’s devolution.

Inter-Culturalism

The Sun Is Setting on the Two-State Solution

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Perhaps recent leaders of Israel might made better choices had they spent more time reading Sherlock Holmes. Of particular use to them might have been The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet in which Holmes says, “It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Then they might have realized that the result of making a two-state solution impossible was to make a one-state solution inevitable. Having worked to weaken Palestine, to undermine all Palestinian leaders, to create – in Sharon’s memorable phrase for the settlements – facts on the ground they are now like a go player who having focused exclusively on a specific battle over territory suddenly looks at the bigger picture and realizes he’s lost the game. We are now at that point of realization.

Culture

Dispatches from the Front Line: The War on Drugs

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If the war on drugs needed a spokesperson, it could hardly do better than select Chico Marx in Duck Soup, saying “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Sadly for the drug war effort, increasing numbers of both people and governments are starting to believe their own eyes. And what they see is that the war has been futile and counterproductive, causing over half the incarcerations in the US, with no measurable decrease in the amount of drugs consumed. But the war fights back, shooting messengers who speak truth to power. It’s enough to make you reach for a ….