Stacking the Deck: The Power of Special Relationships

The January 26th edition of The Nation included an article by Naomi Klein calling for a boycott of Israel in response to their actions in Gaza. This article can be found here.

Naturally, as occurs any time Israel is criticized in the press, there was a highly emotional (and, needless to say, critical) response to Klein's article in the very next edition. This response, along with Klein's retort, can be found here.

The problem with Klein’s call-to-boycott is that it was published in The Nation and The Nation’s readership amounts to the most centrist viewpoint that would still accept the idea. As Pollin’s response shows, even readers of The Nation are sometimes too enamored of Israel to accept any real criticism of it, suffering at most to say that their brutal actions are a response to equally brutal actions brought upon them.

A “special relationship” exists between Israel and America today. This relationship, now continued in President Barack Obama’s explicit recognition of it¹, is an interesting thing. It means that more American aid money goes to Israel each year than to any other country², despite Israel‘s AA- credit rating and high levels of personal wealth³. It means that we have a constant ally in the United Nations, even when we vote to legalize absurd things like the extension of the Cuban embargo to foreign subsidiaries of American companies and nearly the whole world stands against us.⁴ It means that when the American press discusses Israel, it does so with a deference not granted to nations opposed to Israel. It means that when people criticize Israel, they are often faced with charges of anti-Semitism, or simply just “siding with the terrorists.”

Pollin’s response is a perfect example of the way that the special relationship translates into this one sided debate existing today. Take this sentence: “I agree entirely that the Israeli occupation is brutal. But Hamas is also brutal.” Here Pollin says little while excluding much. It is obvious on its face that the happenings in the Gaza strip are brutal to life on both sides, and saying it doesn’t hurt the Israeli occupation forces at all, because they are responding brutally to a brute attack. What they are responding to, however, is not obvious. According to Pollin Israel is responding to Hamas. Hamas is the name of the elected, ruling party of the Palestinian state as it exists in the Gaza strip today. Therefore, Hamas’ actions are the actions of Palestine. Rather than addressing this as a conflict between Israel and Palestine, Pollin addresses the conflict as one between Hamas and Israel, with a dual reaction. First, Americans recognize that Hamas is the name of a terrorist group, and so associate the rocket attacks on Israel as a terrorist action. Americans, as history has shown, have their own brutal streak when it comes to avenging terrorist attacks, and so Israel‘s actions are more easily forgiven. Second, by de-legitimizing Hamas’ sovereignty in Palestine, Pollin opens up the door to legitimizing the US-backed Fatah party’s dominance over all of Palestine.

In the remainder of the paragraph Pollin continues:

“To date, the only thing preventing Hamas from being less lethal than Israel in the damage it inflicts is its limited resources. Hamas is deliberately firing rockets into Israel with the aim of killing and terrorizing civilians. Should Iran, for example, succeed in supplying Hamas with more effective weapons, Hamas will become more successful in killing and terrorizing Israeli citizens.”

The first sentence here assumes that Israel has the right to be more lethal than Palestine, which is interesting. Sovereign nations have the right to defend themselves against their neighbors - but again, this is not a sovereign nation. This is the terrorist group Hamas, so building its strength represents a far more sinister view.

Can we also assume from the writer’s words that, because Hamas is less lethal than Israel, Palestine is suffering more greatly at Israel’s hands than Israel at Palestine’s? Even if we cannot, the numbers support it, as they generally do when Israel engages Palestine. A total of 13 Israeli’s were killed in the Gaza attacks - as many as 1284 Palestinians were killed⁵, a ratio of nearly 100 Palestinians for every Israeli. Surely greater weapons capability would have increased the Israeli numbers, but with the US on its side, you can be sure that the Palestinian death toll would have risen commensurately. But let’s look more closely, because the sentence is loaded. “Hamas is deliberately firing rockets into Israel with the aim of killing and terrorizing civilians.” By extension of our previous formula, we can now say “Terrorists are deliberately firing rockets into Israel with the aim of killing and terrorizing civilians.” This, rightfully, is an abominable action and evocative sentence. However, the sentence can also be worded thus: “Israel is deliberately firing rockets into Palestine with the aim of killing and terrorizing civilians.”⁶ This sentence, just as true as the first sentence about Hamas, completely neuters Pollin’s argument, while hopefully remaining just as emotive. The next sentence, “should Iran, for example, succeed in supplying Hamas with more effective weapons, Hamas will become more successful in killing and terrorizing Israeli citizens” is another stab at demonizing the Palestinians. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”⁷ If this history were written by the other side, the quote might well have been: “Should the US, for example, succeed in supplying Israel with more effective weapons, Israel will become more successful in killing and terrorizing Palestinian citizens.” The US, however, has supplied Israel with more effective weapons, and its Security Council position in the UN secures Israel’s immunity in using them.⁸

You cannot claim to fight a war against terror while also participating in terror yourself, but that brings us to the final unquestioned assumption of Pollin’s argument: that Hamas should be condemned for targeting civilians. The short, right answer is that they should. However, for an American citizen to attempt to condemn Palestinian human rights abuses is amusing at best. From the firing bombing of Dresden to the 1986 raid on Libya, from Hiroshima to nearly every interaction we‘ve had with nearly every South American country, the United States has made it a point to target and engage civilian populations as the most effective method of demoralizing opposition.

. . .

Written plainly the ongoing war between Israel and Palestine is typical to most conflict: it is not a war of ideology, of Semite vs. anti-Semite, of terror vs. life. It is a war for resources, or to use a wholly ironic word, a war for lebensraum. It is true that Palestine, under Hamas governance, has said that they do not recognize the existence of the Israeli state. But what, in the 60+ years of Israel’s existence, demonstrates Israel’s willingness to accept Palestine? The problem of the war in Gaza, thus laid out and free of the special relationship, becomes one of a thoroughly modern, militarily advanced nation suppressing the rebellion - and the right to live⁹ - of a smaller, neighboring, state. How this differs from past situations in Kuwait, Korea, Vietnam, Poland or Cuba - all of which provoked outrage and, eventually, US response - is not readily apparent from a humanitarian standpoint . . . Perhaps it’s just one of those quirks that develop in special relationships.

---

¹Henry, Ed. 2008. Obama closely monitoring Gaza, adviser says. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/28/obama.gaza/

²United States. Census Bureau. 2009. The 2009 Statistical Abstract. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/foreign_commerce_aid/foreign_aid.html
This fact holds true insofar as the United States is not at war with a particular country during the time frame in question. If the US is at war with a country its accounting somehow allows this to be translated into “foreign aid” to that country, so the figure greatly increases. Thus, if we exclude Afghanistan and Iraq, foreign aid to Israel amounts to USD 2.6bn versus USD 1.8bn for Egypt, the next highest country (and the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel), in 2006. By way of contrast, Zimbabwe - a country suffering so badly that it recently abandoned its currency due to hyperinflation - received USD 29.8mn.

³Bloomberg. 2009. Credit rating unaffected by Gaza war, S&P says. Jerusalem Post. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://www.jpost.com

⁴Pipes, Daniel. 1997. How Special is the U.S.-Israel Relationship? Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://www.danielpipes.org/article/282

⁵Younis, Khan. 2009. Final Gazan Death Toll Hits 1284. Taipei Times. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2009/01/23/2003434414

⁶Associated Press. 2009. Israel Faces Heat Over White Phosphorous. MSNBC. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28642180/

⁷Orwell, George. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgeorwe109402.html

⁸Larsen, Suzie. Our Beachhead in the Middle East. Mother Jones. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/arms/israel.html

⁹Goodman, Amy. 2008. Days After Calling Israeli Blockade of Gaza “A Crime Against Humanity,” UN Human Rights Investigator Richard Falk Detained, Expelled from Israel. Democracy Now. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/17/days_after_calling_israeli_blockade_of

The Right Wing Bias of the Media - HARD PROOF!

I recently had a letter to the editor published in The Westminster Eagle and its sister publication The Eldersburg Eagle. The letter was a response to yet another of Hoby Wolf's articles, which can be found here.

My response to the article, as printed by the paper, can be found here.

My actual response follows:

Hoby Wolf suggested in his most recent editorial that “legislating prosperity isn’t how the marketplace works” and that FDR (and by extension the New Deal) was not responsible for ending the Great Depression. He knows these things because he’s seen them first hand, and because he’s read about them in Adam Smith.

Living through things can make you an expert on them, it’s true. But I wouldn’t assume that a fourteen year old living in Oxford Mississippi in 1930 is an expert on William Faulkner any more than I would assume that a fourteen year old living in Baltimore in 1938 is an expert on the Great Depression. I certainly wouldn’t assume that reading The Wealth of Nations makes you an economist, either. Paul Krugman, however, is an economist - a Nobel Prize winning economist who happens to teach at Princeton - and he feels that the New Deal did in fact save us. He is one example of many, just as there are examples on the other side of the fence. The news media, for its part, tends to agree or disagree along fairly consistent lines. Left-center channels like MSNBC openly support the idea of New Deal prosperity, while right-center channels like Fox News say the exact opposite. Americans, with their typically poor understanding of history, tend to believe whichever interpretation best fits their intuitive understanding of the issue. The issue has at its heart, however, the very nature of the inequality inherent in our system and deserves more than mere intuition - and certainly more than the easy dismissal that Mr. Wolf attempted.

One thing which can be easily dismissed, however, is the notion that “legislating prosperity isn’t how the marketplace works.” Across the spectrum from neocon to socialist, it takes serious effort to overlook the consistent protectionism inherent in US economic policy. From the secured, no-bid contracts of Blackwater and Halliburton to Clinton’s ban on Mexican tomatoes, from the Spanish-American war to Reagan’s breaking of the air traffic controller’s strike, the prosperity of American business has consistently been improved and protected by legislation with the government working increasingly harder to make sure that truly free markets are available for those corporations to exploit abroad. What Mr. Wolf means to say is “legislating individual prosperity isn’t how the marketplace works” - which is certainly true for the time being. The legislation insuring the wealth and prosperity of corporations removes more and more rights from individuals until, as Noam Chomsky points out in his Profits Over People, corporations have more rights than citizens. We can see the result as our middle class slides down the slippery slope as the top 1% continues to reap the rewards of their hard work in Washington, holding more wealth than the remaining 99% combined.

The sad part is that the same neo-conservative economists (Larry Summers, Paul Volcker) that presided over the economy for the past 30-50 years will be prominent in Obama‘s administration as well, which would seem to mean that Mr. Wolf has nothing to worry about. There won’t be a new New Deal - it’ll be the same old deal we got with Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and W.


. . . now that you've dutifully read all three items, allow me to point out the following changes that were made to my letter. (Point 1 is my original, point 2 is the edited version. Red text indicates changes/additions made by the newspaper, while green text indicates items that were deleted by the newspaper.)

1. Hoby Wolf suggested in his most recent editorial that “legislating prosperity isn’t how the marketplace works” and that FDR (and by extension the New Deal) was not responsible for ending the Great Depression. He knows these things because he’s seen them first hand, and because he’s read about them in Adam Smith.
   

2. In his most recent column (Jan. 7), Hoby Wolf suggests that "Legislating prosperity isn't how the marketplace works," and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and by extension the New Deal, were not responsible for ending the Great Depression.

   He knows this because he saw them first hand and because he's read about them in Adam Smith.

In example 1 the clause "FDR was not responsible for ending the Great Depression" is grammatically correct because FDR is singular (he) and requires the appropriate singular verb form (he was). The edited version mistakenly includes the parenthetic notation ("and by extension the New Deal") in its consideration of the subject and mistakenly uses a plural verb form (they were). This introduces a grammatical error into a text that did not have one previously. The same error is committed shortly thereafter when the editor changes "He knows these things" to "He knows this." In the first example, "these things" refers to the two separate concepts mentioned in the first sentence. In the second example "this" refers to a single idea - which could be either "legislating prosperity" or "the new deal" but cannot be both. (Also: who, amongst the intended audience for this letter, doesn't know that FDR = Franklin Roosevelt?)

1. Living through things can make you an expert on them, it’s true. But I wouldn’t assume that a fourteen year old living in Oxford Mississippi in 1930 is an expert on William Faulkner any more than I would assume that a fourteen year old living in Baltimore in 1938 is an expert on the Great Depression.


2. Living through things can make you an expert, that's true. But I wouldn't assume that a 14-year-old living in Oxford, Miss., in 1930 would be an expert on William Faulkner any more than I would assume that a 14-year-old living in Baltimore in 1938 is an expert on the Great Depression.

It's a fine distinction, I know, but saying "living through things can make you an expert on them" is not the same thing as saying "living through things can make you an expert." My readers will no doubt be surprised, but I am all for the Strunk and White advice of "omit needless words." But they need to be needless first. And so much for parallel structure - I guess "would be" and "is" are interchangeable in this new English. Also, the change from "it's true" to "that's true" is strictly stylistic, not just a misguided grammatical error introduced by a newspaper editor.

1. I certainly wouldn’t assume that reading The Wealth of Nations makes you an economist, either.


2. And I certainly wouldn't assume that reading "The Wealth of Nations" makes you an economist, either.

As if I didn't start enough sentences with conjunctions on my own!

1. Paul Krugman, however, is an economist - a Nobel Prize winning economist who happens to teach at Princeton - and he feels that the New Deal did in fact save us.
   


2. Paul Krugman, on the other hand, is an economist -- a Nobel Prize-winning economist who happens to teach at Princeton -- and he feels the New Deal did in fact save us.

On the subject of omitting needless words . . . Another completely stylistic change.

1. The issue has at its heart, however, the very nature of the inequality inherent in our system and deserves more than mere intuition - and certainly more than the easy dismissal that Mr. Wolf attempted.
   


2. The issue has at its heart, however, the very nature of the inequality inherent in our system and deserves more than mere intuition -- and certainly more than the easy dismissal that Mr. Wolf attempts.

This is one of those highly technical things about the English language, I suspect, about which I might have been able to tell you four years ago but can't right now. My logic for using "attempted" is that "In his article, Mr. Wolf attempted to dismiss . . ." Hoby Wolf's article exists in the past, as does the verb form "attempted." As this letter was published on January 14, 2009, and Hoby Wolf's article was published on January 7, 2009, there is a definite issue of time at work. Time affects tense. Furthermore, as there is nothing wrong with the initial sentence, what justifies the change?

1. From the secured, no-bid contracts of Blackwater and Halliburton to Clinton’s ban on Mexican tomatoes, from the Spanish-American war to Reagan’s breaking of the air traffic controller’s strike, the prosperity of American business has consistently been improved and protected by legislation with the government working increasingly harder to make sure that truly free markets are available for those corporations to exploit abroad.
   


2. From secured, no-bid contracts of Blackwater and Halliburton to Bill Clinton's ban on Mexican tomatoes; from the Spanish-American war to Ronald Reagan's breaking of the air traffic controller's strike, the prosperity of American business has consistently been improved and protected by legislation with the government working increasingly hard to make sure that truly free markets are available for those corporations to exploit abroad.

The removal of the article "the" muddles the meaning of this sentence. You wouldn't say "From contracts of Blackwater" but you would say "From the contracts of Blackwater." Furthermore, the first clause is not independent, and therefore a semi-colon cannot be used to seperate it from the second clause. Yet another grammatical error introduced for no obvious reason.

1. What Mr. Wolf means to say is “legislating individual prosperity isn’t how the marketplace works” - which is certainly true for the time being.
   


2. What I think Mr. Wolf means to say is "legislating individual prosperity isn't how the marketplace works" ... which is certainly true for the time being.

Of course I think that. I wrote it. It's a letter to the editor. If I didn't think it, I wouldn't have written it. Furthermore, if I wanted it to say "I think" I would've typed it in there myself.

1. The legislation insuring the wealth and prosperity of corporations removes more and more rights from individuals until, as Noam Chomsky points out in his Profits Over People, corporations have more rights than citizens.
   


2. Legislation insuring the wealth and prosperity of corporations removes more and more rights from individuals until, as Noam Chomsky points out in "Profits Over People," corporations have more rights than citizens.

We'll remove "the" and "his" because they're absurdly unnecessary here; however, here . . .

1. There won’t be a new New Deal - it’ll be the same old deal we got with Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and W.


2. There won't be a new New Deal -- it'll be the same old deal we got with Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush.

. . . it's absolutely necessary to include the first names of three of the four presidents mentioned.

So what we have here is a right-wing editorial published by a news media organization. A (very) left wing response to this editorial is sent in to the editor. It is sent in with a bare minimum of grammatical errors (ok, I admit it. There weren't any mistakes at all.), yet comes out with a multitude of them - as well as a hack-job on its otherwise fluid and beautiful prose. As if this were not evidence enough, said media organization then goes on to expand the names of three out of four presidents in the final, perception-shattering sentence. The fourth, last-name only president? Bill Clinton. You guessed it - a democrat!

Armed with this new-found truth, I suspect that I will be doing the tour circuit between Olbermann, Colbert, Stewart, and O'Reilly soon. Look for my upcoming schedule and book tour!

Charge of the Rough Riders (tm)

Terrorist Attack on US
Iraqi Tanks Entering Kuwait
Communist Attack on Korea
Communist Attack on Vietnam
Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
Sinking of the USS Maine

It's fitting to note on this, the 50 year anniversary of Castro's revolution in Cuba, that President-elect Barack Obama apparently plans to continue on with our now 47 year old embargo on that country.

In response to the 50th anniversary celebrations, the Bush White House released this statement: "Many political dissidents are in jail. The economy is suffering and not free. And the United States will continue to try to seek the freedom of the people of Cuba, and support them."

Yes, it's true, many political dissidents are in jail. Of course, more are in jail - or just dead - in China, but rest assured that the Chinese will still be supplying stuffed gorillas that sing "Wild Thing" for you and yours this Valentine's Day - and for only $9.99!

The Cuban economy is suffering, but then they have been through just a few hurricanes this year. Oh, and there's that pesky embargo (which is somewhat the opposite of free economy) that prevents American companies from trading with Cuba, just 90 miles off US shores, instead forcing them to procure food, medicine, etc, at far higher prices elsewhere. That embargo has "resulted in a serious reduction in the trade of legitimate medical supplies and food donations, to the detriment of the Cuban people." It is also against international law, which bans the use of food to exert "political or economic pressure." But we're supporting them!

The embargo-causing problem with Cuba, as we all know, isn't the humanitarian abuses (which I recognize and protest) or their struggling economy. The problem is that last bit about their economy not being free. That is, not free for US companies to exploit. So when the country is devastated by hurricanes Bechtel can't be sent in on a preordained contract to rebuild, GE can't be brought in to privatize the power grid, and Blackwater can't be contracted to provide police forces. The economy which provided those corporations with the massive wealth that they have isn't free, either, of course. Most of the jobs provided to them are secured without any contractual bidding, and when they screw up - as they have from Iraq to New Orleans - their contracts still get paid.

The US position on this was established well before the embargo of 1962, though. In 1898 - when Cuba's revolution against Spain was coming to a head - Cuba accounted for 10% of our total export economy, having nearly doubled in only three years. Businessmen, anxious to ensure that the country remained the exploding market that it was, pushed the US government to intervene. Then, as with our embargo, we acted under the guise of seeking Cuban freedom. The USS Maine was sent to show America's interest. It mysteriously exploded. This caused a public outcry which enabled the Spanish-American war and, consequently, America's control over Puerto Rico and Guam - unlike Puerto Rico and Guam, however, the Cubans were allowed to enter into free elections for their leaders. Naturally, free trade with Cuba was also secured.

(Then, as in now, there were some who saw past the outrage of a possible attack on America. Bolton Hall, the treasurer of the American Longshoremen's Union, said this:

"If there is a war, you will furnish the corpses and the taxes, and others will get the glory. Speculators will make money out of it - that is, out of you. Men will get high prices for inferior supplies, leaky boats, for shoddy clothes and pasteboard shoes, and you will have to pay the bill, and the only satisfaction you will get is the privilege of hating your Spanish fellow-workmen, who are really your brothers and who have had as little to do with the wrongs of Cuba as you have."

. . . which might as easily translate into:

"If there is a war, you will furnish the corpses and the taxes, and others will get the glory. Speculators will make money out of it - that is, out of you. Men will get high prices for inferior supplies, lawless private 'security', for shoddy powergrids and pasteboard hospitals, and you will have to pay the bill, and the only satisfaction you will get is the privilege of hating your Muslim fellow-workmen, who are really your brothers and who have had as little to do with the wrongs of the Middle-East as you have."

Then, as in now, America went to war.)

Cuba became a free nation in 1902 - with the provision that the United States could still intervene whenever it felt like it, which it did only 4 years later. For 57 years it suffered political turmoil, until Castro's revolution. Of course once Castro took over Washington reacted famously - since it is our right to overthrow any government of any country, if said government does not serve our best interest.

And we continue to react, by supporting the Cuban people with starvation and disease.