How to Make Enemies and Destroy Cities

American taxpayer money at work in Jenin (left) and American taxpayer money not at work in New Orleans (right)

On my news feed, a few days ago, next to each other were two items that demonstrate two incredible, and not all too unrelated, phenomena that tell you a lot about America today.

New Orleans Pursues Foreign Aid
Washington to Increase Military Aid to Israel

As New Orleans struggles to rebuild itself, and the Federal money that was supposed to fund this rebuilding is trickling far slower than it was promised, President Bush announced an increase in the aid package to Israel and secured it for the next ten years.

The Big Easy, one of America’s most beautiful and diverse cities, languishes in debris two years after it was devastated by hurricane Katrina, the incompetence of the Army Corps of Engineers who never bothered to check the levies, and the criminal negligence of the Bush Administration and their countless cronies at all levels of government.

Only half of the promised $320million in Federal aid for infrastructure has arrived to New Orleans, leaving its mayor desperate enough to pick up the phone and call back all the world leaders who had made pledges for aid, including Saudi Arabia and Cuba.

On the other hand, the criminal government of Israel, which has murdered thousands of children over the last few years is given $2.4billion (rising to $2.9b) in military aid. This is the money that will go to fund tanks, aircrafts, machine guns that will eventually bomb Palestinian and Lebanese children. With each of these dollars, America is engendering the enmity of millions of Arabs who watch these weapons in action every day.

What was most fascinating was this snippet:

The prime minister asked U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for his assistance in expediting the handling of a number of IDF procurement requests meant to complete the replenishment of equipment and stores used during the Second Lebanon War.

Gates pointed out that though there is no problem with the requests in principle, there is an orderly procedure. However, Bush intervened and directed the defense secretary to expedite approval of the IDF’s requests.

It must be reassuring for the millions of Americans who saw their President do nothing as New Orleans drowned that he “intervened” to “expedite” the IDF request. President Bush will go to any lengths to make sure that bureaucracy and “orderly procedures” do not get in the way of Israel’s bombing of children. As for the children drowning in New Orleans, he can trust Michael Brown to take care of them.

So in one case, the American government is not spending enough money to rebuild one of the country’s most beautiful cities, leaving thousands homeless; while in the other case, the government is spending money on weapons to destroy Arab cities, murder Arab children and win more enemies.

A Load of Scum Unto the Nations

In recent years, Israel has openly admitted that ISA (formerly the General Security Service) interrogators employ “exceptional” interrogation methods and “physical pressure” against Palestinian detainees in situations labeled “ticking bombs”. B’Tselem and HaMoked - Center for the Defence of the Individual have examined these interrogation methods and the frequency with which they are used, as well as other harmful practices. The report’s findings are based on the testimonies of 73 Palestinian residents of the West Bank who were arrested between July 2005 and January 2006 and interrogated by the ISA. Although it is not a representative sample, it does provide a valid indication of the frequency of the reported phenomena.

B’tselem and Hamoked have a new report out on Israeli torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. It is really disturbing reading, but adds nothing new to what everyone with an ounce of brains already knows.

The pigs that run the Israeli government are inhuman criminals with such an incredible racist outlook that they find nothing at all wrong with torture and cold-blooded murder of children. Truly, Israel offers an incredible insight into how humans that claim to be civilized and for peace can commit the most horrible atrocities and still go around the world saying they want peace. The hypocricy is amazing even by Zionist standards.

This is not news for me, but it is news for moronic juvenile American Zionists who still insist that Zionism as a doctrine can be reconciled with “humanist”, “progressive” or “liberal” ideals. These are people whose blindness is glaring that it wouldn’t matter if Israel murdered 4 million Palestinians in broad daylight, they would still find a way to justify it as the correct and necessary thing to do. As usual those morons will continue to ignore this and act like it never happened, and continue to trot out their usual idiotic claptrap about how they want to work for peace, and how the road for peace is blocked by terrorism.

It never occurs to these dumbfucks that the reason there is no peace is the occupation, ethnic cleansing, torture and cold-blooded murder that are the defining characteristic of this despicable Zionist movement since its inception.

And it never occurs to them that by continuing to support Israel and making the world’s only superpower offer unconditional support for Israel, they are the root of the problem.

And of course, the majority of American media will continue to ignore this report, and will continue to write that Israel does not torture.

Wolfowitz and Corruption Fetish

So today there is a huge showdown in the Bank over Wolfowitz, and it looks like he might actually be forced out. A decision will be made this week. Wolfie is protesting his innocence saying that he is subject to a “smear campaign” (which begs the question: Is it even possible to smear someone like him?) Steve Clemons has some of the gritty details (here and here), and George W Bush is, expectedly, speaking up in support of his demented crony.

I have to say, this is more than I had expected; I thought that this would be swept under the rug quickly, but all credit to the unity and determination of the Workers of the World (Bank) who, with nothing to lose but their very comfy contracts and 5-star junkets in starving countries, have made enough of a big deal about this that the Executive Board had to do something. It also helped that pretty much everyone in the development world despised Wolfowitz and couldn’t wait for a chance to lay into him.

On a more theoretical, academic and mundane note: I have always had a lot of trouble with the World Bank’s obsession with corruption and democratization, a fetish that started with Wolfensohn’s reign in 1994 and continues to grow.

The case the World Bank has incessantly tried to make since the mid-1990’s is that fighting corruption and democratizing are the keys to unlocking sustained economic growth and development. After a thorough review of the development literature, one will find that the simplistic relationship that everyone talks about between corruption and democracy and development has very flimsy support in the real world.

The theoretical, quantitative and case-study evidence on this is really missing, and relies heavily on some really shoddy statistical work that frankly makes very little sense.

My personal take from reviewing all this literature is this: corruption and democracy have very complex interactions with one another and with other factors that in turn influence growth and development. It is too complex to be able to generalize it across countries across different points in time, and it is misleading to attempt to study it in a simplistic cross-country regression. The simplistic mantras of “corruption bad” and “democracy good” are quite misleading and possibly as wrong as saying “corruption good” and “democracy bad”.

However, this does not just say that we should just forget about these things; we have to remember that these are important issues not just for their impact on development, but for their own right. It is a mark of the short-sightedness of some development economists that they only view the issue of democracy in terms of its impact on growth, ignoring its importance in its own right.

But what we should say about this is that the attempts from an international institution with as much clout as the World Bank or the IMF to crusade around the world with this message and packaging it as a necessary and sufficient precondition to development and growth has in itself possibly been harmful to the causes of development and growth.

This is at best irrelevant and promises false results that will lead to skepticism towards the virtues of democracy and anti-corruption; but at worst, could lead to political and economic implications that then complicate things for developing countries. The best example of this is how democratization and liberalization have, in many cases, lead to certain elites managing to capture power and special interests in their own hands, and weakened the government’s ability to undertake positive policies for development.

This is a very complex issue and I have not discussed it here thoroughly enough, but I will discuss this more in the future. Suffice to say for now: The World Bank should certainly tread very carefully when discussing these issues. However, they should certainly be very assertive in throwing Wolfowitz out on his ass for what are surely corrupt and despicable acts with no potential good for anyone but him and his cronies.

Finkelstein demolishes Dennis Ross’ lies

If I were to be asked to give two words that summarize why there is no peace in Palestine, I could hardly think of any better candidates than “Dennis” and “Ross”.

This isn’t to say that this demented liar is the reason there is no peace; that would be giving a stupid minion like him too much credit. But what this says is that in a time when a despicable racist liar like Ross can get a job as a “mediator” of negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis; use that job as a mercenary for the Israelis; get a free pass in propagating outright lies about his role in the process and the process itself; have his lies published in a book that sells massively and is then used by “experts” to justify positions on the Middle East; and continue to make millions portraying himself as an honest peacemaker–no wonder there is no peace in the Middle East.

Ross is the “mediator” who was too upset that Barak offered too much concessions to the Palestinians, he even said: “If Barak offers anything more, I’ll be against this agreement.” Let’s remember that anything that Barak offered was at best a Bantustan solution that would’ve made the leaders of apartheid South Africa in the 1970’s look generous. Ross then made a career out of trumpeting these concessions as a “Generous Offer”.

I will write more when I have time about Ross and his lies and racist and fatal commitment to Israeli racist hegemony; but for now, I will leave you with this excellent, thorough and comprehensive demolition job carried out by Norman Finkelstein in the latest issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

This sentence from Finkelstein sums up perfectly the problem with Ross’ demented perception of the conflict:

“Palestinian demands appear maximal while Palestinian concessions appear minimal because Ross ignores international law.”

He goes on:

whether at Oslo or Camp David: the Israelis might have had to settle for much less than they wanted, but the Palestinians had to settle for much less than they were owed. To curb one’s desires is fundamentally different from surrendering one’s rights. In disregarding international law, Ross obscures this crucial distinction. Concomitantly, he obscures the fact that throughout the peace process, all the genuine concessions came from the Palestinian side.

Finkelstein ends his piece with this conclusion:

Judging from Ross’s account, Camp David failed because Palestinians stubbornly clung to the illusion that they had real needs. Had they understood that all they really needed was symbols, Palestinians would have leapt at the generous Israeli offer. The root of the problem, again, appears to be that Palestinian “sense of entitlement”: Camp David might have succeeded if only Palestinians grasped that they aren’t real, actual human beings.

Incidentally, the Journal of Palestine Studies is such an excellent scholarly resource for the conflict. One can only wish that people would read this journal instead of the bucket-loads of inimitable crap emanating from the likes of Ross, Thomas Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg.