Single state of Bibi

So Obama visits Israel. Despite the famously frosty relationship between Bibi (Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister) and Barack (Obama), things seem to be going well.

Bibi says he will let the Palestinians have a state, so long as they are good. And don't ask for their bit of Jerusalem. And let settlers colonise most of their land.

Obama says it is very important to let the Palestinians live in a peaceful Bantustan. But the grown ups will decide who they are allowed to be friends with.

Why America is so beholden to Israel is an interesting question. I think it is something to do with Evangelical Protestantism. People may rail against the 'Jewish' or 'Israeli' lobby, but only about 1.7% of US citizens are Jewish. It is the weird fixation some sects of American Protestantism have with Israel and ancient versions of the bible that cause the trouble. There are not enough Jewish voters to make much of a difference. There are quite a few Muslim voters to counterbalance. It is the evangelical protestants that make the issue important. And the mythology that you really can't go anywhere without AIPAC and the Israeli lobby. The description of America's friendship with Israel also entailed the word 'eternal'. I think this kind of shows how the whole thing is packaged for religious fanatics.

The Palestinians demand a state within the 1967 borders (including East Jerusalem) and the refugees' right of return to the ancestral homes. The UN and polite opinion agrees with the 1967 borders thing, but also agrees to do nothing about it. No one really thinks that it will happen soon. The Americans have got so intertwined with the Israelis that they have ceased to be polite. Prominent Americans subscribe to the Israeli dogma that Jerusalem is "the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel". Wow. Eternal. Was this a revelation from the Most High? 

There are other dogmatic statements that the pro Israel lobby tries to make people say. They insist that everyone recognise "Israel's right to exist". This is emotive. The Holocaust proposed a final solution of eliminating all Jews, that is eliminating Israel. The dogmatic statement regarding Israel's "right to exist" leads you to agree rather than get on the side of the Nazis. I find it insidious and divisive. Perhaps Bibi Netanyahu should be asked if he recognises Palestine's 'right to exist'? It is in light of the 'right to exist' dogma that Israel describes Iran as an existential threat. In aquiescing to the 'right to exist' dogma you are also pressed to recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. This is not something I can agree to. I see religion as a personal choice. I would be glad to have a country called Israel within the 1967 boundaries operating as a democracy. I would expect all citizens of that country to have the same rights. Jewish people may constitute a majority, but if many Jews and Arab citizens later come to define themselves as secular, would they need to be deported to maintain the Jewish majority?

But back to the 1967 boundaries. These are viewed as the borders of a future Palestinian state. If you take the time to look at the map of Israel & Palestine, you will notice this gives the Palestinians two areas, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Can these to pieces of land really form a single state? I would suggest not. States with non contiguous territory only really work if you can get from one part to the other via the sea.

So the 1967 boundaries are compromised. And even if Israel was prepared to take all their people back behind them, I am not sure a two state solution could work. Therefore I think the time has come to recognise that the two state solution is a non starter. The world has tried to negotiate it time and again. We have all tried and we have failed. The Israelis blame Palestinian intransigence. Likewise the Palestinians blame Israeli intransigence. Whatever. The two sides cannot reach agreement.

There is only one solution. A single state. Let all the people of Israel and Palestine live together in a single state. Israel has consistently refused to recognise Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel also declines to recognise this land as occupied. Normally Israeli government ministers refer to this land as 'the territories'. Fair enough. Let it be a single territory Israeli territory and Palestinian territory, a single state. One person, one vote.

Neither Jewish nor Muslim. Just a single secular state. A democracy.

Jews may well be in the minority in ten or twenty years' time. Unlucky. The Israeli people and government have had plenty of opportunity to put a palatable deal before the Palestinians. They have not put Palestinian good faith to the test. Just as Israeli policy has strangled the two state solution before it was fully born, the US Israeli lobby, in tying itself so tightly to Evangelical Protestantism sows the seed of its own demise. Religion is a dying force in American society. If evangelical protestants could guarantee you an American majority, we would have a republican president. Tying your colours to that mast nowadays puts you in the minority.

NATO - why bother?

What is NATO for?

I know what it was founded for. The defeat of the USSR. The USSR no longer exists. The old Warsaw pact is dissolved.

When that occurred, why was NATO not disbanded?

There were a few Europeans who felt it was important 'to keep America engaged in Europe'.

There were a few Americans who though it was important 'to maintain America's footprint in Europe'.

But really, why?

I am not advocating being unfriendly to the Americans in any way. But why would anyone want troops from another country deployed in their own country? There is only one reason, to repel a threat.

That was why we had NATO, to repel a threat. The threat of the Soviet Union. As noted above, that threat is now extinct.

The military is a government department. Much like any other. The only real difference between the military and other government departments is the political right loves the military and hates other government departments, while the political left is more suspicious of the military than of other government departments.

In this it displays some similarity with the police.

NATO was a sort of supranational governmental department, dominated by the US, but with significant contributions from others. As such NATO was, and remains, a bureaucracy. Soldiers are a certain sort of bureaucrat. This is particularly true of officers. They are, in many ways, the archetypal bureaucrat.

They believe the world would fall apart without them.

NATO, like any other bureaucracy, eventually directed itself to its own benefit. To self preservation. To really answer the question 'What is NATO for' one must only read Ludwig von Mises book, Bureaucracy - http://mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy.asp

In many ways NATO is the prime example of bureaucracy at its worst. Having achieved the objective, NATO should have disbanded. But instead of the 'peace dividend' promised by George Bush the elder at the end of the cold war, NATO sought a new reason for its existence. It went into full self preservation mode. Compromising the peace it had helped secure by inviting former Warsaw Pact countries to join.

Eventually NATO would find a new reason to exist. The war on terror. I sometimes wonder if, without the bureaucratic muscle that NATO provided, if the 'hawks' that hate government but love the military would not have found it a little more difficult to engineer the war on Iraq and the war on terror.

Nevertheless, as the troops have now left Iraq, and will soon leave Afghanistan, it is time once again for Western Nations to review their defensive posture. We do so in a significantly different economic environment.

Whatever the priority of Obama and America, let us be clear, China represents no military threat to any European nation.

We may seek alliance with America. We do not need the bureaucracy of NATO. And we cannot afford the luxury. Time to close it down.

Iraqi Anniversary

So..... ten years since the Iraq invasion. Wow, doesn't time fly when you're having fun?!?

To any neutral observer, the Iraq war was lost.

It was lost by the Brits in Basra.

It was lost by the US in general.

It was certainly lost by the Iraqi people.

And Saddam Hussein's Tikriti clan lost power, so they lost too.

The only way not to lose was not to participate. Iran and France did the best out of it. Jaques Chirac will be forever remembered (outside of France at least) for refusing to bow to the pressure to join the charade. It is only a minor injustice, all things considered, but it still rankles with me that a corrupt old hypocrite like Chirac gets to leave with a positive balance sheet because other world leaders proved even more useless.

How can men of conviction (however deranged) like Bush and Blair make the weather vane Chirac look principled in comparison? Answers on a postcard to the ICC at the Hague.

My Grandad told me that there are only two ways to win a war.

1) Eliminate the enemy (almost never tried, if it is tried, always failed since prehistory)
2) Keep on fighting until the other side gives up

Looked at like that, unless we eliminated every single Iraqi, sooner or later the war would be lost. However many victories the Brits scored in India, sooner or later we were always going to leave. The empire would be lost.

In light of this, you need a central, achievable objective which, when achieved, lets you declare victory and pull out. This objective has to be something the other side will aquiesce to when faced with the alternative. Iraq war 1 provides a clear example. pictures of Norman Schwarzkopf telling the Iraqi general where to sign let the world know the US had won. The Iraqis aquiesced to the US objectives/terms.

But in Iraq war II. what would victory have looked like? There was no clear objective, apart from making those dastardly Iraqis 'stop it'. This is confirmed by the shifting justification both before and afterward.

After Vietnam, the US learnt, at least for a generation, to not invade other people's countries. They didn't stop meddling, but they didn't invade.

Iraq war I only half changed that. Kuwait was an ally. Iraq was in breach of international law. It was a wide coalition which went after them. Iraq war II was very different. It was probably illegal, and had to be justified by half truths and lies.

Have we learnt? Well, no. Perhaps because there was no draft, the US polulace has not accepted defeat. Likewise (but not so relevant) the UK.

Everyone thinks it was 'the surge that won it'. The surge provided covering fire for withdrawal. In that sense it was tactical genius. Political rather than military tactics. Problem is, the US Army believed its own publicity. It tried the same trick in Afghanistan. And it has failed. Still they fail to acknowledge that.

Perhaps, in ten years time when the US elite realises it lost both these wars, the lessons will be learnt.

After all, if all the soldiers are back home, the budget will be much healthier and that may allow space for reflection.

As for me, I still have difficulty forgiving the big lie. I can respect people that disagree with me, that thought it was worth attacking Iraq just to remove Saddam. Or that the oil justified it. I may dislike them, but I can respect them, or who believed the WMD fairy story and now fully admit they were wrong. But Tony Blair, the supposed leader of the British left said, on the eve of war, 'Even today, if Saddam gives up his WMDs, he and his sons can stay in power'.

I do not believe Mr Blair was misled. I believe he demanded British secret services present the evidence to support the policy upon which he was already set.

I have real difficulty coming to terms with that. Any rational person must know that fabricating evidence to invade another country is against international law. It is a war crime. I cannot prove Mr Blair is guilty, but surely there is a case to answer?

Let the court decide. Mr Blair should be extradited to the Hague. Then our leaders might learn lessons a little more quickly.

Austerity double down

Well, I suppose every country in Southern Europe has already seen it, and worse. We have had the same in Ireland. Who knows where else?

Today, having seen the policy of austerity fail by any realistic measure, the UK government decided to cure the problem with more austerity.

I am reminded of the Einstein's famous definition of insanity. Doing the same thing again and again, but expecting different results.

Our current (UK) government inherited a situation with the public finances in dire straits but the economy in growth. It said that cutting back the (evil) public sector would increase growth. It did so, since then we have had at least a double dip and possibly a triple dip recession.

Their response to this policy failure? To announce two more years of public spending cuts.

Doh!

There is only one question.

Why? Please provide your answer from the choices below:-

A) Are our leaders so stupid as to believe what they say? Still?
B) Are they merely too proud, unable to admit they are wrong even theough they know it deep down?
C) Could it be that they know they made a mistake, but, with the next election coming in 2015, think that staying the course gives them their best hope then, irrespective of the economic consequences?
D) Have they taken the political decision that this offers a once in a lifetime to destroy the welfare state and force a step change reduction in public spending, and this chance must be taken at all costs?
E) Some other fandiful reason..... please elaborate.

Cyprus austerity tax

Cyprus announced last night they were going to tax bank deposits by (around) ten percent.

People are outraged that the government can come along and just 'take their money'. I can understand why. But is it rational?

Firstly, there is a name for that thing when the government comes along and takes your money. It is not robbery, it is taxation. Robbery is when private individuals do it. There are people that pretend all taxation is robbery. For them this is no different to any other tax.

Normally governments tax us when we get money (income tax) or when we spend money (sales tax/VAT). They rarely tax our wealth (although land tax is an example).

Given that the return to labour from economic activity has been decreasing while the return to capital rising, why shouldn't wealth, as opposed to income be taxed? Put another way, workers have been getting an ever smaller slice of the pie, savers an ever bigger one. Should we then tax workers and spare savers?

In the final analysis Cypriot banks are in such a state they cannot survive without state subsidy. That subsidy comes at great expense. Should savers really have all their money preserved? Should benefits be cut just so people with savings can receive a subsidy from the state?

All over Europe we are implementing economic austerity. We are cutting benefits, and the root cause is a bankrupt financial system. The poorest in society are paying for the mistakes of the richest. And now bank depositors think they have a special case to plead? Someone, somewhere has to pay for this bailout, as major beneficiaries, shouldn't they be close to the front of the queue?

Finally, consider this. Cyprus has acted as a tax haven and a hub for money laundering. This way teh Cypriot government gets to  tap wealthy as well as corrupt foreigners.

This move may look bad, it easily could be the least worst option available. If we aren't to let banks go under, I can't think of anything better.

Press freedom

In Britain, we now have a debate about regulation of the press. For anyone that has missed this slow burning story, much of our press, especially that which is controlled by the Murdoch family, has been caught doing bad things. Tapping phones, bribing police, that sort of thing.

Not very good. Some senior executives still have charges pending. So we had an enquiry, presided over by a judge.

This enquiry, called the Leveson enquiry, concluded that the UK system of 'self regulation' of the press really wasn't working.

That is not news to anyone. We had a committee called the press complaints commission which could tell papers off a bit, but not really hurt them. It had a chair appointed by the papers. And representatives from the papers.

Nobody listened to it.

So the Leveson enquiry recommended that they have a new regulator. Backed by law, which make them pay big fines. And put their apologies on the front page, that sort of thing.

The press hate the idea. They keep whining about it being a fundamental issue of freedom. That it is the function of the press to hold the government to account.

I could take a cheap shot and point out that messing with the voicemail of missing 14 year old girls is a strange way of holding the government to account. So I have done.

The point is, the press are saying statutory regulation (meaning laws which regulate the press) are a limit on press freedom. They are backed by the Conservative party (the largest party in parliament and the government). These people say they are happy with all the rules but just don't want them to be enforced by law. That somehow puts the government in control of the press, is a step towards licensing of the press.

Whereas the Labour party (the main opposition) and the Liberal democrats (the minor government party) do want the regulations to be backed by law.

So the issue is not the regulations themselves, but how they are enforced. How arcane. I am left thinking that legal restrictions on the press can be introduced at any time. The real reason the press doesn't like this is because the really don't want to be held to account. They don't want the regulations enforced at all.

Many Latin American leftists point out, in defence of Chavez's record on press freedom, that the press is controlled by the wealthy. That it promotes the interests of those that own it, not the majority, and not justice or right.

It is a similar debate we see here. A feral press, controlled by a global elite, crying foul, backed by political rightists, opposed by leftists (such as we have any leftists here).

Which way will the cards fall?

The real question is, will it matter? Are newspapers actually that important or relevant any more?

Liberation of Francis

Through the 1950s and 1960s the Latin American Catholic Church reinterpreted the gospel in a radical way. This radical, politicised Christianity was named Liberation Theology. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology

In the 1980s, pope John Paul II refused to condemn the right wing regime in El Salvador for running death squads. Ostensibly this was because he didn't like the condemnation of systemic, as opposed to personal, sin.

This was not a philosophy he applied to the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, with which he was a little more familiar. Quite the opposite.

In fact I rather think the John Paul II decided that the greater evil to fight was communism, so he basically took sides in the political dogfight between left and right. He took the side of the right. I do think John Paul II was a basically good man, but I do not think he was politically neutral, I think he could easily make common cause with the political right, such as anti abortion republicans. But he could not condemn the right wing death squads of Latin America. This is the most serious of failings, in my mind it ranks close to his failings on sexual abuse in the Church, and it has a common cause. His right wing philosophy trusted the church hierarchy in a fundamental way. He thought it a good of itself. Where as the revolutionaries of Liberation Theology were only too ready to accept the complicity of religious authority in the excesses of the government, and see both government and church as part of the same ruling class. Much like in medieval Europe.

To my mind, in the same way that some evangelical protestants seem to worship the bible instead of God, some high church Anglicans & Catholics can sometimes appear to worship the church. It is this sin of idolatry which I think John Paul II fell in to. All the institution of the church, human organisation that it is, is not worth one human life, which (for a Christian) is indisputably the creation of God.

From the election of John Paul II up to the resignation of Benedict XVI the papacy was occupied by confirmed right wingers.

This was but a short season. And it aligns with the dominance of the political right in the secular west. The regimes of Reagan/Bush, Thatcher/Cameron. Kohl, Berlusconi. Even the representatives of the left in this time were less radical than the rightists, and would have looked centre right just a couple of decades before. Think of Clinton, Blair, Mitterand & Schroeder.

After the second world war there was a revolution of democratisation throughout the West. Votes guaranteed to all. Welfare states founded. A new accountability for our rulers. An unprecedented expansion of educational opportunity.

The rightwingism from the late seventies up until the aftermath of the Global Economic crisis is the reaction to the revolution. A retrenchment, a rolling back of the earlier reform.

It is time to once again tread the path of radical reform. Liberation theology has returned. I expect secular leadership to also follow this leftward path.