UN Palestinian Statehood Bid

In a few days, The UN General Assembly will vote on a resolution, proposed by the Palestinian Authority, for Palestinian statehood. It is extremely imperative that we all support this bid for statehood by the Palestinians, especially us here in the US. The bid for statehood has an overwhelming international consensus of support but unfortunately the US response is quite predictable; it follows an old pattern of rejectionism of which we have followed since the early 1970's. This path has put us squarely on the side opposing the rest world on this issue as well as the wrong side of history. Furthermore, in terms of national strategic and economic interests, it can be argued that this path is incredibly counterproductive, particularly in the post-Cold War world. Even in regards to more Right Wing priorities, it can be argued as counterproductive because of the Israel-Palestine conflict's effect on so-called War on Terror.

This is all well known to anyone who is sincerely interested in the truth of such matters; that the US-backed Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories has always been considered an illegal venture, ever since the initial invasion in 1967, that the human rights of the Palestinian people have been continually and deliberately  violated since that initial invasion (and beyond), and that the US-Israeli coalition has held a position of rejection throughout. This newest happening is no exception to the rule. However, with the advent of the Arab Spring and the recent unification of the West Bank's Fatah and the Gaza Strip's Hamas leadership, amongst other factors such as increased international pressure and domestic unrest, the Palestinian side of the table has created a momentum that is hard to ignore. For better or for worse, Israel's reaction to this has been one of complete rejection. We'll see how this plays out.

In any case, I find it extremely important to point the hypocrisy in all of this. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy like the hypocrisy regarding Israel's refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians due to the unification with Hamas when before they refused to negotiate because the Palestinians were not unified, there are two I especially want to point out that are relevant to the upcoming UN vote. Both have to do the with the behavior of the United States.

Firstly, I want to point out the last vote in the UN regarding the conflict which took place in the UN Security Council, a body in which the US has veto power. The US essentially opposed its own national policy when it vetoed a very uncontroversial Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlement activity. Opposition to illegal settlement activity is already the official policy of the US government, so why veto a resolution reconfirming it?

Ambassador Susan Rice had an answer to this question, explaining that the UN Security Council is not the right forum for such a resolution, and that such things should be worked out through negotiations of the parties involved. Now, when I heard this answer I really thought about it; what exactly, then, is the function of the UN Security Council, if its not the correct forum for a resolution regarding something such as illegal settlement activity?

The answer lies in the Charter from which it was created and empowered, and you can find it right on the UN's official website. Indeed, the relevant information is immediately noticable, as it encompasses the two very first bullet points given:

• to maintain international peace and security in accordance with the principles and purposes of the United Nations;
• to investigate any dispute or situation which mightlead to international friction; 

-(From the UN's official website's Security Council's "Functions and Powers" section.)

It becomes clear after reading just these two points that the UN Security Council is exactly the right forum for such a resolution and that Ambassador Rice's answer was at least misinformed if not intentionally misleading. Indeed, if she was misinformed as to what the UN Security Council's purpose was, then obviously its time to find a new ambassador.

This, of course, takes us to the next great hypocrisy, and it is regarding the upcoming UN General Assembly vote on the Palestinian statehood bid, which, as stated earlier, the US is determined to oppose. The excuse by the Obama Administration is along the same lines as the excuse for the opposition to vote condemning settlement activity: Not the right forum. That Palestinian statehood should only be the outcome of negotiations; In fact, one spokesman for the Obama Adminstration recently stated that Palestinian statehood WILL only be the outcome of negotiations. Perhaps that was out of arrogance, or perhaps that was prophecy.

Regardless, it would be a good idea to check to see whether the bid for Palestinian Statehood is being carried out in the right forum; for this all we need to do is look at the UN's website once again, this time where the General Aseembly's powers and functions are located. Immediately, three points standout:

• Consider and make recommendations on the general principles of cooperation for maintaining international peace and security, including disarmament;
• Discuss any question relating to international peace and security and, except where a dispute or situation is currently being discussed by the Security Council, make recommendations on it;
• Make recommendations for the peaceful settlement of any situation that might impair friendly relations among nations;

-(From the UN's official website's General Assembly's "Functions and Powers" section)

Those three bullet points make it very clear that the bid for Palestinian Statehood is being carried out in the right forum, the General Assembly. So the statement that this resolution is inappropriate by the US is completely baseless. The real reasons for opposition are obvious to those of us who understand the issues and the history of the US's policy towards the Palestinians, as this has always been a US-Israeli occupation and nothing less than that. So the question is, why can't they at least be honest about it, rather than creating these red herrings about "right forum" or "wrong forum?"

In the realm of Israeli opposition, there is one very important element that shouldn't be ignored; one that shows incredible hypocrisy. Indeed, one only needs to recall the birth of Israel. One only needs to recall what was regarded as Israel's birth certificate by the nation's founding fathers: United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181. If a UN General Assembly resolution was viewed as a legitimate way of creating the Israeli state out of the home of the Palestinian people by the founding fathers of Israel, why are the same standards not applied to the Palestinians? Are they not merely following in the same, exact, footsteps as Israel did in 1948? Let's also not forget that the Partition Plan did not just call for an Israeli state but also a Palestinian state; one that never found its way into existence. If 181 was a "birth certificate" for the state of Israel, how come it wasn't for the Palestinians?


The hypocrisy is palpable. All this just further proves the US and Israel's rejectionist position towards the Palestinian cause. How do you handle a superpower and it's regional nuclear power client when they go rogue? It is important to remember that Abba Eban, a founding father Israel and the author of Israel's "birth certificate" Resolution 181, said Israel "tear[s] up its own birth certificate" whenever it ignores the UN. In this sense, by now Israel's 181 should be in shreds, as it has ignored General Assembly Resolution 194, Security council Resolution 242, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and Security Council Resolution 446.

The most unfortunate part is that the people of the Occupied Territories continue to suffer, continue to be shackled, and continue to feel absolutely no security in their lives and futures. Lets keep them in our hearts and minds, show our solidarity and hope that one day soon they, too, will be free.

Suicidal Bombers

Foreign Policy Magazine's Adam Lankford recently wrote a piece on the mental states of the 9/11 hijackers, and it argues something, based on scholarly research and evidence from many of the hijackers' lives, that should have been obvious to all of us since day one: The 9/11 suicide bombers had mental health issues, including depression and suicidal tendencies. This conclusion is in direct conflict with the conventional assessment that the suicide bombers of 9/11, and suicide bombers in general, were painfully normal individuals who expectedly "subordinated their individuality to the group. And whatever their destructive, charismatic leader, Osama bin Laden, said was the right thing to do for the sake of the cause was what they would do," as former CIA analyst and behavioral psychologist Jerrold Post explained in 2006.

However, the evidence does not support Post's conclusion, as an investigation from Israel that studied 15 arrested individuals who attempted to carry out suicide bombings shows. This study showed that more than half were depressed, nearly half had suicidal tendencies, 20 percent had post-traumatic stress syndrome, and more than 10 percent had actually attempted suicide in the past. Based on this, Adam Lankford concludes that out of the 19 9/11 hijackers, 10 would be clinically depressed and 7 or 8 would have been suicidal. The Israeli study is compounded by testimonials of people who had known the hijackers and their email correspondences with friends and family, which undeniably show signs of an ill mental state.

I have always been bothered by the line of thinking that generally, suicide bombers were not mentally ill but rather just brainwashed. I had the sense that, though one may commit acts of violence under the influence of an authority (as we see in every military force in the world), I found it unlikely that merely a charismatic leader like Osama Bin Laden could drive one to suicide. I am always reminded of the mass Jonestown suicide where the victims were kept in the dark about the content of the Kool Aid and where the ones who did know about the cyanide proved to be defiant and had to be forced to drink it; Here we have a cult essentially based on devotion to one man and even he couldn't get his followers to knowingly accept his order to commit suicide.

So why were we lead to believe that those who kill themselves to kill others in the name of God were not mentally unstable? There are several different factors that we could speculate about, but two immediately stand out to me. The first one is that to talk about the psychological problems of the 9/11 hijackers would be to humanize the enemy and risk the potential for sympathy. The attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 were undoubtedly incredibly heinous, and when something like this happens we all need someone to blame; its only natural. However, there were forces at work that had great interest in portraying a colorful, nuanced, and intricate world as black and white. Partly these were interests in self-preservation; to make sure we blame the right party, namely, Islamist terrorists and not US foreign policy. People who are able to think critically will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that Islamist terrorism, such as on that tragic September morning, is, in no small part, the effect of a long history of disruptive US intervention in the Middle East. This is not a controversial statement and I do believe most Americans know this today to an extent, whether they want to think about it or not. However, when the world turns black and white, when global relations turn to an "us vs. them" dynamic, cause and effect are suspended from public consciousness and an institution of power like the US government can escape blame, and thus no changes are needed to be made in policy as long as the same people still benefit.

Not only did policy not need to change direction, but it could expand. In addition to self-preservation, making the world monochrome was also an instrument used to exploit a crises to the gain of the few. Simply, without the tragedy of 9/11 there would be no War in Iraq, or at least no easy path towards it. Here, the Bush Administration and its allies overreached, as it wasn't so long after the Iraq War was under way that majority public opposition mounted against it. But, the exploitation of 9/11 did its basic function and cleared the path to war, and aside from the War in Iraq, it also gave opportunity to the Bush Administration to consolidate more power in the executive than was ever acceptable to pursue other avenues.

Making the world black and white was conscious decision made by those in power in order to escape blame and achieve otherwise unpopular goals. However, there was an unconscious current that continuously ran beneath that made it easy to not consider the obvious mental health-related questions raised by suicide bombing. This was a result of conditioning that has created deeply ingrained, distorted views of Muslims and other formerly colonized peoples by peoples of former colonizing nations. This undercurrent influence, extensively researched on by scholars such as Edward Said, has been dubbed Orientalism. In the Orientalist viewpoint, the Middle East is a region of unchanging, irrational, and primitive people; they are not civilized like their western counterparts and are prone to zealotry and violence. The majority religion of these people, Islam, is seen to be a root cause of this backwardness.

I say this is an unconscious current because I do believe most westerners do not consciously make a choice to be bigoted, for lack of a better term, but are ultimately informed about the "Muslim World" by, for example, "experts" like Judith Miller and other so-called authorities on the Muslims who's opinions are sought by the media as well as the intellectual mainstream. Just as significant are the portrayals of the Middle East, Muslims and Arabs in western literature and film that ultimately, in a not-so-subtle way, shape our understanding.

Orientalism provides a certain outlook on the world that can be easily boiled down to a good-guy-bad-guy story. It provides assumptions that are usually wholly false. One important assumption is that everything people in Middle East do has everything to do with Islam, completely discounting the fact that the "Muslim World" is composed of countless different people of several different ethnicities with a countless set of different experiences, and that first and foremost, they are people and not mindless drones. However, by asserting that Islam dictates the lives of every Muslim to the breath one is able to completely eliminate an issue like mental health from the picture. Thus, there can be no room to even question why a Muslim would run a plane into the World Trade Center and kill himself along with several other innocent people, because the answer becomes obvious: Because he is a Muslim.

Instead, should we not be asking why any person would run a plane into the World Trade Center killing himself and several other innocent people?

The hypocrisy in the media is, as usual, out of this world. Particularly the right wing media, where a right-wing Christian fundamentalist terrorist in Norway can kill something like a hundred youths or a right-wing terrorist can open fire on a crowd and shoot a Democratic congresswoman, as well as killing a child, and immediately he is thought to be mentally handicapped. And I'm not disagreeing with that. But what if we replaced both of those people with Muslims? What do you think Bill O'Reilly would be saying?

Or how about when a Christian terrorist does something heinous, he or she is not considered a real Christian, just a crazy. However, when there is a Muslim terrorist, there is the expectation for the Muslim community to take responsibility and speak out. Could it be that, likewise to Christians, Muslims don't consider such people as real Muslims either, and probably just crazy as well? Or are all Muslims implicated and considered accomplices?

Bottom line: This is very dangerous thinking. Muslims have been continuously wrongly perceived and thus persecuted and alienated continuously since 9/11, as recent polls on Americans' attitudes towards Muslims confirm. It's as if 60 or so of those who died on that traumatic day were not Muslims just as innocent as the others who lost their lives far too early. Unfortunately, its only when we come to terms with our mistakes as a nation that we will ever be truly safe.




You can read Adam Lankford's piece here (Foreign Policy Magazine)

Looking Forward (Vol II): Energy Democracy

Disclaimer: I am not even close to an expert. These are just some ideas I've been having, unrefined and I'm sure, amateurish. I realize that there are probably inconsistencies, flaws, and errors from whichever perspective you look at it from. But this is my blog so whatever.


It is clear and obvious to most of us rational and reasonable people that we are on an utter collision course with the fury of nature, as storms and erratic weather becomes more and more common. Indeed, it is well known by the climate science community that we are near a tipping point and unless we reduce our carbon emissions significantly in the next 20 or so years we will melt vast regions of permafrost in the arctic that have enormous stores of Methane gas hidden beneath, a gas that is far, far worse for our atmosphere than Carbon Dioxide in its effect. This melting will release these stores of Methane into the atmosphere and essentially, no matter what we do beyond this point, whether we reduce carbon emissions or not, climate change will become self-sustaining and an action of nature, all at a far more severe pace than we could ever imagine.

Its hard to educate on this matter because by its own nature it is frightening and can be, and has been to a great degree here in the US, interpreted as pure fear tactics. Fear tactics are able to spark short term public submission, as illustrated by the Bush Administration following 9/11, but ultimately always leads to mass disillusion and rejection. I don't believe the majority of the environmental movement wants public submission to their cause unlike the Bush Administration, but unfortunately, just the effort to raise awareness and to educate has been increasingly rejected by the American public in recent times. This is partly because of the scare-mongering interpretation of the effort, but also in large part also because of a major propaganda effort by the world's energy companies, which hit an all-time high during the "Cap and Trade" debate a couple years ago.

The corporate reaction to the noble cause of environmentalism is completely expected; I would be greatly surprised if the energy sector did not fight. Corporations are not moral, they don't care about the welfare of humanity, particularly if its in contradiction with their bottom line. And it must be emphasized that we are talking about their short term bottom line, because in the long term it would do them all well to change. This all illustrates a great problem that all of us should focus on; something that is, in a sense, completely separate from the problem of climate change.

You see, I find it very disturbing that because of corporate opposition from one sector of our economy, we have been completely paralyzed as a country from going forward and doing what is the interest of all of us. The fact is, the solutions to our climate and energy problems do not lie in the executive offices of those corporations, nor do they live in the hearts of our legislators. The solution must come from a decentralized effort; from a purely democratic effort. Much is said by the right wing of government decentralization and in principle, as a libertarian socialist, I agree; to rid our society of illegitimate authority and oppressive power structures is a noble cause and one worth supporting, given that it is for the right reasons and done in the right fashion. However, very little has been said about decentralizing the other sources of illegitimate authority, specifically one that has proven increasingly in the modern era to be far more devious and damaging: the profound concentrations of power held in private hands. It is because of the rampant corporatism of the modern world that we have been continuing on this collision course with our planet, whether it be by the buying off of our federal and state legislators and other public officials, by the indoctrination spread through our powerful corporate media, by puppet think tanks and universities that funnel corporate interests into superficially credible academics and ultimately into policy proposals, or by a combination of all three. This is how a liberal democracy inevitably turns into a corporate plutocracy. This how we have been paralyzed.

The great error of our society has been to assume that the enormous energy conglomerates of our world would obviously be the driving force behind the clean energy transformation, when there has never been an inkling of support for this conclusion. In a sense, we assume this because any other way forward almost seems impossible. Energy today is completely centralized, stemming from an oligopoly on fossil fuel resources, and thus since energy has always been centralized in our lifetime its somewhat difficult to imagine the world working otherwise. When even just an ounce of critical thought is worked into the assumption of where the change will come from, we can realize the flaw of it all. The fossil fuel-based energy sector has an obvious interest against clean energy. Particularly when you factor in the fact that corporations act in the interests of the shareholders, most of which are floating and short term, you will find that their interest will be focused on maximization of profit margin in the short term. Indeed, we all know that in the long term it would do these conglomerates a lot of good in terms of their bottom line(and their survival) to focus on clean renewable energy, but alas this is not a possibility in a capitalist society. However, there is hope in all this doom and gloom; there is something we can do, as a population, to spearhead the change needed, not just regarding our environment and energy, but also the growing cancer of corporatism in general.

The beauty of some of these renewable sources of energy lies in the fact that energy can be harvested without massive amounts of capital or land. To use solar energy, for example, you don't need a large mine or deep water rig. Solar and other sources of renewable energy are still far more expensive than conventional sources, but lessons can be taken from Europe, and particularly Germany, which has done much to reform renewable energy costs and efficiency through its German Renewable Energy Act and Feed-In-Tariffs, both of which were products of the movement lead by the late Dr. Hermann Scheer. These are, of course, matters of policy that have to be done by the government; seeing as how the energy conglomerates have a stranglehold on our policy makers, this may not be a possibility in the near future. In any case, a lot of the reason why renewable energy like solar is expensive is partly because it is still a young technology that isn't getting nearly the amount of investment it should be getting, but also because there is a lack of mass demand, thus a lack of bulk purchasing, etc. However, the prices have been going down at an increasing pace and the lower the prices become, the more demand, the lower the prices, and so on and so forth. Perhaps capitalism can work in our favor, for once.

Solar is currently an expensive way for the individual to become self-sustaining and clean, sure. However, when it becomes a community wide effort, things become much more plausible. More well off neighborhoods or communities could pioneer the effort and create completely clean and self-sustaining small communities. As more of these neighborhoods join in and create their own respective energy pools, the costs of solar or wind power will decrease (and the technology will become more efficient due to an increase of capital for the producers to invest in R&D) and increasingly less wealthy communities will be able to leave the grid and become energy-autonomous. This is Energy Decentralization.

Eventually it will get to the point that Energy Decentralization becomes so widespread that it will begin to threaten centralized energy. This may lead to energy companies changing their strategy and focusing on renewables; at this point, however, it would have to be very important to keep the movement spreading. The last thing we should ever do is let energy become centralized again because what would be happening would be revolutionary; a key service created by the public, for the public, in a completely decentralized and autonomous fashion, free of coercion, all in addition to saving the planet. As energy companies become less powerful, issues dealing with climate change in the public square will become more open, and concerted efforts for reform in other areas regarding environmentalism (and corporatism) will follow, most likely following in a similar, democratic fashion as Energy Decentralization, as we will be a changed country. Indeed, the implications of decentralizing such a large and necessary industry are enormous and would undoubtedly have destructive consequences for other concentrations of private wealth and power.

Idealistic? Yes. However, I believe it is something we should strive for. The environmental problems of our world today are too dangerous, and we have too much at stake for us not to try. I approach this the same way I approach anything dealing with ideology: see the possibilities and work towards a better future, one step at a time, with those ideas in mind.