The Distant Ocean

I _____ the military

I try to avoid procedural Washington politics as much as humanly possible, but I didn't do it well enough today to save myself from Elena Kagan's vomit-inducing vow that "I respect and indeed I revere the military."

Revere?

Yeah.  See, not only is this not quite the word and/or phrase I'd choose to fill this particular blank, but I wouldn't allow anyone who did choose it to carry an already-bagged dog turd over to the trash can for me, much less sit on the Supreme Court.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste

This was one of the more encouraging things I heard last week:

AMY GOODMAN: Victor Agosto, you served in Iraq. You refused to go to Afghanistan. You were court-martialed. What caused you to change? Why did you sign up for the military?

VICTOR AGOSTO: I just grew tired of sitting in classrooms. I wanted to do something. And the military was a way of seeing the world and getting a job. And that’s—and, of course, patriotism played a role, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re in Iraq. What changed your attitude?

VICTOR AGOSTO: It just didn’t make sense to me why we were there, why—why these contractors were making, you know, all this money. And eventually, I started making the connections between that and just the idea of empire. And I realized that what I was doing there was just that, just being a soldier for empire, basically, not to make America or Afghanistan a better place, I mean. So I read some books. I read some Chomsky. I realized that there’s absolutely no American moral superiority. There’s no—we were no one to impose anything on the people of Iraq or Afghanistan.

(Agosto says here that it was Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival that "just totally shattered any conception I had about moral superiority or good intentions.")

So think about that: there are people in Iraq and Afghanistan wearing American uniforms and carrying guns who are literally just one book away from changing their entire world view and refusing to kill.  And that's one reason why writing about this stuff, speaking out, talking to people you know, spending time in discussion forums and so on really does matter—because you may never know what effect it will have on someone out there who's ready to hear it.

According to this, you can send books to...:

MWR NCOIC
CJSOTF-A
Unit-3E
APO AE 09354

...and they'll be in the hot little hands of soldiers throughout Afghanistan in no time—though I'm guessing that getting, say, John Pilger or Chalmers Johnson through that gauntlet might be a bit of a challenge.  Still, I'd be interested to hear what happens if anyone gives it a try.

Maybe someone should start Chomsky for Soldiers?

AND A QUESTION: Assuming someone really was just one book away from an epiphany, what book do you feel would be most likely to get them there?  Not limited to Chomsky, of course, though it's hard to beat his combination of ideological orientation and information density if you've only got one book to change someone's mind.

The one that made the biggest impression on me (thanks to timing as much as content) was Chomsky's The Umbrella of U.S. Power, which has the benefit of being short and to the point.  There's also On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures, a transcription of five lectures Chomsky gave in Nicaragua in the 1980s which were structured almost as a tutorial in US foreign policy principles, with examples, quotes, and citations throughout to provide background.  Unlike much of his writing which assumes some familiarity with the history, this is a very clear, direct, and readable presentation of the issues that basically starts from zero, so despite its age I'd say it would make a good introduction.

Charlton Heston warned us about this

I'm telling you:

Ron Greve expects the worst is yet to come in the oil spill drama that is haranguing beach towns all along the US Gulf Coast. So, like a growing number of residents, the Pensacola Beach solar-cell salesman took a hazardous materials class and received a "hazmat card" upon graduation.

Those cards, says Mr. Greve, could become critical in coming weeks and months. In the case of a hurricane hitting the 250-mile wide slick and pushing it over sand dunes and into beach towns, residents fear they’ll face not only mass evacuations, but potential permanent relocation. [...]

In the case of a "toxic storm," only residents with hazmat cards would be allowed to cross bridges to return home, Greve says, since toxicity risks would be too high for untrained residents.

"You’d have to have these cards to be able to return," says Mr. Greve. "In these classes, they basically tell you that swallowing even a small amount of the oil or getting some on your hands and then having a smoke could be deadly."

See, of Charlton Heston's many fine science fiction films I was really hoping it'd be Planet of the Apes that turned out to be the most accurate, because, you know, apes.  But Soylent Green keeps looking more like a pre-documentary every day.

So we've got the jackbooted stormtroopers in Fortress Toronto and the hazmat cards in Florida.  Now we just have to get the jackbooted stormtroopers demanding our hazmat cards, and we're halfway there!

It's like slapping someone with silence

The shunning of Israel (yet another positive result of the Gaza flotilla) is coming along much faster than I'd expected:

An Elton John concert ordinarily isn't front-page news. But in Israel, where many feel more shunned than they have in decades, the legendary pop icon's decision to perform in Tel Aviv last Thursday was cause for celebration.

After weeks of dreary reports about artists caving to calls to boycott Israel, Israeli diplomats being expelled by friendly allies, and even pressure from the United States to change course in Gaza, John allowed Israel an opportunity "for three hours," as one music reviewer put it, "to be a normal country." 

Aww.  Tears you up, doesn't it?  I'm sure Afrikaners felt just as grateful when Linda Rondstadt played Sun City.  And you've got to love Janine Zacharia's choice of the not-even-slightly-loaded phrase "caving to", when "responding to" or "honoring" (among others) would have worked just fine; I always appreciate it when reporters wear their biases on their sleeves.

But here's the best part:

"This is something Israelis know: that they very, very much depend on both America and Germany, or in the larger sense, Europe. And there's nothing they fear more than being alone in the world," said Tom Segev, an Israeli historian. [...] Israelis may be indifferent to criticism when it's in their own media or when it comes from Israeli human rights groups, Segev said, "but we are not indifferent to these signs coming from abroad."

Which is great to hear, since Israelis are not only indifferent to criticism in their media or from Israeli human rights groups (as Segev observes) but to calls for justice in countless other forms (not to mention the monotonous background noise of their victims, but that goes without saying).  So it's interesting that the cultural boycott seems to be having a disproportionately large effect, producing such a chorus of mopey, self-pitying whining after just a few cancellations.

I'd say this hits home because for decades the average Israeli has had the luxury of living a life of entitled consumption just like that of any coddled upper-class Westerner, as though the Gulag they've created next door doesn't exist—and a cultural boycott threatens that directly.  Israelis don't really give a damn what Elvis Costello or Carlos Santana think about their decades-long project of ethnic cleansing (any more than they care what anyone else thinks), but they do care very much about being able to live in a bubble of blissful self-imposed ignorance.  So when they're forced to face what seem like trivial consequences in their daily lives (is it really such a tragedy not to hear "Monkey Gone to Heaven" live?), it comes as a very direct and personal blow with a psychological effect far out of proportion to its cause.  And it's exactly this kind of pressure that's most likely to bring about a change.

So a huge amount of respect to all the artists who've participated in the shunning so far, and here's hoping more will follow their lead.  It's making a difference.

ROCKODILE CROCK: Reginald Kenneth Dwight snipes at his moral superiors:

John, who wore blue-tinted sunglasses, told the audience those cancellations "ain't gonna stop me from playing here, baby."

Recent cancellations by the Pixies and Elvis Costello, who cited Israeli government policies, have added to Israel's growing sense of isolation.

John swiped at those artists, saying, "We do not cherry-pick our consciences," before hitting the opening chords of his 1972 hit "Crocodile Rock."

By "cherry-pick" I believe the man with five first names actually meant "either possess or follow".  On the plus side, this gives me a reason to promote my vague irritation with him and his music into full-blown loathing (the same sort of upside as when talentless munster John Malkovich fantasized about killing Robert Fisk and George Galloway).

We're not worthy

I happened across this article ("Voters' anxiety clouds Obama's historic successes") while I was away last month:

Historians say President Obama's legislative record during a crisis-ridden presidency already puts him in a league with such consequential presidents as Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt. But polls show voters aren't totally on board with his achievements, at least not yet, and the White House acknowledges that his victories have carried huge financial and political costs. [...]

Obama says he understands why many Americans are restless, and why his administration doesn't get more credit.

"There is no doubt there is a mismatch between our accomplishments and the perception, but I think that makes perfect sense because we're going through a very tough time," Obama said in a brief interview. When people are jobless or worried about layoffs, they "aren't interested in abstract comparisons with other presidents."

In other words, we're just too distracted to appreciate the extraordinary achievements of our god-king.  Right?  C'mon, you know it's true.  For example, I know I'm personally way too anxious about the chance of being brought up on charges of providing material support to terrorists to fully appreciate Obama's unprecedented assertion of the right to execute Americans without a trial.  And I have to admit that my obsessive focus on his escalation of the war in Afghanistan has probably blinded me to his huge increases in military spending.  Why, I've even been so distracted by the minutiae of his handover of power to health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations that I've failed to give him proper credit for his Wall Street bailouts!

But I'm sure we can all at least appreciate Obama's magnanimity in not blaming us for our failure to recognize how singular and extraordinary he is, you know?  It says a lot about him that he's willing to wait so patiently, confident in the expectation that we'll eventually come to our senses and start thinking just as highly of him as he does of himself.

With friends like these

I was glad to see ACORN's Bertha Lewis saying this:

"You get upset and angry about the unfairness of this," she said of the onslaught of negative publicity from the videos that were criticized as being heavily edited.

"This is just the 21st century version of high-tech lynching."

Lewis laid some of the blame for the group’s demise on the lack of support from Democrats and progressives, who she said failed to support the group and voted for the funding ban.

"It just pisses me off that the right can get away with attacks on the organization while the left and progressives just stood by and did nothing to defend us."

(In case you've forgotten, 172 of 247 House Democrats and all but 11 Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to defund ACORN.)

But unfortunately she turned right around and negated it:

Key to reviving the group’s mission is a lawsuit currently on appeal in federal court arguing the ban on funding was unconstitutional. [...]  The ban has effectively prevented former associates of ACORN from applying for federal funding.  If not overturned, similar bans could be aimed at other activist groups. [...]

Lewis was also critical of the Obama administration's continued effort to fight the lawsuit by filing appeals.

"It’s politics pure and simple," she said. "They’re scared."

Look, "they're scared" may have had some credibility in the days when this media flash flood was breaking and corporate Democrats felt the need to demonstrate that they could piss on the poor and minorities just as much as any Republican.  But the waters have long since receded, and the Obamaites wouldn't take any political damage from allowing this obviously unconstitutional piece of legislation to be struck down.

And more importantly, as the article observes, this is no longer just about ACORN—it's about the ability of the executive and judicial branches to target individual groups for punishment and possible destruction.  The Obama administration understands that perfectly well, and it  isn't just some secondary consideration, it's exactly why they're doing everything they can to fight this ruling; it's not fear, it's the same determination to defend and expand governmental power that Obama's shown over and over since the day he took office.  How many times does he have to demonstrate his disdain for the notion of due process (or any of the other trivial rights and protections in the Constitution) before people are willing to stop making excuses for him?

That's a rhetorical question, of course.  Dennis Perrin's veal crate metaphor never seemed more appropriate than it does in this case, where despite having watched an overwhelming majority of Democrats (including Obama) participate in what she accurately calls the "high-tech lynching" of ACORN, Lewis is nonetheless still trying to rationalize away the administration's attempts not only to defend that action but to assert the right to do the same to other groups in the future.  If watching your organization be marched to the gallows by the people you've worked so hard to elect isn't enough to convince you they're not really on your side, what possibly could be?

No political content

My Manute Bol story: when I was a kid, a friend and I used to go to Allen Pond and throw a frisbee for a few hours, and when we were completely exhausted we'd head to Pizza Hut and get a priazzo.  Manute Bol had just come to the US to play basketball and he lived nearby and must have liked Pizza Hut too, because we saw him there on two different occasions.  I remember him standing in the lobby, bent double over a video game machine (and still too tall for it thanks to his 7'7" height).  He seemed like a friendly guy, and I appreciated the fact that even though he was a celebrity he just acted like anyone else in the neighborhood.

But this obituary shows there was much more to him than basketball:

Mr. Bol donated almost all of his $6 million in career earnings to peace efforts in his native Sudan.

Even during his playing days, he went into war zones to preach peace. His family was wiped out by Darfurians, but when the people of that region became victims, Mr. Bol was one of the first Sudanese to speak out in support.

"He was a wonderful man with a terrific sense of humor," Warriors coach Don Nelson said. "He had everybody on our team in stitches all of the time.

"He cared deeply about his people and did everything he could to help them."

I had no idea, and I'm always glad to hear when people who have every incentive to succumb to a life of self-involvement choose a different path instead.  So goodbye not only to an icon of my youth, but a decent human being as well.

ADDING: Ok, some political content.  And in case you're wondering, I no longer subject myself to Pizza Hut.  Chalk it up to the folly of youth.

Not dead, just resting

Every once in a while real life interferes with the important business of keeping the world informed of what I think, and this is one of those times.  I'll be posting again once it lets up and/or I recover, which hopefully won't be long.

Stop defending yourself

I appreciated this article last week from the BBC...

It has emerged that the new sanctions will not affect a contract to supply Russian surface-to-air missiles to Iran.

Russia agreed to supply Iran with S-300 systems several years ago but has never delivered the weapons.

The US and Israel are concerned the missiles, designed to counter both aircraft and cruise missiles, might be used to protect Iran's nuclear facilities from possible attack.

...because it's always good to see an explicit mention of one of the cornerstone principles of US foreign policy: that our victims have no right to protect themselves from attack by us or our accomplices.  Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation explains how this principle applies to the Iranians' menacing attempts to keep themselves safe from US/Israeli-inflicted harm:

Iran's current air defense system is outdated and would not defend against a massive airstrike aimed at its nuclear facilities. Israel, or under certain circumstances, even the United States, does not rule out the possibility of such a strike. If S-300s enter into service in Iran, they may deter potential strikes by Israel, unless Israel either acquires new American F-35s capable of destroying S-300s or executes a pre-emptive strike on Iranian S-300s before they become fully operational.

You noticed that last bit about a "pre-emptive strike", right?  David Kramer of Foreign Policy explains further that Iran's purchase of the S-300s may actually "start a war, as Israel may be tempted to attack Iran before those missiles would become operational."  Got that?  By purchasing a weapon system whose purpose everyone from the CIA to the foreign policy think-tank establishment explicitly recognizes to be entirely defensive, Iran may actually be starting a war.  Is there no limit to the aggressiveness of our ruthless enemies?

Of course this is just a smaller version of the overall fact that if Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, they're doing it in order to establish a standing deterrent to an armed attack by the US or Israel—but the difference is that it's all but forbidden in the mainstream media to admit that Iran's purposes are defensive in the case of their imagined nuclear weapons program, but it's no problem at all in the case of the S-300s.  Why?  Because once the narrative has been established that Iran only wants nuclear weapons to obliterate Israel and menace all other peace-loving nations of the the world, thus justifying any measures we take to stop their demonic quest for world domination, it doesn't threaten that storyline at all to allow that Iran intends to use the S-300s to defend their evil terror program from our peace bombs.  They have no more right to "defend" themselves from our righteous violence than, oh, say, so-called human rights activists facing a justice assault by heavily-armed Israeli commandos in international waters.  See how easy it is?

Since I may never have tumbled to the "mortal sin of self defense" if it weren't for Noam Chomsky, I'll give him the last word:

It was also understood throughout that the aging MiGs that Nicaragua was accused of trying to sneak into its territory could have only one purpose: to protect Nicaraguan airspace from the CIA supply flights that were required to keep the U.S. proxy forces in the field and the regular surveillance flights that provide them with up-to-the-minute information on the disposition of Nicaraguan troops, so that they can safely attack civilian targets in accordance with their instructions and training. Understood, but scarcely mentioned. A search of the liberal Boston Globe, perhaps the least antagonistic to the Sandinistas among major U.S. journals, revealed one editorial reference to the fact that Nicaragua needs air power "to repel attacks by the CIA-run contras, and to stop or deter supply flights" (Nov. 9, 1986). Again, the conclusion is clear and unmistakeable: no one has the right of self-defense against U.S. attack.

That's from Deterring Democracy, which is available online here (and is one of Chomsky's clearest and best-written books, so it's well worth your time if you haven't read it).

Maher Arar needs your help

The Center for Constitutional Rights is calling on us all to do something for Maher Arar:

Today, the United States Supreme Court rejected CCR's case on behalf of Canadian citizen and extraordinary rendition survivor Maher Arar against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and detained in an underground, grave-like cell for a year.  This latest decision signals the end to Maher's legal case to obtain justice in U.S. courts.  Now it is up to the White House and Congress: demand action now!

With this latest decision, CCR has exhausted the legal process. While we are deeply disappointed that the courts have been unwilling to recognize Maher's right to have his story heard by an American jury we will continue to pursue every available avenue towards an apology and remedies. This case has become a national embarrassment.  The U.S. refuses to acknowledge or apologize for the crimes and human rights abuses they committed when they sent Maher to Syria to be tortured.  Maher remains on a U.S. Watch List, despite an exhaustive investigation by the Canadian Commission of Inquiry that found "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada."

As CCR cooperating attorney and Vice-President David Cole says, "The courts have regrettably refused to right the egregious wrong done to Maher Arar. But the courts have never questioned that a wrong was done. They have simply said that it is up to the political branches to fashion a remedy.  We are deeply disappointed that the courts have shirked their responsibility. But this decision only underscores the moral responsibility of those to whom the courts deferred - President Obama and Congress - to do the right thing and redress Arar's injuries."

So for Maher Arar's sake, click through on the link and spend the minute it'll take you to tell your Congressputz, Senatrollops, and Prevaricator Obama to do the right thing for once in their lives.

Vote for Bush's fourth term!

I have enormous respect for Daniel Ellsberg, and I certainly wouldn't argue with any of this:

Ellsberg: I believe [Obama's] administration in some key aspects is nothing other than the third term of the Bush administration.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How so?

Ellsberg: I think Obama is continuing the worst of the Bush administration in terms of civil liberties, violations of the constitution and the wars in the Middle East. [...] The Obama administration is criminalizing and prosecuting whistleblowers to punish them for uncovering scandals within the federal government. [...] His violation of civil liberties and the White House's excessive use of the executive secrecy privilege is inexcusable. [...] His administration caters to the profits of big corporations like BP and Goldman Sachs -- even though I think BP won't get off that easily this time. His early campaign contributions, the big corporate contributions, came from Wall Street. They got their money's worth.

But here's the part that made me weep profusely:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Ellsberg, you're a hero and an icon of the left. But we hear you're not too happy with President Obama anymore.

Ellsberg: I voted for him and I will probably vote for him again, as opposed to the Republicans.

Got that?  Obama is continuing the worst of the Bush administration—catering to the profits of big corporations, prosecuting whistleblowers, violating civil liberties, abusing the executive secrecy privilege, violating the Constitution, escalating wars, etc, etc.  He's basically Bush's third term.  Vote for Obama!

Now, it's painful to contemplate someone as smart as Ellsberg doing this, but I'm sure we all know smart people who subscribe to lesser evilism, right?  And though we may disagree with their reasoning or their choices, we can at least understand their desire to ensure that their decision not to vote for a Democrat doesn't put a worse-in-some-ways Republican into office.  Right?

There's just one problem: Ellsberg lives right across the bay from me in Kensington, California, and Barack Obama beat John McCain in California by a margin of over 3.2 million votes (out of a total of 13.5 million).  For comparison purposes, McKinney and Nader received a combined total of 147,155 votes in California in 2008, and even in 2000—the year the Great Liberal Morality Tale was born—Nader received only 418,707 votes in California.

So even granting for the sake of argument the validity of the lesser-evil, fear-based electoral strategy of so many people, the chance that a Republican would win California as a result of Ellsberg's refusal to vote for Barack Obama is exactly nil.  Zip.  Bupkus.  Zilch.  Zero.  And this is what drives me insane: not only that the left is unwilling to stand up for its principles when election time rolls around, but that it's filled with intelligent, well-informed people who suddenly find themselves incapable of remembering how the Electoral College works the moment they enter a voting booth.

Would the left in the US still be defeated if it ever stopped defeating itself?  At the rate we're going, we'll never know.

The return of toxic engagement

The U.S. sent delegates to the review conference of the International Criminal Court this week, and according to State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh:

"It's hard to emphasize how happy countries are to see us here," said Harold Koh. "They felt very distressed at the period of U.S. hostility to the court. They're very excited about the Obama administration and its renewed commitment to international law and engagement. And they're just thrilled that we're here as an observer country."

Aw, how sweet.  But as I've written before, the "period of U.S. hostility to the court" actually began with the Clinton administration and continued right through the Bush administration—the main difference being that Bush's hostility was overt and unmistakable, but Clinton's hostility took the form of treating the ICC as something to co-opt, neuter, and deploy as a weapon against official enemies.  And Obama is picking up right where Clinton left off, as you can see with crystal clarity from U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen Rapp's explanation of what this "renewed commitment to international law and engagement" really means:

"What we're here talking about is ways that we can support this court constructively when it works in our interest. And so far in the cases it is taking on, they are in our interests and in the interest of all of human kind."

(I'm going to go way out on a limb and guess that no one here will need to spend too much time pondering what the U.S. response would be to something that genuinely was "in the interest of all of human kind" but not "in our interest".)

So like Clinton, Obama wants to use the ICC as a weapon when its actions conform to U.S. interests, while handicapping it enough that it won't ever be able to act against those interests.  And whereas countries around the world were "distressed" that Bush left the ICC alone, they're now "happy" and "excited" and "thrilled" by the Obama administration's willingness to pretend to be committed to international law while actually doing everything it can to warp the ICC into yet another forum for the projection of U.S. power.  Go ahead and call me a cynic, but I don't see any of this as an improvement.

(Article pointer via Glen Ford, and you should definitely read his take.)

Someone give this guy a medal

This was sweet music to my ears:

DEAN BLANCHARD: The President, I voted for that man. It was one of the worst mistakes I ever made. I thought he was a man and he was going to bring about change. But if this is change, it’s not change for the better. The President ought to be ashamed of himself.

Now if another 45 million people will just come to this realization, maybe we can get something done around here.

You should definitely click through on the link and watch the segment (if you haven't already), since Blanchard is not only informative but funny as hell, despite everything he and others are going through.  Best line: "And BP wants to give you a one-time payment of $5,000. My bills are $5,260 a day. What am I going to do with? Does it matter to me if I go broke on a Tuesday or a Wednesday?"

Best joke I've heard all day

This Reuters article ("U.S. liberals: Time to make Obama uncomfortable"):

Nineteen months after celebrating President Barack Obama's historic election win, disappointed liberal activists promised on Monday to turn up the political heat on a White House they said is too quick to compromise.

Ha ha ha!

"It is not our job to make this president or this administration comfortable. It is our job to make him do the right thing," said Darcy Burner, head of the Progressive Congress Action Fund.

You are too funny!

"We have to stop waiting for Obama. We have to stop taking the president's temperature. We have to stop being critics and start being actors," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, which sponsored the conference.

Please, stop, my sides!  You're killing me!

There was at least one skunk at this picnic, though:

Some activists said high hopes for Obama made it hard to criticize him.

"There is still an extraordinary loyalty to Obama and that creates this sense of conflict," said Gloria Totten, head of the Progressive Majority, which recruits liberal political candidates at the state and local level.

Gosh, really?  I hadn't noticed.  But I'm sure it's such a marginal factor that it won't be any impediment at all to, uh...these fighting-mad liberals' plans to...to make...make Obama...do...the right...dammit!  I knew I couldn't make it all the way through that without cracking up.

BONUS JOKE: The Internet's censorship champions, CommonDreams, changed the deeply offensive term "liberal" to the happy joy-word "progressive" in the article's title—because what's most important is what you're called, not what you do.  Which is actually a general principle for people like this, who'll vote for any candidate who's called a Democrat no matter what that person actually stands for.  After all, anyone who focuses on trivial substance over self-gratifying symbolism obviously just doesn't get it.

Oh please yes

The phrase "beyond my wildest dreams" springs to mind:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is weighing the possibility of traveling to the Gaza Strip in order to "break the Israeli blockade," the Lebanese newspaper al-Mustaqbal reported on Saturday, according to Army Radio.

Erdogan reportedly raised the idea in conversations with close associates and even informed the United States of his intention to ask the Turkish Navy to accompany another aid flotilla to Gaza.

As does the phrase "the enemy of my enemy."

An Iron Cross for a real Ubermensch

Just in case you missed this:

Six of the nine activists killed in Monday’s raid on an aid convoy were shot by a single Israeli commando who is now being considered for a medal of valour.

Of course, we would never do anything so outrageous here; we only give medals to people who kill an enemy's civilians, not an ally's.

(No word on whether or not this is the same Israeli hero who reportedly convinced the captain of the Mavi Marmara to surrender the ship by pointing a gun at a one-year-old child's head, but since that's a part of basic training for all IDF soldiers anyway it's obviously not medal-worthy.)

ALSO: See here for a definitive account of how this valiant stormtrooper defended Israel from Turkish human rights activists.

Victory

When I went to the Occupied Territories in 2002 to help the International Solidarity Movement counter Israel's vicious assault, I knew I might never return.  All of the hundreds of people from around the world who'd come for the same reason knew it as well.  We went anyway because we felt that what we were doing was worth that risk.

I'm sure the same applied to the participants in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.  No doubt they believed (as we did) that Israel's desire to avoid an international incident would give them a measure of protection—but they also knew the Israelis had rammed and nearly sunk a boat in a previous flotilla, and that much worse could follow.  They went anyway because they cared enough about the inhuman levels of suffering Israel has inflicted on the people of Gaza to risk their lives in order to challenge the blockade and try to bring the world's attention back to this ongoing atrocity.

And they were spectacularly successful at that and much else besides—in fact, more so than any action I can remember.  Their story has dominated the news all week, with well over 20,000 articles registered on Google News (one of the highest totals I've ever seen).  They've raised opposition to the Israeli blockade not only among people all around the world but governments as well, to the point where even the US is calling it "unsustainable" (not for the right reasons, of course, but the very fact that the US felt compelled to take this position is a major victory).  They've managed to turn Israel into more of a pariah state than it already was, doing even more damage to Israel's image than the Gaza war—which is saying a lot.  They've driven a massive wedge between Israel and Turkey that may well lead to a permanent fracture:

"From now on, Turkish-Israeli ties will never be the same. This incident has left an irreparable and deep scar," [Turkish president] Abdullah Gul said in a televised speech on Thursday, as thousands gathered in the streets of Istanbul to pay their respects to the humanitarian activists killed during the raid.

The raid "is not an issue that can be forgotten... or be covered up... Turkey will never forgive this attack," he said.

They've dealt a serious blow to Israeli propaganda, which reached new depths of ludicrousness in its attempt to peddle the notion that people sailing in international waters have no right to defend themselves against heavily armed attackers bent on hijacking their ships—an argument that impressed Israel's army of liars, its conservative loon fellow-travelers, and nobody else.  And last but definitely not least, they've widened an already-growing rift that may eventually cost the US the use of NATO as a fig leaf for its military interventions.

Any one of these things on its own would be a major achievement, but to accomplish all of them in a single action is nothing short of astonishing.  While it's true that much of this wasn't planned—or planned to happen in the way it did, at the least—it's nonetheless also true that it couldn't have happened if there hadn't been people who were willing to risk everything to defy this blockade.  So as much as we should mourn, we should also recognize that this was a spectacular victory...and I'm sure that everyone in the Freedom Flotilla, including those who are no longer with us, would feel the same way.

ADDING: I neglected to point out the wonderful damage done to Israel's relationship with the US, as reflected by Mossad chief Meir Dagan telling the Knesset that "Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden" and Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggesting that Israel is becoming a "strategic liability" to the US—two of the most prominent examples of a theme I've seen all week in mainstream sources.  And along the more general lines of the posting, see this excellent article from the Observer ("Gaza flotilla attack: A week that changed Middle East politics").

Slander

On Wednesday night I saw this bizarre report:

A diplomatic solution seems imminent to allow the humanitarian aid vessel the Rachel Corrie to dock without incident at the Ashdod Port. According to European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials in Jerusalem, quiet messages have been exchanged over the past few days between Israel and the group operating the ship, to allow it to dock. [...]

The European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials said Israel had been communicating with the organizers of the ship through the Irish government. The Irish Foreign Ministry also conveyed messages from [Denis] Halliday, one of the organizers, to the Foreign Ministry.

See, there's questionable, then there's unbelievable, then there's utterly absurd, and then there's Denis Halliday agreeing to betray the entire purpose of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla while sailing on a ship named for a girl who was crushed to death in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer.  So I assumed this story was an attempt by the Israelis to curry favor—notice how the ship is identified as a "humanitarian aid vessel" (to differentiate it from the evil terror ships in the first flotilla, no doubt), and how if you read the rest the implication is that because there are sober adults like Halliday on this vessel they'll be willing to make a devil's bargain with Israel in order to avoid any unpleasantness.  For Israel, that is.

Then on Thursday I saw this:

An Irish-owned aid ship headed for Gaza won't stop until it's forced to, a former U.N. official aboard the ship told CNN Thursday.

"We have not stopped and have no intention of stopping," said former Assistant U.N. Secretary-General Denis Halliday from aboard the vessel. "We will only stop when Israelis force us to do so." [...]

Citing European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials in Jerusalem, [Haaretz] said "quiet messages have been exchanged over the past few days between Israel and the group operating the ship, to allow it to dock" in Israel.

But [Adam] Shapiro said people on the ship deny that report and believe it is part of a misinformation campaign by the Israeli government.

It sure looks that way, but it's pretty astonishing that the Israelis thought they could co-opt Halliday with this planted story; apparently a few of them actually believed that the committed Quaker who resigned his position as the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq "because I did not join the UN to wage war on children" would be willing to hand over 550 tons of cement to Israel, so that instead of being used to rebuild schools and hospitals in Gaza it could be, oh, I don't know, shipped to the West Bank to build a few more houses for settlers from Brooklyn.  Well, they do say your reach should exceed your grasp.

Good luck to all those on the Rachel Corrie; we'll be thinking about you.

Hero

One of the Bay Area activists I was concerned about was Free Gaza co-founder Paul Larudee, but happily he's alive and has (finally) been released from Sheol.  Some of the first news I saw about him said he'd sustained some injuries after he was detained.  Here are some details of that:

US activist, Paul Larudee, 64, of California, said he was beaten.

"I have no broken bones, which is better than most," he said. "But there is not a spot of my body that is not sore."

Mr Larudee, who bore evident signs of bruising, said he was beaten after refusing to sign papers demanded by Israeli officials.

(These papers were in Hebrew, by the way; like the 1940s German predecessors they strive so hard to emulate, the Israelis are nothing if not systematic, and when they want to "deport" you they prepare a document in Hebrew which they actually expect you to sign.  I was offered one of these documents on my way out of Israel in 2002 and I just laughed in disbelief—but luckily I and others had been taken to the US consulate at that point, so the Israelis didn't have the option of beating us for refusing to sign.)

But this is undoubtedly the highlight of Paul's story:

When Israeli commandos seized a supply flotilla bound for Gaza, Paul Larudee decided he would not go gently.

Larudee, a 64-year-old former linguistics professor and Fulbright scholar, put on a life vest and jumped in the Mediterranean Sea, said Joe Meadors, one of five Americans in Larudee's group known as the Free Palestine Movement.

On his swim toward Gaza, the Northern California man eluded an Israeli patrol craft for 30 minutes before he was cornered, Meadors said.

Yes, really—Paul decided to swim for Gaza, which officially entitles him to the title of bravest person I know.  But for some reason the Israeli stormtroopers didn't appreciate this display of courage and conviction (jealousy, I'm sure, since they'll never be anything but thugs and he'll never be anything but a hero):

When [his wife] talked to him by phone Thursday night, he told her he jumped into the water with a life raft and when the Israeli officers plucked him from the water, "They were so mad, they beat him down to hell."

Welcome back from hell, Paul.

Protests

Gaza Freedom March is compiling a list of emergency protests planned for the next few days all over the US and the rest of the world.  Take a look and see if there's one near you (and if there's not, maybe you can organize one).