Same as it Ever Was! Talking Heads, Obama and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Obama and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Like a bizarre ritual, every few years or so, some allegedly fresh thinking and policy initiative for addressing the Israel-Palestine conflict is announced. The usual sound-bites are propped up by, well, the usual props and photo-opportunities. This time around, the claim has been that President Obama broke new ground by actually mentioning the pre-1967 borders. In actuality, what was new was Prime Minister Netanyahu’s public and very categorical dismissal of President Obama’s invocation of 1967 as the pivotal year. Never before has an Israeli Prime Minister summarily rejected an American president’s viewpoint without the usual diplomatic cushions. President Obama promptly backtracked and qualified what exactly he meant by his invocation of the pre-1967 borders and in turn, Prime Minister Netanyahu naturally affirmed his scripted support for “peace”. The much-touted alleged “breakthrough”, surprise, surprise, rapidly mutated to the enduring stalemate that all political leaders invariably promise to overcome. Needless to add, the realities of oil, gas and cynical global geo-politics will continue to ensure a seemingly endless repetition of the mirage of breakthroughs that are unlikely to materialize. Talking heads will continue to chatter about alleged "breakthroughs".

Nuclear Catastophe and Debates in Absurdistan

In the wake of the ongoing overt nuclear catastrophe in Japan and the not so evident mess at all the nuclear energy generating plants, the so-called "debates" over the pros and cons of nuclear power have begun. Over the past we weeks, an "expert" on BBC has dismissed the idea that there is anything inherently dangerous with nuclear energy. CNN too has followed the same path, but by allowing a Greenpeace representative to rebut. The problem is that even though most issues come in shades of gray, when it comes to nuclear energy, there is only one viewpoint - this technology is inherently dangerous. Yes, all other technologies invariably come with some risks that can be minimized and managed. Yet most other technologies generate risks in the context of use. Nuclear technologies on the other hand, come inbuilt with risks, even in the context of so-called normal, safe, managed use. As long as we cannot figure our what to do with the steady accumulation of radioactive waste, any talk of managing risks is just talk. If anyone has time, they should seek out Langdon Winner's path-breaking article on "inherently political technologies".

It is not just the nuclear industry that is pushing hard for an image makeover during this critical moment. Their rivals - coal and natural gas industry - are inundating the TV networks with adverts to capitalize on the nuclear tragedy in Japan. The industry spokespeople as well as the self-appointed experts all hammer away at the "fact" that an industrial society needs energy and one has supposedly no choice but manage the risks associated with these technologies. None of them of course talks about the ecological impossibility of carrying on with absurd goal of unlimited economic growth.

Social Scientific Intervention in Libya

The Harvard University political scientist Stephen M. Walt laments the fact that in the heated debates over the latest American led war and attempts at “regime change” in Libya nobody has bothered to consult what “social science” has to tell us about the probable results of such interventions. Predictably he cites zillions of empirical studies aided as he points out by ever more "sophisticated research design" to conclude that “these various scholarly studies suggest that the probability that our intervention will yield a stable democracy is low, and that our decision to intervene has increased the likelihood of civil war.” In making this claim, he neatly demonstrates the real limits of certain varieties of social science. Where one might ask, did he obtain his presumably rock solid empirical data to to claim that the real intention of this intervention is indeed to facilitate a “stable democracy” in Libya? Even while intending to be skeptical of the dominant worldview orchestrated by the official pronouncements, he falls for it, with the proverbial hook, line and sinker.

The non-debate over whether or not armed intervention will or will not magically create instant democracy continues to resurface with uncanny predictability. Such simulated debates ensure that nobody gets the "picture" by shifting attention, possibly unintentionally, to the "frame". Such steering away of any discussion of the picture to the frame, if successful, constitutes a very effective way of exercising power - an insight from the great Canadian/American sociologist Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis: The Organization of Human Experience, 1974.

C. Wright Mills on the facts of power and the ways of powerful

"The view that all is blind drift is largely a fatalist projection of one's own feeling of impotence…The view that all of history is due to the conspiracy of an easily located set of villains, or of heroes, is also a hurried projection from the difficult effort to understand how shifts in the structure of society open opportunities to various elites and how various elites take advantage or fail to take advantage of them. To accept either view--of all history as conspiracy or of all history as drift--is to relax the effort to understand the facts of power and the ways of the powerful“ C. Wright Mills

Japan's Nuclear Boy

The Japanese nuclear boy

Tokyo Governor Ishihara, the tsunami and "Divine Punishment"

For many years, the Governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro has been railing against the Koreans and Chinese in Japan. Criticisms of his rants have been muted. Indeed when he recently announced that he may not run for a fourth term, most Tokyo residents were disappointed and urged him to reconsider. Now, one of the most egoistic Japanese politician claims that the devastating tsunami was divine retribution meted out to the Japanese people for apparently being too “egoistic”.

He said the tsunami was needed “to wipe out egoism, which has rusted onto the mentality of Japanese over a long period of time.”
“I think [the disaster] is tembatsu (divine punishment), although I feel sorry for disaster victims,” he said.

Not to be outdone, the Rev. David Yonggi Cho, the Korean senior pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Church – the world’s largest church – pointed out that recent Japanese quake and tsunami arew without a doubt, “God’s warning” – apparently because, in his view, “the Japanese people shun God in terms of their faith and follow idol worship, atheism, and materialism, it makes me wonder if this was not God’s warning to them.”

Needless to add, Glenn Beck could hardly be expected to stay out of this muscular one-upmanship! He (surprise, surprise!) claimed that the earthquake could be a "message from God". Posing as the intellectual he craves to be, he injected the mandatory nuance by pointing out: "I'm not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes," but added: "I'm not not saying that either."

Yes, there is indeed the danger of propagating manipulative yet unadulterated crap while criticizing it, yet…

The politician and the pastor were blasted by their fellow citizens. Presumably Glenn Beck was cheered on by his supporters drunk on tea. Quite unexpectedly, possibly for the first time in history, Tokyo Governor Ishihara, offered his "deep" apologies for his comments. He has of course never apologized for his verging-on- -the-racist rants against the Chinese, Koreans and other “foreigners”. They don't have a vote.

"Secular" commentators were not faring any better. According to the CNBC host Larry Kudlow:

"The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that," Kudlow said, quickly adding: "The human toll is a tragedy; we know that. But these markets, all these markets - stocks, commodities, oil, gold - there is no major breakout or breakdown."

Naturally, he later apologized on Twitter: "I did not mean to say human toll in Japan less important than economic toll. Talking about markets. I flubbed the line. Sincere apology."

Nuclear Radiation detected in Tokyo and Saitama

Earlier today, there were reports of radiation spreading to Yokosuka city, south of Tokyo. Now there are reports of radiation in Tokyo and Saitama too. According to the Governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro : "I received a report this morning that there was an important change of data," Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said at a news conference. "I heard that it will not immediately cause health problems." He did not elaborate on whether he had heard anything or received any reports about long term health problems…radiation in Tokyo