The Inevitable Cost Of Low Expectations

Well, the peace talks have failed, as everyone was expecting. Oslo has degenerated to the point now that not only is no-one surprised when the process has collapses - no-one can actually summon up the indignation to be surprised by the lack of surprise, either. If there has ever been another diplomatic engagement recently which was so universally regarded as doomed that even the alleged optimists just hope for a good outcome from its inevitable demise, then I should care to see it.

This is not the death throes of Oslo - this is merely the continued decomposition of its rotting corpse. The low expectations we have for the process have led us to a position where we treat this as normal. In doing this we are playing into the hands of the Israeli right, who are trying to slowly build a fait accompli in the territories. Our indifference, our expectation that "this is just how things are done here" isn't common sense, it's one of the major factors preventing the international community's facilitation of an effective peace deal.

All three parties shoulder a great deal of blame. The US government chose to tackle the Israeli government on the wrong issue and in the wrong way and then, in the way we have all become accustomed to, Obama capitulated twice over in the face of right-wing bluster. The Netanyahu government used Lieberman as an excuse to avoid properly engaging in these talks, playing a duplicitous double game. Then the Palestinian Authority showed little leadership and even less determination. Once the Israelis and the Americans reconciled after the Biden incident, the only reason to press the Israelis was in order to keep the Palestinians at that table.

Yet they've given up and Abbas has decided to stick with the proximity talks.

Today in the Middle East is a (relatively) tranquil present with a scary future. The new route for the Palestinians, if they are going to get anything and anywhere, is to follow the path of unilateral development. Declare their state, demand recognition from the world and once more follow the lessons of resistance from the First Inifada, being careful to avoid the awful mistakes and immoral terror of the Second. Already relatively uninvolved and disinterested states such as Brazil and Argentina have begun to recognise the PA as the legitimate government of the Occupied Territories.

This has been under-reported, but it represents a significant moment in this conflict where supporting unilateral Palestinian actions is no longer the preserve of the global left or Muslim community and has instead become 'common sense' from an international community which no longer regards Israel as a rational actor which responds to persuasion and moral reasoning. The Palestinians have a chance, right now, to build their state on their terms through growing external pressure and the construction of a domestic political force for independence.

A peace deal can no longer suffer from the corrosive effect of low expectations. If this cycle of cynicism and despair can only be broken by recognising that the Oslo framework has outlived its usefulness, then this is a price we should gladly pay. The alternative is a far longer conflict which will result in a disaster for the Israeli and the Palestinian people, as well as cementing the imminent death of liberal Zionism.

EDIT: Didn't post the right version...

Campfired

The most fashionable argument made by American liberals when trying to defend immigration has always been "they are willing to do the jobs no Americans are willing to do". I always found such an argument to be quite a cop-out from the left, as it is pretty much tantamount to saying "okay, fine, we will let you into our country, but only if we exploit you and degrade you to a degree considered unacceptable by both U.S. labor law and our basic concepts of dignity and humanity". This can best be seen in regards to the debate surrounding Arizona's recent passing of new laws on immigration in which racial profiling would be used to track down illegal immigrants. Liberals demanded such a ruling be blocked, but nothing more, thereby merely calling for a return to a normalization of a situation characterized by economic insecurity and vulnerability. To be sure, such discourse represents the inability of American liberals to move beyond a focus on fighting for cultural rights and racial/sexual equality and fully embrace class-based politics (a fight which would encompass the struggle for other equalities within it by addressing the materialist conditions and social structures that underpin much of this cultural politics).

But I digress...What this post was originally intended to address was a phenomenon I accidentally was alerted to while waiting for Jeopardy to come on (incidentally, one of the categories of the night was "Lenin", which I aced, thus earning $3000-worth of Marxist street cred...). This ABC News piece spoke of the "Amazon Gypsies", a cohort of the terminally unemployed and the elderly poor who travel around the country in their RVs looking for temporary work, in this case at an Amazon.com packaging plant. These flexible, casualized laborers receive around $10 an hour and live in their RVs. While the company pays for electricity, heating and water, the camper must pay rent for the land on which they park. According to the above-cited article on the subject, although the existence of such mobile workers has been a reality for some time, the recent economic downturn has swelled the ranks of these "gypsies", with over 500,000 such people now being documented as such from around the country. But what had once been a way for intrepid baby boomers to experience the world while financing their adventures with temporary work along the way, has now become a last resort for "economic refugees" without a home, permanent job or guarantee of health care.

The question is, is this a blip in on the radar of the American economic landscape, a temporary occurrence that will correct itself once the economy bounces back, or a foreshadowing of a new economic order in which the backs of the American worker have finally been broken, in which Americans have become the (internally) migrant labor force doing the jobs previous Americans had been unwilling to do? Could this be the a prime example of "creative destruction" in action, in which the resistance of the republicans to supporting welfare and social safety net initiatives finally pays off and the U.S. can reinvigorate its manufacturing sector on the back of an unprotected American workforce (for better or for worse)? Are these workers just the seeds of the creation of the American version of the rise of slums that already characterizes major cities across the world--something akin to the "floating population" of China--with RVs instead of shacks (got to hand it to Americans, even when we become refugees we still manage to drive huge fuck-off cars)?

Obviously my phrasing is meant to be a bit over-dramatic, and the answer to such questions will depend on a plethora of contingencies related to the way in which trajectories in geopolitical relations and social struggles unfold themselves. But I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't a symptom of a larger attack against labor that is already underway in the Republican's opposition towards the passage of any bill that would provide the poor with welfare or a social safety net, the same way that Thatcher used inflation-fighting policies as a way to create an "industrial reserve army".

RSA Animate

I completely love these RSA animate videos. They get across the point so much more effectively than just listening to the speech. I've tried listening to the original before and it just isn't as engaging - though, that said, your mind does wander more without the animation.

Either way, it's a beautiful idea and I completely love it.

This video in particular is a favourite of mine. I generally like Zizek (though some of his ideas make him come across as a tit) and this is him at, if not his finest, then undoubtedly his clearest. The examination of the attempt to ensure that capitalism contains its own salvation is really enlightening and it does really relay how insipid contemporary consumerism has become of late.

Let us hope, though, that this new 'cultural' capitalism has opened the doors to an ethical debate which has been dead for decades.

2010: A Laffer Free Zone

One of my friends - a horrendously cheeky, incredibly intelligent woman with slightly reprehensible politics - recently made a post on today's situation and the Laffer Curve. Her argument is twofold: 1) The best way to cut the deficit is growth and 2) One of the best ways to encourage growth is to cut taxes, particularly on the wealthy. I completely agree with the first point, but I couldn't disagree more with the second.

The key point which needs to be understood here is that income inequality is the core cause of the financial crisis we face. Others have covered this in far more detail, but the case is quite simple (though I'll simplify it even more to avoid anything more than one paragraph). Incomes for the bulk of society have been held down due to political changes which occurred in the late 70s/1980s which led to the defanging of labour as a economic and political force. The economy grew (though not as quickly as before), but the vast majority of benefits accrued to the very wealthiest in society. The problem is, though, that one man's employee is everyone else's consumer. The massive amounts of wealth which were now being created for the very top had to be redirected to consumer credit to allow the standard of living to increase. This wasn't a grand conspiracy, but it is important to note that the credit which fuelled the recent consumer/housing 'boom' would have been unnecessary if this money had entered the market through wages instead of loans. Today, though, consumers are overburdened with debt - they can't borrow anymore, they're having trouble paying back what they have borrowed. That right there is the financial crisis we're experiencing.

So, cutting taxes for the wealthy would just accentuate the existing inequalities of income which fed our crisis. Furthermore, however, they will do little for our society as it is. We are not facing a situation where there is not enough money to be invested - we are facing a situation where there is so much money to be invested that a cycle of speculative booms has become a chronic issue. The wealthy in Britain are sitting on massive piles of cash, cash which they are reluctant (sensibly) to invest in the UK, so, instead they deposit it abroad. The corollary of our credit drought is Brazil's hot money crisis.

In cutting taxes for the wealthy, we don't just accentuate our social inequalities and economic troubles, we also speed up the spread of our completely unsustainable model of economic growth. Brazil, for example, is seeing banks raking the money in at the cost of 20% credit growth. This is not sustainable and it is unhealthy for the world economy to be creating more locales where a credit crisis is inevitable.

The major economic challenge of our time is to tame the beast of capital, not to offer up greater and greater sacrifices to its oily, bloodstained maw.

Broken Hopes, Smashed Windows

There was something particularly satisfying about hearing about the storming of the Millbank Tower. In the build-up to the spending review and its aftermath the right-wing press was full of smug articles proclaiming the 'responsible' acceptance by the British public of the looming austerity measures. The British, it was claimed, weren't like the infantile French or the uncontrollable Greeks - they would take their dose of medicine and doff their hats to their betters.

Where are those articles now?

The first major protest against Austerity Britain saw destruction on the streets of London, at a homeopathic level of dilution compared to the violence which is about to be inflicted on society as a whole. As made clear by many first hand accounts, this was not the normal anarchist crew acting outside of the will of the group. This was the simmering discontent of a generation, manifesting itself as broken glass, crude graffiti and cheers.

In three paragraphs, Laurie Penny gets right to the heart of the matter:

One can often take the temperature of a demonstration by the tone of the chanting. The cry that goes up most often at this protest is a thunderous, wordless roar, starting from the back of the crowd and reverberating up and down Whitehall. There are no words. It's a shout of sorrow and celebration and solidarity and it slices through the chill winter air like a knife to the stomach of a trauma patient. Somehow, the pressure has been released and the rage of Europe's young people is flowing free after a year, two years, ten years of poisonous capitulation.

They spent their childhoods working hard and doing what they were told with the promise that one day, far in the future, if they wished very hard and followed their star, their dreams might come true. They spent their young lives being polite and articulate whilst the government lied and lied and lied to them again. They are not prepared to be polite and articulate any more. They just want to scream until something changes. Perhaps that's what it takes to be heard.

"Look, we all saw what happened at the big anti-war protest back in 2003," says Tom, a postgraduate student from London. "Bugger all, that's what happened. Everyone turned up, listened to some speeches and then went home. It's sad that it's come to this, but..." he gestures behind him to the bonfires burning in front of the shattered windows of Tory HQ. "What else can we do?"

I wasn't at this protest and, as I'm stuck in Jerusalem for a while, I am unlikely to be on any future ones for some time. But I cannot help but feel that this protest is a foreshadowing of what is to come. It being the first noticeable blow to the coalition's plans for the bright, new Austerity Britain, this has set the stage for a significant confrontation. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe for one second that the next protest is going to see any such act. I don't think that it's only a matter of months until we're waving red flags in the House of Commons, but the idea that the British public do not know the word "fight" unless followed by "ze Germans" is dead.

The burning of those placards and the smashing of those windows has added a dash of tension to the otherwise oppressive sense of broken hopes and grey austerity. The coalition is unlikely to back down or compromise, but perhaps (just perhaps) this has opened the door to defeating the coalition outright. When he criticises the people in Millbank that day, Aaron Porter is living in a different world where the government is a partner for negotiation. The truth is that this government is hell bent on an ideological redrawing of this country. No number of friendly chats or witty placards can change that.

As said, "the next five years can't just be about marching on Whitehall to hear Tony Benn speak". The spending review was the declaration of a political conflict whose outcome will shape our entire society. We need to win it.

Obama's Offer and a Lack of Will

One year ago the air was virtually blue with talk of a split between Israel and the US. Biden was publicly humiliated, Netanyahu was snubbed and it looked as if Obama was starting to demand Israeli compliance as repayment for US assistance. It looked as if the metaphorical reset button which had been pulled out of his pocket in Cairo was about to be pressed.

A year later and things couldn't be more different. The US is currently offering Israel even greater levels of support in return for temporary and half-hearted compliance with international law and US demands. The US will sell Israel 20 state-of-the-art jets, provide assurances that it will silence certain UN debates. In return it will get 90 days where settlement construction in the West Bank is halted. This is, quite obviously, an awful deal from an American perspective. Unlike his predecessor, Obama is not ideologically committed to Likud policy. Unlike other presidents he does not have the luxury of treating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a sideshow. So how did he end up in this position?

A large part of the responsibility has to fall on Obama's already burdened shoulders. In a pattern that we have all become familiar with, he begins with lofty rhetoric, adopts a moderate position, unilaterally compromises when there is no partner for compromise and then proceeds to compromise on the compromise. The initial demand was for a halt to all settlement construction, then for a temporary freeze and this time - the compromise of the compromise - for a three month freeze outside of Jerusalem. This distressingly weak habit was aggravated this time around by picking the wrong issue - the Israeli government needs to stop settlement construction, but it would be very hard for any government, let alone Netanyahu's, to halt the JCBs. By picking this as a key issue Obama has forced Abbas into a position where he cannot negotiate whilst settlement construction is ongoing, leading us to the impasse we currently face.

He has forced both parties into a corner and has not given them a way out. Perhaps Obama is secretly trying to kill off Oslo, and in that case he has my support and I commend him for his excellent manipulation of the situation. If, however, he does not reject Oslo, this is incredibly misjudged. If, however, he does think that a mythical 'final status' agreement can be reached, then he is frustrating the entire process by only allowing negotiations to occur in short windows. He has given the Israeli government the ability to hold the entire process hostage, by creating a situation where Israeli far-right cooperation is required for either of the other two parties to legitimately and effectively participate in the negotiations.

Personally, I believe Obama was gambling on his initial demand for an unconditional settlement freeze. I think he believed he had a chance, a good chance, of forcing the Israeli government into at least paying lip service to this. If he had succeeded it would have established American dominance over the US government and given the Americans greater credibility down the line in forcing the Israelis into making other difficult choices. It also would have forced the settler movement into a position where it had to decide between the US alliance or continued construction. If the gamble had paid off, then the political environment would be markedly more hospitable for doves.

To defeat the settlers, however, required facing down Netanyahu and forcing him to choose between the US and the settler movement. It required will, a will Obama lacks, as well as the almost brain-dead stubbornness needed to play chicken with a blind opponent. It became a question of who would blink first and, as per usual, it was Obama.