Palestine's New President: Portents of Peace?

The times, they are a'changin' in the Middle East. And there's reason to believe for the better.

In an election with five presidential candidates, Mahmoud Abbas is the clear winner with 66% of the popular vote.

While Abbas campaigned on former leader Yassar Arafat's call for a fully independent, internationally recognized Palestine, he appears genuinely more committed than Arafat to meaningful negotiations with Israel. More to the point, he has denounced terrorism and violence as a means to achieving nationhood, if only for pragmatic reasons.

"The only way is the choice of peace," he said in a recent newspaper interview. "It is impossible to liberate Palestine with the use of weapons because the balance of power is not with us.

"We will put the road map on the table and say that we are ready to implement it completely," Abbas said, referring to the U.S.-backed peace plan.

According to the Palestinian policy center's director, Khalil Shekakihe, the clear majority vote means that Abbas "will have the legitimacy to negotiate with the Israelis, and the Palestinian people will accept what Abu Mazen will agree on. He has a mandate from the voters."

Of course it is too early to say if Abbas will make the dramatic shift in Palestinian-Israeli relations that many are hoping (and praying) for, but there is significant reason to hope. Western nations have been favourable to Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears ready to talk.

The election, in and of itself, has been well-received.

"From now on," said 73 year-old farmer Ahmad Darawish, "Arab peoples around us need not learn democracy from the west. They can learn it from us."

"You people here," Khaldun al-Nasir, head of Jordan's nationalist centre-right Al-Ahad Party, told Aljazeera, "are practising democracy under the most difficult conditions because of the repugnant Israeli occupation. This in itself should earn you the admiration and respect of the entire world."

"Nobody can belittle this election. In time all Arabs will learn from you and democracy will spread eventually, maybe slowly but definitely."

But some locals are more skeptical.

"I am not against democracy," said construction worker Ali Hijjah. "The Arab world needs democracy, but this election under the Israeli occupation is like placing the carriage before the horse."

Well, at least it's a start. It's your turn now, Mr. Abbas. For God's sake, please do what your predecessor couldn't. Or wouldn't.

* * * * *

Related articles:

Palestinians Choose Successor to Arafat (Globe & Mail - Jan 9.05)

Democracy Reaches West Bank: Abbas Wins 66 Percent of Vote (FOXNews - Jan 9.05)

Exit Polls: Abbas Headed for Big Victory (Aljazeera - Jan 9.05)

Elections Open Gate of Change (The Australian - Jan 10.05)

Who Is Mahmoud Abbas? (CNN - Jan 7.05)

Ukraine vs. Iraq: When America Gets It Right

"Democracy is not the absence of tyranny. It has to grow from within over time, and it requires far more care and feeding than Washington seems able to give."

-- George Packer in The New Yorker, December 20 & 27, 2004 (Comment: Invasion vs. Persuasion)

Just in time, George Packer makes a compelling case for American foreign intervention that actually works. Call it Operation Ukraine. (Read the full article here.)

Contrast Ukraine with Iraq: whereas hasty, aggressive, and unilateral attempts by America to democratize the latter have met with almost universal resistance and questionable success, a much less invasive, much more sensitive and incremental approach in Ukraine over the past decade has helped that country embrace democracy with relative smoothness.

And with considerably less damage to America's global reputation.

In the Christmas edition of The New Yorker, Packer documents how the United States helped establish genuine democratic reforms in Ukraine from behind the scenes and gradually during the nineties. Financial and technical support was provided by both governmental and non-governmental organizations, and to all political parties, in order to create a truly balanced, non-partisan democracy.

With Ukraine, U.S. leaders apparently remembered that democracy "has to grow from within over time", that it can't be shoved against its will into the microwave and nuked at high without boiling over and tasting funny.

"The United States did in Ukraine exactly what it failed to do in Iraq: it upheld international standards in conjunction with democratic allies. The consequences of this failure in Iraq will always haunt the American effort here. . .Iraq has shown that a war of liberation is a crude instrument for setting a country free."

Here's hoping that Ukraine, not Iraq, serves as the model that future U.S. administrations follow in the years to come.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Democracy or Americanization?

"President Bush has put the idea of spreading democracy around the world at the rhetorical heart of American foreign policy. . .
The best role for critics in the President's second term will be not to scoff at the idea of spreading freedom but to take it seriously - to hold him to his own talk. The hard question isn't whether America should try to enlarge the democratic order, but how."

-- George Packer in The New Yorker, December 20 & 27, 2004 (Comment: Invasion vs. Persuasion)

Colour me blue and call me liberal if you really must, but I do appreciate Michael Moore. However biased or inaccurate he may be at times, few can argue that, with "Fahrenheit 9/11", he re-popularized dissent.

And yes, I believe that's a good thing, because it appears that America badly needed a wake-up call to reclaim its roots. Despite what the O'Reillys and Gibsons of the world would have us believe, dissent is not the new terrorism. On the contrary, it is what has always made America beautiful.

After all, you don't have to agree with everything Moore says. That's the great thing! Just to be able to disagree, and to believe that the act of doing so contributes to the continual fine-tuning and upgrading of our democracy, is what has (historically) made America the envy of the world.

What freaks the world out is not the (yes, sometimes trivial, other times dubious) criticisms of America's Left, but the almost religious "patriotism" of the Right.

"You can't root against your country in Iraq and still be a loyal American, period", says Bill O'Reilly. O'Really? When did lack of dissent become the defining attribute of an "American"? Is anybody else confused by the Right's version of democracy?

If Right-leaning media really speaks for the current U.S. Administration, one could be forgiven for asking: Is U.S. foreign policy really about democratizing the world, or simply about Americanizing it?

International affairs specialist John Ikenberry claims to already know the answer, stating that U.S. policy going back to Wilson, "begins with a fundamental commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor", a situation which is to be "permanent [so] that no state or coalition could ever challenge [America] as global leader, protector, and enforcer."1

I don't want to believe Ikenberry when he says that the current strategy "presents the United States [as] a revisionist state seeking to parlay its momentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show." But I'm really having trouble disagreeing with him.

And I love America!

Now that I think about it, I resent having to even say that. It bugs me that I have to defend myself against charges of anti-Americanism simply because I register concern with some things America does. I mean, is this where we've come to? After nearly 230 years of the great democratic experiment, is 21st-century America really no further beyond, and possibly even a step or two behind, its forefathers on the defining ideas of free speech and dissent?

It is this rush to marginalize dissenters that makes me wonder if it's really global democracy that U.S. foreign policy is aiming for, or if Ikenberry is right: that democracy is merely a cover for good old-fashined imperialism.

If he's wrong, then American leaders (and their media-based supporters) should welcome dissent (not only from the Moores and Stewarts, but from U.S. war veterans and families as well) as the best evidence of success. That Moore's "F9/11" was not completely blocked from release was a good sign, but I think politicians and media execs need to do more.

Blind support of America's actions in Iraq and elsewhere, whereby critics are villified and "defenders" praised, naturally leads the world to question America's motives. And no, dammit, that doesn't mean we're hateful or jealous. Just deeply concerned, because, hey, this affects us too.

I know O'Reilly and crew would love to argue that their rantings are simply one form of dissent in the thriving democracy that is America. But their comments don't merely disagree with opposite views: they marshall against the act of dissent itself, dissent in principle. They imply that criticism of the Administration is, in and of itself, un-American.

I really hope America's leaders don't agree. I concur with Packer's quote that starts this article: the time is past to simply throw rocks at Bush for going into Iraq. For better or worse, he's there. The task of the dissenter now is to make sure that when he says "democracy" in his speeches, it's actually democracy that Iraq (and the world) end up with.

It just might have helped to asked them if they wanted democracy in the first place. After all, wasn't it their democractic right to have a say in the matter?

1 John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, September-October 2002

162,000 Dead, Millions Homeless

As of this morning, the death toll in Asia (click here for details) has reached nearly 162,000, affecting at least 12 countries. Worst hit were Indonesia and Sri Lanka, whose dead or missing have accounted for nearly 89% of the total.
Tens of thousands remain unaccounted for and hundreds of foreign tourists are still missing. Some (including the World Health Organization) have already suggested that diseases resulting from the massive flooding could double the number killed by the December 26 earthquake. At least 5 million more have been left homeless.

Several of the world's richest nations (with Canada taking the lead) have announced that they will indefinitely suspend all debt for countries affected by the tsunamis. Additionally, "a spokesman said the [Canadian] government will match as much as is donated by individual Canadians up to Jan. 11", reports the Globe and Mail.

Billions of dollars in aid have already been pledged by countries around the world.

If you would like to help, contact any of the following organizations:

Canadian Red Cross: 1-800-418-1111; on-line at http://www.redcross.ca

Unicef Canada: 1-877-955-3111; on-line at http://www.unicef.ca

World Vision: 1-800-268-5528; on-line at http://www.worldvision.ca

The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace: 1-888-664-3387; on-line at http://www.devp.org

The High Commission of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka: 1-613-233-8449 or on-line at http://www.srilankahcottawa.org

The Mennonite Central Committee: 1-888-622-6337 or on-line at http://www.mcc.org/respond/rapid_respond/asiaearthquake/index.html

Or visit:

The American Red Cross

AmeriCare

Oxfam

Network for Good

CARE

ADRA International

If you are concerned about whether your donations will be used appropriately, read this article at the Globe and Mail.

No Conspiracy Required: Vaccine Development & the Squeezing Out of the Third World

"Drug companies are wary of admitting publicly what everyone knows to be true: that the size of a market affects how much they invest in it." -- James Surowiecki in The New Yorker, December 20 & 27, 2004 (The Financial Page: Push & Pull)

Years ago, I began hearing what I took to be conspiracy theories about how the rich were always looking, under one pretext or another, for ways to further marginalize the poor from "good society". The educated trying to squeeze out the illiterate, the privileged to eliminate the disadvantaged, the powerful to pulverize the powerless.

Although the idea had a certain dramatic appeal, I, of course, quickly dismissed these as both exaggeration and oversimplification. Nothing, I knew, could be as cloak and dagger, as black and white, as all that.

More recently, however, I've come to realize that no such Social Darwinist conspiracy is required to nonetheless marginalize and ultimately wipe out an entire people group from good global society.

Reading James Surowiecki's recent editorial on vaccine development, for example, it is clear that modern market forces connected with the pharmaceutical industry prevent any meaningful solutions to Africa's disease problem. Consciously or not, the result is a culling of the population several times more effective than the most determined campaign of military genocide.

"Usually," writes Surowiecki, "a company that invents something useful doesn't have much trouble selling it. But vaccines - especially for diseases in the developing world - are notorious exceptions to this rule. To begin with, Third World countries have unimaginably tiny amounts to spend on public health. (The poorer African countries spend eighteen dollars per person a year on health. We spend five thousand dollars.)"

This, of course, virtually guarantees that disease will continue to be a part of daily life on that continent for years to come.

"Drug companies," he continues, "have put very little money into vaccine research. They'd much rather invest in an anti-arthritis drug that well-insured Americans will take every day than a vaccine that may command a fair price. (Just a few years ago, a promising malaria-vaccine candidate that had been tested in Papua, New Guinea was abandoned for lack of funding.) Meanwhile, diseases like malaria and tuberculosis have continued to ravage the Third World. Hundred of millions of people are newly affected every year."

Surowiecki does offer a couple of proactive solutions that could level the playing field and give meaningful vaccine development for the Third World a chance. Nonetheless, I couldn't help notice the net result of the current situation:

"The burden of disease has helped keep sub-Saharan Africa poor" and the population in check.

Am I accusing governments of conspiring with drug companies to squeeze out Africa's debt-, disease-, and poverty-ridden populations? No. Tempting as it is, I still refuse to believe that. But conspiracy or no, I can't help but wonder if, on some unconscious level, there isn't some grain of truth in those old rumours.

Boxing Day Hell in Asia

Christmas was a quiet one for me this year. My kids were with their mom visiting her family, so it was just me and Santa on Christmas day.

I pulled the graveyard shift on Christmas eve, finishing work at seven in the morning and finally crawling into bed around eight. When I woke up at three thirty that afternoon, I drove to seven eleven, bought myself a Hungry Man turkey T.V. dinner and a Pepsi, and came home to have a quiet Christmas dinner with Alastair Sim, still my favourite Scrooge (1951).

I was feeling mildly sorry for myself until I turned on the news the next day. Suddenly, I felt pretty good about my life.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing: an earthquake centred in the Indian Ocean, and so huge it had actually affected the earth's rotation, had in the space of a few minutes killed over 14,000 people in 9 countries. And those numbers were just a preliminary count.

As of today, the official count (which doesn't include foreign tourists) sits at around 23,000:

Sri Lanka - 12,029

Indonesia - 4,991

India - 2,958

Thailand - 866

Malaysia - 52+

Maldives - 43+

Somalia - 3,000

Bangladesh - 2

It might seem a little off topic to comment here at the Nuggery, but since this site is about people and their relationships, it seemed entirely appropriate. My heart absolutely breaks for the tens of thousands of families affected by this massive tragedy.

I can't remember a disaster in my lifetime like it. 23,000. To give us generally unaffected westerners some perspective, that's roughly September 11 times eight. Of course, the numbers are only going to increase over the next few days and weeks.

Like a lot of people, I'm asking, why did this happen, where is God, what could have been done to better prepare people in the affected regions. All good questions.

But right now, I'm mainly just thinking about the families - the wives and husbands, the fathers and mothers, the orphans - who have to bury their kids, their spouses, their parents today. I can't even begin to relate to that kind of suffering, never mind the anguish of having to rebuild lives without homes and where most of the drinking water is now contaminated.

We can only do what we can do. If you are able to help, click here for a complete list of donor agencies.

The O'Reilly Fracture: How FOXNews' Biggest Big Mouth Hurts America

"You can't root against your country in Iraq and still be a loyal American, period." -- Bill O'Reilly, Dissent or Disloyalty?, FOXNews (December 20, 2004)

Bill O'Reilly (FOXNews) leaves me baffled most of the time. While I sometimes appreciate his POV, on the whole, I can't figure out if he rants to the Right just to be a shit disturber or if he actually believes the stuff he writes.

Take, for example, his winsome and balanced take on Canadian-American relations in an editorial for the Toronto Star:

"Canada needs America. America does not need Canada. As soon as both countries realize this, we can start the healing process. We can, hopefully, forgive Canada for its strange and outrageous behaviour in recent years. . . Look. North Korea and Iran are our new priorities. But Canada needs to proceed with caution. No more whining about softwood lumber. No more diseased cattle. Otherwise, regime change may be our only option."

Yes, O'Reilly's article is meant to be taken lightly. No, he doesn't really feel that way. Or does he?

Judging by similar articles, like "Hating America", or "Why Is Canada So Tiresome?" by fellow FOXNews editorialist John Gibson, I'd say O'Reilly is only half-joking. At best.

Does O'Reilly really think this kind of cocky insult-polemic is going to win the hearts and minds of Canadians? That it will somehow rouse us (with the rest of the world) to an "ah yes, now we get it" acknowledgement of America's rightness?

Is it supposed to bring (or shame) us to our senses, showing us how wrong we've been: that America really doesn't have an attitude problem when it comes to dealing with its enemies, and even with its allies?

Maybe O'Reilly doesn't get how ignorant he sounds.

I mean he can't really believe, like a surprising number of other American political writers, that Canadian mistrust of American leadership is simply the result of envy.

That a majority of nations, polled by the U.N. as having greater concern with George W. Bush's leadership than they had with Saddam Hussein's, are simply jealous or misinformed.

Hey, I'm Canadian. I'm just trying to be polite and give him the benefit of the doubt.

But speaking of Canada, does O'Reilly really not see that millions of Americans share deep misgivings over U.S. domestic and foreign policy all by themselves, completely without the help of their neighbours to the North?

Apparently he does. And such dissent is, in his opinion, tatamount to treason:

"There are some Americans who actually want the USA to lose in Iraq, primarily so that President Bush will look bad. Few will admit that, but it does exist, primarily on the far Left. . .But losing in Iraq means more U.S. casualties, so Americans cannot hold that sentiment and still be called loyal. Let me repeat that. You can't root against your country in Iraq and still be a loyal American, period. If you don't believe me, I will take you to see a double amputee U.S. Marine. And you can tell him to his face that you want the USA to lose in Iraq. Are you willing to do that?"

Now I get his point about supporting U.S. troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and not wishing them ill. Both they and the people of those countries are going through hell on earth, and as much as I strongly object to the war, I believe that simply pulling out or booing their efforts would, at this point, be morally wrong.

But I'm nervous about O'Reilly's (and Gibson's) almost fanatical insistence that having a problem with anything America does is proof of ignorance, international envy, or "Leftist anti-Americanism."

On this basis, John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (and a Republican), must be branded un-American for his excellent and most certainly patriotic editorial in the Union Leader questioning George W. Bush's and the Republican party's policies.

Groups like Iraqi Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and MotherSpeak, comprised of those in the best position to comment on American wars abroad - the soldiers - are nothing more than bands of disaffected traitors, not to be viewed as real Americans, and certainly not to be heard.

What an insult to those O'Reilly would pretend to defend.

In the early stages of the war in Iraq, I shook my head when French Fries became Freedom Fries at the nation's capital. (Come on, guys, how insecure is that?) I was disappointed by the hyper-negative reaction of Americans to Dixie Chick Natalie Maines' anti-Bush comments. And of course, as a Canadian, I've had a growing concern for years about the escalating Canadian-American banter that keeps kicking the crap out of a relationship we all know is important. (Okay, Bill, yes Canada needs America. But get over yourself. Read Fox vs Canada: When Did "Canadian" Become A Dirty Word? @ prettypolitical.com)

But I think what bugs me most is when big players like O'Reilly so completly miss the point and confuse the American public regarding issues on which clarity is so badly needed, chipping away at relationships the U.S. should be building and nourishing. Now is the time for heroic diplomacy, not aimless personal attacks on those who are otherwise deeply committed to what America stands for.

In fact, by his own standard, I'm beginning to question O'Reilly's patriotism. I mean, if he's such an American, why does he keep saying things that only serve to hurt America?

He is is entitle to his opinion, of course. Judging by some of his past articles and interviews, he does, on occasion, have something interesting and constructive to say. But if all he's looking for is a tree to piss on, I'm sure there's one or two in his own backyard that would be happy to oblige. If international support for America is what he's hunting, he's got his gun pointed in the wrong direction.

Cold New World

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

It's not news that North America's top corporations are doing better than ever while the average North American is falling on harder times than at any time in the past quarter century.

In his groundbreaking 1998 book Cold New World, journalist William Finnegan summarizes this reality after nearly a decade's worth of travel and research across America's urban and rural hard places: "While the national economy has been growing, the economic prospects of most Americans has been dimming."

What does this look like for the average North American?

"For young people and males and those without advanced degrees - for, that is, the large majority of working [North] Americans - reall hourly wages have fallen significantly over the past twenty-four years. Even during the time since I began this book, a period marked economically by low inflation, one of the great bull markets in Wall Street history, and an unemployment rate that has reached, as I write, its lowest level in twenty-four years, the median household income has fallen and national poverty reate has risen. What the triumphalism of most American business writing ignores is a frightening growth in the number of low-wage jobs." (xi)

In other words, unprecedented corportate profits aren't trickling down to the little guy, the worker who actually makes those profits happen.

Some would argue (and with a degree of merit) that it's neither the goal nor the function of corporations to "share the wealth." Corporations are not in business to improve the standard of living of their employees, by creating some kind of internal profit sharing-based welfare system. They exist to make money, plain and simple. And what exactly is wrong with that?

Workers are taken care of, so the argument goes. Labour unions have done more than enough to level the playing field. They've made the workplace safer, safeguarded workers against arbitrary demands and dismissal, gained legal protections against abusive treatment by employers, fought for minimum wage and won. (Some, including this author, would even say unions have gone too far sometimes, asking more from employers than was either fair or reasonable.) Whether by choice or political pressure - and a stronger case can be for the latter, in my opinion - corporations today treat their workers much more fairly than did the sweat shops of the nascent industrial revolution a century or so ago.

So why make more demands? Yes, many corporations make obscene profits; but that's just the way capitalism works. Why should we ask big business to do any more than they already have?

Bypassing all appeals to altruism - even though I think that is where the best arguments lie - I'll jump straight to simple economics.

From a purely selfish profit perspective, it just doesn't make sense to leave your employees out when it comes to a fair and reasonable wage. Because the ultimate survival, not only of corporations, but of the entire Western - and by extension, the global - economy depends on people being paid well for the work they do.

Here's how. Some experts have suggested that a "contributing member of society" is, by definition, a consumer. Let's assume this is true. After all, who can deny that consumption is the heart and blood of capitalism, and that it is this which keeps our Western economy (and standard of living) alive? The math, therefore, is simple:

1. A society built on the principle of consumption requires consumers.

2. Consumers requires money to consume.

3. To have enough money to consume, a consumer must have a source of adequate income.

4. Therefore, workers who are paid barely enough to pay their bills simply cannot consume beyond this, except by indenturing themselves (a topic that will get special treatment in a differnt article). This obviously limits the number of products and services sold and thus threatens the bottom line.

It also begs the question: will corporations really gain anything in the long run via their current techniques of "staying competitive"?

Is this not the epitome of the old saying, "What does it really profit a company, if it gains the whole world but loses its own soul?"

But that's looking at it from a purely selfish point of view.

CEOs, what about the people who work for you? Do you feel any responsibility to them? Or should they just be happy they have a job at all? Do you really not feel there's anything unfair in the disparity between your $30 million and the floor guy's $15,000? Has business leadership's Ethical Imperative been lost in a hostile takeover by Expediency, Inc.?

I know your books tell you what's profitable. But what does your gut say is right?

Don't get me wrong: I think top executives who do their job should be paid well, even very well. They carry huge responsibilities that come with big stresses. I'm not looking for an equalization of wages. But something is clearly amiss when, as Benjamin DeMott puts it, "within our borders an opportunity society and a caste society co-exist".

I'm not suggesting corporations should pay their workers too much, though that, of course, depends on one's definition of "too much". The point is moot, really: Most North Americans aren't in any immediate danger of living too well - though this can't be said for senior executives whose salaries have been rising in direct proportion to the drop or stasis in average wages.

Is this capitalism at its finest?

Is this the "better way", the new global market economy we are so urgently, even fanatically, preaching and pressuring other nations to embrace? And better for who, exactly?

Now is the time when we can turn this thing around. Judging by history, however, and by our political responses to other issues such as, say, the environment, I'm not anticipating a turnaround anytime soon. Perhaps not, as usual, until it's too late.

Oh well, there's always revolution.