The Unholy Alliance Of Blackwater Mercenaries With The UAE Rulers

After all those serious incidents of unprovoked murderous orgy of unarmed civilians in Iraq by the trigger-happy mercenaries working as contractors for the U.S. State Department in the post-Saddam era, we thought that we had seen the last of Blackwater and its CEO Erik Prince. But we were wrong. Utterly wrong!

By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
May 24, 2011
Courtesy Of "Iviews"

Remember Blackwater USA, the private military group, which worked as contractors for the U.S. State Department? Since June 2004, it has been paid more than $320 million out of State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protective Service, which protects U.S. officials and some foreign officials in conflict zones. Inside Iraq alone, at one time, it employed no less than 20,000 armed security forces. In the post-Saddam Iraq, they drew much notoriety for their trigger-happy, gung ho attitude. Between 2005 and September 2007, Blackwater security staffs were involved in 195 shooting incidents; in 163 of those cases, Blackwater personnel fired first. 

On March 31, 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah attacked a convoy containing four Blackwater contractors. According to Iraqi accounts, the men broke into homes and raped some women. The four contractors were attacked and killed with grenades and small arms. Later their bodies were hung from a bridge crossing the Euphrates. In April 2005 six Blackwater independent contractors were killed in Iraq when their Mi-8 helicopter was shot down. 

On February 16, 2005, four Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. State Department convoy in Iraq fired 70 rounds into a car. An investigation by the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service concluded that the shooting was not justified and that the Blackwater employees provided false statements to investigators. The false statements claimed that the one of the Blackwater vehicles had been hit by insurgent gunfire, but the investigation found that one of the Blackwater guards had actually fired into his own vehicle by accident. However, John Frese, the U.S. embassy in Iraq's top security official, declined to punish Blackwater or the security guards because he believed any disciplinary actions would lower the morale of the mercenary group.

On February 6, 2006 a sniper employed by Blackwater Worldwide opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry, killing three guards working for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network. Many Iraqis at the scene said that the guards had not fired on the Justice Ministry. On Christmas Eve 2006, a security guard of the Iraqi vice president was shot and killed while on duty outside the Iraqi prime minister's compound by an employee of Blackwater USA. Five Blackwater contractors were killed on January 23, 2007 when their helicopter was shot down on Baghdad's Haifa Street. In late May 2007, Blackwater contractors opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days, one of the incidents provoking a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos. On May 30, 2007, Blackwater employees shot an Iraqi civilian who was said to have been "driving too close" to a State Department convoy that was being escorted by Blackwater contractors. 

The Iraqi Government revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq on September 17, 2007, because of the death of seventeen Iraqis. The fatalities occurred while a Blackwater Private Security Detail (PSD) was escorting a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with USAID officials. As in many other previous cases, here again, it was found that Blackwater's guards had opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. The incident sparked at least five investigations, and an FBI probe found that Blackwater Employees used lethal force recklessly. The license was reinstated by the American government in April 2008, but in early 2009 the Iraqis announced that they have refused to extend that license.

Documents obtained from the Iraq War document leak argue that Blackwater employees have committed serious abuses in Iraq, including killing civilians. In the fall of 2007, a congressional report by the House Oversight Committee found that Blackwater intentionally "delayed and impeded" investigations into the contractors' deaths (of March 31, 2004). 

So negative was the public perception of the mercenary group, it had to change its name twice - first in October 2007 to Blackwater Worldwide and then to Xe Services LLC in February of 2009. 

After all those serious incidents of unprovoked murderous orgy of unarmed civilians in Iraq by the trigger-happy mercenaries working as contractors for the U.S. State Department in the post-Saddam era, we thought that we had seen the last of Blackwater and its CEO Erik Prince. But we were wrong. Utterly wrong! We forgot that evil sells big time! An ugly monster is more preferable to a Mafia Don than an attractive good hearted man. 

Erik Prince has settled in Abu Dhabi, and has opened a mercenary wing there. It goes by the name Reflex Responses. The company, often called R2, was licensed last March. Outside Americans, Brits, French and some Colombians, R2 has recruited a platoon of South African mercenaries, including some veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African company notorious for staging coup attempts or suppressing rebellions against African strongmen in the 1990s. 

Last week the New York Times (NYT) had a detailed report on this mercenary group which is employed by - who else this time but - the oil-soaked Emirates prince Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi to protect the sheikdom from threat. The lucrative deal is worth $529 million. R2 spends roughly $9 million per month maintaining the battalion, which includes expenditures for employee salaries, ammunition and wages for dozens of domestic workers who cook meals, wash clothes and clean the camp.

Emirati law prohibits disclosure of incorporation records for businesses, which typically list company officers, but it does require them to post company names on offices and storefronts. Over the past year, the sign outside the suite has changed at least twice - it now says Assurance Management Consulting.

We are told that the foreign military force was planned months before the so-called Arab Spring revolts that many experts believe are unlikely to spread to the U.A.E. People involved in the project and American officials of R2 told the NYT reporters that the Emiratis were interested in deploying the R2 battalion to respond to terrorist attacks and put down uprisings inside the country's sprawling labor camps, which house the Pakistanis, Filipinos and other foreigners who make up the bulk of the country's work force. 

It is worth pointing out that the UAE is the abysmal bottom of today's Arab world without democracy. Through its unfathomable wealth it has transformed itself into a new high-tech federation that is lived by two low-life communities - a body of modernist Arab (21% of population) and western capitalists (8%) in total play-mode, who have very little touch with the great deen of Islam, and a body of foreign migrant workers (totaling 71%) -- 27% Indians, 20% Pakistanis, 8% Bangladeshis, and 16% other Asians -- unpaid or underpaid, without papers or their own (confiscated) passports, working all-day in any heat without medical aid or supervision. Like the Egyptian slaves of the Biblical times, these migrant workers - denied their basic human rights -- are the modern-day slaves that have built the Burj Khalifah (the tallest building in the world) and continue to build a playground for the world's capitalist elite - a zone without rules and without fear of recourse to law. As noted recently by Shaykh Abdal Qadir as-Sufi, "There are no suicide-bombers in the U.A.E.; only the weekly suicide of a worker in despair of his salary, his work conditions, his foul dormitory and his future." 

The UAE, like many of the Gulf states, has a highly discriminatory pay-scale that is based on one's nationality. For example, the top wage earners are white westerners (from the USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand) followed by the GCC nationals, East Asians (from Japan, Korea), South-east Asians (from Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand), South Asians (from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh) and other African countries (in that order).

While the corrupt princes and sheiks live an opulent life of parasites drawing benefits from God's gift to the nation - the oil and natural gas resources -- and the fruit of the labor of their 'slave' workers that work in those oil and natural gas fields, the construction industry and the shops or malls, these workers are paid some of the lowest salaries imaginable. The building workers work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and are paid around 370 AED ($100) per month. The 'workers' are bound by the Kafala System not to move from their job to another one, and are 'tied' to their employer. Employers house workers in dormitories known as labor camps, usually on the edge of urban zones. In Al-Quoz and in Sonopar in Dubai the typical dwelling for an average construction worker is a small room (120 sft) which must take up to eight workers. Al-Quoz Camp has 7,500 migrant workers sharing 1,248 rooms. Withholding of wages, in total disregard of the Islamic ruling, is commonplace. The greedy employers don't like their Muslim workers to fast during the month of Ramadhan, fearing that their labor efficiency would go down.

In May 2010 hundreds of workers marched from their Sharjah Labour Camp to the Ministry in Dubai demanding to be sent home. They claimed they were unpaid for over six months and were kept in squalor. The authorities finally sent home 700 stranded from Sharjah's Al-Sajar Labor Camp.

So, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand the rationale behind the deployment of R2 in the UAE. The authorities are afraid of these low paid workers and their legitimate rights of which they are robbed. The unholy alliance with a hated trigger-happy murderous group like Blackwater has much to do about containing potential labor unrest, and thus avoiding catastrophes like the ones visited by the former Shah of Iran, and Zine ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. But as history has shown so many times when the time comes no mercenary group can protect an unpopular regime.

In recent years, the Emirati government has showered American defense companies with billions of dollars to help strengthen the country's security. A company run by Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser during the Clinton and Bush administrations, has won several lucrative contracts to advise the U.A.E. on how to protect its infrastructure.

Emirati military officials had promised that if Erik Prince's first battalion of R2 was a success, they would pay for an entire brigade of several thousand men. The new contracts would be worth billions, and would help with Mr. Prince's next big project: a desert training complex for foreign troops patterned after Blackwater's compound in Moyock, N.C.

In a recent spring night after months stationed in the desert, the R2 mercenaries boarded an unmarked bus and were driven to hotels in central Dubai. There, some R2 executives had arranged for them to spend the evening with prostitutes. Where else in the Arab world but UAE can one find such displays of sexually immoral acts?

In a well-known hadith, Muhammad (S), the Prophet of Islam, said, "Allah the Most High says: 'There will be three persons against whom I shall fight on the Day of Judgment: (1) the person who makes a promise with an oath in My name and then breaks it, (2) the person who sells a free man as slave and appropriates his sale proceeds, and (3) the person who engages a workman and having taken full work from him fails to pay him his dues.'" [Bukhari: Abu Hurayrah (RA)]

Muhammad (S) also said, "Give the laborer his wages before his sweat dries." [Ibn Majah: Abdullah b. Umar (RA)]

Something has gone profoundly wrong in the Arab world. The once camel-riding and tent-dwelling, and now jet-flying and high-rise-dwelling modern-day Arabs of the desert had been so busy taking on the modalities and values of modern techno-society that they had completely lost the Deen in all its civic and spiritual identity. They forgot that the best security comes not from mercenaries but from a satisfied workforce that are treated fairly and humanly. 

*****

Dr Habib Siddiqui has authored nine books. His book: "Democracy, Politics and Terrorism - America's Quest for Security in the Age of Insecurity" is available at Amazon.com.

War Dictatorship

By Jacob G. Hornberger
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Courtesy Of "The Future Of Freedom Foundation"

Yesterday, I wrote about the president’s dictatorial power regarding the waging of war. I pointed out that when it comes to war, the president can now violate with impunity the constitutional provision requiring him to secure a declaration of war from Congress before waging war. This power to violate the Constitution effectively gives dictatorial power to the president, given that he is free to use his military to start wars whenever and wherever he wants.

There are two supplemental points I wish to make here. The first involves the Supreme Court and the second explains why this dictatorial power presents such a grave threat to the fundamental rights and liberties of the American people.

Given the clear unconstitutionality of the president’s violation of the declaration-of-war requirement, why hasn’t the Supreme Court declared it to be unconstitutional? Isn’t that job of the Court?

The Constitution does not expressly delegate to the judicial branch the power to declare congressional laws and presidential actions unconstitutional. In the famous 1803 case of Marbury vs. Madison, however, the Supreme Court held that the Framers intended the federal judiciary to be the final arbiter of constitutionality, given the nature of the judicial branch of government.

The natural question arose: Would the other two branches of government go along with the Court’s ruling? By and large, they have done so. Under our system of government, the Supreme Court became the final decider of what was constitutional and what wasn’t.

With the rise of the national-security state and the Cold War after World War II, however, things changed, at least insofar as the waging of war was concerned.

Keep in mind that prior to that time, it was commonly understood that the president was required by the Constitution to secure a declaration of war prior to waging war. That was why, for example, President Roosevelt went to Congress for a declaration of war against Japan in World War II, even though Japan had already initiated hostilities against the United States.

After World War II, however, presidents decided to simply violate this important constitutional constraint on power. The Korean War. The Vietnam War. The Persian Gulf War. The Afghan War. The Iraq War. And the military attacks on such countries as Grenada, Panama, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and others.

No congressional declaration of war in any of them. A clear violation of law — the law that the Framers imposed on federal officials when the federal government was called into existence by the Constitution.

So, why didn’t the Supreme Court declare such wars to be unconstitutional? The answer is: Because the Court knew that the president would never comply with its ruling anyway, and the Court knew that it had no way to enforce its judgment against the president.

Of course, that’s not the reason given by the Court. Over the years, the Court has used fancy technical contortions to avoid ruling on the issue. It would hold, for example, that the person suing for a declaration of unconstitutionality lacked the necessary “standing” to bring the action, but it soon became clear that under the Court’s view no one could ever have the necessary standing, thereby ensuring that the Court wouldn’t have to rule on the issue. Or the Court would say that it was precluded from ruling on “political questions,” ignoring the fact that a “political question” didn’t relieve the Court of its constitutional responsibility to declare an action or law unconstitutional.

It has always been an elaborate cover, one designed to avoid showing the American people and the world that the president of the United States now wielded total power when it came to waging war and that when it comes to this particular part of the Constitution, the Supreme Court is impotent. Its self-declared role as the final arbiter of constitutionality, as declared in Marbury vs. Madison, is no longer operative when it comes to the president’s decision-making power to wage war.

By resorting to fancy legal contortions to avoid ruling on the constitutionality of presidential wars, the Court has been able to maintain the façade that America’s ruler is still operating under constitutional restraints, when in reality, by virtue of the fact that our ruler is now free to violate this critically important part of the Constitution, he now wields the same omnipotent power wielded by foreign dictators.

Why is the power to violate this particular provision of the Constitution so important? Libya provides a microcosm of how this dictatorial power relates to the rights and freedoms of the American people.

The president initiates a war against Libya, a country that has not attacked the United States, thereby once again making the United States the aggressor in a war. Libyan soldiers are killed and maimed. They have friends and relatives and people in the Middle East who sympathize with them. Some of the sympathizers make their way to the United States and retaliate, say, with strikes against the Pentagon and the Capitol.

Needless to say, U.S. officials would immediately label the strikers as terrorists rather than as soldiers fighting a war, one that the United States initiated against their country. In the eyes of U.S. officials, a terrorist is any person who opposes the president’s wars.

That would mean a renewal of the perpetual war on terrorism, a “war” that itself arose out of foreign retaliation for pre-9/11 U.S. aggression in the Middle East. The terror alerts would be elevated. And you know what that would mean: A new round of infringements on the rights and liberties of the American people — more fondling at the airports, more Patriot Acts with sharper teeth, more national-security letters, more illegal spying on Americans, more arbitrary arrests, more torture, more indefinite detentions, more dungeons, more kangaroo tribunals, more assassinations, more centralization of power, more regulation, more bureaucratization, more drug war, and higher spending, taxes, debts, and inflation.

And, of course, if the war expands to include other countries, there is always the ever-present threat of conscription, an unconstitutional power akin to slavery, hanging over America’s youth.

Madison was right: Of all the enemies to liberty, war is the biggest. Obviously dictatorship — that is, the power of a ruler to initiate war on his own initiative — is a close second.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Hornberger’s Blog Archives

War On Terror Is A Fraud

By Andrew J. Bacevich
May 24, 2011
Courtesy Of "The American Conservative Magazine"

The killing of Osama bin Laden settles nothing, decides nothing, and repairs nothing. Yet the passing of the al-Qaeda leader just might serve an important purpose. We confront a moment of revelation: Coming across bin Laden comfortably ensconced in a purpose-built compound in the middle of a Pakistani city down the street from the nation’s premier military academy should demolish once and for all any illusions that Americans retain about their so-called Global War on Terror. The needle, it turns out, was not in the haystack but tucked safely away in our neighbor’s purse—the very same neighbor who professed to be searching high and low to locate that needle. Think we’ve been had?

Bin Laden was an indubitably evil figure. Yet the historical drama in which he played a role is not a morality play. Its central theme is not good vs. evil. It is instead the pursuit of power and advantage by whatever means necessary. In short, the theme is politics—dirty, cutthroat, no holds barred.

In the wake of 9/11, President George W. Bush and more than a few other Americans insisted otherwise. The issue, they asserted, was freedom vs. oppression; civilization vs. barbarism; tolerance vs. bigotry; the law-abiding vs. the law-defiling; peacemakers vs. those who engaged in wanton slaughter; those committed to serving God’s purposes vs. those who twisted God’s words to serve their own malevolent ends.

As in the early days of the Cold War, Washington divided the world into two neatly defined opposing camps. “You are either with us,” Bush declared ten days after 9/11, “or you are with the terrorists.” There was no third alternative, no in-between, and no opting out.

The government of Pakistan, hesitating briefly, chose to be “with us.” Overnight, it became a valued partner. Pakistani interests and U.S. interests now aligned, bonded by the paramount importance of eliminating the threat of al-Qaeda. America’s enemies were now Pakistan’s enemies and vice versa—this at least was the prevailing assumption.

From the outset, that assumption was utterly false.

During the decades prior to 9/11, Washington’s relations with Islamabad had suffered through many ups and downs, the United States embracing Pakistan as an ally when it was convenient to do so and otherwise giving Pakistan the back of its hand. Neither the Pakistani elite nor the man in the street had any reason to trust Washington.

So despite constant cajoling and complaint, with generous U.S. military and economic subsidies thrown in, Pakistani efforts to snuff out Islamic radicalism have been, at best, half-hearted. Indeed, Pakistan is itself a state supporter of terrorism (directed against its archenemy, India) and in all likelihood would like to see the Taliban restored to power in Afghanistan (again as a curb against Indian influence).

Dissatisfied with Pakistani efforts to clean out Taliban sanctuaries inside its borders, the United States has taken matters into its own hands, expanding the use of missile-firing drones within Pakistan itself. Unwilling to acknowledge that they allow U.S. forces routinely to disregard their country’s sovereignty, senior Pakistani officials profess shock and dismay, thereby encouraging Pakistani anti-Americanism. Based on all- but-irrefutable evidence, it turns out that they have for years been harboring America’s public enemy number one.

Already in crisis, the relationship between the United States and Pakistan now stands on the brink of collapse. Diplomats will attempt to paper over the differences, with one side offering lies that the other side may pretend to believe. Their efforts may succeed in creating some semblance of normality. Yet it will be no more than a semblance.

More important is this: restoring even the appearance of purposefulness to the enterprise once known as the Global War on Terror has now become impossible. That war is a fraud. It exists only as a figment of American imagination. At great cost to itself and others, the United States has been playing the wrong game, falling prey to the tricks of its erstwhile friends, unable to recognize who its enemies actually are.

War on Terror: The End? A Symposium.

Andrew Bacevich: War on Terror Is a Fraud
David Rieff: Fighting the Last War
Jacob Heilbrunn: Death of the Bush Doctrine
Adam Garfinkle: Reform the Reforms
Michael C. Desch: How Much Does Osama Matter?
Ivan Eland: Declare Victory and Come Home

Even Alleged Terrorists Have Authentic Grievances

From Sirhan To Bin Laden: U.S. Was Warned About Nakba

By Dallas Darling
Courtesy Of "World News Network"

Even alleged terrorists have authentic grievances, obvious truths that cannot be denied in regards to state-sponsored terrorism. This ancient certainty was again revealed when Israeli soldiers shot and massacred over twenty Palestinian protesters and wounded hundreds more. Their crime was commemorating the Nakba, an event when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed or militarily forced to flee their homes while Israel became a new state. The Palestinian protesters, killed alongside steel barricades in Lebanon, and the Occupied Golan Heights and Gaza Strip and West Bank, were not only calling attention to Palestine's Nakba, also known as the Day of Catastrophe and a tragic remembrance which Israel has outlawed and tried to eliminate, but they were also demonstrating on behalf of Palestinian refugees and their right to return to their homelands.

In 1948, when the Truman Administration and much of the United States recognized the creation of Israel even before the United Nations did and immediately provided aid and military support, Palestinian survivors of Deir Yassin were striped naked, loaded onto open trucks and paraded through Jerusalem where they were spat upon, beaten and stoned. The Zionists laughed and clapped as the women had their breasts cut. One passing Palestinian mother quickly pulled her young child away from the horror-filled scene, but not before he cried out, "Momma, look at the blood." His name was Sirhan Sirhan.(1) After assassinating Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and at his trial, Sirhan delivered a grievance, a warning to the United States concerning its unwavering support of Israel at the expense of Palestinian refugees.

"Well, sir, when you move-when you move a whole country," said Sirhan, "a whole people, bodily from their own homes, from their own land, from their businesses, sir, outside their country, and introduce an alien people, sir, into Palestine-the Jews and the Zionists-that is completely wrong, sir, and it is unjust and the Palestinian Arabs didn't do a thing, sir, to justify the way they were treated by the West." He explained how forced relocations and massacres deeply affected him asking, "Where is the justice involved, sir? Where is the love, sir, for fighting for the underdog? Israel is not underdog in the Middle East, sir. It's those refugees that are underdogs. And because they have no way of fighting back, sir, the Jews, sir, the Zionists, just keep beating away at them. Than burned the hell out of me."(2)

In his final audiotape and just before his assassination, Osama bin Laden warned the United States and Americans that they would not live in safety until the Palestinians lived in security. A sickly and pale-looking bin Laden declared, "America will not be able to dream of security until we live in security in Palestine. It is unfair that you live in peace while our brothers in Gaza live in insecurity." Like Sirhan, bin Laden was thinking back to 1982 when he witnessed the United States and its warships bombing, killing, and wounding many Palestinian refugees in Lebanon while other fled in terror. In "The Towers Of Lebanon," bin Laden wrote, "I still remember those distressing scenes: blood, torn limbs, women and children massacred. All over the place, houses were being destroyed and tower blocks were collapsing, crushing their residents, while bombs rained down mercilessly on our homes."(3)

And like Sirhan, bin Laden wondered how the "whole world" could hear and see what had happened but still do nothing. In another letter, this one entitled "To The Americans," bin Laden explains why he is fighting the United States and its military and what he wants. The very first reason he expresses is: "Because you attacked us and continue to attack us. You attacked us in Palestine."(4) According to bin Laden, "Palestine, which has foundered under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction, and devastation...The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally avenged."(5)

The United States and Americans must someday realize that Arab Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone; and their peaceful protesters slaughtered by Israeli soldiers do not die alone.

Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)

(Note: While abhorring the violent acts committed by both Sirhan and bin Laden, Palestinians should be commended for their nonviolent Intifada uprisings. Also, to this day Sirhan claims to have no memory of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. Some speculate that it might have been a Central Intelligence Agency mind control experiment-MKULTRA-that went wrong.)

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)

(1) Smith, Michael K. Portraits of Empire: Unmasking Imperil Illusions from the "American Century" to the "War on Terror." Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press: 2003., p. 32.

(2) Ibid., p. 137.

(3) Lawrence, Bruce, Messages To The World: The Statements Of Osama Bin Laden. New York, New York: Verso Publishers., p. 239.

(4) Ibid., p. 240.

The Cause Of Violent Extremism

By Tom Coghlan, In London
From: The Times
May 28, 2011 12:00AM
Courtesy Of "The Australian"

Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent who directed the "Alec Station" dedicated bin Laden CIA team during the 1990s, said that far from winning the war, the West was losing and did not understand the conflict.

"In 2001, (al-Qa'ida) was overwhelmingly based in Afghanistan. It still has a part of Afghanistan. It now has a big slice of Pakistan, (and is) firmly established in Yemen and recovering in Iraq."

He said it had influence in Somalia and "worrisome" strength in the Maghreb that would probably grow given events in Libya. "We have not yet seen the extent of Salafism (from which al-Qa'ida derives much of its ideology) coming into Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan because of taking out Saddam. How can growth geographically and apparently in numbers translate into a weaker organisation?"

He said US foreign policy and Western intervention defined its relationship with the Muslim world. "There are almost 900 pages of primary sources on bin Laden - sermons, speeches, etc ... There is almost nothing in there about waging a war against the West for its freedoms or liberty or gender equality or drinking alcohol.

"It is support for Israel, support for the Saudi police state, it's our presence in the Arab peninsula, it's support for the Russians in the Islamic Caucasus. There is no more effective recruiter for al-Qa'ida than the status quo of American foreign policy."

Time For The US To Confront Its Coups

By Jacob G. Hornberger
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Courtesy Of "The Future Of Freedom Foundation"

Two Latin American countries — Chile and Guatemala — are confronting coups of long ago that ousted democratically elected presidents and installed U.S.-supported unelected dictators in their stead.

In 1973 Chilean Army Gen. Augusto Pinochet ousted democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende from office in a violent coup. Allende died during the coup, and it has always been commonly accepted that he committed suicide. This week, however, his body is being exhumed to determine whether he really took his own life or was killed by Pinochet’s goons.

After taking power, Pinochet pursued the same types of policies that the U.S. government has employed since the 9/11 attacks — arbitrary arrests, torture, indefinite detention, and murder of prisoners. Of course, Pinochet cited the communist threat as his rationale while U.S. officials have cited the terrorist threat as their rationale.

Ever since the Chilean coup, the U.S. government has maintained that it played no role in the coup, notwithstanding the fact that it has been well-established that the U.S. government did everything it could to prevent Allende from coming to power and then encouraged his ouster from office.

What is unclear, however, is how the U.S. government can reconcile its position claiming non-involvement in the coup with the fact that the CIA played an as-yet-undefined role in the killing of a young American journalist named Charles Horman during the coup.

For decades, U.S. officials had denied any participation in Horman’s murder but finally, in 1999, the U.S. State Department released a document stating that the CIA had, in fact, played a role in Horman’s murder. The document revealing the information had been released to the Horman family 20 years previously but with the critical information about the CIA’s participation in the murder blacked out for “national security” reasons, which means, of course, that U.S. officials were intentionally covering up the CIA’s participation in Horman’s murder.

What was the CIA’s role in the murder? Did they shoot the young American journalist at point blank range? Did they stick a knife in his heart? Did they torture him to death?

We don’t know. When the document was finally released to the Hormans in 1999, it still contained blacked-out areas — national security, again.

Has Congress investigated the murder? Have they subpoenaed CIA officials to testify about what happened? 

Has the Justice Department ever convened a federal grand jury to look into the murder?

Of course not. This is the CIA we are talking about. No one — and especially not U.S. government officials — is likely to jack with an agency that has the power to destroy and kill people with impunity.

An article in today’s New York Times reports that the Guatemalan government is now in the process of restoring the legacy of Jacobo Arbenz, who had been elected president of Guatemala in a landslide in 1950. 

However, he offended some U.S. corporations with a redistributive land-reform plan that was no different, in principle, from what President Franklin Roosevelt and his successors did with their redistributive welfare-state programs.

The corporations had a lot of pull in Washington. Thus, President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to oust Arbenz from power and install an unelected army general in his stead. The operation was a success, just like the CIA’s ouster of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, and his replacement with the brutal dictator the Shah of Iran, had been the year before.

Now, more than 50 years later the Guatemalan government has signed an agreement with Arbenz’s descendants to treat Arbenz as a historical hero, name a highway and a museum wing after him, publish his widow’s memoir, post an exhibit about him in the National History Museum, and issue a series of postage stamps in his honor.

So far, there is no statement of regret coming out of the CIA. But then again, the CIA also never showed any remorse for the hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan people killed in the 36-year civil war that erupted after Arbenz’s ouster.

Interventionists have long justified the ouster of Allende and Arbenz under the rationale that a country’s constitution is not a “suicide pact.” Since Allende and Arbenz were taking their countries down the road to destruction with their pro-communist, pro-socialist policies, the argument goes, there was nothing wrong with the Chilean military’s and the CIA’s saving the countries by ousting those rulers from office in a violent coup and replacing them with rulers who could save the country.

Ironically, that’s the same argument that researchers in President Kennedy’s assassination point to when asked about what motive the CIA, the U.S. military, and the Secret Service would have had to oust Kennedy from power in a violent coup. The researchers respond with the same argument that interventionists use to justify the Chilean and Guatemalan coups: that charged with protecting national security, U.S. military and intelligence officials considered it just as necessary to save the United States from Kennedy’s pro-communist, pro-socialist policies as the Chilean military and the CIA considered it necessary to save Chile and Guatemala from the pro-communist, pro-socialist policies of Allende and Arbenz.

Given that Chile and Guatemala are facing their past history of coups, why shouldn’t the United States do the same, especially given the roles that the CIA played in those coups? If Chile can exhume Allende and if Guatemala can honor Arbenz, why can’t the U.S. government divulge, fully and completely, the details of all the coups in which the CIA and other U.S. agencies have participated?

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Hornberger’s Blog Archives

Argentina's AND U.S. Congress's Dirty Wars

By Dallas Darling
Courtesy Of "World News Network"

With the United States Congress's failure to declassify documents on Argentina's Dirty War and its brutal dictatorial regime, it appears that Congress is also still trying to grapple with American complicity in one of Argentina's most shameful tragedies. The secret files that Argentine human rights activists are requesting could help them identify individuals and babies stolen by the military junta, a military junta, that is, supported and recognized the United States. In a vote of 214-194, though, U.S. intelligence agencies will not only hinder Argentina's search for the "stolen" and "disappeared," but the American public will continue to be oblivious to its own dirty past and military impunity in Argentina.

While many in the U.S. mistakenly believe Argentina's Dirty War lasted from 1976 until 1983, for some Argentineans state-sponsored violence and terror started in 1962 during John F. Kennedy's presidency. By 1958, Argentina President Arturo Frondizi Ercoli had reestablished democracy and protected civil liberties which had all but disappeared under the rule of Juan Peron. But in 1962 and during an election, the Argentina military overthrew Ercoli, establishing a military junta. The Kennedy Administration viewed Argentina's military coup favorably, specifically since it supported efforts to isolate and impose severe sanctions against Cuba.

Many in the Kennedy Administration had also worried that Ercoli's economic and progressive reforms, including its neutrality between U.S. and Soviet Union-Cold War rivalries, were akin to communism. Coupled with over one billion dollars of U.S. corporate investments and loans into the Argentina economy, Kennedy recognized the new military regime which promised to be staunchly anti-communist. Argentina military rule and control, backed by the U.S., was seen as essential to America's fight against Communism and its continued war against Cuba. Argentina would also aid the U.S. in its fight against leftist rebels in El Salvador and Brazil and other Latin American nations.

The 1976 Guerra Sucia (Dirty War) was simply the culmination of Argentina experiencing years of militarization and of working closely with America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military advisors. While both the United States and Argentina were sending military forces to numerous countries in the Western Hemisphere to suppress communist and socialist uprisings, Through Operation Condor, Argentina was arresting, torturing, murdering, and assassinating thousands of suspected left-wing activists, journalists, teachers, and trade union leaders. It is estimated that 13 to 30,000 were killed.

Surprisingly, Congress is using the excuse that releasing secret documents on Argentina's Dirty War would "out" spies fighting al-Qaeda. Perhaps the reason Congress refuses to release the secret documents, though, is to prevent more damaging evidence of U.S. involvement and complicity in Argentina's decades-long Dirty War. Would secrets reveal that "annihilation decrees" actually started in 1962 and not in 1976? Would releasing the secret files implicate more U.S. military advisors of committing crimes against humanity, and would it write yet again another sordid chapter in the annals of CIA history?

President Barack Obama and Americans should pressure Congress in releasing classified documents regarding Argentina's Dirty War, as former President Bill Clinton did with regards to Chile's U.S.-backed dictatorial regime of General Augusto Pinochet. Thousands of declassified documents showed how the U.S. military had been deeply involved in overthrowing Chile's government. They also helped prosecute crimes against humanity and peace. While showing the futility of backing military coups, at least for the U.S., releasing the Dirty War files might also assist rights groups in Argentina, like the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, to possibly reunite with their lost children.

Argentine-U.S. relations began in the early 18th century with trade when New England whalers and merchants would stop at Buenos Aires to purchase goods. Some Argentineans credit American seamen with brining the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to South America and, as a consequence, helping to inspire the Argentine independence struggle against Spain. Another independence struggle has started, but this time it is paradoxically against the United States. It is a struggle for truth and openness for without them, there can never be justice and liberty.

Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)

How America Screws Its Soldiers

Everyone Claims To “Support Our Troops.” But As Andrew J. Bacevich Explains, Telling The Military It Can Do Whatever It Wants Works For Everyone—Except For The Soldiers Themselves.

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Courtesy Of "The Daily Beast"

Riders on Boston subways and trolleys are accustomed to seeing placards that advertise research being conducted at the city’s many teaching hospitals. One that recently caught my eye, announcing an experimental “behavioral treatment,” posed this question to potential subjects: “Are you in the U.S. military or a veteran disturbed by terrible things you have experienced?”

Just below the question, someone had scrawled this riposte in blue ink: “Thank God for these Men and Women. USA all the way.”

United States Marines place a colleague wounded in an IED strike into a waiting medevac helicopter in Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan, Friday, May 13, 2011. (Kevin Frayer / AP Photo)

Here on a 30 x 36 inch piece of cardboard was the distilled essence of the present-day relationship between the American people and their military. In the eyes of citizens, the American soldier has a dual identity: as hero but also as victim. As victims—Wounded Warriors —soldiers deserve the best care money can buy; hence, the emphasis being paid to issues like PTSD. As heroes, those who serve and sacrifice embody the virtues that underwrite American greatness. They therefore merit unstinting admiration.

Whatever practical meaning the slogan “support the troops” may possess, it lays here: in praise expressed for those choosing to wear the uniform, and in assistance made available to those who suffer as a consequence of that choice.

As the 10th anniversary of what we used to call the Global War on Terror approaches, a plausible, realistic blueprint for bringing that enterprise to a conclusion does not exist.

From the perspective of the American people, the principal attribute of this relationship is that it entails no real obligations or responsibilities. Face it: It costs us nothing yet enables us to feel good about ourselves. In an unmerited act of self-forgiveness, we thereby expunge the sin of the Vietnam era when opposition to an unpopular war found at least some Americans venting their unhappiness on the soldiers sent to fight it. The homeward-bound G.I. spat upon by spoiled and impudent student activists may be an urban legend, but the fiction persists and has long since trumped reality.

Today such egregious misbehavior has become unimaginable. Even if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not especially popular or successful, no one blames the troops. Instead we cheer them, pray for them, and let them go to the front of the line when passing through airport security. And we take considerable satisfaction in doing so.

From the perspective of those who engineer America’s wars, the principal attribute of this relationship is that it obviates any need for accountability. For nearly a decade now, popular willingness to “support the troops” has provided unlimited drawing rights on the United States Treasury.

Since 9/11, in waging its various campaigns, overt and covert, the United States military has expended hundreds of billions of (mostly borrowed) dollars. By the time the last invoice gets paid, the total will be in the trillions. Is the money being well spent? Are we getting good value? Is it possible that some of the largesse showered on U.S. forces trying to pacify Kandahar could be better put to use in helping to rebuild Cleveland? Given the existing terms of the civil-military relationship, even to pose such questions is unseemly. For politicians sending soldiers into battle, generals presiding over long, drawn-out, inconclusive campaigns, and contractors reaping large profits as a consequence, this war-comes-first mentality is exceedingly agreeable.

One wonders how many of those serving in the ranks are taken in by this fraud. The relationship between American people and their military—we love you; do whatever you want—seems to work for everyone. Everyone, that is, except soldiers themselves. They face the prospect of war without foreseeable end.

Americans once believed war to be a great evil. Whenever possible, war was to be avoided. When circumstances made war unavoidable, Americans wanted peace swiftly restored.

Present-day Americans, few of them directly affected by events in Iraq or Afghanistan, find war tolerable. They accept it. Since 9/11, war has become normalcy. Peace has become an entirely theoretical construct. A report of G.I.s getting shot at, maimed, or killed is no longer something the average American gets exercised about. Rest assured that no such reports will interfere with plans for the long weekend that Memorial Day makes possible.

Members of the civil-military-corporate elite find war more than tolerable. Within its ranks, as Chris Hedges has noted, war imparts meaning and excitement to life. It serves as a medium through which ambitions are fulfilled and power is accrued and exercised. In Washington, the benefits offered by war’s continuation easily outweigh any benefits to be gained by ending war. So why bother to try?

As the 10th anniversary of what Americans once called their Global War on Terror approaches, a plausible, realistic blueprint for bringing that enterprise to a conclusion does not exist. Those who might once have felt some responsibility for articulating such a plan—the president, his chief lieutenants, senior military leaders—no longer feel any obligation to do so. As a practical matter, they devote themselves to war’s perpetuation, closing one front while opening another. More strikingly still, we the people allow our leaders to evade this basic responsibility to articulate a plan for peace. By implication, we endorse the unspoken assumption that peace has become implausible.

Here at last we come to the dirty little secret that underlines all the chatter about “supporting the troops.” The people in charge don’t really believe that the burdens borne by our soldiers will ever end and they are not really looking for ways to do so. As for the rest of us, well, we’re OK with that.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University.

Parallel States: A New Vision For Peace

Two parallel states, Israel and Palestine, should be established, with jurisdictions extending to Israelis and Palestinian citizens whether they lived in Israel proper, the West Bank, or Gaza, scholars say [AFP]



A New Idea Of Citizenship Is Needed For Peace In Israel and Palestine; Obama Can't Repackage Failed Strategies.

By Mark LeVine and Mathias Mossberg
Last Modified: 28 May 2011 15:42
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

President Obama's much-anticipated Middle East policy speech last week has drawn fire from many quarters, none more so than politicians and commentators involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on one or the other side.

Obama's bluntness has shocked some Israelis and their supporters, who long assumed that when push came to shove the United States would acquiesce to the facts Israel has created in the West Bank through its establishment of over 120 settlements since 1967. The President knocked the wind out of their sails by reiterating US support for the 1967 borders as the basis for any final peace deal. The Palestinian state, he declared, "should be... sovereign and contiguous [and] based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognised borders are established for both states."

An equally important but much less noticed element of Obama's speech was his desire to return the negotiating process squarely to the dynamics that governed the Oslo era negotiations that collapsed with the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000. He did this from two perspectives: First, the idea of borders roughly aligning to 1967 with land swaps is essentially the position to which the two sides were allegedly close to agreeing before the negotiations broke down at Camp David in July of 2000.

Second and more broadly, the process Obama outlined marks a return to the strategy of a "phased" solution that defined the ill-fated Oslo process, where interim agreements on less difficult issues were supposed to enable a "final status" agreement that resolved the most difficult issues.

Out Of Phase

As we know from the subsequent history of the conflict, the phased process failed miserably. And yet President Obama has redrafted the concept by arguing that the two sides should agree to "territory and security" first, and then later return to the more difficult issues of "Jerusalem and refugees", essentially dividing final status issues into yet another subdivision, of semi-final and really final status issues. Indeed, a recent "simulation" of such a "security-borders" first scenario conducted by the Brooking Institution's Saban Centre could only consider such a programme if it "defined away" the likelihood that no such agreement would be possible without also addressing Jerusalem and refugees from the parameters of the simulation.

Similarly, vis-a-vis Jerusalem a simulation of possible land swaps by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy had to deal "only with areas outside the Jerusalem municipality as defined by Israel" in order to be conceivable merely on paper. Neither report considered Palestinian security concerns at all, and the Saban simulation admitted that most of the conceivable provisions for a security-borders agreement would challenge Palestinian conceptions of sovereignty in irresolvable ways. Indeed, the only way the Palestinian Authority (PA) could "get a state and sovereignty over territory" would be if it was "willing to accept infringements on its sovereignty which undermined its legitimacy among its own people".

Broadly, there are four reasons why a phased solution will work no better today than it did almost two decades ago, each one relating to one of the President's own four elements of a proposed solution.

First, it is extremely difficult to imagine how Israel, having establishing such a comprehensive matrix of control over the West Bank-settlements, bypass roads, security corridors, military zones and the security wall - can ever withdraw from enough territory to allow the establishment of a territorially contiguous Palestinian state. Indeed, successive Israeli governments, even during the Oslo process, worked hard to create the facts on the ground that would render such an outcome moot.

Second, even if Israel could disengage from most of the West Bank, the ring of Israeli settlements surrounding East Jerusalem, a finger of which sticks deep into the West Bank, will be almost impossible to dismantle. Yet without doing so, it will be impossible to include East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, without which no Palestinian would ever agree to a final settlement.

Previous rounds of negotiations have stumbled on issues including the partition of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees [Reuters]

The third problem concerns the President's definition of security, which is focused almost entirely around Israel's perceived needs. The reality is, however, that Palestinians have suffered far more threats to their physical security than have Israelis during the last forty-five years. The legitimate needs of all Palestinians, in and outside the Occupied Territories, to be free of the risk of routine Israeli incursions, attacks, confiscation and destruction of land and property, constant humiliations, and other defining motifs of the occupation are as legitimate as the need of Israelis to be free from rocket attacks and suicide bombings.

Fourth, the issue of Palestinian insecurity leads to refugees, among the most insecure categories of existence possible. The protests along Israel's borders from the West Bank, Syria and Gaza on May 15 demonstrate the continued salience of the refugee issue among Palestinians. Contrary to what Israelis, Americans and some Palestinian leaders would like to believe, they will not easily relinquish their right of return, something Israeli conservatives intuitively understand, as they point out that Jews held on to their right for almost 2,000 years.

By returning to failed strategies of the past, President Obama is likely ensuring the failure of his courageous attempt to bring the two sides together towards a common future. There is a way, however, for the United States to take the lead in working towards a two-state solution, albeit one that looks very different from the type Mr Obama is presently imagining. We believe that a new vision, based on shared sovereignty, power and cooperation, offers a more viable path towards resolving the conflict.

The language of sharing rather than division has long been associated with a binational or even one-state solution that have both been dismissed because their implementation would effectively mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. But sovereignty and control can be shared while retaining a two-state structure that allows each side to secure and preserve its unique identity. Specifically, two states could be established in parallel over the same territory, both covering the whole area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

Parallel States

Termed a "parallel states" solution, this concept has been developed over the last four years by a team of Israeli, Palestinian and international scholars, policymakers and even protagonists in the conflict. It is built upon a new understanding of sovereignty that breaks the previously exclusive link with territory, and reorients the basis of identity, citizenship and rights away from land and towards the relation between the state and the individual citizen. Citizenship would follow the citizen wherever she or he may live within the territory of Israel/Palestine, not the territory itself.

Building on existing institutions and frameworks of the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, two parallel states, Israel and Palestine would be established, whose jurisdictions would be extended to Israelis and Palestinian citizens whether they lived in Israel proper, the West Bank, or Gaza.

As sovereignty would no longer be tied to territory, demography would no longer determine the viability of each state, and Jews and Palestinians, and indeed, members of the Diasporas of both societies, could in theory live anywhere within the space of Israel/Palestine without disturbing the basic ethnic composition, and thus character, of either state.

A parallel states structure addresses the core Israeli concerns of remaining Jewish and democratic, while allowing most if not all Israeli settlers to remain in place (although the boundaries of such settlements would be limited to their built up area rather than the much more expansive areas allotted to them under Israeli occupation). At the same time, it addresses the Palestinian need to implement the right of return for Palestinians throughout historic Palestine and be secure on their land.

Moreover, a parallel state structure would allow Israelis and Palestinians to retain their national symbols, have political and legislative bodies that are responsible to their own electorate, and retain a high degree of political independence. Put simply, the contours of political authority and security would be shared by the two states in a manner that guarantees the long-term secure existence of each community, something the Oslo era two-state solution could never achieve.

It will be difficult to convince Israelis and Palestinians to embrace the concept of parallel states [EPA]

External security would have to be coordinated in a common security envelope and with a joint Israeli-Palestinian security and defence policy. Internal security would require a close cooperation, as is the case already today, but on a more equal basis.

Economic cooperation could be expanded, and with the help of the international community the Palestinian economy could be brought up to a higher level, so a meaningful and mutually beneficial exchange could take place.

This is particularly important, because the Oslo peace process, while billed as an economic as much as political peace, in fact exacerbated the structural imbalances and inequalities between Israel and the Occupied Territories, in particular through the policy of closures of the Territories that almost destroyed the Palestinian economy.

Jurisdiction could be separate in some areas, harmonised in other and unified in yet some other areas. Parallel jurisdiction is not a novel legal concept and has several international precedents that can serve as models for cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis.

Difficult But Possible

In the short and medium term the two states could agree to territorial division with extraterritorial jurisdiction and shared sovereignty over certain areas such as Jerusalem, settlements and border areas. This is both a more realistic and positive kind of phased solution than the Oslo model resuscitated by President Obama.

Many if not most of the elements of a Parallel States solution have precedents in attempts to resolve other ethnoterritorial conflicts. Yet it cannot be denied that the scenario as a whole would be an innovation in world politics and in international law, and difficult to implement. But in difficult times you have to do difficult things, and the alternative of another round of a doomed process with continued land grabs going on simultaneously is hardly encouraging.

What is clear is that the Oslo era two-state solution was born out of a twentieth century notion of sovereignty that, at least in the case of Israel/Palestine is neither viable nor particularly desirable in the "New Middle East" Oslo's architects imagined their peace process heralded. Almost two decades later, the region has finally moved towards a new era, but led by ordinary people rather than leaders who more often than not have frustrated rather than helped to realise the legitimate political, economic and cultural aspirations of their peoples.

In the context of the Arab Spring, a parallel states process might just hold the key to helping Israelis and Palestinians join the region-wide push towards peace, democracy and justice in the fullest, and fairest, way possible.

UPDATE: Several comments have questioned the precedence and viability of harmonising the legal systems of the two states in a parallel states scenario. Within our research, the most useful example of how various levels of jurisdiction can be shared is the European Union, where the rapid integration of the member states has transferred traditionally national legislative and judicial powers to supranational bodies, diminishing the importance of national boundaries and territorial sovereignty for the benefit of the exercise of transnational freedoms and rights for citizens within the Union. In many - but certainly not all areas - a common European Union legal and political framework has emerged, which has softened the concept of territorial sovereignty, shifting the law to a more flexible and personal realm of application. Within the Israeli/Palestinian scenario, there would have to be significant harmonisation of both criminal and civil codes in the same manner as has occurred within Europe, where harmonisation of penal codes began in 1975. Not only has harmonisation of EU legal codes been a "current topic in criminal law literature" for a long time, it is considered by scholars as "one of the most important areas of cooperation among member states". The legal experts on our team believe that while harmonisation would present many challenges, it is certainly not a deal breaker or even the most difficult component of a parallel states scenario to actualise.

For more information, please visit the Parallel States Project website.

Mathias Mossberg is a former Swedish ambassador who has served in the Middle East. He was part of the Swedish team that helped initiate the back-channel negotiations that produced the Oslo peace process. He currently directs the Parallel States Project at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden.

Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California, Irvine, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Lund. His most recent books include Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Book, 2009) and, with Gershon Shafir, Struggle and Survival in Israel/Palestine (California, forthcoming).