israel versus

The newest trend in Israeli foreign relations is also the oldest trend, and it boils down to this:

Here, Mr Netanyahu has been clear: he sees no reason to stop the building [of settlements on Palestinian land].

Mr Abbas has been equally clear - he will not sit down with the Israelis until all settlement growth is frozen.

Despite decades now of strenuous efforts at peace-building, we are seriously still at this, the starting point of negotiations. While maintaining this charade of a peace process, Israel continues to do things its own way, insolently continuing to develop illegal settlements, constructing "security" fences to envelope even more Palestinian territory, blocking humanitarian aid efforts and the presence of foreign journalists, and conducting devastating military deployment into civilian areas. Much of this is done in direct defiance of UN resolutions (the same resolutions upon which the U.S. justified its Iraq adventure), and with the tacit approval of U.S. administrations (under the all-encompassing pretext that "Israel has a right to defend itself").

Further insight into the Israeli position can be gleaned from the present tensions between Israel and the EU, which is manifest in the former's "threat" to exclude the latter from its peace negotiations with Palestine, unless it agrees, in principle, to gag its members from making critical comments in public. According to the AP:

The warning came after EU's commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, this week criticized Israel's refusal to endorse a Palestinian state. She said an upgrade in Israeli-EU relations would depend on Israel's commitment to the "two-state solution."

It also came ahead of a planned trip to Europe next week by Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman — his first official trip abroad. The ultranationalist Lieberman's comments about Arabs and Mideast peace have raised international concerns about the new Israeli Cabinet's intentions.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor on Thursday called Ferrero-Waldner's comments "very militant" and contrary to understandings with other EU officials.

He said her remarks threatened to undermine understandings with the EU to maintain a "quiet dialogue" until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completes the formulation of his foreign policy.

Put in other words, Israel is outraged at the EU's apparent inability to understand the game it has been playing for years: namely, "quiet dialogue" under which nothing gets accomplished while Israel continues to "quietly" implement its own nationalistic solutions to the Palestinian Question. The outrage is understandable, given this policy. The real question, however, is how the U.S. under Barack Obama will handle the situation.

Obama and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet this month; Obama will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas next month. Stay tuned...

the zeitgeist movement manifesto: part i

In this series I will use individual segments of the manifesto expressed here as seeds for brief discussion from my perspective. Since I am very much attracted to the idea of progressive (nonviolent) change to our social systems, I think it is worth expending the effort and time to consider these ideas critically and practically.

The central foundation of the "movement" is summarized in the following quote:

The central insights of this awareness is the recognition of the Emergent and Symbiotic elements of natural law and how aligning with these understandings as the bedrock of our personal and social institutions, life on earth can and will flourish into a system which will continuously grow in a positive way, where negative social consequences, such as social stratification, war, biases, elitism and criminal activity will be constantly reduced and, idealistically, eventually become nonexistent within the spectrum of human behavior itself.

This possibility is, of course, very difficult for most humans to consider, for we have been conditioned by society to think that crime, corruption and dishonesty is "the way it is" and that there will always be people who want to abuse, hurt and take advantage of others. Religion is the largest promoter of this propaganda, for the "us and them" or "good and evil" mentality promotes this false assumption.

Accordingly, it is critical to address the issue of "human behaviour", as it is the sole underlying determinant of social organization. This point is not exclusive to the Zeitgeist philosophy; it is the essential question in any political philosophy. Thomas Hobbes, for instance, addresses this question in Part I of his book Leviathon, postulating a "state of nature" for human existence, in which all human drives are in conflict; in other words, our "state of nature" is a state of war. Out of this state of nature are born social contracts, under which a man agrees "to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself".

Hobbes's is, of course, a classical mind, lacking the wealth of scientific knowledge available to us today. His argument, that man requires social contracts and, ultimately, the rule of an "absolute sovereign", is in many ways diametrically opposed to the view espoused by the Zeitgeist movement, which is that it is our present set of contracts and unequal distribution of power which leads to the "morally bad" behaviours we continue to see in society. Crime, for instance, is the breaking of a contract whose terms are skewed. For Hobbes this is the true measure of morality; for Zeitgeist it is a predictable outcome of a human placed in a particular environment.

wolfe, chomsky, and intellectualism

Okay, let's start this off with an excerpt from an interview with author Thom Wolfe, which has gotten a bit under my skin:

TW: I make a distinction between intellectuals and people of intellectual achievement.

C: Who are intellectuals?

TW: An intellectual feeds on indignation and really can't get by without it. The perfect example is Noam Chomsky. When Chomsky was merely the most exciting and most looked-to and in many ways, the most profound linguist in this country if not the world, he was never spoken of as an American intellectual. Here was a man of intellectual achievement. He was not considered an intellectual until he denounced the war in Vietnam, which he knew nothing about. Then he became one of America's leading intellectuals. He remains one until this day, which finally has led to my definition of an intellectual: An intellectual is a person who is knowledgeable in one field but speaks out only in others.

This whole business was started unintentionally by my great idol, Émile Zola, in the Dreyfus case. Zola was an extremely popular novelist. A popular writer writing fiction had never been considered a person of any intellectual importance before, but in the Dreyfus case he and Anatole France and others who were trying to defend Dreyfus were singled out by Clemenceau as "the intellectuals." The term had never been used that way before-meaning people who live by intellectual labor. That was Clemenceau's term.

When Zola wrote his great manifesto, J'accuse . . .!, it appeared on the front page of a daily newspaper. All 300,000 copies of the newspaper were sold out by afternoon. Suddenly the world of writers and teachers and all of these intellectual laborers realized that it was possible for a mere scrivener to be called an intellectual and be considered an important person.

Zola, incidentally, was very knowledgeable about the Dreyfus case. He knew it as well as anybody, as well as any law clerk did. That part was lost later on; it was considered not necessary to go that deeply into anything. All that was required was indignation.

Marshall McLuhan once said that moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity. I think that's quite true these days.

Besides implicitly calling Chomsky - a well-respected scientist who revolutionized the field of linguistics - an idiot, this statement suggests that his discourses (i.e., on sociopolitical issues ranging from Vietnam to modern propaganda to American hegemony) do not delve deeply into the topics they address. For starters, this is absurd. Chomsky is well-known for being extremely thorough in his research; for his relatively recent book "Hegemony or survival: America's quest for global dominance", he uses a total of 502 references, or approximately 50 per chapter. Wolfe, on the other hand, writes fiction, and apparently dabbles in the sciences. I think it is important to examine this a bit further, not to disparage Wolfe - who I admire in many ways - nor to defend Chomsky - who needs no protection - but because this idea of communicative style versus substance is essential to a critical appreciation of, as Wolfe might call it, intellectualism.


One big difference I see (or feel) between the expressions of Chomsky and Wolfe is that of candour. While I have no doubt that Wolfe is being candid in his own fashion, Chomsky is candid on an entirely different level (for instance here or here), such that my impression is that I could - irrespective of my views and biases - have a very enjoyable and enriching discussion with Chomsky, while with Wolfe I would be cast immediately into the role of debater; either agreeing wholsesale with a prefabricated package of ideas he has tossed to me, or instinctively creating a package of my own to toss back, and in the end find myself wondering what the hell just happened..

This is only an impression. But in many ways, that is the point. Wolfe speaks repeatedly on the power of language, and it is important to appreciate the angle at which he is approaching communication. There is a large difference between communications of the basic scientist and mathematician (Chomsky's school) and that of the aestheticist (Wolfe's). In the former case, communication emerges primarily as a means to elucidate a logical analysis of evidence; in the latter, it is the aesthetic of language that takes priority.

To explore this further, here is the introduction to Wolfe's 2006 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre:

Ladies and Gentlemen, this evening it is my modest intention to tell you in the short time we have together . . . everything you will ever need to know about the human beast.

This is amusingly ironic, as was certainly its intention; one can imagine the gentle laughter that it induces in its audience. We cannot fault Wolfe for thus skilfully engaging the interest of his audience, but it nonetheless sets the tone in a noteable way: we can expect a speaker who is self assured, amusing, and provocative. And Wolfe does not disappoint.

Says Wolfe:

O. I love you, Emile, but by the time you and Darwin got hold of it, evolution had been irrelevant for 11,000 years. Why couldn't you two see it? Evolution came to an end when the human beast developed speech!

Contends Wolfe:

No evolutionist has come up with even an interesting guess as to when speech began, but it was at least 11,000 years ago, which is to say, 9000 B.C. It seems to be the consensus . . . in the notoriously capricious field of evolutionary chronology . . . that 9000 B.C. was about when the human beast began farming, and the beast couldn't have farmed without speech, without being able to say to his son, "Son, this here's seeds. You best be putting 'em in the ground in rows ov'ere like I tell you if you wanna git any ears a corn this summer."

Now, not being an "evolutionist", whatever that is, I'm not sure what the basis is for this argument, but by very basic logic it is no stretch to imagine that an activity so simple as agriculture did not initially require anything more than a few grunts and teaching-by-example. Nonetheless, the passage is amusing and ironical, so we just grin and suspend our disbelief.

Where Chomsky seems to thrive in a mental world of original ideas, Wolfe appears to have decorated his mental mansion with personalities and the ideologies they represent. In the number of interviews and lectures I have read, he evokes a long list of names and isms: Darwin (and Neo-Darwinism), Chomsky, Zola (and Intellectualism), Weber, Nietzche, and Freud, about whom he states:

I turned to the literature of the physiology of the brain for the answer, only to discover that Sigmund Freud had stopped the physical study of the brain cold for 40 years. Freud had been so persuasive, had so convinced the scientific community and the academic community in general that he had found the final answers to mental disturbance in his theories of the id, the ego, the superego, and the Oedipal drama within the family, that it was rather pointless to go through the tedious, laborious business of determining what synapses, what dendrites, what circuits in the brain accounted for what one already knew anyway. The physical study of the brain didn't resume until 1969, thanks to the work of a Spanish physician and brain physiologist named Jose Delgado.

Now, it is no strange thing within the world of academia to represent ideas by the names of people who originally posited them; and Wolfe certainly proposes a number of his own ideas. But what I see in this is an association of ideas with aesthetics; instead of examining them in more candid detail, it is more appealing somehow to assign a name and a school to a notion, and thus relegate it to a symbol, ignoring the unresolved complexity underlying it. To be honest, Freud did not bring a halt to neuroscience, nor did Delgado singlehandedly revive it. In 1949, Donald Hebb published "The Organization of Behaviour", combining experience in both neurosurgery and human behaviour to introduce several remarkable insights into the connection between brain and mind, the most renowned of which is his theory of how neurons might support learning and memory. In the early 50's, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley were busy investigating the electrical properties of neurons, eventually developing a mathematical model for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Starting in 1959, David Hubel and Thorsten Wiesel designed a set of electrophysiological experiments which revolutionized the understanding of visual processing, and provided further insight towards a general model of cortical organization, for which they also won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1981.

In fact, many of the most revolutionary discoveries in neuroscience occurred in the period during which Wolfe contends Freud had stopped the field dead. This is a mere detail, however, which interferes with the aesthetic he wishes to produce, of a single mind dominating the thought of an entire field of scientific study, which is simply not true. The idea of naming Delgado as the sole saviour of neuroscientific reasearch may be similarly linked to the sensational aesthetic of a man stopping a raging bull in its track with targeted brain stimulation. Without detracting from the importance of the man's research contributions, they can hardly be said to supercede those of William Scoville and Brenda Milner, whose discovery in the 50's of neural regions necessary for the formation of explicit memory (most famously with patient H.M.) have led to our current understanding of the neuroanatomical basis of memory.

In an attempt to give some substance to his thesis that oral culture has rendered evolution nonexistent, Wolfe provides an example of an article from PLOS Biology entitled "Rapid Behavioral and Genomic Responses to Social Opportunity". He shrewdly informs his audience that the researchers in question hail from Stanford and Duke; which, while having no importance with respect to the merit of their research, bears the stamp of social status, and thus aesthetic quality. From this study he quotes findings about the cichlid fish Astatotilapia (Haplochromis) burtoni. In a nutshell, this species has a social organization such that dominant males have a bright colourful display - which attracts females and thus allows procreation - in comparison with subordinate males who have dull coloration. If a dominant male is removed from a tank, a previously subordinate male can assume its coloration and behaviour in a matter of minutes, a change which was observed to be induced by the expression of the immediate-early gene egr-1. Thus, summarizes Wolfe:

They had established that a change in social status had caused a change in the brain. It was the opposite of the situation envisioned by Neo-Darwinists neuroscientists who assume is that the genetic inheritance triggers changes in status.

And moreover:

Only foolish writers make predictions instead of descriptions, but this fool feels certain that Fernald, Burmeister, and Jarvis are sure bets for a Nobel prize in biology, should such a social influence prove to be the case with human beasts.

Firstly, it is not a revolutionary discovery that the state of an organism, as induced by its environment, leads to a change in genetic expression. As far back as 1998, when I began my interest in neuroscience, the prevailing model of long-term potentiation of a synapse (which is posited as a basic mechanism of learning and memory) included the theory that certain patterns of neural activity trigger short- and long-term alterations to genetic expression which ultimately give rise to lasting changes in the cell and its response to other cells. Secondly, while I will join Wolfe in predicting a Nobel Prize for extending these findings to a description of the incredibly more complex social organization of humans, I won't hold my breath for this.

Thirdly, with respect to "Neo-Darwinists". I will allow that the system of genetics presented by Dawkins and Crick is quite limited and in some ways inexcusably inflexible, but while one may certainly exist, in my brief career I have not encountered any prominent neuroscientist who clings to the simple-minded theory that genes do not interact with environment. In fact I do not necessarily disagree with Wolfe's assertion that language (and its products, oral tradition, religion, culture, etc.) have substantially altered the purely genetic notion of evolution, replacing it with a sort of traditional evolution - but it is a bit naive to contend, as Wolfe does, that "evolution came to an end when the human beast developed speech". Language did not develop "suddenly", as Wolfe seems to imagine, but it evolved genetically as human society developed, as social groups clashed with one another, as humans routinely killed other humans and thus continued to drive genetic evolution.

Regardless of that debate, which is too extensive a digression for this thread, the trend I am trying to illustrate is Wolfe's consistent favouring of style over substance. I won't pretend that his insights do not strike chords with me, nor that I do not admire the man for his style and obvious intelligence (I find this interview with prominent neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga particularly insightful, for instance). I do find a need to comment, however, on the hypocrisy inherent in criticizing someone like Chomsky for speaking out on topics which are not directly related to his prior "intellectual achievements", while obviously having no problem doing the same on a much broader and highly superficial level. To state that Chomsky knows nothing about the subjects on which he speaks and writes is nothing short of asinine, given the massive amount of documented research supporting his communications. In fact, Wolfe could likely learn something from Chomsky, namely that if one is willing to venture outside of the field in which he has built his reputation (and why shouldn't he?), then he ought to at the very least undertake an earnest effort to inform himself about the field, and ensure that his statements are founded in substance, rather than being mere rhetorical devices.

It seems more likely to me that Wolfe takes exception to Chomsky's sociopolitical expressions because they are so discordant and aesthetically unpleasant. I have no doubt that Wolfe would make a far better guest at a cocktail party, where discussing social status as a mechanism for human behaviour is far more entertaining (and less sobering) than Chomsky's detailed analyses of the nefarious mechanisms of the state and its various systematic abuses of democratic principles, and the impact of this upon the planet. Such criticisms require serious thought and much energy, whereas hand-waving about the Human Beast, complete with its name-dropping and clever irony, is as effortless as watching the Discovery Channel.

In the past, powerful dissidents have been silenced by violent means. These days the methods are far less brutal, but arguably more effective. In a world where convenience is king (i.e., a capital-driven world), inconvenient messages are easily drowned out by a barrage of aesthetically-pleasing noise (as our modern mass-media has become). Advertently or not, Wolfe is attempting to marginalize Chomsky not on the basis of the merit of his ideas (nowhere have I discovered a substantive critique), but rather on their lack of aesthetic accessibility, colourfully attacking Chomsky's apparent lack of depth with no apparent appreciation of the irony of such an attack...

morales' "ten commandments" for a functional democratic socialism

In a recent speech, Bolivian President Evo Morales outlined ten points of debate (or "ten commandments"), which give a nice overview of his vision for a functional social-democratic state in Bolivia, as well as globally. He calls this vision "el Buen Vivir", or "Live Well", in reference to the idea of the egalitarian living conditions he hopes to faciliate with his social reforms. Since he's calling for dialogue, I'll throw my voice in for what it's worth:

1. "..if we want to save the planet earth to save life and humanity, we are obliged to end the capitalist system. The grave effects of climate change, of the energy, food and financial crises, are not a product of human beings in general, but rather of the capitalist system at it is, inhuman, with its idea of unlimited industrial development."

The idea is for the most part correct, but I'd like to know what he will replace the capitalist system with. This is particularly important at the community level; how does he propose to encourage private enterprise and trade, without some limited form of monetarism? He hints later at community-based economic diversity, so I'm curious to know the details of this plan...

2. "..to renounce war, because the people do not win in war, but only the imperial powers; the nations do not win, but rather the transnational corporations. Wars benefit a small group of families and not the people. The trillions of millions used for war should be directed to repair and cure Mother Earth wounded by climate change."

This is in general a good sentiment to convey. The phenomenon of transnationals is relatively new in the history of human civilization, although they have their predecessors in the shipping companies that acted as the growth cone of European colonialism over the past few centuries. Many wars were indeed fought over the resources from whence these companies derived their profits. War is the direct result of aggressive foreign policies; we do not tolerate aggressive behaviour from individuals in a law-based society, so why should we tolerate it on a global scale? This may seem naive and/or simplistic, but it really is that simple. It is a victory for imperialism that people tend to dismiss ideas in the perception that things are more complicated than they actually are. There is a huge PR machine dedicated to maintaining this illusion of complexity.

3. "..a world without imperialism nor colonialism, our relationships should be oriented to the principle of complementarity, and to take into account the profound asymmetries that exist family to family, country to country, and continent to continent."

I take this to mean that it is desirable to have a system that, rather than seeking to exploit the relative strengths and weaknesses between world groups, instead determines how they complement one another and seeks a way for each community to develop its unique set of resources in a way that is beneficial to the global community, in return for which it receives reciprocal benefits from that community. This is similar to the "each according to his abilities" tenet of Marxism, except that it is focused upon communities, where it belongs, instead of impinging upon individual liberties as Marxism does.

4. "..oriented to the issue of water, which ought to be guaranteed as a human right to avoid its privatization into few hands, given that water is life."

Privatization of water has been a huge issue of concern in Bolivia, so it makes sense that Morales is emphasizing this in his ten points. It also has the merit of being completely true. Hording water for profit has to be one of the worst forms of antisocial behaviour.

5. "..I would like to say that we need to end the energy debacle. In 100 years we are using up fossil energies created during millions of years. As some presidents are setting aside lands for luxury automobiles and not for human beings, we need to implement policies to impede the use of agro-fuels and in this way to avoid the hunger and misery for our peoples."

Agro-fuels (aka. biofuels) have been a source of increasing controversy lately. The basic problem is that, despite a world food shortage, we are designating large tracts of agricultural land to the production of crops for use as fuels. There is also a growing corporate lobby for this "emerging market" (see this). Given that there are very viable, ecologically superior alternatives of energy production, I am glad to see Morales acknowledge these alternatives as a very real means of improving the human condition as well as implement a sustainable energy plan.

6. "..in relationship to the Mother Earth. The capitalist system treats the Mother Earth as a raw material, but the earth cannot be understood as a commodity; who could privatize, rent or lease their own mother? I propose that we organize an international movement in defense of Mother Nature, in order to recover the health of Mother Earth and re-establish a harmonious and responsible life with her."

An international movement to ensure enviromentally-responsible global behaviour? Sounds fantastic...

7. "..that basic services, whether they be water, electricity, education, or health, need to be taken into account as human rights."

The same theme as point #4 in my opinion, except expanded to include all basic services. As human rights, these services are captured in Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights; although many capital-based social systems fall somewhat short of this requirement. I tend to believe that Morales intends to apply these human rights much more universally.

8. "..to consume what is needed, prioritize what we produce and consume locally, end consumerism, decadence and luxury. We need to prioritize local production for local consumption, stimulating self-reliance and the sovereignty of the communities within the limits that the health and remaining resources the planet permits."

This is a pivotal tenet. Consumerism is the engine for both corporate power and manufactured consent; the cases for this have been well made (see Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky). There is no need, and indeed we can no longer afford, to be wasteful in our production and consumption. This is not to negate freedom of choice (at least in my mind), but simply to allow the community to determine its productivity and consumption habits. This is no easy task, and is of course the very essence of the socialist question. How does a community decide what it wants, without compromising the liberty of the individual to make personal consumption choices? This is the reason I believe some limited form of capitalism and free market must exist in any socialized state. I am greatly interested in Morales' take on this; is he truly Marxist in this respect or does he acknowledge the value of personal liberty as a basic human right?

9. "..to promote the diversity of cultures and economies. To live in unity respecting our differences, no only physical, but also economic, through economies managed by the communities and their associations."

This again raises the notion of community-based economics. Coming from a labour union background, it makes sense that this is a priority for Morales. It is also the right approach, I feel, although again it is not an simple thing to implement in practice. The process has to be completely transparent and democratic in order to have any chance of succeeding, and personal liberty must be a critical factor in the debate.

10. "..we propose to Live Well, not live better at the expense of another, a Live Well based on the lifestyle of our peoples, the riches of our communities, fertile lands, water and clean air. Socialism is talked about a lot, but we need to improve this socialism, improve the proposals for socialism in the XXI century, building a communitarian socialism, or simply a Live Well, in harmony with Mother Earth, respecting the shared life ways of the community."

More of a summary than a distinct point, I think, so I'll let this rhetoric stand alone.

My own summary: the ideas are great, and the leader, with his softspokenness, his humble indiginous roots, and his fearless resolve is highly inspiring. It is easy to get caught up in such optimism, however; so it is important to acknowledge that rhetoric is almost always far removed from action. There are, moreover, some very strong forces opposing Morales' vision, the foremost being a U.S. government hellbent on preventing any form of economic organization outside its sphere of influence (read: exploitation), and which has proven quite ruthless in the past.

Thus I'll be following the action in Bolivia quite closely.

on xenophobia

Okay, so.... feeling philosophical.

One of the most prevailing and least-discussed aspects of human nature is xenophobia, literally translated as "fear of the other". Like many phobias which are trivialized by calling them fear, we tend to sideline xenophobia by labelling it "bad" and pretending it doesn't exist. It does exist, however, and is a huge drive behind every politicoeconomic thing we as a species do. I think this warrants a more candid discourse on the subject.

Two of the more controversial (and thus interesting) political figures I've encountered here in Holland are Ayaan Hersi Ali and Geert Wilders, both commonly described as far-right anti-immigration (i.e., xenophobic) politicians. The story of Ali in particular is fascinating (I cannot do justice to it here, but if you are interested, she has written two autobiographies: The Caged Virgin, and the excellent Infidel); in particular, she herself was an refugee from Somalia who lied to gain entrance into the Netherlands. After learning Dutch and obtaining a degree in political science, she became an increasingly outspoken critic of Islam, particularly its treatment of women, and was elected to the Dutch Parliament.

Among her policy statements, Hirsi Ali has denounced the existence of faith-based (and particularly Muslim) schools, which she blames for the failure of many young immigrant Muslims to integrate into Dutch society and accept Western values, instead encouraging insularism and radical anti-Western sentiment. Along with Wilders, she has also advocated a more restrictive immigration policy than is currently in effect in the Netherlands (and most of Europe), citing her fear that the pace of growth of the Muslim community poses a very real threat of Islamic values (and sharia law) being gradually imposed upon the country through a purely democratic means.

The Dutch are a proudly tolerant society, and these ideas are thankfully approached with much criticism and dubiousness. Hirsi Ali has since left Dutch politics and currently works for the American neocon think-tank the American Enterprise Institute (which features such thinkers as David Frum, Newt Gingrich, and Irving Kristol); and Wilders remains a controversial Member of Parliament with a small but consistent following. The issues that they represent, however, reflect a larger trend in world demographics that is not widely discussed by politicians (who abhor a hot potato like nature abhors a vacuum). As far as I can see, the issue boils down to xenophobia.

In a wholly unsatisfying wiki representation, xenophobia is displayed as a sort of world pathology; the introduction begins with an authoritative psychological assessment:

As with all phobias, a xenophobic person is aware of the fear, and therefore has to genuinely think or believe at some level that the target is in fact a foreigner.

Whether or not this is spoken by an expert (which I doubt), it is an opinion that is out of place in the wiki context. However, I find that it tends to sum up the general conecption of the term. We are xenophobic because we have some unattributable fear that we rationalize by assigning it to some pre-existing notion of group identity (e.g., nationality) as a defense mechanism. I think this tends to miss the point entirely. It ignores (or pretends away) the possibility that some of these fears may be well-founded, and not pathological at all. While selectively documenting incidences of xenopobia in the world (by no means doing justice to the actual state of affairs), its authors do not seem aware that this seemingly universal prevalence may just signify that xenophobia may actually be a fundamental and adaptive characteristic of human beings. Let's explore this possibility.

Although the fear that motivates Wilders' immigration policies is basically unfounded (Muslims constitute approximately 5 percent of the Dutch population, and according to this (well-documented) source, its growth rate has basically stabilized), the issues that have won him support are ones which I think illustrate the basis of xenophobia. The first is population growth rate. Population determines to a large extent a group's edge over another group; this can be counteracted by forcibly controlling resources and the war machine, as per South African apartheid, but over the span of history it is population levels that dictate territorialization and power structure. The second is integration. When two groups refuse to integrate with each other, this results in a natural mistrust and further insularism, and ultimately conflict.

This is arguably the basic drive behind all of human history: insularism and conflict, which acts as a powerful positive feedback loop which resonates, blows up (resulting in either assimilation or annihilation of one group), and starts over. A large portion of the efforts we have put into political and religious institutions have been (implicitly) motivated by the necessity of controlling this feedback cycle.

The biggest challenge this presents to us is as follows. To be honest with ourselves, we must admit that xenophobia is a natural human trait that will not be eradicated by any amount of persuasion or rationalization. We therefore need to address it directly, rather than building walls around it in the vague hope of containing it. Xenophobia is not irrational nor pathological; it is in fact largely adaptive. If another group threatens the prosperity and existence of my own (whether that "group" is defined by value systems, race, gender, circumstance, etc.), it makes perfect sense for me to fear and act against the threat.

For instance: If an immigrant group's population is growing at a rate which is disproportional with that of the native population - e.g., the average immigrant family has 10 children whereas the average native family has 1.5 - then this is a real issue. There is certainly the argument that we have no right to curtail a family's right to produce offspring, but by the same token such irresponsibly high reproduction should have real consequences. The immigrant community cannot maintain this rate while at the same time demanding equal opportunities from the native population; this amounts to an invasion by procreation. In this case, it is no surprise that they will "suffer unemployment, poverty and segregation out of all proportion to their numbers" (see this).


The problem is that we tend to be overly conservative in our risk assessments, such as is the case with Geert Wilders, and this leads to the feedback loop of insularization and conflict. The stats on second-generation Muslim families in the Netherlands, for instance, tell us that their birth rates hardly differ from native Dutch (same ref):

Not surprisingly, older Muslim women -- all first-generation immigrants -- gave birth to far more children than do native Dutch women. Not so second-generation Muslim women. Their fertility rate "hardly differs from that of native Dutch women," notes Statistics Netherlands.

The correct approach, I feel, is to:

(1) Obtain a real risk assessment. Collect statistics on population growth, on cultural intolerance, on changes to value systems. The numbers are usually better than the bleak assessment we instinctively, lacking information, arrive at;

(2) Make this a matter of public discourse. If a real threat exists, then bring it to the public forum and allow all sides to debate it and decide upon an acceptable compromise, rather than pretending it doesn't exist, or treating it as taboo;

(3) Give integration a chance. Expecting immigrant communities to instantly express unconditional love for their new homes, where they live in poverty and lack immediate prospects - in direct contrast to their relatively well-off hosts - is foolish. There needs to be patience and a gradual transition in order to make this work. That being said, insularization should be actively discouraged.

The take-home message then, is that xenophobia is not a horrendous beast that we should condemn without condition. It is a natural human drive that has very rational bases. Intergroup tensions should not be simply chastized and ignored, but they should be the substance of consistent and open public discourse, if we are to have any hope of addressing their root causes. In this respect, I think the Dutch are not doing too bad a job.

danny a closet socialist?

From David Frum's blog:

Danny Williams may reap what he has sown. If he does not, his party will. As the Post pointed out, the principle beneficiary of Williams ABC campaign was the NDP. For those outside Atlantic Canada, this may seem odd, but NFLD’s Liberal Party is still recovering from scandals from its time in office so the beneficiary is naturally the party that had the least amount of seats. How long before his efforts to tarnish the national party’s brand trickle down to his own.

The truth is many of NFLD’s federal-provincial wins were the result of the diplomacy of other Atlantic premiers. Danny’s antics just grabbed the headlines. By empowering the NDP, if the Liberals don’t resuscitate themselves before Danny’s star fades, NFLD may have the first NDP government east of Ontario.

If this happens, it'll be Danny leading it up. In all seriousness, Danny taking on the feds in defense of Newfoundland's common good has socialism written all over it. Despite his being a successful entrepreneur, the majority of his policies are not the neoconservative junk that Frum embraces; they are actually much closer to the kind of responsible socialism (i.e., Newfie-style, not necessarily the NDP's brand) that has given him wings in Newfoundland.

If the NDP gain popularity in Newfoundland it is because (1) Newfoundlanders are generally not bankers and stock brokers, but people with a long history of labour who are looking for leaders who can deliver real labour solutions and protection from vulture conservatism, and (2) Danny Williams has given us a strong voice and a sense of social responsibility that we will be loathe to relinquish as the benefits are realized.

chávez vs. the corporacracy

Having spent the entire day hopping between links to jump-start my education regarding the policies of populist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez - which seem (at least on the surface) to be a promising model of successful social democracy - I have the unfortunate task of attempting to narrow the topic sufficiently for a single blog entry. I think it is crucial to get a good handle on the recent history of Venezuela, which sets the context for the current situation, before we can begin to come to a consensus concerning its politics.

I have settled on the topic of the Venezuelan media, which was so pivotal to the 2002 coup attempt, and the ensuing people's counter-coup which returned Chávez to power. Let's first describe that coup attempt. On December 6, 1998, Chávez and his Fifth Republican Movement party were elected with ~56% of the popular vote. On July 31, 2000, he maintained his presidential status, attaining ~59% of the vote. Chávez ran on a platform of socializing the state, promising improvement for the roughly 80% of the Venezuelan population that lives in poverty, despite that country's impressive oil and agricultural resources.

In accordance with this platform, Chávez has (mainly in a package of 49 laws enacted in November, 2001; see this, this, and this):

• Organized referenda on writing a new constitution for Venezuela, obtaining the authority to form a "Constitutional Assembly", with the authority to suspend Congress and institute law while it reorganized the state apparatus (this was, according to its proponents, an unfortunate but necessary step in the process of uprooting a thoroughly corrupt system). The resulting constitution, which renamed Venezuela to the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela", was passed in a December, 1999, referendum
• Instituted public programs for immunization and food distribution (which did not exist before)
• Instituted state-funded health care and education programs
• Required wealthy businesses to pay taxes (!)
• Implemented a land reform policy called Ley de Tierras ("Land Law"), which included "taxing unused landholdings, expropriating unused private lands (with compensation), and giving inheritable, unsellable land grants to small farmers and farm collectives"
• Made moves to reorganize labour unions in Venezuela, which some see as having entrenched capital-driven interests
• Implemented oil nationalization reforms, including mandating "state possession of a majority of stocks in all mixed companies engaged in primary activity in the oil industry"

Of course, these reforms were a horror story for those in the Western world who had claimed a victory for the Washington Consensus (as well as the big players such as Conoco and ExxonMobil), as it was essentially a revival of the policy reforms of the democratically-elected Chilean socialist leader Salvatore Allende. Such nationalization is a slap in the face to corporate interests who - in direct terms - profit by shamelessly pillaging a country's resources. It also carries a more subtle threat to corporate imperialism, in that it manifests the possibility of an authentically democratic socialist state (but see this), which, in the words of Henry Kissinger (in this memo from 1970):

..would surely have an impact on -- and even precedent value for -- other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.

The U.S. responded to this threat in 1973 by backing a coup d'etat (see the actual unclassified documents) by General Augusto Pinochet, which resulted in the murder of Allende, the kidnapping, torture, and murder of thousands of his supporters, and a radical reversal of publicly-supported social measures resulting in a mass privatization of Chile's entire society. All of the elements of the 1973 Chilean coup are present in modern-day Venezuela, with the threat of "narco-terrorism" replacing that of the communist scourge as the fear-based public relations spin. Of course, old dogs dislike new tricks, and the old dogs who pull the strings decided a Pinochet-type approach was in order for Venezuela.

The (predictable) coup d'etat attempt on Chávez's administration arrived on April 11, 2002. There are of course countless variables involved in this event (including the issue of whether or not the U.S. was involved), but as stated, my present focus will be the central role of the media in both the coup itself, and the counter-coup that followed, as it highlights the true power of media to influence the outcomes of world events. Discussed in detail here and here, mainstream Venezuelan media sources were central to the execution of the coup (there are also suggestions of corporate media complicity in events leading up to the coup, but I'll leave that for now).

The coup itself was triggered by resistence to Chávez's attempts to nationalize the country's largest oil concern, PDVSA, which resulted in his firing of top executives and middle managers on April 8. On April 9, the country's largest union federation, CTV, held a two-day strike, which was joined by a strike/lockout by its largest commerce organization, Fedecámaras. On April 11, a march of 100,000 - 200,000 protesters clashed with a pro-Chavez demonstration, resulting in 18 dead and over 100 wounded. During this initial violence, Chávez began to issue public appeals for calm, while the four main commercial media outlets (each outspoken opponents of Chávez's policies) began to broadcast these messages alongside images of the violence, meanwhile reporting that the violence was incited by pro-Chávez gunmen (detailed here).

Simultaneously, there are reports (see here) that the Caracas police, controlled by the anti-Chávez mayor Alfredo Peña, forcibly shut down a number of independent "community media" radio and television stations during the coup, while forcing another to play nothing but music during the period. These forces also took over the state-run television network, Channel 8. Clearly, controlling the airwaves was a critical aspect of the coup's chances for success, and while independent community-based sources were gagged (but not completely), it is evident that the commercial stations were on-board from the start (see here, here, and here). For instance, in a quote attributed to PROVEA, a Venezuelan human rights NGO, on April 13, 2002:

A journalist who asked not to be identified, the Production Chief of one of the principal TV channels in the country, denounced that the directors of the company impeded the journalists from transmitting information about the current events.

One particularly controversial piece of footage which was looped constantly by private stations during the coup attempt showed a group of Chávez supporters firing guns from an overpass, allegedly at a crowd of demonstrators below. This footage, however, was very brief, and as documented in the Irish film Will Not Be Televised, alternative footage indicates that the street below was actually empty at the time it was shot.



On April 12/13, top military officers arrested Chávez and allegedly forced his resignation, replacing him as an interim measure with the president of Fedecámaras, Pedro Carmona, whose first acts were to dissolve the National Assembly, Supreme Court, and Constitution. During this time, foreign and media agencies, including the New York Times, Reuters, and CNN, were reporting - without substantiation - that Chávez had resigned and/or fled the country. The official reaction of the U.S. was to pin the blame squarely on Chávez (from New York Times):

Hours after Mr. Chávez was overthrown, Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, said, "the Chávez government provoked the crisis," while Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said that "undemocratic actions committed or encouraged by the Chávez administration provoked yesterday's crisis."

The U.S. media, including the Times, played right along with this official story (see here and here):

In an April 13 editorial, the New York Times triumphantly declared that Chávez's "resignation" meant that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." Conspicuously avoiding the word "coup," the Times explained that Chávez "stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader."

Prompting an apologetic editorial a couple of days later:

In his three years in office, Mr. Chávez has been such a divisive and demagogic leader that his forced departure last week drew applause at home and in Washington. That reaction, which we shared, overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly he has performed, is never something to cheer.

Due in no small part to the work of independent media sources, massive pro-Chávez rallies were recruited from the barrios which constitute his electoral base, and Chávez was eventually reinstated. During this time, none of the major private stations covered these rallies, preferring instead to pretend that the coup had succeeded and playing cartoons and cooking shows while some of the most momentous events in Venezuela's history were unfolding.

The story continues. However, I think it's time for this entry to wrap up. I won't leave you with any opinions on the success of Chávez's policies in attaining the mandate for which he was elected, nor the recent developments which have seen him consolidate power and lose his popularity. These topics are for future entries. One development that is of relevance is the changes to media freedom that have occurred in the aftermath of this coup. While the major private stations continue to broadcast, human rights groups (particularly the Human Rights Watch, but see this and this), have begun to criticize the means with which Chávez's government has acted to control private media, particularly the larger outlets which continue to strongly oppose him. This being said, the fact that these clearly corporate-controlled operations are allowed to broadcast at all after their roles in the coup attempt (and further acts of sedition, including involvement in a mass-strike/lockout in December 2002-January 2003, aimed at crippling state oil production) suggests that Chávez is not the tyrant he is commonly portrayed as in mainstream Western media.

Last year, the government of Venezuela decided not to renew the license of the major television network RCTV, one of those stations who participated in the coup. This evoked condemnation from various organizations (from here):

Several NGOs of note also voiced baseless and disingenuous criticism claiming Chavez violated standards of free speech and freedom of the press. They know better and acted shamelessly doing it. They include Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and Peruvian-based Press and Society Institute monitoring Andean region free press attacks and funded by the US National Endowment of Democracy (NED) that only supports media allied with its neoliberal right wing agenda.

It seems to be quite a mild penalty, however, for its previous and ongoing behaviour, which far exceeds the role of a critical and independent media agency and is very clearly motivated by a partisan agenda. Secondly, if Chávez were truly intent on censoring his opposition, he is doing a horrible job, given that vocal opposition to him is a common and tolerated occurrence. This appears more to me to be in line with his policy of replacing corporate interests with community interests, i.e., the increasingly popular "Community Media movement" of the small radio and television broadcasters which were targeted in the coup attempt and in general by opposition forces which still hold sway in Venezuela (see here).

The result is not such a clear picture. Indeed, in doing research for this it was exceedingly difficult to find information from mainstream media sources. Perhaps this is a strategy by - umm, them - to obscure the fact that Venezuela's economy is healthy and growing, and that the corporacracy might actually be losing to Hugo Chávez...? More to come.