Bigots and History

Neo-cons, orientalists and Zionists gathered recently in Israel to confirm their fantasies about history, people and politics. Azmi Bishara responds

The seventh annual Herzliya Conference, held in the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre, featured a rarefied blend of neo-conservatives and old-guard conservatives who have preserved their "unbounded vitality and eternal youthfulness", as one might hear in the plug for one of our video clip starlets these days. How it warmed the heart to see assembled together in a single conference such illustrious figures as the eternal orientalist Bernard Lewis, the permanently startled Shimon Peres, the notorious Richard Perle and, of the same clique, former CIA director James Woolsey.

Where else in the world could you come across these sorts of people and other leeches upon this part of the world underneath one roof? It could only be in Israel, of course, which has become one of the major centres for provoking the clash of civilisations and cultures, and for glorifying "Western civilisation", in which Israel so unreservedly situates itself, in spite of the "Third Worldness" and corruption that pervade its mass culture and the mindset of its politicians. Israel has made itself a forum for economic liberalism and the politics of globalisation (to be read as Americanisation), without self-criticism inside the conference hall and without demonstrations outside. Herzliya, after all, is not Vancouver where people are mad enough to protest against this type of conference. It is located on the most extreme and most extremist fringe of Western colonialist culture; it is, according to Zionism's self- definition, the West's "spearhead against Eastern barbarianism," as that Zionist hero, Osishkin, put it in order to win the British over to the Zionist enterprise.

Lewis, in his lecture, attempted to summarise Arab history since the Napoleonic invasion in -- as is the want of the totally arrogant or consummately wise -- a handful of terse sentences. For 200 years, the rulers of the Middle East played one great power against the other. But the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an end to that era. Now outside powers are not as interested in the region as they were before. This meant a going back, a reversion to older patterns. The primary identity of Middle Eastern countries is religious, not national or ethnic. It is always Muslims against the rest, and their task is to bring Islam to all mankind. They succeeded in two major attempts, when they conquered Andalusia and, later, under the Ottoman Empire. Today they are preparing themselves for the third attempt. But there has been another major development since the end of the "Bonaparte phase". This is the increased rivalry between the Sunnis and Shia -- the "Protestants" and "Catholics" of the Middle East.

And some accuse the Arabs of mixing fact with their oriental flights of fancy! But Lewis is a respected Princeton professor and a world-renowned orientalist whose works have not only had an impact on the media but on such scholars as Huntington. So, imagine the miles he had to traverse in order to be able to offer this potted history, which illustrates the mood and values of the culture that prevails among all those political luminaries that converged upon Herzliya, as though it were the capital of the Middle East.

Because "outside powers are not as interested in the region as they were before," the US has sent troops to Iraq and is gearing up for Iran. Condoleezza Rice is busily giving the peace process its latest "tune-up" and the Zionist sympathiser Javier Solana is dropping by every two weeks or so, via Israeli television, to reassure Israelis that "we don't meddle in the decisions of our friends in the government of Israel. We will support what you decide. But we advise you to be wary of Syria's intentions for peace. Syria, first, has to demonstrate the sincerity of its intentions in Lebanon and in Iraq and in not providing a base for Palestinian terrorism... And, in Palestine, a Palestinian unity government is not enough; Hamas has to accept the conditions of the Quartet." In Herzliya, Jose-Maria Aznar called upon the EU to set into motion an initiative to include Israel into NATO, Woolsey declared that Israel couldn't negotiate with those who wanted to annihilate it, and the whole crew counselled the Lebanese government to show no flexibility towards the majority opinion in Lebanon and furnished ample evidence of their intent to bring down the majority government in Palestine. Yes, Bernard Lewis must be right: the world has completely lost interest in the Middle East since the collapse of the Soviet order.

He suggests, too, of course, that nothing ever changes under our scorching sun, that Muslims are forever their immutable selves, that to Arabs all other affiliations pale next to their religious ones, and that it was, therefore, only natural that, once they no longer had big powers to play off against each other, they would inevitably revert to their pre-Napoleonic religious squabbling. And who are we to challenge this perspicacious insight? Even so, in the same Herzliya week, Sunni and Shia clergymen gathered in a dialogue conference in which they effectively resolved to "nationalise" Sunni and Shia affiliations. These affiliations should be linked to national identities, they said, and Shia religious and political leaders should commit themselves to not pushing the Shia affiliation upon "Sunni countries" and Sunni leaders should make a similar commitment towards "Shia countries". Apparently, national and ethnic affiliations have come a much longer way than Lewis imagines. Instead of the adherents of different Islamic doctrines, or Muslim "Protestants" and "Christians", at each other's throats, religious rivalries have been subordinated to other rival interests. In other words, religious affiliations have become tools in the service of antagonisms that are cast as national rivalries, because these affiliations sidestep the problem of creating a sovereign nation founded upon the concept of citizenship, because the separation of religion from citizenship and public affairs or even retaining religion as a public concern within the framework of a multi-cultural and multi-denominational nation or state is being kept out of the picture. Lewis is wrong if he cannot see that what appears to be religious conflict is, in fact, an instrument for furthering other brands of interests, attitudes and identity politics.

When some of us, out of despair, disparage the fighting beneath sectarian banners, our intent is a far remove from Lewis's. He sees the resurfacing of Muslim or Islamic atavistic traits whereas we use such terms as the "Sultanate" and "Mameluke kingdoms" to characterise the current disintegration and fragmentation of contemporary Arab states. It is our way of sounding the alarm, of urging caution, of crying out. The crusader state, in its heyday, succeeded marvellously in turning brother ruler against brother ruler and conquering its neighbouring statelets, even without the advantages of state-of-the-art technological superiority and nuclear might. Indeed, they used very much the same instruments of war that the Arabs had and they didn't even enjoy the degree of social and scientific advancement the Arabs had attained at the time. And they certainly didn't have to convene a Herzliya conference. Their ally was the fragmented structure of the surrounding statelets and their mutual rivalries and suspicions. These are the historical circumstances that we cite metaphorically in order to warn of the consequences of failing to build a nation founded upon the concept of citizenship.

Believe it or not, this metaphor is closer to present day realities than Bernard Lewis's theories. The Arabs have made some progress since the Middle Ages -- some considerable progress: Israel can't keep them down or even preserve itself without technological superiority and other forms of superiority, unlike the crusader state which lasted for some 200 years without these advantages. But the unresolved problem of nationalism, Israel, and the failure to build a democratic civil state are definitely among the foremost factors to have stalled this progress. Meanwhile, the folks at Herzliya have their own theories to expound on the Arab condition, because they approach it from a different mindset altogether.

To better understand what I'm getting at, I suggest you read Shimon Peres's amazing Herzliya lecture. Even Peres, himself, seemed amazed, amazed at himself and at scientific and economic progress, all of which he managed to lump together when he observed proudly that he "looked so good" for his age because he was an optimistic type of person and he was optimistic about the power of science and economy. Peres also had certain people to thank for his optimism. He expressed his gratitude to Ahmadinejad whose exaggerations and extremism unified the world behind Israel. And he expressed his gratitude to Hassan Nasrallah who eulogised Israel by saying, "what country, having lost one soldier, ceaselessly searches for him. Even if he was killed, it won't stop searching for his corpse," and who praised the democracy that enabled Israel to "learn a lesson".

Of course, Peres couldn't or wouldn't pick up on the other side of these remarks. Out of all the Arab political forces these days, the undefeated Hizbullah, while certainly no great fan of Israel, has the confidence to praise the strong points of its adversary because, by "pure coincidence" it was the only power capable of inflicting defeats on Israel. Moreover, this party, which demonstrated such superb organisational strengths in battle, is also the political force that, in the wake of a highly destructive war, has the power to get unprecedented numbers of Lebanese out into the streets in peaceful strikes and protest marches as well as the sophistication to address these people rationally, in a language that is far removed from the fascist and populist harangues used to mobilise certain mass movements in Israel, and even in some European countries. But here, the type of mass movement that is capable of modern, rational and institutionalised organisation and that even by the standards of Herzliya should be entitled to govern is regarded as Israel's number one enemy. What Israel prefers is happy Mameluke petit states, allied with Israel against other Mameluke petit states, or against their own internal adversaries. It wants states capable of receiving the Israeli economic and scientific modernising mission with open arms, prepared to heed preacher Peres's advice to shun those forces that are truly modern in spirit and practice.

What else did Peres say at Herzliya VII? He said that Assad, the son, wants to correct the mistakes of his father. But Bashar must realise that the question of war and peace with Syria is a triangle that includes the US, and that the latter, right now, doesn't want negotiations with Syria because the US supports Fouad Al-Siniora's government in Lebanon and because Syria provides shelter for Khaled Meshaal and trains terrorist forces to send into Iraq. On the other hand, if the Syrians turn to war, "they will encounter the triangle, and not just Israel."

Apparently, Peres hadn't attended Lewis's lecture about how little the rest of the world cares about this part of the world and Islam's next encroachment into the West -- he seemed indifferent to that danger. Rather, the impression he left was that Israel did not want peace with Syria, that it was preparing for war against Iran and that the Palestinians had better be ready to accept much less than what was offered to them at Camp David II. On the latter point, he was explicit about what the Palestinians had to accept. Israel, he said, has no intention of letting demographic reasons end its existence as a Jewish state. It would not go the way of Lebanon, which ended as the only Christian state in the region due to the demographic price it paid for its mistakes. Israel, in other words, would never accept the principle of the Palestinian right to return; as to what "mistakes" the Lebanese made, these were left unsaid.

Yes, with or without Bernard Lewis, the analogy to Mameluke petit states is very useful in order to grasp the blindness of an Arab order that supported the occupation of Iraq, that has no idea what stance to take on the current process of partitioning Iraq and on the prospect of an increase in American forces there, and that has a strong inclination towards availing itself of any mechanism, including fuelling sectarian tensions, in order to keep its people mired in backwardness.

And the analogy is particularly apt when it comes to the Arab order's stance, or lack thereof, on the attempt to impose Israeli conditions on the Palestinians by means of economic blockade, while at the same time calling for a Palestinian unity government on the conditions set by the Quartet, without making any demands on Israel, as a preliminary for reviving a negotiating process aimed at securing Israel's conditions for a settlement. This is definitely an Arab order in a muddle and looking for a way out of the awkward and embarrassing position that the resolve, perseverance and skill of the Lebanese resistance have put it in.

True, Israel's military and technological superiority is essential to its survival. However, the gap between Israel and the Arabs is not so much created by its superiority as it is by the Arabs' backwardness. At the root of this backwardness lie the petit states in which, to borrow from Ibn Khaldun, flattery and favouritism are the way to rank and power, rank and power are the route to money, and alliance with Israel and any other power is the way to forestall the rise of any alternative.

Conjuring Tricks

Elections can be both more and less than they seem, writes Azmi Bishara

In an age in which an individual from any social class anywhere in the world can grasp the meaning of political freedom, political sovereignty can no longer be expressed without democracy. Nor, it would appear, is it possible to imagine democracy without an electoral process for selecting rulers, whether through elected voting delegates or through direct polls. But elections do not happen in a perfect world: rather, they descend upon us as they are, with all their ills. There is influence, pressure, money, lies, fraud and deception, all used in various ways to manipulate the electorate. In other words, electoral campaigns are an exercise in distorting the will of the people. Deliberate tampering with the polls through such means as removing names or adding fictional names to voter registration lists, altering or forging ballots, or falsifying the tallying of votes, are thus rendered unnecessary. Tampering tends to be the recourse of underdeveloped political forces or rulers that are weak or unable to afford the luxury of costly campaigns. But an election that is free of the first set of ills is a rare bird indeed. One has the strong impression that the recent elections in Ukraine marked a victory of the first set of ills over the second.

But is there any real difference between the two? The first set does just as much to falsify the popular will as the second, and apply in varying degrees to all electoral processes, beginning with the tailoring of the process itself and passing through methods of financing it, the purchasing of votes through direct payments or through promises of jobs or services, control over access to the media, false pledges made and lies and insinuations spread against rival candidates. It happens everywhere, even in the most established democracies. And then of course there is the more recent problem -- US intervention in elections abroad, through ambassadors and other envoys, aid and finance agencies and democracy approval ratings.

Falsifying the popular will by purchasing consciences, spreading lies or warning that votes cast in the wrong direction will call down America's wrath at least recognises the democratic method, regardless of how it is bent to a candidate's advantage. More importantly, voters have some freedom of choice and political forces that want to prevail against this form of falsifying the popular will still have the opportunity to appeal to the electorate's intelligence. The astute voter can escape the first type of fraud in the ballot box, but there is no way his vote can survive direct tampering. Perhaps the results would be the same in either case. But at least honest polls, however dirty the campaigns, entail more developed social mechanisms for managing a society and its political life, mechanisms that include ways of bringing politicians to account for pledges made and then not kept. The second form of electoral corruption, on the other hand, would seem to thrive in a more rudimentarily organised and generally less politically aware society. The difference between the two approaches must inevitably translate into differences in the quality of life.

The debate over whether elections are indispensable to other citizenship rights and whether rotation of authority is a prerequisite for the democratic expression of popular sovereignty is certain to continue for some time. However, apart from purely technical matters, the Palestinian elections have no bearing on these matters, since, unlike national elections elsewhere in the world, these elections were not a manifestation of national sovereignty to begin with.

To regard the Palestinian elections as an expression of sovereignty requires a stretch of the imagination. The notion presumes that the Palestinian people are only the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza and that these could somehow turn a blind eye to the presence of the occupation and the crimes it perpetrated up to the evening preceding the elections. It presumes that it is not important whether major political parties participated or not, that only a third of qualified voters in the West Bank and Gaza registered to vote and that only two thirds of these voted. No one is about to air these subjects at length, no matter how ardently democratically minded observers wave their hands and shout. They were, quite simply, besides the point. The elections were intended to confirm the popular legitimacy of the post-Arafat leadership in the West Bank and Gaza, which areas define the Palestinian people from the perspective of those non-Palestinian forces that were so enthusiastic about the elections because they wanted a Palestinian leadership with a popular rubber stamp for the purposes of negotiations and managing affairs inside the territories -- in that order.

This said, the elections were a political process and those participating were compelled to outline their political views and objectives and to state their apprehensions, leaving the ultimate say to the voter, regardless of the powerful regional and international factors at play. Political parties had a responsibility to stake out their ground. They had to either participate in the elections or, if boycotting them, to clearly delineate their reasons for this form of protest. The political parties should also have felt compelled to contemplate the impact of the transition from the PLO and the diaspora to the PA as the primary framework for political life on their power, influence and perhaps very survival. Having failed to engage in such a process of introspection at the time of the first PA legislative elections, Palestinian political forces succumbed to a form of identity crisis that saw them wavering for years between the PA and the Islamist movements.

This week's Palestinian presidential elections were a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming legislative elections, and it would be wise for the Palestinian parties to assess their performance in light of the results. How, for example, did it come about that a high media profile overshadowed a long record of political activism? This is but one of the dozens of questions that the results raise. Political parties cannot survive on their past laurels or on declaring responsibility for a resistance operation from time to time. If they have a policy or a programme to which they subscribe they must lay this before the public. Yet, today, we find that some political parties no longer bother to produce a newspaper, let alone convene popular rallies or other forms of grassroots mobilisation. It would appear that the problem resides in the absence of political party life in the simplest sense. The crucial factor in the presidential elections was not so much the media fanfare as it was the vacuum that filled the media and everything else. Perhaps some would like to believe, or have others believe, that political rallies, newspapers, conventions, lectures and the like are purely conventional devices. That may be true. But no political party can exist without engaging in conventional political party activities. Wheels are conventional, but no car can move without them however state-of-the-art its motor.

The newly elected PA president is being hailed as though he were really a president. At least that is the impression all those congratulations, from the White House on down, seem intent upon creating. But then this is precisely the result the Western world, including Israel, wanted and made no attempt to conceal. Will this international embrace work in favour of the Palestinian cause, or will it be a bear hug? I suspect the latter.

Israel has not budged an inch on the Palestinian question. It still regards Bush's letter to Sharon as a major political achievement. It may be ready to negotiate with the new Palestinian leadership and it may be willing to take some initiates to "alleviate the conditions" of the people (as though they were hostages) in order to facilitate things for the new leadership. But beyond that nothing is open to discussion. Even the simple idea of agreeing to the notion of a ceasefire is out of the question as far as Sharon is concerned. He expects the PA to do everything for him by "eliminating the sources of terror" or by declaring a unilateral truce. In short, any ceasefire is an exclusively Palestinian responsibility. This implies that Palestinian "terrorism" is the cause and Israeli repression the result. And this cause has to be eliminated if the roadmap is to go ahead, or at least Israel's reading of the roadmap. Even the agreement that presaged the new coalition in Israel was not content with regurgitating Tel Aviv's 14 "reservations" on the roadmap; it also included the letter from Weisglass to Condoleezza Rice reminding her of the 14 reservations and her statement to the effect that Washington sympathised with them. Such was the basis of the rapprochement between Sharon and Perez. And this was signed following the death of Yasser Arafat, i.e. following the disappearance of the foremost "obstacle" to peace.

Sharon may be prepared to negotiate, that is true. But far from accommodating the principles of each side, the negotiations he wants are certain to focus almost exclusively on the creation of a Palestinian state and the only margin of diplomatic manoeuvrability he will be willing to accept, even from the US, is that which will serve to persuade the Palestinians to accept the notion of a state and nothing more. There will be no question of addressing such fundamental Palestinian demands as the right of return while, once a Palestinian state is created, any outstanding border issues will be reduced to minor glitches that can be handled between the two "states" through peaceful means. All the US and the Europeans have to do is to convince the Palestinians that this is their only alternative and that once they accept the inevitable their state, created on 40 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza, will be transformed into heaven on earth. And if Sharon cannot get what he wants through an agreement he will repeat the unilateral disengagement ruse without an agreement, but, of course, only if the PA proves itself capable of handling security by monopolising recourse to arms and unifying its security agencies.

The foregoing is only part of what lies in store for the newly elected PA. It will have decide whether or not to read the results of the elections with the spectacles Washington and Tel Aviv are wearing, a reading that tells it that it now has the green light to halt the armed Intifada and lay the groundwork for accepting a Palestinian state in exchange for keeping the final status questions of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees and borders pending indefinitely. Or it can decide to interpret the election results as a partial mandate to administer the affairs of Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza and to negotiate with Israel without abandoning the principles of relative justice and fairness. This interpretation will also entail working to unify the ranks of the PA and Palestinian society so as to complete the mandate, and working to unify the Palestinian struggle in a manner that permits Palestinian society to live and develop even under the most arduous circumstances until we realise a truly just, permanent and comprehensive solution.

Beyond Good and Evil

From the Circus Maximus to the Brandenburg Gate, summer is one big party. And still the world's poorest are dying in their millions, writes Azmi Bishara

Allowing ourselves a little empirical leeway it is possible to divide summer society into two classes. One is constantly on the move. Its members have not a moment's rest as they flit from an outing to the beach to an outdoor festival, rush to their summer homes then fly off for an excursion abroad. London may be off the list of vacation stops this year but the consumerist thirst for other venues remains insatiable. The other class remains at home. Summer alters nothing of its members' schedules with the exception, perhaps, that they desperately fan themselves as they curse the heat, waiting for the evening to approach as they stoically endure the ruckus of children at play and tend to their problems and demands during two long months without school.

Whether or not one accepts this sociological taxonomy there is no denying the proliferation of summer festivals. Virtually every tourist destination has its own art or music festival and has long since made the preparations necessary to receive hordes of holiday makers eager to flock together in the evenings for a concert beneath the stars. As for areas populated by those destined to remain at home during the summer, brides and grooms and their entourages tour local fêtes in which the loudspeakers are strategically placed to ensure no one is deprived of their blast. Summer is the season of noise.

In Europe, Japan, the US and Canada the touring class has given rise to a sub-species, one that refuses to party without a cause. The fad this year reached its zenith with the Live 8 concerts, sponsored by Irish rock singer Bob Geldof, famed for organising the Live Aid charity concerts 20 years ago that raised $150 million for the relief of victims of famine. Of course there are certain differences between the two mega-events. Conditions in Africa are far worse than they were 20 years ago. It appears that Geldof, who has since knelt before the Queen and become Sir Bob, felt he had to furnish critics and sceptics proof of the worthiness of his project. This year he paraded across the stage a beautiful woman -- you have to be beautiful if you're going to stand the remotest chance of appearing on stage at such an event -- photographs of whom had flashed across screens 20 years ago when she was a toddler suffering the pains of starvation. Also, this year, the Live 8 organisers joined hands with Tony Blair to urge his G8 partners to write off African debt and double their aid to the continent by 2010.

In Gleneagles the G8 nations remained mostly silent on the question of debt cancellation, though they did issue a pledge to increase aid. Tony Blair used all his moral force, as conference host and as a leader returning from the British capital which had been "rocked" by explosions (such was the unfortunate term used by the British and American media to describe events in London, consciously or unconsciously echoing pop culture jingo) to get his G8 partners to commit their pledges to paper, but to no avail. They all know only too well that a huge portion of aid never reaches its target, not just because of the pervasive corruption of African regimes, against which the corruption of other Third World countries pales, but also because whatever figures they announce are certain to shrink once parliamentary and government committees apply themselves to the task, and because a large portion of aid goes to subsidising food and drug companies, to covering the administrative and personnel costs of their own aid organisations and to funding the administrative expenses of NGOs and other intermediary agencies.

President Bush had preempted the G8 summit and the need to talk new figures when, on 30 June, he announced his government would give $1.7 billion more to Africa over the next five years, of which $1.2 billion would go to the fight against malaria. Malaria is a disease that could theoretically be cured at the cost of a dollar per dose of vaccine. Yet the disease claims at least a million lives annually, 90 per cent of them in Africa. This is a modest estimate, with some placing the annual death toll as high as three million. Bush's announcement was lauded by the press the following day and hailed by the organisers of the mega concerts. Then it was revealed that the figure Bush so magnanimously pledged barely makes up for the cutbacks his administration made this year in its aid allocations for combating epidemic disease. In Africa a child dies of malaria every 12 seconds. Factor in the other epidemics ravaging the continent and a child dies every three seconds.

The Live 8 concerts did little to improve on the media's tasteless if unwitting pun on the word "rocked". In Philadelphia actor Will Smith cried out, "Hey you in Circus Maximus! Do you hear Brandenburg Gate?" He was referring to the concerts taking place simultaneously in Rome and Berlin and the exhortations from the stage to the audiences to snap their fingers at three-second intervals as a reminder of how many children are dying in Africa. I found it difficult to understand this symbolic gesture. Does finger snapping in time with the African child mortality rate make people sleep better at night? Do they remember why they were snapping their fingers when the music blares out after those three-second intervals? It is truly mind-boggling. Spectacle, celebrity fanfare and dance blend to the rhythm of death, not for any evil purpose but for the sake of excitement. As Bono of U2, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Neil Young, REM, Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour and others strutted on the stage the huge screens behind them flashed images that have become a synonym for Africa in Western mass culture, children with distended bellies carried by mothers with desiccated breasts, using their last remaining strength to flick flies off their babies. Only in Western consumerist culture can one conceive of people grooving against this backdrop. Which, of course, raises questions regarding the "politically correct", the scarcity of Africans on the stage and what exactly drew the audiences, the cause or the music? It seemed that every newspaper conducted its own opinion poll, quoting this or that young man or woman saying that they came only for the music, or mainly for the cause or, as some respondents put it, for a little of this and a little of that. What difference does it make as long as the result is the same?

Starvation, poverty and disease formed the backdrop for Live Aid, Live 8 and, this year, the G8 summit. Music celebrities rubbed shoulders with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Bill Gates and Kofi Annan (who, perhaps rightfully, hailed the Live 8 concerts as the real United Nations). Between the self-promotion and consumerist hype of the greatest-show-on- earth sort it is possible to discern some of the features of an albeit unwritten and unsystematically thought out ideology. This ideology places itself at the centre of, rather than against, current global policies. "If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act," Bill Gates told the crowds and worldwide television audiences. Otherwise put, what global politics lacks today is not the values of justice and fairness but someone like him to tell the politicians what they have to do. Speaking from the same script Geldof declared that the eight leaders sitting together in a room could change the world. All that is needed, it appears, is someone to open their eyes to the truth -- or a crowd of people snapping their fingers persistently enough to get those G8 leaders dancing -- and then they'll do what is right.

This new ideology informed an article by John Major, whose conservative government ruled the UK for seven years before Blair came to power. Beneath the headline "I did care, but I didn't do enough", in The Guardian of 6 July, he declares his support for increased government aid to Africa and his fear of abandoning poverty there to the laws of the free market. In a display of self-flagellation he confesses to having seen the ravages of poverty in Africa but failing to do enough to end it when he was in power. Then came the excuses: "the recession I inherited; the slender majority in parliament; the squabbles over Europe; the internecine warfare that distracted my attention; the fact that the issue was lower profile then." None of these, however, convinced his conscience. "I should have done more," he concludes. One cannot help but be impressed by this seasoned politician's adeptness at the art of coming clean without coming clean. I would not rule out the possibility that someone spotted John Major at the Hyde Park concert but didn't recognise him, or else did not believe what they had seen.

One of the strictures of the new ideology, it appears, is that there are no longer evil forces in the world, not even in the context of African poverty, with the exception, of course, of fundamentalist Islamic movements. As if to prove this fundamentalists disrupted the joining of hands between the greatest concerts in the world and the greatest nations in the world over the plight of poverty by carrying out four coordinated bombings in London. Afterwards President Bush, self- appointed champion of the fight against malaria and terrorism, proclaimed: "The contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who have got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks."

The bombings furnished an opportunity to affirm the sense of harmony and complacency within a culture that has rallied to display its solidarity on behalf of the absolutely abstract victim, poor and defenceless Africa, which cannot, in contrast to the culture of terrorism, play anything but the victim. On the one hand we have the victim par excellence, who can arouse only pity, who can be easily sold to the millions who need a cause to which they can rhythmically snap their fingers. On the other we have the cult of terrorism and murder (and we all know who that stands for, regardless of Blair's insistence that ordinary Muslims are not to blame) barging into the middle of this harmonious gathering of the "real United Nations" which in its peace-loving rationality would do the right thing if only pointed in the right direction.

Instead of an ideology that divides the world into good and bad we have a new ideology in which evil has disappeared from society unless it breaks in from the outside. Gone, too, is the need to assess evil policies, or policies with evil results, and the arguments of those who oppose them. In the fever of summit fanfare and summer concerts the world has become one big stadium in which mega concerts merge with mega summits and coordinated mega-bombings and the public, tired of the tedious complexities of political analysis and criticism find it is far more satisfying to watch Bill Gates take the stage and propose buying a mosquito net for every bed in Africa as a ready-made remedy for malaria. It is important, too, that our demonstrations of universal solidarity in the fight against poverty and disease be heavily spiced with celebrity appearances and performances lest solidarity becomes boring.

But let us leave the exciting Live 8/G8 world for a moment and turn to some simple facts and figures. The Economist 's Global Agenda Web site of 7 July 2005 discloses that 2.8 billion people, or half the developing world, lives on less than two dollars a day and that half of these live on less than a dollar a day. If every dollar donated by the great powers to recipient countries reached its intended destination, this would cover 50 days of expenses for the billions who live on a dollar a day and 12.5 days for those who live on two dollars a day.

Now, to "rock" the reader's mind a bit, let us also consider that against the $50 billion G8 countries allocate as overseas aid, the countries of Europe and North America allocate $350 billion to their own farmers in subsidies intended to protect them from competition from the developing world. These enormous subsidies fly in the face of the market-led policies the IMF so assiduously hawks to the developing world. That the developed world exempts itself from the policies it forces on the poorest countries sabotages agriculture in the developing world. If Western nations stopped paying out that $350 billion and did not pay a dollar more in aid the economies of a great many Third World countries, including the countries of Africa, would improve dramatically.

There are no more good guys or bad guys. That's a relief. But who's going to deal critically with evil policies or policies with evil results?

Identity and Democracy

Azmi Bishara delves into the use and abuse of Arab, as adjective and identity

One cannot help but notice in the course of the ongoing debate on democracy and reform in the Arab world that those who are most adamant in denying the existence of such a thing as Arab identity are the quickest to lump all these countries together when it comes to criticising them. Arab, as a collective designation, is okay as long as it is used in a negative context. This raises the question as to what Arab identity might mean these days to those with good intentions.

I have no intention of resurrecting identity politics of any sort. Far better remain hungry for theoretical insight than gorge oneself on illusory answers that play on the emotions. Identity politics are disastrous. They blur differences between social and political forces. They give rich and poor a single identity, and allow the former to speak for the latter, happy to share an identity if not the nation's wealth.

Instead of civil rights -- the right of individual citizens -- to have their views and interests advocated on representative bodies, identity politics allows only for the representation of identities, for which purpose people are divided according to their ethnic or denominational affiliations rather than on the basis of their convictions and political beliefs.

The question of identity must, of course, be addressed. It must be addressed because the power that dominates the world is pursuing the most pernicious sort of identity politics, imposing a clash of civilisations where no such tensions had previously existed. It must be addressed because, among those who formulate the policies of the sole superpower, suspicious eyebrows are raised at the mere suggestion of an Arab identity.

Persistent attempts to refute an identity are the most telling confirmation of its existence. Such attempts also underline the existence of an ulterior motive for the refutation. Deconstructing theories in such a way as to pinpoint that motive is the challenge that faces all who want to seriously address the issues raised by identity.

There is no point in enumerating traits that make up Arab identity: that is a kind of knee-jerk self-defence. Rather, we should first ask what lies behind this scepticism over the very existence of an Arab identity. In this context, it is germane to wonder why in Iraq, after recognising a Kurdish identity, they now speak of a Shia-Sunni-Kurdish federation rather than an Arab-Kurdish federation. Why are the Kurds treated as though they are bound by an identity founded upon common ethnic and cultural origins, or upon a belief in their descent from a legendary forefather, whereas the Arabs are not allowed an ethnic affiliation, let alone national identity? People from more than a hundred different nationalities and as many cultural and ethnic origins were subsumed under a single national identity in Israel. It was a process that took place in the modern world and no one batted an eyelash. Moreover, today, the Arabs are being asked not only to recognise Israel but to recognise its national character as a Jewish state. Yet, the Arabs have to justify the existence of an Arab identity. How very odd indeed.

There is no reason why we should not discuss the benefits to be had from regarding our Arabness as a national identity that supersedes cultural bonds. Many democratically minded people admit to the existence of only a single nation, based on citizenship, the community from which the nation state arose or else itself created in the process of nation building. The existence of an Arab national identity without citizens hinders the emergence of any meaningful form of citizenship capable of taking the issue of democracy in existing Arab states seriously. If the aim of the state is to serve its citizens, then there are bound to be those who would rather wait until the Arab nations unite, postponing the task of democratisation and taking refuge in national causes in order to obstruct democratic rights and institutions and the sovereignty of law.

So what is and what is not meant by the notion of adhering to Arab identity? What, in so doing, is legitimate, and what is not?

It is alarming that when Arab states shrug off their Arab identity or withdraw their commitment to an overarching Arab nationality they continue to attempt to solidify a national identity that conforms with the boundaries of the state and that can serve as a foundation for building an overriding concept of citizenship. As a result the state disintegrates into a motley collection of sectarian, regional or tribal affiliations producing, at best, a state for sects or tribes rather than a state for all citizens. In other words, the juridical personality that stands before the state is not the individual citizen but the pre-modernist organic group. Since, in many instances, dictatorial regimes demolished the civil structures they inherited without providing alternative structures to establish the bond of citizenship people had no alternative, when these regimes collapsed or succumbed to outside pressures to reform, but to fall back on the only remaining social structures, the clan or the religious sect. These were the only structures that could mediate between the individual and the state, and the only structures to which the individual could turn for support and protection, even if this came at the price of individuality and the free and independent exercise of political will. These dictatorial republics also made their populations recoil from pan-Arabism, which had been co-opted as an ideological prop for the regime.

Just as it is useful to examine the political and economic interests that gave rise to pan- Arabism as a political identity in the reputedly liberal post-World War I period, and then as a political ideology following World War II and, specifically, after 1948, it is also useful to useful to examine the political and economic interests that are prompting the denial of Arab identity, or at least its depoliticisation, at a time when existing regimes and American hegemony are politicising kinship and sectarian affiliations and when their opponents are politicising religion.

The tragedy is that the identity of the regional state, as opposed to pan-Arab identity, is laden with -- indeed, perceives itself in terms of -- its indigenous and potentially politicisable tribal or sectarian composition. This applies even to those instances in which state boundaries have historical legitimacy and are not regarded as the product of colonialist partitions, as is the case with Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain and, to a certain extent, Lebanon if we confine ourselves to its status under the Ottoman Empire, which some posit as favourable to democracy. In fact, pushing regional state identity as the alternative to Arab identity, rather than as complementary with it, exacerbates the crises of identity allegiances within the region state.

The importance of Arab identity does not reside in the fact that it is an expression of nostalgia for regimes that once used it as an ideological prop. Rather, it resides in the fact that it has remained in the collective political memory as an expression of the dream that emerged among Arab elites and middle classes in the Levant and Fertile Crescent at precisely that period when succumbed to a modernist optimism. Since Arab identity was associated with the modernist project of the Arab middle classes, which envisioned a united Arab market and economy within the borders of a united Arab state, it was conceptually more open. In actual application it permitted for the inclusion of non-Arab peoples, whose actual origins are now obscure except perhaps to ethnologists, into the fold of urban Arabism, and by virtue of its inclusiveness it worked to politically neutralise their other identities. Arabism was not an ethnic, but rather a political and cultural construct. Because Arabism was associated with the drive to throw off Turkish hegemony, and then with the struggle against the partition of Arab lands according to the rulers of the colonialists, it has retained a cherished place in the hearts of the Arab peoples and a mobilising power that every progressive movement in the region has sought to tap.

There are several reasons for viewing the battle over democracy within this context. Only much later was Arab identity recruited into the service of conformist ideologies that negated the rights of non-Arab minorities, and the more fragmented the Arab world became the more strident and exclusivist these ideologies became, as if demagoguery could compensate for reality.

Arab identity continues to exist as a language, a shared history, a legal identity and a call for solidarity in the face of foreign intervention. Within a democratic programme it could become an instrument for uniting the Arab majority in every individual Arab state within the framework of a homogeneous cultural identity, without obviating the state's character as a state for all its citizens -- Arabs and non-Arabs alike -- and without encroaching on the collective cultural rights of non-Arab minorities. Such homogeneity works to neutralise sectarian differences in the political arena while providing the framework for the plurality of opinion and political platforms.

Would a common supra-national affiliation to Arab identity conflict with democracy? Not at all. Such an affiliation can still form the basis for realising the dream of a federal unity between democratic states, as occurred in Europe for example, even in the absence of a common national identity. Nor is there a reason why such a drive should not draw on the old dream of Arab unity, even if it is out of date and can no longer be put into effect in the fashion imagined in its heyday. It was an enlightened dream, foregrounding the right to self determination. It was also a dream for wresting control of the region's natural wealth and then using this wealth for the benefit of all its people instead of creating a statelet next to every oil well.

To strip the identity of the majority of the population of the adjective Arab can only work to hasten the disintegration of societies not only into fractured identity affiliations, but politicises these identities. At best this process produces denominational/sectarian quota systems (which for some curious reason are called consensual democracies) that entrench traditional, non-democratic sectarian leaderships. In the worst of circumstances it produces civil war. But it is civil war -- cold or hot -- that prevails in either case because politics in such societies -- and discrimination, oppression and other injustices -- does not revolve around policies, counter policies or the analysis of policies, but simply around identity affiliations and the pitting of one affiliation against the other.

What makes it easy for outside powers to neutralise Arab identity is that each regime has its own direct and unmediated link with American hegemony. This phenomenon is reflected in the way in which every Arab nation gives priority to its bilateral relations with the US and European countries over its relations with other Arab nations. It is also reflected in their readiness to improve relations with Israel, whenever circumstances permit, by ironing out their differences with Israel as if these differences had somehow sprung from their Arab identity.

Arab identity, here, is neither a cause nor an effect. It is a phenomenon associated with ruling elites and their policies. But there is no reason why it should not be asserted, as long as people realise that it does not hold all the solutions. Nationalism, as an ideology, has always been the property of right-wing movements, which take nationalism as a guise for identity politics, often of a fascistic bent, the most extreme examples of which could be seen in many European countries in the 20th century. However, nationalism is the framework for an affiliation that transcends local organic affiliations, and in the context of democratic thought there is scope for asserting national identity, so long as such confirmation promotes the processes of modernisation and democratisation and helps resistance against Western domination. There is nothing wrong, then, if an advocate of democracy and social justice in the Arab world appeals to Arab identity, for this helps create a climate inimical to American hegemony, as well as a climate obstructive to the fundamentalist anti-American response which emanates from an antagonism to modernism itself.

Arab democrats, or at least those that are not waiting for the American tanks to arrive, realise that democracy is a set of values given force by a set of principles and systems -- the peaceful rotation of authority though the electoral process, the separation of powers, the autonomy of the judiciary, mechanisms for checking and punishing the abuse of power, a range of civil rights, etc. -- and that together these make up a cause that has to be fought for and gradually won. However, one also presumes that they realise that democracy can only take root in a state grounded on popular legitimacy, for without this precondition only despotism can hold the state together. Either that, or the process of democratisation triggers the splintering of the country into petty entities. The presumption of a minimal common identity among citizens is crucial to establishing the legitimacy of the state. It also makes it possible for the citizenry to side for and against political and social programmes intended to promote the welfare of the whole, without such divisions degenerating into civil war.

When is a Terrorist a soldier?

When he's Israeli, of course, writes Azmi Bishara

Ariel Sharon condemned the Jewish terrorist attack against a bus in Shfaram last Thursday in the harshest terms. His vehemence, however, was not inspired by any compassion for the Arab victims but by the opportunity to turn this event to his advantage. Not only could he use the incident against extremist Jewish settlers but also to rally Israeli Arabs to his side in what has become the only game in town: either you're with Sharon or with the extremist settlers who are fuming at him for having abandoned them. In the Sharon scheme of things there is no room for a third option, based on an Arab or Palestinian position or the principles contained in international resolutions. There is Sharon and there are the settlers, and Arabs in Israel have to choose between them, just as the Labour Party did when it opted to become the Likud leader's reservist army.

If Eden Tzuberi's shooting spree snapped people back from any flight into political apathy they were contemplating it does not mean there are only two positions to choose from. Indeed, any true condemnation of this act must take into account the policies Sharon pursues and his promotion, in the name of some mystical theological ordinance, of massive settlement construction in Jerusalem, Hebron and elsewhere. The settlers in Hebron, we should remember, are no less fanatic than those of Tapuah, the settlement the terrorist had chosen as his place of residence.

Sharon is the godfather of the Jewish settler drive. He encouraged them, supported them and used them -- and his support for them -- in all his political battles. Sharon also believes that force is the only way to deal with the Arabs, which is why he does not subscribe to a just -- or for that matter unjust -- negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He prefers the unilateral imposition of borders and entrenchment behind an iron wall of military deterrence.

It is out of these preferences that his unilateral disengagement plan grew. Sharon has remained the settlers' role model for the use of violence against Arab civilians from his early days with Unit 101 to the recent Intifada. His government produced a bill, ratified by the Knesset, barring Arab civilians -- the accidental victims of the violence perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces -- from appealing to the courts for compensation. Sharon's Israel treats Arabs either as a people under occupation when it is convenient, or as citizens of another country should they try to sue for compensation.

Israel under Sharon has sustained and intensified its violence as an occupation power without having to meet its obligations to the civilians under occupation. Under Sharon the Israeli government has refused Arabs from the occupied territories the right of residence in Israel under the family reunification provisions of Israeli law. In doing so, in deliberately discriminating against Arab citizens of Israel even in matters pertaining to choice of spouse and place of residence, he has removed the last barriers to the open discussion of Arabs in Israel as a demographic peril.

The terrorist act perpetrated by Eden Tzuberi in the northern Israeli town of Shfaram was a suicide operation. He knew he would never get out alive, that is unless he had been driven to such lunacy by his racism that he thought the Arabs would clear the way for him to flee after hearing the shots that killed and wounded so many of them. Tzuberi had a model to draw on, Barukh Goldstein, who also knew he would not return alive after opening fire on worshipers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. Barukh the brave, Jewish extremists called him, and a monument was built to commemorate him in the Karyat Arba kibbutz near Hebron. This unprecedented harvest of people kneeling in prayer did not prompt the Israeli authorities to remove the settlers from Hebron. Instead they divided the mosque into two, along with the entire town, rendering the lives of the city's Arab inhabitants, subject to the constant harassment of the settlers who took over the city centre, an interminable nightmare. Why shouldn't the settler zealots celebrate Barukh Goldstein and his great accomplishment?

To observe that the monstrous racism born in the settlements must inevitably extend its cancerous tentacles into Israel, as is borne out by the assassination of Rabin, one of the heroes of Israeli military prowess in 1948 and 1967, and by the Shfaram bus massacre of 4 August, is to engage in a form of socio-political analysis founded upon concrete evidence. The conspiracy theories come from another quarter, the senior political commentators in the Israeli press. They do not think that the Israeli soldier was implementing an Arab plot or that he was in the pay of Shin Beth, Israel's internal security service. Like me they think Tzuberi was a rabid racist. But they also think that Shin Beth's negligence in apprehending a man reported AWOL more than two months ago may have been deliberate. This was a "professional decision", they say, intended to ensnare the settlers and the extreme right.

"This is a scandal," wrote Alex Fishman in Yediot Aharonot of 5 August. "For months they've been warning us about a terrorist attack... The attack in Shfaram was an isolated act but Eden Nathan Zada (Tzuberi) is a phenomenon. There are dozens, indeed, hundreds like him, and in times of incitement, the time of the disengagement, killers like him ripen. Most of them won't go out and kill Arabs for being Arabs. But every Zada has his own fuse and no one knows when it will ignite... Shin Beth knew that the man was mixing with the Kahana people, but the army never got a report about that. Where was Shin Beth? A crazed man who spent the first four months of his military service either AWOL or in military prison, who studied in a Yashiva, a religious school, in Tapuah, and who was in contact with Kahana's men was wandering around the settlements in Gush Katif with an army issued gun. Why was there no pursuit or any serious attempt to look for him? Why were the police not notified or brought into the picture... What part did Shin Beth play in this story? Did Shin Beth have hidden professional motives for not apprehending the man?"

Amos Harel in Haaretz raised similar questions. He also noted the reactions of the Israeli ultra right on the Internet, which he described as varying between sorrow over the Israeli soldier's death and charges of Shin Beth provocation. Of course, the allegations by the right against Shin Beth would be motivated by entirely different considerations than those that arouse our suspicions and those of the Israeli commentators.

There are four reasons why Arabs in Israel should be alarmed by this terrorist act against them -- and I say them because the murderer was not selective in his targets, opening fire indiscriminately against the passengers in the bus as soon as it arrived to its destination because they were Arab.

The first reason is that Arab towns and villages inside Israel have entered the target list of Jewish terrorists, which means that to their minds, too, these towns and their inhabitants are part and parcel of the Palestinian people. Many inhabitants of these towns and cities, like normal people everywhere, feel that politics has nothing to do with them and that political involvement brings nothing but trouble. They just want to get on with their lives. But suddenly the monster of terrorism reared its head from a settlement that was next to faraway Nablus, but turned out to be tragically close to Galilee and, I would venture, to Lebanon and Syria as well.

The second reason resides in how hard Israeli society found it to take this incident seriously. It took hours for the Israeli media to announce that the shooting was by an Israeli and that it was deliberate. Before that it was passed off as a "brawl in a bus" and, in one instance, an "Arab sectarian dispute". Such terms, alone, give the Arabs some useful clues as to the wishful thinking of their adversaries. But even after all the gory details came to light about the perpetrator and his rampage Haaretz 's banner headline the following day: was "Soldier kills four". It is not as if the words terrorist or attack could not be squeezed in. A newspaper of the stature of Haaretz does not choose its headlines lightly. They are the result of considerable deliberation.

The attack took place at a time of widespread Israeli sympathy for the settlers who are being told to leave their settlements in Gaza. At the time of the terrorist operation thousands of Israeli soldiers and policemen were busy keeping sympathisers out of Gaza in advance of the withdrawal. Israeli security forces have little compunction in opening fire on Arab demonstrators or driving a police jeep or two at full speed, guns ablaze with live ammunition, into demonstrators to disperse them. But in the event of a Jewish demonstration Israeli police assign two policemen to every demonstrator so that they can lift them away bodily without even having to use tear gas. Who needs tear gas anyway when the policemen's eyes are already streaming over the fate of the settlers?

If this is the reaction of settlers and a significant segment of Israeli society to the withdrawal from settlements that no one could seriously have a hope of surviving in Gaza, what will happen when it comes to Israeli "concessions" in the West Bank? Israel is not about to subject itself to violent social upheavals every year or two. If only for this reason the disengagement from Gaza is a one-off. Sharon's remarks in Paris with regard to the disengagement and the settler protests offered a stark indication of his intentions: "These days the world is getting to know what we mean when we say painful concessions."

There are a hundred reasons to believe that the Israeli army is thoroughly infiltrated by ultra right gangs, racists and crazies of every hue. Not that the Israeli army would be a guardian angel without them. It, and the policies it implements, lie at the heart of the problem. They are the instrument of the occupation and repression and the embodiment of a militarist culture that falsifies reports when the victims are Arabs. The army is the terrorist in the territories occupied in 1967. But when Jewish terrorism starts operating on the other side of the Green Line the existence of extremist gangs inside the army changes the rules of the game entirely. Israel is one of the few, if not the only, countries in the world in which off-duty soldiers roam the streets, board busses, sit in restaurants and cafés and step into shops and pharmacies sporting their guns as though this were their everyday dress. How is anyone to know whether or not this soldier or that will get it into his mind to open fire? That is something that should concern not only the Arab citizens of Israel.

The American Way of Death

Draped beneath a flag and accompanied by a band or floating bloated on the surface of toxic flood waters: there are different ways to die in Bush's America, writes Azmi Bishara

People long ago abandoned the custom of making human or non-human sacrifices to ward off natural disaster. The balance of power between man and nature, though, remains the same, and against the fury of nature at its most extreme there are no superpowers. That said, not all nations are equal in their ability to deal with the aftermath of cataclysmic natural events.

America is a great power, capable of evacuating millions and of sending hundreds of thousands of young men and women on rescue operations providing, of course, those young people are soldiers and the "rescue" a military operation abroad. America presents itself across the globe as the state writ large. At home, though, for neo-conservatives -- as, indeed, for their admirers overseas -- the state is a dirty word. America is a maximalist state viewed from the outside, and a minimalist state when the perspective is from within. Tellingly, Washington had to bring troops back from Iraq to deal with the crisis in Louisiana. While there seems to be no limit to the resources the US can deploy abroad, at home it appears to be ill-equipped to deal with calamity.

The US is not a Third World country yet it suffers from a desperate shortage of domestic institutions. One might point to the Department of Homeland Security, created in the post-11 September hysteria and allocated massive powers and resources, and claim it was established to cope with exactly the kind of havoc wrought by hurricane Katrina. Homeland Security's Secretary Michael Chertoff would differ with such an assessment: in his own words, "the critical thing was to get people out [of New Orleans] before the disaster. Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part." Shades of social Darwinism, as The Observer ("Bush at Bay", 4 September) in which this quote was cited pointed out. There is nothing like casting the blame on the victim, who most likely had no idea of the magnitude of the threat and even less of an idea of where to go to escape it, let alone how to get there. Chertoff conveniently deflects attention away from the responsibility of the state and its sheer incompetence in providing essential services to the needy and destitute. Yet neither Homeland Security nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can claim they lacked advanced warning when the mayor of New Orleans could advise his city's citizens on the Sunday before the disaster struck to leave their homes.

Hurricanes are not the kind of enemy on which you can pin a face. Their victims do not stir up the will to avenge. Modern societies do not treat nature as an "other". Ancient societies did, formulating collective rites and striking alliances with gods higher up the celestial hierarchy in order to avert disaster. Nature is no longer that unfathomable mystery that gave rise to religious systems. Today science has supplanted myth and technology has taken the place of sacrifice to the gods.

When the levees that protected New Orleans from the floodwaters of the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain were breached on 30 August the potential for catastrophe was realised. Most of the city was submerged, leaving more than 100,000 people stranded in their homes. It was impossible to get even a rough estimate of how many had already died though the hundreds of bloated bodies floating on the water provided a horrifying testimony to America's shame.

The 20,000 people packed into a sports stadium had to spend a week amid the stench of decay before they were bussed to proper shelter. Food, medicine and evacuation remained distant promises, while politicians in Washington offered speeches and press conferences. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was desperate. Instead of food, he said, "they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here." He pleaded with officials in Washington to "get off your asses and do something and fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country".

It is to America's shame that news came before food, the television hookup before medicine, transmission before shelter, images before the victims. And what images.

The disgrace goes deeper than the appalling indifference and incompetence of the federal government. Four days into the flood and the head of FEMA told ABC news that he had learned about the disaster victims like everyone else, from the television. He hadn't been notified officially. What more proof do we need that the world of media spectacle has become a universe unto itself.

On the ground the police appeared more concerned about protecting shops from looting than about those stranded in their homes or in the stadium. No distinction was made between shops being looted for DVD players and grocery stores raided for the water and food the government had failed to dispatch. Guards supposedly protecting the thousands of stranded stood as far away as possible, rifles at the ready, as if dealing with vast leper colonies.

When the floods began to recede America continued to handle the aftermath with all the efficiency of a Third World country. Confusion was aggravated by a lack of coordination between state and federal agencies. In the midst of this chaos priorities surfaced. As New Orleans' poor -- most of them black -- were left to fend for themselves the cameras zoomed in on the plight of the middle class whites trapped amid piles of rubbish in the stadium. The press wondered how water levels in Louisiana would impact on Bush's popularity ratings, and on the price of oil and gas. In the meantime Arab oil-producing nations scrambled to contribute emergency funds to the US, as if the US is strapped for cash. It wouldn't do to let the storm-struck Americans turn their anger against the hurricane to anger against rising oil prices and, by extension, the oil exporting states. Arab countries had already donated millions of dollars before Saudi Arabia, which custom has long dictated should set the ceiling for Arab generosity, stepped in to do the same.

All of this was happening while the fate of the poor and homeless remained pending. Apart from their impact on Bush's popularity ratings, on the settling of political scores with the Bush administration, on the relationship between rising oil prices and rising growth rates, what value do the disaster-struck have? Their lives, apparently, are without intrinsic value. Whatever significance they have derives exclusively from a set of economic and political calculations, from a fortunate coincidence that the White House is currently feeling the heat of mounting popular anger at Bush who spent the month of August holed up in his Texas ranch in order to avoid meeting the distressed mother camped outside who wanted five minutes of his time so that he could explain why her son had to die in Iraq.

The "victims of terrorism", or the relatives of soldiers killed in action, are given at least some explanation of their suffering through the invocation of patriotism, the defence of the American way. They are allowed concrete symbols, the flag draped over the coffin, the brass band that plays as the coffin is carried to a final resting place. There are rites and rituals, the paraphernalia of grief, and these are accompanied by the finely modulated voice of the politician, intended to rally hearts around the red, white and blue. For the flood victims, though, there was no such pomp and circumstance. Their last rites were the colour of their bloated bodies, accompanied by the stench of their decay and the sounds of scratching and gnawing as rats consumed their flesh. The difference is the product of mankind's hypocrisy, made all the more horrific by the hypocrisy of a consumerist media for which even the spectacle of death is a product to be placed.

Only Bush could have managed to emerge from all of this looking as dull and insensitive as he is. Some American journalists noted that if a terrorist group or foreign troops had invaded Louisiana the necessary armed forces and all the equipment necessary to meet the attack would have been rushed to the scene at the drop of his Texan hat. That, of course, is a conjecture with the benefit of hindsight and influenced by the horror of the death and by the politicisation of death. But, the record does show that Bush can be extraordinarily "cool" in a crisis. The same man who referred to the terrorists who perpetrated the 11 September attacks as "those folks" said in the wake of Katrina that he wasn't looking forward to the "trip" he had to make to the disaster zone, as though disappointed he had to cut his holiday short, but as disagreeable as it was duty called because "we're gonna have to clean up this mess." Little wonder The New York Times bristled and called the president "casual to the point of carelessness" as it questioned whether he "understood the depth of the current crisis".

Bush's colloquialisms are a part and parcel of his folksy image, but there is more to them than that. This is a president who is rarely caught without a little paper in his hand to tell him what to say, and on this occasion his colloquialisms enabled him to segue smoothly into the big lie.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach in the levees," he told Diane Sawyer in an interview last Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America". Odd, considering how much has been in the press about the worst-case scenarios FEMA had presented to the Bush administration in August 2001 regarding a terrorist strike against New York, a devastating earthquake in San Francisco and massive flooding of New Orleans. If those scenarios were hypothetical the same cannot be said of the warning given earlier this year that the levees around New Orleans would not be able to withstand even a grade-three hurricane. But budgetary allocations had not been approved to make the necessary repairs and reinforcements that would protect the city against a grade-three storm. Katrina was grade four, wreaking a catastrophe for which the US was caught totally unprepared, and for one reason. The federal government has a single priority -- war abroad, combined with the fight against terrorism at home.

On Democracy

Democracy in the West can survive without democrats. Not here, though, says Azmi Bishara

In the heat of the debate over democracy as a function of the domestic-foreign dialectic we sometimes lose sight of the essential distinction between the process of building democracy and the process of its self-regeneration once it has taken root and begun to flourish.

One of the factors that work to blur this distinction is that democracy has reached us after several centuries of evolution. This has led some to imagine that democratisation no longer entails the labour of laying the necessary groundwork for the political infrastructures and economic mechanisms necessary for its daily reproduction, as though democracy is a question of switching to the latest government software programme and all you have to do is pick it off the shelf, take it home and press "install".

On the other hand, the fact that democracy has reached us in its current stage of evolution rules out the possibility of returning to square one, restricting the right to vote to a narrow elite and then gradually expanding the franchise to all adult citizens, as occurred in Western democracies. It is impossible to contemplate democracy today without universal suffrage extended even to the non-democratically minded and with rights and civil liberties enjoyed even by anti-liberal forces.

But while not acting as though democracy were the latest consumer craze, we should simultaneously not pretend that we have no previous store of experience to build on. The era of Arab liberalism between the two world wars was not all corruption and collusion with colonialism. Nor was the radical Arab nationalism of the 1950s and 1960s a complete series of blunders. Those non-democratic regimes did have some democratic facets: the masses were brought on board the political process, they were given access to public education and they were led to believe in and aspire to equality and social justice.

In fact, the non-fulfilment of the latter expectation led to the rise of non-democratic movements; indeed, to anti-modernist fundamentalism, often in conjunction with the ruralisation of cities incapable of absorbing the vast influx of migrants into urban mass culture.

But even if frustrated, the aspirations raised by the populist movements of the 1950s and 1960s have become ingrained in mass culture, and today's advocates of democracy can draw on this and, simultaneously, draw inspiration from the fact that those pioneering freedom fighters were at least sincere in their belief in freedom, equality and the power of the people.

Certainly, the more repugnant manifestations of the way in which universal suffrage in the West has blended with mass communications and mass culture have driven many of today's youth to despair of politics and seek meaning for their lives in other domains. Politics in democratic societies has become associated with images of political party intrigue, dirty tricks and backstabbing, rabid opportunism, shifting political positions before and after the elections and before and after entering coalitions.

Electoral campaigns have turned into carnivals and parliament into a circus; spectacle, showmanship and hogging the camera are unchecked by any moral constraints; indeed, it seems now virtually imperative to have one's moral backbone extracted before entering the world of politics, a world divorced from morals and ethics and a world in which private morals are divorced from public morals.

Such are the blights that plague any parliamentarian who has retained a modicum of sensitivity, and they are more than apparent to any objective observer of the pornographic collusion between the commercial media and politics.

These are the manifestations of a modern democracy that can perpetuate itself without democrats because it has established traditions and institutions capable of embracing the pettiest political panderers and posers, capable of accommodating pragmatism and opportunism beneath the euphemism of utilitarianism, and capable of enduring the politics of expedience, which is to say the willingness to tread on corpses (both material and spiritual) without batting an eyelid in the pursuit of one's ends and the mindset that considers all this a virtue.

The foregoing were not the moral outlook nor even a passing phase of democracy's founding fathers of the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Georges Jacques Danton, Giuseppe Mazzini, Louis Auguste Blanqui, Karl Marx, the leaders of the Chartist movement and other radical democrats who forged the path for modern democracy as a mode of government based on majority rule. Nor were they the morals of the first liberals who were less concerned with the principle of majority rule than they were with the values of liberty and private property, even if these had to be safeguarded through a restricted franchise.

This is not to deny that these were human beings prone to err, that many of the values to which they subscribed appear to us today conservative if not downright reactionary, and that, as many studies have shone, many aspects of their personal lives were at odds with the principles they preached.

However, they were all proponents of new and radical idealisms whose constituent values were not derived from local or global balances of powers and whose appeal for democracy was not a banner to be waved when it suited the demands of national interest. These were people for whom political reform was an essential component of their zeal for a just and fair society. In effect, they were revolutionary visionaries and as remote as can be in moral temperament from politicians who cynically spout democratic platitudes without for a moment believing in equality and the quest for a more just and rational society.

Whether at a later stage in their evolution democracies settle into solidly established self-reproducing institutions with a truly democratic elite that safeguards them from the deluge of anti-democratic mass culture, or whether they open themselves to self-serving cynics who thrive in a media jungle that has nothing whatsoever to do with democratic values, I do not believe that we can begin to build a democracy with that mentality that prevails in latter-day democracies. It is impossible to imagine the opportunists in the West, from Bush down to the to most insinificant campaign secretary or speechwriter, as capable of founding a democracy.

In Brazil's Hugo Chavez we find someone who is much closer in his moral makeup to the revolutionary spirit of democracy's founding fathers than all those Arab politicians whom the US wants to commission, or who are vying to be commissioned, with the task of building democracy in the "Greater Middle East" put together. There is a paucity of reform-minded democrats in the current scramble to respond to American pressures while keeping the same elites in power.

This is not a question of charisma. That too is lacking, but this is not the problem. The Arab world, like other parts of the Third World, has produced more than its share of colourful and eccentric leaders who have had journalists flocking to interview them, even though they have left nothing standing in their societies, not even the stones laid by the urban developers under colonialist rule.

No, we have little need for charismatic leaders of that calibre. But, what is existentially disturbing is the gaping vacuum in the realm of vision, the absence of the aspiration to a more just society, the lack of ideological passion that characterised the first proponents of democracy where none existed. In the "Greater Middle East" democracy to some means skipping the formative phase and jumping straight to the backroom deals of coalition politics that characterise postmodern democracies.

It is unacceptable as we lay the foundations for our own democracies simply to reach out and grab the predigested jargon of George Bush and his fundamentalist speechwriters. Democracy is not something you can pick up at a drive-by window like a coke or a hamburger, or even some ready-made item that requires the strain of comparison shopping in order to get the best deal.

What kind of democrat would advise the Palestinians to relinquish their rights? Certainly, not the kind capable of founding a democracy, because that is the kind that defends people's rights to his eyeteeth, the kind that is incensed by injustice, that rejects might as a substitute for rights and, indeed, sees a moral antithesis between right and might, as was the case with Hannah Arendt in her thesis on violence.

The democrat is not the manipulator who works the balance of power in a democratic government towards his personal advancement or the advancement of his party. Nor is he or she the one who, for example, supports the decisions approved by the Israeli democratic majority regarding the future of the Palestinians or the equal right of women to pilot planes that bomb Palestinian homes. That is democracy in form, but one that, in this case, sanctions the repression and occupation of another people and militaristic values that inherently entrench the inferiority of women.

The democrat is not the person who regards Sharon's refusal to withdraw from the occupied territories in accordance with UN resolutions a stand for democracy and his unilateral disengagement plan from Gaza a step forward when he has nothing positive to say about the prospect of the emergence of a sovereign state. The democrat in the formative phase is the person who subscribes to democratic values out of principle and not as a bargaining chip in dealings with the powers that be in today's world.

In his speech to the National Defense University at Fort Lesley McNair on 8 March, the American cowpoke turned champion of democracy hailed the municipal elections in Saudi Arabia as a step forward towards broader democratic participation (applause!) and the recent Palestinian elections as a step towards liberation from "the legacy of (Palestinian obviously) corruption and violence" rather than from the vice of the Israeli occupation (more applause!). He described the demonstrations by the Lebanese opposition against the Syrian presence in Lebanon as an uprising for democratic reforms and another sign of the successes of America's war against terrorism, which were perhaps too many to enumerate in his speech.

But did you notice, too, that in that same speech he referred to the attack against the marine bases in Beirut in 1983, mentioning it in the same breath as the attack of 11 September 17 years later and the bombings of the American embassies in Africa and the USS Cole? Now there's something to give you pause for thought.

For years we have been trying to call his attention to Lebanon, which he had never mentioned in any of his speeches, not even as an example of the possibilities of how democracy might blossom in the Arab world. Yet suddenly Bush gets it in his mind to pack in two references to Lebanon, one of which he squeezed into his list of Al-Qaeda-like operations and the other of which he depicted as a velvet revolution that we are to assume had taken its cue from America's trailblazing crusade for democracy. How deftly he took that dense intricate fabric of Lebanon with all its contradictions and contrasts and cut and trimmed it to suit the American image of the contest between good and evil.

Are there no Arab democrats out there to remind him that, on the same day he stood before that military academy in Texas, a huge mass rally to counter the one he referred to in his speech took place in nearly the same vicinity in Beirut? It seems important to note that the fact that these demonstrators had assembled and disbanded just as peacefully as their predecessors, with no need for police intervention, indicates that a democratic culture had taken root in Lebanon long before Bush decided to mention that country in his speech, and in a manner so insidiously calculated to wreak dissension. I doubt very much that two opposing demonstrations of that scale would have passed without clashes, the firing of teargas canisters and a number of dead and wounded even in democratic Israel.

Democratic culture in Lebanon did not sprout from the American intervention in Iraq or from Bush's speech or from Resolution 1559. It had existed long before that, albeit with its flaws of denominational quotas, pseudo-dynastic influences, a relatively frail principle of citizenship in concept and practice, and a host of foreign intelligence agencies that found easy pickings in Lebanon's denominational and kinship patchwork and its not very democratic system for plurality in government.

The Lebanese opposition, therefore, benefited from existing democratic traditions; it did not establish these traditions as the opposition movements had in Prague, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere. The same applies to the supporters of the resistance and alliance with Syria.

Naturally, Bush did not mention all of this for the simple reason that he is not a democrat, even if he has read Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky, one of the sources from which he is cribbing lessons on democracy.

But, one would think it the duty of Arab democrats to draw Bush's attention to a few hard facts about Lebanon and the Lebanese democratic culture. One would also think that they would sense it their duty, if indeed, they are sincere in their desire for popular legitimacy and in their desire to help democratise the popular political culture. Unfortunately, the prevalent mindset of purported democrats has tuned itself in to Washington and its agenda for the region, without having any democratic agenda of their own, in the sense of a vision for attaining equality and justice.

Tehran can shout until it's blue in the face that it does not possess nuclear weapons and has no intention to, but the world will echo America's claims to the contrary. Korea's mad butcher Kim Jong Il can swear by all that is holy to him that he possesses nuclear weapons, but Australia on behalf of the US will swear that he is lying. Syria can protest as much as it likes that Resolution 1559 violates the UN Charter because it was not issued on the basis of a threat to world peace and security and none of the parties concerned had appealed to the Security Council to begin with, but no one wants to waste time discussing the matter. After all, life is unfair and international law is a farce in today's world, and, in all events, only the portion of the resolution that pertains to Syria will be applied.

Not that the US is about to commend all that pragmatism or realism or whatever you might call it. Nor is it about to give Syria a pat on the back for having taken "positive steps forward". Rather, Bush proclaims that he will not abide by Syria's partial solutions and manoeuvres and other such belligerent talk, for the simple reason that Israel has Syria in its crosshairs so Washington does too.

Meanwhile, Sharon, a renowned war criminal, can declare with impunity that he will never ever implement the UN resolutions pertaining to the Israeli occupation of Syrian territory and Washington will back him up in word and deed. Such is the dark side of the world of Martha Stuart who is all the craze in the US; the world of conspicuous media consumption, of George Bush, Rumsfeld, Condi and the rest of the thugs.

But should not nascent Arab democracy make itself heard in the midst of this wilderness as the voice of justice, as a voice that rejects the logic behind Resolution 1559? Instead, we get an Arab minister demanding that Syria should implement Resolution 1559 immediately and without delay, which is more than Kofi Annan has asked from Syria, because that is not what the resolution stipulates. The minister in question issued this demand from Tel Aviv, no less, which has yet to implement any of the resolutions pertaining to it and which immediately and without delay is annexing occupied territories, building a separating wall in violation of the ruling of the International Court of Justice, and tearing apart a land and its people, rather than unifying and safeguarding it, as Syria has done in Lebanon.

Where is the voice of Arab democracy that should be protesting these injustices? Or do Arab democrats intend to leave the opposition to sycophancy to Sharon's Israel and to the selective application of even the feeblest Security Council resolution? One would presume not, just as one would presume that a true democrat would treat other national causes and principles as more than banners to wave in front of the cameras, if he is sincere in building a truly democratic society from the grassroots up.

Amman Massacre

The atrocities in Amman are not only testament to the bankruptcy of the war on terror, but indications of the deep rifts which have grown in the Third World as a result of neoliberal ideologies run amok, writes Azmi Bishara

Three thoughts occurred to me in the wake of the atrocities in Amman.

First, violence perpetrated against civilians on the grounds of some religious or ideological creed that claims a monopoly on truth and that places this truth above the lives and happiness of others knows no moral or logical restraints and no bounds to its savagery and bloodthirstiness. Therefore, humanitarianly-minded people must take a firm and unified stance against it. The people who carried out the Amman bombings were unmoved by the victims they claimed. They were impervious to the dreams and joys of the wedding couples that they would so summarily terminate. They gave no pause to the fact that many of the receptionists, porters and other hotel staff had also been children of refugee camps.

It is as though with every moral boundary they trample they acquire the ability to transgress more. In fact, one could say that extremist creeds neutralise moral restraints. At least the Machiavellian notion that the ends justify the means differentiates between the ends and means. Although the former generally becomes pretext for the immorality of the latter, the moral substance of the ends may sometimes act to inhibit the recourse to immoral means in other situations. The separation of ends and means, thus, is a double-edged sword. However, when the Machiavellian approach is brought to the service of an absolutist ideology, or when the ends are categorical, irrational, metaphysical or even unknown to the perpetrators who are acting on the impulse of vengeance, the means and the ends become one and the means become as absolutist as the ends. If, for example, the end is to spread alarm and terror for the sake of revenge, the means is also to spread alarm and terror, which, in turn, acquire an idealistic sanctity in their own right. The unity of ends and means is symptomatic of a primitive, barbaric condition, and there is no overestimating its pure destructive power in the hands of an absolutist creed that claims a monopoly on truth -- whatever that truth might be, so obscured has it become by thick films of blood.

Perhaps the purpose of dispatching bombers to blow up hotels in Amman was to remind Jordan that it would not prosper on the destruction of Iraq. Perhaps the bombings were meant as a caution to it not to base its policies or its economy on the disasters of others -- not to build its palaces on ashes, so to speak. Perhaps, the aim was to avenge the "steel curtain" operation, as was announced 24 hours before the bombings. Who knows anymore? And who might even care to remember? That's one of the problems with confusing the ends with means: people's horror of the means gets projected onto the ends.

Second, America's "global war against terrorism" has done nothing but encourage the global spread of terrorism and augment the numbers of those ready to blow themselves up as an act of revenge or in order to obstruct the policies of the US and its allies. Realities on the ground have put paid to every Bushism on terrorism. The notion that terrorism can be fought and vanquished like an alien army or held under siege in the Tora Bora mountains has long since fallen by the wayside, as Bush's adventurist folly created new theatres of war in, for example, Indonesia, Jordan, Madrid and London. The Israeli brainchild, wholeheartedly embraced by the neoconservatives and by extension the Bush administration, that this brand of terrorism is fuelled by the existence of certain regimes, which therefore must be changed, has proved an unmitigated disaster. The toppling of regimes that had perpetuated themselves through the imposition of law by despotic force and had held themselves together on basis that the unity of the nation rested upon the unity of the army and security agencies gave rise to unbridled theft, kidnapping and vigilantism, and to a vacuum that was quickly filled precisely by this brand of terrorism. And it has become patently obvious that there is no relationship between democratisation and the spread of electoral processes, on the one hand, and halting terrorism or even reducing the rates of violence against civilians, on the other. Democracy is an aspiration that should be sought in its own right if the aim is to create a more just government, as opposed to "fighting terrorism" as the neoconservatives in Washington would have it. In all events, the existing democracies of Spain and Britain did not safeguard London or Madrid from terrorist attacks from within, and Jordan is not on Washington's list of countries in need of regime change, yet the terrorism that struck it did not come from abroad.

Third, the conjunction of the growing prevalence of an economic neoliberal and consumerist value-oriented outlook among the upper classes and, with considerable intensity among the groups advocating reform, with a conservative, non- democratic and anti-modernist political culture has virtually split Third World societies, and Arab societies in particular, into two socially and culturally distinct classes or peoples. One was struck by the similarity between the Amman bombings and the bombing by a hostile power of civilian targets on the adversary's side in times of war. In both cases, there is no identifiable strategic gain to be had, and in both there is a smug indifference to the fate of human beings "on the other side", since the point is essentially to blow up whatever is in reach regardless of who is there. Of course, the Americans claim that war has rules and that they abide by these rules whereas suicide bombers and those that recruit them do not. The history of American warfare from Hiroshima to Iraq is testimony to the fact that when fighting escalated, military objective took firm precedence over the rules. No, the similarity we are speaking of has nothing to do with not playing by the "rules" and everything to do with the distorted socio-economic situation in countries in which American policies have become so internalised at certain levels as to create two diametrically opposed cultures that are virtually in a state of war.

For how else is it possible to explain why revenge for the America's brutal "steel curtain" operation in northwestern Iraq was meted out against Jordanian hotels which, albeit, have Americans among their guests but also host wedding receptions for people from the same country as the perpetrators and have among their staff individuals who may well come from the same alleyway in the same impoverished neighbourhood as the bombers. It is pointless to ask why this hotel was bombed and not that; the point was to get any hotel at all. Two forces are confronting each other across political and cultural divides that have a single society rift in two. One side regards the other as America's ally, and its lifestyle as corrupt and even heretic, calling to mind the war of Islamist extremists in Algeria against Algerian society. On the other side is a Francophone or Anglophone culture that looks askance at the other half of their society whom they perceive as backwards denizens of squalid ghettos, envious of their wealth and a threat to a lifestyle that is difficult to universalise. Or, at best, that other half represents political and economic causes to espouse, not people to live with, let alone socialise with. Our societies are in the grips of a socio-political crisis that cannot be resolved by warfare or by military planning. No Iraqi can escape this grim reality by pointing out that the people who are setting off bombs in their country are Saudis or Jordanians, and no one in Jordan can sidestep this matter by suggesting that the suicide bombers were inspired by the tragedy in Iraq or elsewhere. The ghettos of poverty, ignorance and fanaticism are still there in all countries of the Third World.

The middle class which bridges the upper and lower classes of society is not only insufficiently large but also weak, fragile and divided in its affiliations to the two other classes. Here you will find the bourgeoisie of middlemen associated with foreign capital, the state bureaucracy and the rentier economy, on the one hand, and with the poverty belts and the urban quarters filled with people who have fled the villages but not yet been absorbed into the cities. Because this middle class has no calling of its own it has become a battlefield for the opposing ideologies and lifestyles of the two other classes. The middle class did not inherit the pan- Arab project, let alone the quest to democratise that project in a manner that would safeguard the unity of the pan-Arab entity. There are many reasons for this, some historical, others related to the nature of the rentier state and yet others to the transformation of pan-Arabism into an ideological weapon between competing regimes. The fact remains, however, that US-European intervention in the domestic conflict has worked to render the struggle against the US a component of the domestic conflict and to aggravate domestic tensions to the point of civil war. Once again, direct colonialist meddling has wreaked its destructive havoc on nationalist projects before the middle class even had the chance to coalesce around such a project and get it off the ground.

What do the neoconservatives have to say about the catastrophe in Jordan? Undoubtedly they would take it as corroboration of their view that the war against terrorism has to be expanded yet further. Are they happy at this prospect of engulfing new countries in this war? I will not venture an answer as I am no expert in their psychological makeup. What is certain, however, is that if the US does not stop making itself a domestic political issue in Arab countries it will be impossible even to begin thinking about making a natural transition away from the ghettos of poverty and ideology that produce suicide bombers. As long as the US remains a major determinant of domestic affairs in our countries it will be impossible for people to take an objective position for or against any idea on the basis of what is or is not good for the development of their society and its institutions, because they will always have foremost in their mind whether Washington is for or against that idea.