From Xico

Jeffrey Goldberg on Bibi Netanyahu

In the Atlantic Monthly today Jeffrey Goldberg writes about "talking to a senior administration official about Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister2 and leader of its seemingly endless provocations of the Palestinians, many of which have been brutal and bloody. Goldberg is no anti-Israeli writer, by the way, and his article seems to me a model of calm, non-hysterical journalism. He reports that the official said,  "'The thing about Bibi is, he's a chickenshit.' "

Goldberg goes on to say that "relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis.  The relationship between these...dual guarantors of the putatively 'unbreakable' bond between the US and Israel is now the worst it's ever been and stands to get significantly worse after the midterm elections."

Goldberg lays the blame mostly on Netanyahu who apparently ¨plans to speak directly to Congress and the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached."  The administration expresses a "'red-hot anger at Bibi because of "his settlement policies on the West Bank and building policies in Jerusalem...."

These policies in Jerusalem which have led to Israel building housing for Jews past a previously agreed-to demarcation have resulted in Arab protests.

While I think that you could sense growing administration hostility, this article will surprise people, I think.  And I think it's excellent that the administration is no longer willing to stand by while Netanhayu leads Israel into horrendous actions against Palestinians.  You should read the whole piece.   It appears at this point that the administration views Netanyahu as scared to start a war against Iran and most interested in maintaining his place as prime minister.

In no way would I argue that Netanyahu is a good and enlightened leader, but seeing him "as a national leader who acts as though he is mayor of Jerusalem, which is to say a no-vision small-timer who worries mainly about pleasing the hardest core of his constituency" I think points to a serious weakness in the administration's world view.  There is rarely evidence that anyone in the administration sees leaders as having biographies and histories of their own, the understanding of which would vastly help US foreign policy.  Does anyone know who Netanyahu's father was?  How his father influenced him? How the death of his brother in combat with the Israeli army, how spending his teenage years in white, Jewish suburban Pennsylvania, his college years at MIT and post-college years working with Mitt Romney might have influenced him?  I don't have a clue how you open someone like Netanyahu up to different possibilities.  He's probably much more intransigent than Obama and Kerry realize.  Our administration's cultural deafness continues to be a significant problem.

Anyway, you can read about the Israeli and Netanyahu's response to the US in the (leftish) Israeli newspaper Haaretz here.

Kenin Malik on Immigration

First off, I want to tell you that Kenan Malik is a great thinker and writer.  AND he writes so easily, so fluidly, that he carries you along through tough subjects.  Here I am posting a link to a post on his blog, which is called Pandaemonium, on politics and immigration in Europe, especially England.  I didn't think much about the similarities between European and US attitudes until recently.  They are not so different.  Malik kind of comes out of left field with his ideas (or from outside the box?)  Basically he feels that outsider parties gain strength because insider parties no longer speak to The People, left or right or neither, and that all parties make it hard not to be anti-immigrant.  Please do take the time to read this compendium of several of his articles.

   

Images stolen from Google.

My grandparents (my father's parents) were immigrants in the early twentieth century.  My mother's parents' families came from mostly England and Ireland (I think) during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Just for your information.  Therefore I am a mongrel, and it's interesting to be a mongrel.

PLEASE read the Malik article!

Leaving Quito, Ecuador

We have just returned home from a week's very interesting vacation in and around Quito, Ecuador. This trip was our first vacation together in many years.  Last time we traveled together we went to Boston to see an eye specialist because of Jim's glaucoma.  THAT was definitely not a vacation.  

On our trip home, we we found heightened bag checking in both Quito and Mexico City.  In Quito, Jim was called downstairs somewhere to have his bag searched while we were waiting at the gate.  (Actually, it turned out to be my bag, but no matter)  According to Jim, the inspectors went through the giant bag of the woman ahead of him with meticulous care.  By the time they got to Jim, it was almost flight time and they were far more cursory.  Nonetheless, he had to go through the whatever you call it that you have to walk through for security yet again.

In Mexico City, it took a very long time for the baggage to make it onto the carousel which it did in fits and starts. While we waited, we watched as inspectors, often with the assistance of the owners, unloaded luggage carts brimming with suitcases and carryons.  The  inspectors went through all this stuff with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.  One woman had packed all her belongings  into an awful lot of plastic bags. Inspectors opened each one.  I was impressed with how polite and amenable everyone was. Passengers helping with difficult knots, lifting clothes out of their piles, and so on.  I wondered how the same scene would play in New York.  But there was still more.  In Mexico's airports, you push a bright red button after your bags have gone through the X-ray machines.  If it turns on green, you are actually free to go.  If it turns red, you have to go to a customs inspector to get your stuff combed through.  I wondered if the people whose bags had already been picked apart had to face this additional obstacle.

The day before we left Quito, October 6, a newspaper headline announced that the President Rafael Correa was supporting the release from prison of a couple of thousand drug mules.  A new law now treats them "more as vulnerable people exploited by cartels" than as hardened criminals. 

Apparently this was also seen as a slap in the face of the US umm war against drugs (We're not supposed to call it a war on drugs anymore).  More important than any gesture against th US I think is that the government, which describes mules as mostly poor and uneducated, often women who are single mothers or sex workers or drug addicts, is acting compassionately.  A side note to all of this is that a number of the mules are from Spain, people who could not get jobs in the terrible climate of Spanish unemployment.

And in the interest of fairness, I would like to note that in the US, Eric Holder, departing Attorney General, also has condemned the brutality of aspects of the what shall I say, the government's effort to remove temptation from people who can't do it themselves.

Living in Mexico, it is hard to ignore drug crime-related issues, but I was completely oblivious to the presence in Ecuador of any problem.  In El Centro Histórico, police in lime green vests were quite numerous, probably so obvious in order to reassure tourists.  The warnings about crime centered on what you might expect in any dense city, namely pickpocketing and purse snatching, among other things.  One peculiar (and a bit scary) activity was spraying something in the face of potential marks so they'd pass out and the thief could take everything.  Taxi cabs had been scenes of crime, so now you can tell when you are getting a legal taxi.  It will have big black numbers on doors, special plates, and, inside, tiny cameras.  In any event, we never felt in any particular danger.

But, we did wonder if all the excessive searching, especially on the Mexican end, was due to the release of the mules. And we wondered if the US was pressuring Mexico to watch flights from South America with special attention.  The US does not walk softly; it stomps around in big boots.  And it seems to consider much of Latin America drug territory even though it may be softening its rhetoric.  A fuller description of the situation can be found here.  It is worth following the link for an understanding of President Correa's personal interest in drug crime.