New kid in the block

Finally it's here. Mr. Obama already is the 44th president of the United States of America. After a long weekend of old style party -and I'm talking about really old style, like Royal Coronations. With big attractions and many people, all over the World. And full of symbolism. Even unwontedly. What best metaphor of the ending of Bush Administration rather than the image of Cheney in a wheelchair? It's said that he hurt himself while handling some books during the moving out. It's unknown if he was going to throw them into the fire.

Mr. Obama's inaugural speech has been much commented. I agree with George Packer, it's not a wonderful speech. Well, it is. It is an historical speech. But only because of the context, not by the speech itself. And by the context I don't mind that Mr. Obama missed some words during the oath and had to repeat it the day after -even if it was unnecessary, but just in case.

From his speech, I'd take a few points. First, his effort to union instead of hate. As well his bet for new technologies -the new White House website is a declaration of new intentions, including a place for Human Rights. Or his implication against global warming, enhancing the research on green energy. And of course, his effort to break ties with previous Administration.

But overall, there are three sentences that are key aspects. First is “For the world has changed, and we must change with it”. After a campaign based around the idea of change, it would have been weird not saying this. Second is “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals”. This is a truly kick in the ass to the policy of Bush Administration.

But I have to stick with another one that has been much more unappreciated, but it is much more revolutionary: “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers”. That last part of the sentence, that mention to the “nonbelievers” is something never seen in a country that finishes all the speeches with a “God bless America and bless you all”.

Ok, but now, what?

For now, the new administration is working full throttle. Indeed, they have been doing so since the election of Mr. Obama as new President. However, the first hours of Mr. Obama as President -and even before- have already created deception in some. The first ones, the left wing. It was logical. When you focus on yourself so many and so high expectative, you now you are going to deceive people. Mr. Obama knows it. And Europe is going to know it really soon. As soon as he starts to demand more troops for Afghanistan.

But there is place too for hope. For now, in his first day at office, Mr. Obama signed the close down of Guantanamo in a year time, the force to use the Army interrogatory rules -more restricted- and the closure of CIA's secret prisons around the world.

In international affairs, both the new Secretary of State, Ms. Hillary Clinton, and Mr. Obama, agree on the importance of the Middle East in their agenda. Just to start, the new American government has called to open the Egyptian border of Gaza to ease the entrance of humanitarian aid -the final figures increases to 1,284 deaths, including 894 civilians. Hamas says that, even though, there is no change at all: same way of thinking as Bush. China probably disagrees. There they went from the gentle -even concessive- approach of Bush to the aggressive attack -a punch where hurts the most, the economy- of Mr. Obama.

And all this in less than two days. Who said that there won't be fun in the White House when Bush and his Bushisms leave?

Image is from Jae C. Hong, Associated Press. The comic strip is from Steve Bell.





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When hell freezes

Last week the world was heating on. Israel attacked Gaza in an operation that right now counts in more than a thousand the number of casualties; but there weren't Israeli bombs the only ones moving around. Still in the region, Lebanese militias launched several rockets against the north of Israel. Twice. Meanwhile, Russia announced a new deal to contribute as Government Aid with MIG-29 combat fighters to the development of Lebanon.

On the other hand, Israel saw how a supply of American arms was delayed to avoid a direct relation with the ongoing offensive. It doesn't matter; it will arrive with the new administration. By the way, military authorities in Obamaland -although it isn't still officially Obamaland- just passed their first test in a nuclear security inspection for a long time -pheeew, finally! It was about time, seriously-, after the mistakes detected a few months ago with the momentaneal miss of the track of a few bombs...

It's only about time too that the Royal Navy nuclear submarines start failing, now that from now on will be running on Windows XP. Can you imagine a blue screen just when they are about to abort a missile launch in a training? The Kursk incident is going to be ridiculous against this.

Anyway, as I was saying, even though the hell Gaza is living in, and against the predictions of Al Gore, like if Earth wanted to give some ground to the ones that drill her, Europe suffers this year one of the worst winters in decades. And if that wasn't enough, the gas supply has been cut off, although Durao Barroso says he paid the bill.

The origin of the problem is in the edge of geographical Europe, in Ukraine. Across this country travels the majority of the gas supply for Eastern Europe, and some of the gas for Germany, France and Italy. Russia started saying that Ukraine hadn't paid the bill; the Ukrainians response they did. Then the Eastern bear says that will not supply more gas to Ukraine until all the debt (including interest rates) is paid; and the OTAN aspirant threatens with kidnapp Europe's gas. Arguing about the price, mutual accusations of robbery... At the end, Gazprom decided to cut the gas supply across Ukraine increasing the supply through Belarus.

But the result was an alarming descend in the flow of gas in the pipelines in Europe. Some countries like Bulgaria or the ex-Yugoslavian republics saw a decreasement of more than 90%. Add this to the extremely severe conditions of the rigorous winter and you have almost a disaster (Slovakia decided to apply the emergency state). So now that Europe was directly affected, the EU did something. Not much, but enough to force Russia to start negotiations with Ukraine again. It's more than what Georgia got last summer.

There are, however, two interesting lectures from this episode (still going on). These are that a) Europe has the same power over Russia than the la UN over Israel, and b) that Europe must get as soon as possible new energy suppliers and invest more in other energy sources, specially renewable energy sources and nuclear energy.

About the first point is clear that the political power of Europe is minimum. Not only is not able to put order inside its own borders, but also is inefficient while managing crisis abroad. The only weapons Europe has are the diplomacy (obsolete as the Europe's vision in a world dominated by military superpowers) and the economy. And that later one, in a world immerse in a financial breakdown, applying protectionism measures, is not very effective either.

The EU is only an economic union, not military nor political. And that's precisely its weakness. Add that to an excessive dependency on American technology and we just kill European influence in the world (out from the Third World of ex-colonies) Maybe, just when the teenager that is now the European military and technological industry reaches its maturity and politically stays together in a more solid structure, only then we could start talking about a return of the power to the old world. Some steps are being made in that way (like the new positioning system, Galileo), but are still too few.

And about the second point, the necessity of diversify the insource of energy supply is something on sight from a long time ago. Who only has an exit is caught. North African gas looks like a better alternative than Russia. The gas there is cheap, good and closer, going directly from the provider into European borders (Greece, Italy, Spain). No intermediaries, no pain.

But that's not enough. It's necessary as well to invest in new renewable energy, new technologies and nuclear energy. An investment now in those fields means gaining an outstanding position in the market for the future (and control over it), when the oil reserves start to fail.

Last measures adopted by Europe are in that way. More benefits to I+D, more restrictions to contaminant products (from cars to TVs) and incentives of all kind to the companies developing cheaper and greener products. It is much more than what you can see in other parts of the world.

But still is needed more.



Correction: In my last post I identified the photo as the explosion of a cluster bomb when it is in fact a White Phosphorus shell.


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Gaza (Part II)

As I said in my last post, right now the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict seems far. Hamas won’t resign to its core principles while Israel won’t allow the Palestinians to make a second refuge for the rocket launchers after the withdrawal in Gaza. Without an efficient mediation, it doesn’t look good for the civilians in both sides.

The worst of all is that there aren’t many qualified mediators. The old valid Egypt is now attacked for at least not responding firmly against the Israeli bombing campaign. There are even rumors that say Egypt knew about the Jewish attack and didn’t do anything. Rumors go further to say that they even gave the approval for it.

The truth is that the country of the pharaohs is between two friendly fires.

On one side is his commission with the Arab world. Egypt is, probably, the country that has done more for not only the Palestinians but for all the Arabs. From his land panarabism was born, as well as the idea of the Arab solidarity, it was involved in several wars against Israel in the past to defend the Palestinians and is thanks to the traffic on his borders that the people in Gaza has survived for the last six months to the Israeli blockade.

With the collaboration of Hamas (that for once was able to look further than his own benefit), Egypt gave oxygen to Gaza. First they made both sides to sign a ceasefire. Then, they convinced Hamas to use the tunnels only for a humanitarian use, and not for gun trafficking (or at least no more than what Hamas needed for themselves)

But the weakness when condemning the Israeli bombing campaign has condemned themselves in front of the Arab world. To that fire, the photo of a smiling Mubarak giving his hand to Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, a day before the attacks, was like gasoline. Hamas understood that there was no reason to worry, and everything caught them by surprise. If Mubarak knew what was going on then or not remains a mystery.

On the other hand, Egypt is trying to avoid as well that a hypothetic open of the border will make that, with the massive flow of Palestinians, come as well some Islamic terrorists from the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization active in Egypt of whom Hamas is a franchise.

Egypt fears as well of an open war with Israel. In the past decades, the pharaohs have fought against the Jews in several times to defend the Palestinians. And they only had back a loss of land, lives and international aid. Today, Egyptians don’t want to lose the aid from the USA, don’t want to see their sons die in a war they are going to lose -the own Egyptians complain that the countries most critical with them, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are the ones that have done less action and the richest and remotest ones- and of course, they don’t want an angry Israel, who they have had cold but cordial relations for years now.

Another one of the great possible mediators in this crisis like the USA looks out of game. First, it’s its big support for Israel -just remember the speeches of Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain and Ms. Clinton in front of the AIPAC when they were running for the presidential campaign.

From the USA come the cluster bombs used by the IAF [in the photo, via El Mundo] in Gaza. Of course, according to
Ehud Olmert civilians aren’t the main target in Gaza. Even if they cover Gaza’s sky with bombs about to fall over the most overcrowded place of the world.

Because everybody knows that bombs only fall over the terrorists of Hamas with chirurgical precision. Never over civilians. Like with this truck that was being loaded with Grad missiles by Hamas’ members. Truth is that at the end they were oxygen bottles. Really.

Maybe they didn’t have activated the SMS subscription alert system.

Back to the States, from the Bush executive -W. on holidays in Texas, Rice missed in action- nothing new is expected. Plus, they won’t have time to do anything. Well, almost anything. From the new Obama team things aren’t better. Obama remains silent -in Hawaii-, but his left hand has already spoken in the terms of Bush administration (the right of Israel to self-defense and blah, blah, blah...), and Ms. Clinton, the successor of Ms. Rice, will have to clarify some doubts about her. Like how well will make a good mediation a senator (herself) who rely her career on the defense of Israel and the Jewish vote. She will have the help of her family name (Clinton), however.

The USA is the only fervent defender of Israel, or at least its most fanatical. Why others don’t defend the Jews is not because of the marketing campaign (quite good, btw), but because the product itself is really bad.

“When you have a Palestinian kid facing an Israeli tank, how do you explain that the tank is actually David and the kid is Goliath?

“That is why the television kills us. Newspapers are better because they give context.”

Maybe that’s why Israel doesn’t want journalists in Gaza.

Following with the list of possible mediators, the EU -the second of the quartet for Middle East: UN, EU, USA and Russia- is not likely to be as active in the next six months as it has been in the past six with Mr. Sarkozy. If the French president is as energetic in the bedroom as he has been with the European diplomacy -and still is-, then we all know why Ms. Carla Bruni-(Sarkozy) has that smile in her face always. The new European president, the Czech Valaklav Klaus, is not as energetic as his predecessor (politically speaking; no idea about the other)

The other two are quite out of the game right now. Specially the UN. Since Ban Ki-Moon took over on the General Secretary, the political profile of the organization has been lowered until had made almost imperceptible in the international ground (its natural ground). As an example, everybody knew Koffi Annan, but not many people know who the hell is the Korean guy. Not even in the office of New York.

The new General Secretary has renewed the top positions at the UN with people from his own circle and shows little interest for things don’t related with Korea or, sometimes, Africa. By the way, talking about Africa... Since Christmas Day, and making it along with the Israelis in a frenetic race of deaths, the LRA has killed more than 400 civilians in Uganda -technical draw for the LRA and the IAF/IDF for now- and made 20000 refugees flee into the mountains.

So, for now on, the only thing the UN has done so far is ask for a ceasefire -like the others; nowadays asking for something is free. But that’s all they have done. But hey, Palestinians should be happy. At least they got that; the Africans didn’t even got it.


PS. Photos of the war, via The Big Picture.



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Gaza (Part I)

Christmas kept me busy. So it was for Israel. In the last two weeks, the IAF has been bombing Gaza causing near 500 casualties -of them, at least a 25 per cent civilians according to the UN- and more than 2000 wounded. It’s a bigger quantity in eight days of campaign than all the victims of Hamas’ terrorist attacks in the past eight years.

A couple of nights ago, the Ground invasion began as well. It’s expected more casualties. In both sides. What it’s for sure is that Israel Hill be very careful to avoid a disaster similar to that on Lebanon. There are two things that could sink the Jew moral: the kidnapping of any of their soldiers -and Hamas claims that already has done it- and more Israeli civilian victims. For now they are only three and, although Hamas is not Hizbullah, it’s enough with a rocket impacting on a crowded place (like a train or bus station, as it happened in 2006) to kill a few in an only attack. And the Palestinian rockets are reaching longer than ever.

The offensive chronology comes quite clearly explained here , so I won’t waste my time explaining it again. It seems a well prepared operation, fruit of long thinking and with no room for improvisation. There are a few reasons for it. In a country where is impossible to be president without having being general before and with an election process round the corner, a war was imminent. Specially counting the demands for blood of the Gaza’s nearby villages, tired of the constant firing of rockets from the Palestinian territories.

And they got it. Hamas gave a golden opportunity to Israel and they didn’t miss it. A couple of Qassam rockets fired and Israel had the excuse they were looking for. From here, it’s the well known story. The IAF and the IDF attacks Gaza, people running covered in blood and with children in their arms through the Palestinian hospitals, the Jews hiding from more rockets launches, the world -specially the Arab world- asking them to stop -but not doing too much more about it-, the USA defending Israel’s right to defend themselves... and again back to the beginning.

It’s a labyrinth with no clear exit. For that it’s need a firmly willing from both sides to find that exit. And there is any will. If they want peace, and not only temporary ceasefires, it’s necessary a commission from both sides in an effort on giving some concessions to the other. That’s the only way to solve the problems, as even a five years old child knows.

From the Palestinian side it’s vital to recognize the state of Israel. The Jews are there for good and to stay. It doesn’t matter now how they moved in. It’s true that when important times came to date, Hamas accepted -whispering and in a foot note- that there is no problem with a Hebrew state if that guarantees the creation of a Palestinian state. Now, what is needed is that Hamas also recognizes Israel out from the negotiation table. But for those they have to change their foundational principles.

However, two different states means exactly that, and the deal works both ways. That means that the Palestinians must resign the right to return. If now hundreds of thousands (or more) Palestinians were to go back to their previous settlements, there wouldn’t be two different separate states, but two Palestinian states. Or one and a half. In the past it appeared the possibility of a maximum of 3000 people returning, as a compensation symbol for the offense of 1948.

Hamas must renounce as well to the use of the violence as a weapon against the Israeli occupation. If the Jews are there for good, that means that the old willing of send them “back to the sea” is out of date. And the fact that they were democratically elected doesn’t change anything if they don’t follow later the rules of the democratic game. Hitler was as well elected democratically. [We should ask ourselves what the Jews make to make other people so angry at them to elect people who want to exterminate them]

From the Israeli side there is also some homework to do. First is the deal about the settlements. Israel must decide: settlements or peace, but both things are impossible. It’s also important the conditions they leave. If Israel dismantle the settlements but applies a blockade to the Palestinians (as happens in Gaza) it will end to asphyxiate the population and provoking another Intifada.

Israel must recognize Hamas too as a valid interlocutor -once the Islamists refuse to use the violence against the Jews. Ignore them is ignore a great amount of Palestinians. The big support behind them, majority in Gaza and in crescendo in the West Bank, makes Hamas a big player on the conflict that shouldn’t be ignored. It’s a mistake to fall in the dynamic of demonize the terrorists, specially when the terms you use against them could be use against yourself too.

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

Another delicate issue is Jerusalem. The only solution to this lies in a sharing of the city. But the many holy places for both sides -some of them are even holy for more than one faith-makes it difficult to find an equal partition. Maybe the right thing to do would be to leave the city under the UN administration. Not Arab nor Jew, but an international free space.

Anyway, the solution looks distant. Hamas won’t resign his core principles easily and Israel won’t give an inch on this matter after having left Gaza and ended wary. Once bitten, twice shy; and Israel has been bitten 6300 times since they left Gaza. Without and efficient mediation, it seems condemned.

PS. To the heads of ones and the others, they suit quite well to the “War pigs” definition of Black Sabbath’s song. For religious reasons, specially.

PS2. Funny to see how Israel adapts itself to the new times of the Web 2.0 environment. First was a channel in Youtube. Now here it comes the press conferences in twitter, with messages like this:

We hav 2 prtct R ctzens 2, only way fwd through neogtiations, & left Gaza in 05. y Hamas launch missiles not peace?

PS3. The relations with the press on the ground, however, are as bad as always. Image is from Vergara.

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