Saudi Arabia and neighboring oil-rich countries need the military and financial help (heft?) of Washington but perhaps more that of China and even Russia in their confrontation with Iran. Things are changing fast. China has been pouring money into refinery and pipeline operations in Iran (to the tune of at least 50 billion dollars), but will eventually need energy contracts not only with Iran but with everyone in sight, and that means Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the emirates. Washington is keeping an armada in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, as well as boots on the ground in Iraq, Koweit, Afghanistan, etc., that is, around the Persian Gulf and Iran. We are going to keep something like 50,000 troops in Iraq (how many non-Pentagon?), and about as many in Afghanistan. So, East and West of Iran. Aside: interesting that this modern empire of ours, pace the ideologues, still functions like the old empires, that is, with boots on the ground and ships on the seas (and in the air). Costly. How long can we keep it up if our industrial base and even our financial services go global and may end up under others’ control? The natural power over the Persian Gulf, however, with Iraq weakened for a long time, is Iran, which has had the good fortune of seeing its main regional enemy taken out for a long while thanks to Bush II’s war. They could and can sit back and poke the system, if it’s not too grand to say this (“system” for ad-hoc arrangements) via Hezbollah in Lebanon or worrisome nuclear developments. Hence the recent theater.

I can’t help but compare Israel’s present position within the US empire to that of the leaders of Samaria in Ezra-Nehemiah, under the Persian empire at the time (5th c. BC). Then, neighboring sub-provinces of a Persian empire that extended from nearly India to the south of Egypt and to Asia Minor could also be in competition and try to bring down their neighbor by pretending that they were arming (meaning: preparing to rebel). The leaders of Samaria accused their weak Judaean neighbors to the south of putting up defensive walls in Jerusalem: how peaceful was that? Could the Persian king accept this? Of course he could (if you could convince him that it was not military defense).

The key to peace in the area is going to be a sharing by the US and China, mainly, of the military responsibility over the area. Eventually, one could imagine China asking the Saudis and others to drop their opposition to the state of Israel. China’s interest in the question would be less religious and ideological than that of the US. And in turn Washington should pressure Israel to become a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We would end up anyway with Iran and Israel as nuclear powers in the Middle East. But with a strengthened hand for China, and a politically diminished role (though not militarily yet) for the US vis-à-vis Iran and the Persian Gulf. How to pull out of the region and especially of the Persian Gulf in orderly fashion, this should be the main goal of an intelligent US policy. It will be impossible to win elections with it.

The communication specialists working for UC’s office of the president (communications@ucop.edu) just sent a message asking UC employees urgently to write their California political representatives and to advocate on UC’s behalf. Here is this letter. We should let them know how great UC is for everyone, how threatened its future is, and how badly we want higher education to be the priority of priorities in next year’s budget. Of course, this campaign is to be done on our own time (furloughs may be used…), it is genuinely personal and is in no way connected with anything official. To quote: “UC faculty and staff should communicate with members of the Legislature on their own time, and as individuals conveying their personal views – not as official spokespeople for the University. Employees also should avoid writing on official University letterhead and should keep in mind the University’s policies pertaining to incidental personal use of University electronic communications services and similar guidelines.” I would guess the electrons in the UC Davis link above are in trouble…

Below is what I answered. It is narrow and too civil, I’m afraid. Frankly, I’m most worried about public education in primary and secondary schools, already so battered, and about programs in higher education that are staffed by lecturers and do much of the heavy lifting.

Dear UC Officers,

I understand the urgency of the political appeal below. The extraordinary circumstances we are in, however, lead me to question the tone of the UC campaign. I think that many people in California, given events that are affecting them more dramatically than institutions, have doubts about UC being the source of their well-being; that apocalyptic predictions might be met with shrugs; and that the people’s political representatives are likely to side with the majority of their voters rather than a coalition of educational interests, however worthy the cause.

I wish the leaders of this great institution would start recognizing, and find ways to express genuinely, how much UC *owes* to the people of California over the generations, how much a good public primary and secondary education are even more essential and key to proper university training, before claiming *also* that UC “is a vital engine of opportunity, possibility, and leadership for California”. Of course, education, including higher education, is fundamental to sustained development and a richer life for everyone. But the tone of this campaign strikes me as tone-deaf in not mentioning that UC is what it is in great part because of the generosity and foresight of the people of the state. And perhaps it would not hurt to admit that the resources of the state have sometimes been misused at UC.

Furthermore, shouldn’t one confront more squarely and publicly the feeling that some aspects of the long, single-minded transformation of UC into a preeminent research institution have been at the cost of its other mission, the teaching of undergraduates? This latter mission was described as “paramount” in a letter to Chancellors from Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Pitts regarding furlough days (August 21, 2009). No matter how furlough days will be managed this year, one result is sure: the quality of education will suffer. But the truth is that this negative effect is one of a series of blows to the quality of undergraduate education. Given the increasing cost of this education to families and students, and given the transformations of an economy in which social differences become so apparent, why would the people of California respond positively to an appeal to greatness? Shouldn’t the approach of UC leaders take into consideration the real fears and frustrations of the voters and their leaders?

Titre d’un livre de Michel Onfray publié par Grasset en 2005. A la fin de ce livre, je ressens, comme si souvent après mes lectures, un goût amer qui tient en partie au sentiment d’avoir passé à côté du plaisir au sens fort, plaisir qu’aurait procuré une pensée arc-boutée à une réflexion historique documentée. Un peu fort de café qu’un thuriféraire de l’hédonisme nous serve du marc.

Ce livre a de quoi faire à vitupérer les trois monothéismes. Il s’escrime à montrer que ces religions sont à l’origine des horreurs commises par les hommes ou de leur systématisation. Que les religions et leurs livres sont humains, qui n’en conviendrait? Que le monothéisme permet la concentration des moyens politiques et militaires (mais pas scientifiques?), aussi bien. Quant à ce qu’il appelle de ses vœux, la tolérance et autres vertus délectables qui accompagneront un renouvellement de l’épicurisme matérialiste et du rationalisme, voyons voir combien d’Epicures, de Sénèques et de Marc-Aurèles le capitalisme pourra nous offrir et si cela peut se faire dans la paix.

Etait-il nécessaire de faire du Feuerbach nietzschéen maintenant? Je crois comprendre que son hédonisme vise à se démarquer de la passion pour la consommation qui s’étend partout, mais pourquoi son livre ne rendrait-il pas service aux gérants de cet hédonisme de bas étage? En tout cas il ne les dérangera pas.

Very short words those two, I find, as I hear oil is flowing from northern Iraq again, in a complex arrangement between Kurdistan and the Iraqi government. When you have a minute, read Chris Hedges, “War is sin”.

וכשהמלאכים בוכים בעולם אחר,
אז בעולם הזה, עצוב לנו יותר.

A thought-provoking article by David Sweet in today’s *Sentinel* on the UC’s drifting away from its public nature. Quote:

Since 1990, further drastic cuts in taxpayer contributions have accelerated the flat-out privatization. Students and their families now pay, through increasing fees and interest-bearing loans, the entire real cost of an undergraduate education—a backbreaking burden for future teachers and social workers. Financial aid is scarce. The grandchildren of Californians educated for free when the university was seen as a basic good comparable to roads, parks and libraries, now graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

[….]

Until we renew the historic contract with our grandchildren, and pay the taxes required to maintain a great public university, UC will continue to lay off lecturers, cut teaching assistantships, raise tuition and fees, underpay clerical and maintenance workers, turn students away from understaffed classes, and eliminate valuable programs.

It is not only a matter of taxes, but of how and on what public money is spent at the university.

On mneh, tqel, ufarsin in Daniel 5.24-25. I would suggest that this hand appears on the wall of the reception room of the king in his heykhal like a palimpsestic hand, because the walls of this hall, like the apadana of Persepolis, are already decorated with the statuary of bas-reliefs that are made possible precisely by (and obviously disguised to a degree), the “count(ed), weigh(ed), and divide(d) or separat(ed)” (products) of the tributary economy.

To this monumental representation, whether Persian (but represented as “antiquisante”—as if it were Babylonian, when the situation was surely different), or Greek (Seleucid), or a compound of both (in memory), the author of Daniel opposes this metaplastic hand that inscribes. The inscribing of Daniel is only on parchment or papyrus, the story of a dream, a fiction of heroism, carrying with it, precisely because of the weakness of its support (when compared with the heaviness and pretentiousness of palatial reception halls) a spirit of resistance, une idée de derrière la tête, a voice or image that can be repeated or adapted, when the apadana-like structures are doomed and destined to be de-edified (but the modern shah who was re-installed by Washington on the Iranian throne will resurrect these edifices…). The voice, resistance echoed on thin scrolls of paper or parchment, this is already a long story, as Ezekiel had begun a similar process nearly four centuries before. But in the first chapters of Ezekiel it was not a hand appearing en filigrane behind impressive tributary processions… rather it was the Babylonian thrones and gates, the heavy statuary of temples and palaces, that was made to fly, volatilized. The glory of empires, their heaviness (kavod, heftiness, is glory in Hebrew), becomes an electric wheeled, crystalline throne in the air, here one moment, there the next….

The wind caresses drifting cheeks in the deserted streets. Schoolchildren are at their desks, sullen. Against gray skies where clouds lose shape and swiftness, shifting redwood screens and plum trees in bloom unleash the soul. Aloft, it glides above secret cliffs. Graph this blowing, electrify lines that the warm, humid air will fill and swell.

See this short interview by Amy Goodman (Democracy now) of Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and the author of Israel’s Occupation. A minority point of view in Israel, clearly, still an important one also. For an older and longer video analyzing (and criticizing) the way US main media present the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, see Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land. And since I’m on the subject, here is the transcript of Obama’s remarks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Annual policy conference, last June 4, 2008. Critical passage in this obligatory speech: “And Israel can also advance the cause of peace by taking appropriate steps consistent with its security to ease the freedom of movement for Palestinians, improve economic conditions in the West Bank, and to refrain from building new settlements, as it agreed to do with the Bush administration at Annapolis” (my emphasis). Would Obama agree that “settlements”, and not only the “new ones” are an “obstacle to peace” (the traditional language used by the US until Reagan dropped it)? In that speech, he does speak of the Palestinians’ need for a state “that is contiguous and cohesive”, but also adds something that should be left open to negotiation: “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided”.