Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from September, 2019

Saudi Arabia

"The logic of cultural reductionism goes as follows:  Muslim  women are  uniquely  oppressed women.   Their oppression is caused by their society’s uniquely anti-women culture, i.e.  Muslim  culture. This culture is the polar opposite of Western civilization, which, obviously,  allowed  Western women to progress and advance to the point of parity with men. Western women’s oppression (if it exists), is either negligible or is caused by a few, degenerated uncivilized  sub men individuals. In other words, it is not systemic, but interpersonal and racial; resulting from the animalistic predatory Black men and genetically degenerated poor whites. In order to prevent these interpersonal transgressions from these degenerated/uncivilized  sub men individuals, there should be a more robust patriarchal involvement in the national community to protect Western/white women." The Feminist Movement in Saudi Arabia

Egypt

The Franco-Egyptian Initiative for Rights and Freedoms published a letter to France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, calling on his government to “seriously consider its responsibilities concerning the use of French weapons against peaceful protesters ”. My comment: Why should Macron consider that? Like his predecessors, he is elected democratically to carry out a democratic mandate by millions who believe in capitalist democracy... His predecessors too supported Mubarak's regime in different ways.  Voting democratically for men and women who prop up dictators is part of the democratic tradition. When I go to the ballot box I have a shopping list why I am choosing this or that candidate. Complicity in repression, debt enslaving, and underdevelopment of others perpetuated by the governments who I voted for in the past are not in my shopping list. So, I continue exercising my democratic right. In fact, I am denying the others to have the possibility to gain democractic rights.

Yemen: Homegrown War

"Many international commentators continue to present the war in Yemen through the lens of Saudi Arabian intervention or sectarian conflict, [or both]. In essence, Yemeni internal stability has been undermined by widespread political disenfranchisement and socio-economic marginalisation. The Houthis exploited this alienation, which was not merely sectarian – many Zaydi Shiites rejected their message as anachronistic and anti-democratic, while many Sunnis shared their non-sectarian resentments." So far so good. But, like in Syria, it is convenient to give predominance to "sectarianism." It is good for both imperialism and "Western" public consumption. Note: Al-Arabiya is an arm of the Saudi propaganda machine. For that obvious reason there is no mention of the Saudi, and the Emirati, crimes in Yemen. That does not invalidate the analysis that the conflict is originally 'a homegrown affair."  The war in Yemen is a homegrown affair Relate

Migration

"Since the late 1980s, US migration controls have worked to discipline low-wage migrant labor, ensuring the availability of a population of vulnerable, deportable workers for exploitation by US capital. After the 2008 financial crisis, however, the deportation machine kicked into high gear, earning Obama the title of 'Deporter in Chief.' Under Trump, the expansion of the war on migrants has reached dystopic dimensions." Migrants on the Front Lines of Global Class War But if you are "an Iraqi who helped the US military" or from persecuted religious minorities [Rohignyan? I doubt it], you are in .

Alternatives

I have just finished reading this great book ( available here ). It is a very good discussion of what capitalism is and the real and possible alternatives. The focus is on the developed capitalist countries. And I agree with Ben Tarnoff when he wrote, reviewing Erik Olin  Wright's last book, that "Wright writes with an unusual combination of clarity, depth and warmth. He engages generously with opposing arguments. He acknowledges difficulty and complexity. He exudes a democratic respect for his reader. Democracy, in fact, is the essence of his socialism. For him, a just society would enact democracy in its deepest sense. He wants a world where everyone has access to the 'material and social means necessary to live a flourishing life” and the opportunity “to participate meaningfully in decisions about things that affect their lives'."

Britain

From the British Labour Party special conference "The report also makes it clear that there should be no return to old models of nationalisation that were adopted after second world war.  They were state industries designed mainly to modernise the economy and provide basic industries to subsidise the capitalist sector.  There was no democracy and no input from workers or even government in the state enterprises and certainly no integration into any wider plan for investment or social need.  This was so-called ‘Morrisonian model’ named after right-wing Labour leader Herbert Morrison, who oversaw the post-war UK nationalisations." Models of public ownership
Sheikh Imam mocked all of them—from the one who paid lip service to "socialism" to the most venerated Arab singer.

Egypt

According to Blue Sky, Egypt was expecting 100,000 tourists via Thomas Cook in 2020. But the first travel company in the world has just collapsed. The Egyptian tourist industry is dominated by those corrupt pro-regime tycoons.  The main loosers though will be Egyptian workers. Thomas Cook workers at least have a welfare state to rely on. 

Roosevelt and Palestine

Imperialist designs "What I think I will do," he [Roosevelt] told Morgenthau, "is this. First, I would Palestine a religious country. Then I would leave Jerusalem the way it is and have it run by the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, the Protestants, and the Jews—have a joint committee run it...I actually would put a barbed wire around Palestine...I would provide land for the Arabs in some other part of the Middle East... Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish family... But I don't want to bring in more than they can economically support... Naturally, if there are 90 per cent Jews, the Jews would dominate ..." Sources of the quote James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (1940-1945) Jay Winik, 1944: FDR and the Year That Chnaged History

Russia

"While official anti-corruption campaigns are at best a PR exercise, the opposition’s drive to weed out corruption rests on the idea that corruption is an incidental addition to the system, which could be made to function more fairly and rationally without it. Yet this is to mistake a feature for a glitch: the orgies of illicit enrichment Navalny and others rightly attack are not simply a product of the personal greed of Putin’s colleagues, they are part of the system’s very architecture. Far from being an extraneous or incidental aspect of contemporary Russian capitalism, corruption has been built into it from the outset." Russia's appointed billionaires

Organised Crime in the City

But in continental Europe what Le Monde has described as the “ robbery of the century ” has done almost as much to shape the view of Britain as Brexit itself. Dutch media has called it  “organised crime in pinstripe suits”  and one of the original German whistleblowers saying he now  welcomes Britain’s exit from the EU  in the hope it could weaken the influence of London investment banking on European financial institutions. "The men who plundered Europe" You see, our capitalist system, "liberal democracy", does something against crime and "the bad apples". Have faith in regulations and the judicial system. There is no need to be radical about it, advocating nationalisation and democratic control of the banks and the economy . 

Egypt

The same structures persist  A corrupt gang is building palaces while 60 percent of Egyptians, according to the World Bank, are either poor or vulnerable. The national statistics agency found that 33 percent of the population were classified poor last hear. Young people have again taken to the street, calling for the El-Sisi to step dow. The objective of overthrowing military rule is no longer prevalent. "Build your palaces from our sweat and hard work."

"Nothing impresses me ..."

A passenger on the bus says… Nothing impresses me. Not the radio, the morning newspapers, Or the fortresses on hills. I long for a weep. The bus driver says: Wait until we reach the station,  And weep alone as you can. A lady says: Me too. Nothing impresses me. I spoiled my son upon my grave, He enjoyed it and slept without saying goodbye. A university student says: Me neither. Nothing impresses me. I studied archeology without finding An identity in stones. Am I really me? A solider says: Me too.  Nothing impresses me. I guard a ghost that always haunts me. The angry driver replies:  We are close to our last stop,  Get ready to leave. They scream:  We want what is beyond the station, so go. As for me, I say: Drop me here.  I am like them, nothing impresses me. But I am tired from traveling.  —Mahmoud Darwish

A World Without Palestinians

It doesn’t take Ariel long to get used to this new world without Palestinians. He and others do feel flashes of regret and fear. A bartender at the nearby Chez George tells Ariel, "Maybe the Arabs will crawl out of every corner like zombies and return to exact revenge." But twenty-four hours after the disappearance, no zombies show up. In fact, "They didn’t find a single drop of blood. They were relieved that the army either wasn’t responsible for the disappearance, or it had executed it perfectly.” The Book of Disappearance Related : Overcoming Zionism by Joel Kovel 

Racism in Europe

"Europe's so-called migration crisis can be understood as a fierce and multi-sided transnational social conflict of which racism and racist forces are one part. In order to understand racism in Europe today, then, it is productive to analyse the social struggles and structural contradictions associated with migration and border regimes which are shaped by racism and in turn shape racism's dynamic." The Role of Racism in the European "Migration Crisis" A must read

Israel

"Most Israelis have never considered the Jordan Valley occupied territory. Ever since our colonialist enterprise began, its settlers have been seen as “residents,” and even as pioneers, while its settlements have been seen as kibbutzim and moshavim – more stellar examples of Zionism. In those settlements there are no prayer shawls and ritual fringes – there are Jewish masters and Thai farm laborers, like in every kibbutz and moshav. Also Palestinian farm laborers who earn shameful, exploitative, criminal wages. The Labor Party, the first and foremost party of occupation, has seen the Jordan Valley as an inseparable part of any agreement ever since the 1967 Allon Plan, which deserves to be remembered and condemned because no other plan has done more to perpetuate the occupation." Please, Bibi, let the annexation begin
We live in a world of radical ignorance, and the marvel is that any kind of truth cuts through the noise,” says Proctor. Even though knowledge is ‘accessible’, it does not mean it is accessed, he warns.   Although for most things this is trivial – like, for example, the boiling point of mercury – but for bigger questions of political and philosophical import, the knowledge people have often comes from faith or tradition, or propaganda, more than anywhere else.”  —Robert Proctor, Science Historian, Standford University, the  BBC, 2016  
Book review "War in Syria: Resolving a Global Conflict" I think Ms Helberg, or the reviewer, is wrong in saying people " took to the streets without ideological blinkers " and among them was Yassin al-Haj Salah. It seems there is a lack of familiarity with Al-Haj Saleh's writings and positions. He is in fact a very ideological Syrian leftist who fought the regime, imprisoned, and he is still ideological leftist and anti-dictatorhsip and anti-imperialist. Dismissing ideology is a phantasy. The question is which ideology and whose interests? Is it progressive or reactionary, or "antiquated" as al-Haj Salah calls it: "Overall, the fast-moving current of antiquation that is engulfing us all appears to be a result of three springs merging into one: the spring of religion, which offers legitimacy to existing and soon-to-exist despotic authorities; the spring of despotic states that receive assistance and legitimacy from a world system cente

Protecting Saudi Arabia

Protecting Saudi Arabia is part of protecting geo-political allies, which is part of ensuring hegemony of some over others, which is part of enuring the survival of a regime, which is part of ensuring the outflow of capital, which is also part of fueling wars, which is part of "our European way of life", which is part of a long-term hypocrisy and trail of crimes and complicity in crimes.   "President Macron  and Angela Merkel  have signed a secret deal in an attempt to ease Franco-German friction over arms exports, notably to Saudi Arabia. The agreement is designed to stop Berlin from blocking the sale of French weapons that contain German parts to countries with questionable human rights records. There is anger in Paris over Germany’s human rights policy, which the French say is undermining attempts to move towards a common European defence. The row has cast a shadow over efforts by the two countries to relaunch their alliance." The Times online, 16 Septem
Alongside the conservative nationalism of the right, which emphasises tradition, religion or ethnicity, there are liberal nationalisms that can be just as powerful and as exclusionary. Think of the way that British governments, from the 1990s on, have made a forceful distinction between deserving and undeserving migrants: for instance, in policing access to the welfare state. Or of the way in which supposedly European values of tolerance and free speech are deployed in order to stigmatise outsiders who, for religious or cultural reasons, are assumed not to share them. 'Protecting the European way of life' from migrants
"Stolen  [by Grace Blakeley] leads the reader through the various periods of Anglo-American capitalist development from 1945 to the Great Recession of 2008-9 and beyond.  And it finishes with some policy proposals to end the thievery with a new (post-financialisation) economic model that will benefit working people. This is compelling stuff. But is Blakeley’s account of the nature of modern Anglo-American capitalism and on the causes of recurring crises in capitalist production correct? An accessible read/economics made simple Theft or exploitation — a review of Grace Blakeley's  Stolen   Related: It's not just profitability
Education and beyond According to the Times Higher Education, Phil Baty,  THE ’s chief knowledge officer, said that, based on current trends and with Brexit looming, Germany was “poised to overtake the UK as Europe’s number one higher education nation”, thanks to its extra research spending, increased focus on internationalisation and successful excellence initiative.   Meanwhile, mainland China has continued its ascent of the rankings this year and is now home to the top two universities in Asia for the first time.  Tsinghua University  holds on to the number one spot in the region, despite dropping one place since last year to 23rd, while  Peking University  is now second in Asia and 24th overall, after rising seven places. The  National University of Singapore  drops two places to 25th. It should be born in mind that in both Germany and China public higher education is free. Another area that reflects the decline of Britain.
Egypt The Times , a revolutionary paper, is saying that our friends, who  wine and dine with revolutionaries like Cameron, Trump and Netanyahu in London and Washington, are building palace and villas corruptly . Tomorrow we will welcome them again, for they provide stability and help maintin geopolitical interests.
Netanyahu's pledge to annex 30 percent of the West Bank The Arab League regards Netanyahu's statements as undermining the chance for peace, Arab ministers called it a dangerous development, Qatar criticised Israel, Turkey slammed the pledge as racist, Saudi Arabia called for an emergency meeting, the United Nations said the pledge had no legal effects... A few months ago student in London, an American, applauded the "normalisation process between some Gulf states and the Israeli state..." The Iraqi poet Mudhafar Al-Nawaab: Sons of a bitch A pigs' sty is cleaner than the cleanest among you Oh, subdued rulers And subdued people How dirty we are! How dirty we are! How dirty we are and we are proud of it! I exclude no one. Is a motherland ruled by royal thighs A motherland or a whorehouse? What is it called an Arab situation masturbating Before the peace processes And drinking with the villain? I scream at you Where is your pride? Are you Arabs
Chile: 11 September 45 years ago "The contrast between the beauty and the brutality that people are capable of was inescapable. The social power people invest in music became a permanent part of my thinking. Notable for its absence in the time after the coup was the  nueva canción  (new song) folk music movement. Urban musicians had taken rural traditional music and transformed it into inspirational expressions calling for human dignity, equality and compassion. The military regime outlawed it, and it disappeared entirely from the public Chilean soundscape. Overnight,  peñas —gathering places for  nueva canción  musicians and fans—became a thing of the past. It was risky to play or even possess instruments such as the  quena  flute or the  charango  guitar because of their association with the socialist movement." An Eyewitness of Pinochet's Coup
"The Prince [of Edinburgh] is the repository of all the colonial past and all the class privileges of the present. His racist remarks should not be whitewashed or camouflaged. They need to be properly, accurately, and verbatim catalogued in the British Library and made available to future generations of scholars and critical thinkers, anthropologists of the racist foregrounding of European imperialism for careful and close analysis. They are the insignia of an entire semiology of colonial racism in full-blown aristocratic diction. From the rampant racism now dominant in  Israel  to pernicious xenophobia evident in Trump's  America , it's all there: rooted in these unhinged expletives in polite, aristocratic British English." The priceless racism of the Duke of Edinburgh
The Beauty and the Beast "We are the villagers and the villagers are us, and we see these commands everywhere. Because you’re worth it. Be my baby. Like a virgin. i’m lovin’ it. Impossible is nothing. Quality never goes out of style. Just Do It. Make America Great Again. The Will of the People. Mut zur Warheit. Prima gli Italiani. Build the Wall. Kill the Beast." Seductive Fascist Style
Germany "Male members have always outnumbered women in radical right terrorist groups in Germany. Yet a closer look reveals that women have regularly taken part in radical right terrorist activities but their role has been widely neglected so far." The role of women in radical right terrorism
British Airways strike "Balpa has rejected a pay rise of 11.9% over three years, arguing for a profit share for its members, who have accepted cuts to pay and pensions in previous years but now argue they should get more because the company is posting record profits." Greedy pilots!

Marxism, Stalinism, Jesus

  Via Edward Maltby How to explain Marxism to a Financial Times reader Similarly, take the idea/l of democracy, you wouldn't blame it for the 20th century horrors that wrecked Europe. Those were the consequences of the contradictions of capitalism and imperialism. Or, in a more subtle way, they were the "dark side" of capitalist democracy, not of the ideal of democracy per se. In wikepedia entries on the nature of former Eastern European regimes, pervasive and unhelpful conflation of "socialism", "communism" and "Stalinism" is abound. Poland, for example, according to wikipedia, was socialist before 1990. 
"Would you host a refugee in your home?" Why would/should I? Are refugees humans? They have a (very) different culture from mine, they don't know "Western values", hosting them would encourage more refugees to come and change our 'homogenous' society, take our jobs and live on benefits....We have worked hard to make our country propserous and rich, why should other people share our wealth with us? And one day some of them might blow us up...If you asked me whether I would host a stray cat or dog, that would be a reasonable question... If you agree with the above, I am sure you would relate to this  man and host him in your home than to the Syrian children, women and men who were made refugees.
Tapia points out that  “the evolution of CO2 emissions and the economy in the past half century leaves no room to doubt that emissions are directly connected with economic growth. The only periods in which the greenhouse emissions that are destroying the stability of the Earth climate have declined have been the years in which the world economy has ceased growing and has contracted, i.e., during economic crises. From the point of view of climate change, economic crises are a blessing, while economic prosperity is a scourge.” Climate change and mitigation Related: Climate change, uneven development and poverty, obscene inequality, comsumerism, destruction of the environment, exploitation, etc. Is there a solution? Instead of inventing ways to minimize resource consumption, our smartest companies like Apple and Google work only to invent “needs” we don’t really need: drones, robots, iPhones 5-6-7, 3D printers, hoverboards, the “Internet of Things,” self-driving cars, biometric T
Syria as a globalised war A critical liberal view of the West, bit it is wishful thinking. "Europe's fear of refugees is the only thing that can save Syria"

Hong Kong

A powerful, but oft-ignored factor underlying the frustrations of Hong Kong’s people is inequality . And, contrary to the prevailing pro-democracy narrative, the failure of Hong Kong’s autonomous government to address the problem stems from the electoral politics to which the protesters are so committed. Hong Kong - the least affordable city on earth; where the inequality ratio is among the highest. A capitalist enclave left over by British imperialism. Via Michael Roberts "The cosiness between Hong Kong’s tycoons and government – both locally and extending to Beijing – a nexus blamed by many of the city’s street protesters today as the major cause of their woes: one of the developed world’s widest income gaps in the least affordable housing market on earth ." The fortunes of Hong Kong’s 75 wealthiest billionaires – estimated at US$224 billion in 2013 – made up nearly 82 per cent of the city’s gross domestic product, according to Wealth-X’s Billionaire Census. By l
A BBC journalist makes an atrocious "explanation" of atrocities Allan Little speaks about how hatred combined with fear are mobilised to commit atrocities throughout history! I emailed the BBC requesting the scholars and the studies Little relied upon to make his claims, for he never mentions a single source or authority on the subject. I am still waiting fir a response. In The Dark Side of Democracy , an article (which is also the title of his book ), the prominent sociologist Michael Mann included in his analysis of genocide and mass killings an excellent discussion of other scholars of the subject. (Michael Mann 1999) "Murderous ethnic and political cleansing is seen as a regression to the primitive—essentially anti-modern—and is committed by backward or marginal groups manipulated by clever and dangerous politicians. Blame the politicians, the sadists, the terrible Serbs (or Croats) or the primitive Hutus (or Tutsis)—for their actions  have little to do with u

Like a Mouse in a Trap

Humans facing violence at home and violence abroad Just replace each of the photographs by stories of animals and they would see showers of millions of likes and messages of solidarity and tears. A Polish taxi-driver told me today that the priority is to Christian and skilled Ukrainians coming to Poland, not to Syrians, for example. I refrained from telling him: You are right. What would the Polish gain from "Syrian infidels with backward culture and backward religion? Wasn't the Polish regime part of the imperialist 2003 invasion of Iraq? Who made the situation there worse? Why did we get such a wave of refugees in the past few years? And I hope the ordinary Polish have gained something from their government's adventure in joining that criminal invasion and destruction.  Today the Polish government is rewriting history, including criminalising anyone who says that some Polish were involved in the Nazi extermination of the Jews on Polish soil. I managed to tell hi

Tunisia

2019 presidential elections A funny photo of the liberal candidad Mohamed Abbou with the slogan, "A Strong and Just State". Two unachievable objectives. There are two women running for the presidency.
Britain "It was conflict inside the Tory party that led to the current political paralysis, a fact that Johnson wants the public to forget. In an insightful TV documentary made by the former Tory Minister Michael Portillo, party grandees explain that the Tory party is the oldest and most successful ruling party in the world. It ruled before the majority of British people had the right to vote, and it crystalized its power and philosophy in the period of an expanding British Empire.  However, as the Empire ended in the wake of two world wars, the British ruling class, its elite school networks, its aristocracy, its landowners, its bankers, and its large capitalist barons, could no longer rule in the old way. And during the same period popular reverence and respect for the elite faded away.  After WWII, British capitalism was forced to submit to the sway of American global power. Britain became the staunchest U.S. ally and pursued economic policies that came to be known a
Britain “The scorn which the angry young men hurled at the establishment was a class resentment but one devoid of any class consciousness,” feminist Lynne Segal writes perceptively in  Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy . In the decades that followed, shaped by race riots, feminism, Thatcherism, the miners’ strike and the collapse of heavy industry and trade unionism, working-class solidarity appeared to fracture. The rise of what’s now called identity politics began. From the the Blitz to Brexit "While in 1931 10% of married women  were in work, that rose sharply to 21% in 1951 and 47% in 1972 It is interesting to draw a c omparison here . If in an industrial power like Britain, an Empire, with 200 years of capitalist development, women became half of the workforce only in early 1970s, how should one analyse the condition of women in Africa and the Middle East? Why Arab women, for example, do not in total terms make half of the workforce? Does that have somethi
The Infiltrator

Immigration Panic

Not bad as an account of hypocrisy, backed by quotes. It is inaccurate though to say that America faced a threat by Japan, the Soviet Union, or al-Qaida. That too, like today's fear of refugees (and Muslims), was the manufactured fear of the "cold war". Never in its history the US faced a threat. This is a myth in International Relations realism studies as well. The like of John Mearsheimer made such arguments in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics . Why states like the German and the Canadian welcomed refugees recently should be expanded and grounded into a bigger picture: The main German drive has been be demography (That was well-highlighted by Stratfor in 2015). Other reasons include historical guilt and the recent financial terrorism inflicted on Greece. It is not because some Syrians have blue eyes or a girl carrying a picture of Merkel. It is the very same German state that is selling weapons to the UAE, fuelling the killing of civilians in Yemen and selling su
"Big thieves hang small ones." —a Czech proverb If you steal millions you get bonuses and you are among "our betters"; you are a wealth creator. When you mismanage, we bail you out with taxpayers money. If you plunder or help plunder a whole country, it is called "development" or protecting an ally. We even give you asylum in three months. If you steal $50 dollars, you spend (at least) 36 years in prison . For stealing $1, you need to afford a $12,000 bail . And it is even worse of you are a poor person of colour. If you steal a £3.50-pack of bottled water or a pack of chewing gum, you get 6 months prison sentence. (Britain 2011) And when the  world’s top 25 hedge fund managers earned $13bn in 2015  (the latest year available) – more than the entire economies of Namibia, the Bahamas or Nicaragua, it was not consideed theft, but "a fairly-determined market income."
"When the next financial crisis comes – and it will come because, like earthquakes, only the when and how severe is ultimately up for debate – it seems all but inevitable that once again the public will be called upon to step in and bailout the big financial institutions. There is, however, another option. Instead of panic-driven handouts to corporations and temporary quasi-nationalizations, a plan should be in place for cleanly and transparently taking failing financial corporations into genuine public ownership. Ultimately repurposing them, and shifting their activities away from financialization, speculation, and extraction and towards supporting healthy, prosperous, and equitable local economies as well as a sustainable planet." Buyouts, not bailouts: public banks as a solution to the next crisis