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Showing posts from June, 2020
If you attempt to erase the peculiarities and individuality of life by violence, then life itself must suffocate.  —Life And Fate by Vasily Grossman

Capitalism

Some of this reminds me of how five or six years ago in a class of seven students in a UK elite university three of them (two Germans and one British) were in favour of a "benevolent dictator" (in the Arab context). The bloody horrors of Pinochet showed how capitalism will react when it's threatened

Capitalist Production and Covid-19

A short video about COVID19 crisis, its origins and its remedy (more details in the synopsis below). Video is produced by the North African Food Sovereignty Network and has English subtitles (settings: caption ON). Synopsis Capitalist production penetrates brutally to the depths of the earth and disturbs the balance that allows society to live in harmony with its environment. This is the concern of the North African Network for Food Sovereignty as it works towards alternatives to agribusinesses which have aggravated food dependency but have also caused major disruptions in our ecosystems, ultimately leading to epidemics such as Covid-19.

UK: John McDonnell

John McDonnell, Labour Party: I have been a member of the Labour Party and involved in politics for over 45 years.  I have spent these years as a campaigner in my local community and nationally for what I consider to be basic rights- the right to a decent roof over your head in a safe, secure, clean, green environment, a good quality truly creative education, a job and income you can live on, trade union rights at work and an NHS fully funded in public hands so that we receive the treatment we need when s ick.  Throughout the New Labour years, Jeremy and I stayed in the Labour Party and fought for socialism. That meant in 2015 we were there when our chance came. We suffered a defeat in December. But not because of our policies. Public ownership, ending tuition fees and reversing NHS privatisation are all hugely popular. They're all still Labour Party Policy, as is the Green New Deal, and we need to organise to keep it that way. Party members can be forgiven for feeling demoralis

Penance

Ireland 1916 The movie is available on putlockers.fm

UK

The armed forces are abusive institutions. They target the poorest and most vulnerable young people for recruitment, brutalise them through military training, deploy them in wars that fuel poverty and destruction in other parts of the world, and often dump them back into poverty when they leave." —Simon Hill Labour leader accused of 'erasing history in Armed Forces Day message

History

Alain Gresh removes Political Economy from History. He also separates the "Enlightenment" from barbarism (e.g. slavery, colonialism, etc) that co-existed with it. The West's selective reading of history

Tunisia

Queer Festival postponed due to coronavirus I think the writer is not aware of the following fact:  The anti-homosexuality law is not a religious-based law. "As noted by Tunisian Law Professor Sana Ben Achour,  the criminalization of homosexuality  in Tunisia began with the passage of 1913 Penal Code, imposed by colonial authorities during the French protectorate. Previous iterations of the Tunisian penal code, such as the Qanun Al Jinayat Wal Ahkam Al Urfya (قانون الجنايات والأحكام العرفية), issued in 1860’s  under the Husainid dynasty , included no provisions criminalizing homosexuality..." [like in today's South Korea's constitution, for example] In the 1860s by the way Tunisians were Muslims! A similar law was passed by the French in Lebanon. Similar policies were either passed or encouraged by Victorians in the colonies. Even Muslim writers adopted the Victorian language of "perversion" in their literature. The British criminalised homosexu

Coronavirus

"This is a generation of Spaniards raised in the wake of the civil war, hardened from living through an oppressive dictatorship." It's sad when human beings die out of negligence. I think though that the sentence above is irrelevant. Many of the elderly people who died where workers who helped create wealth for the present generation. We don't know whether they were oppressed under Franco's dictatorship. Many Spaniards after all supported that dictatorship . How Spain shamed itself

Britain

"The state of a nation’s public services, from its health system all the way to its toilets, tells you a lot about its priorities. As with so many aspects of our society, the coronavirus pandemic has revealed to many what was already obvious to plenty: that after 40 years of neoliberalism and a  decade of Tory austerity , Britain is a place in which private interest trumps public comfort." Blaming exclusively the Tories, absolves [(New) Labour. The same things applies to encroachment on public spaces like pavements by businesses, lack of benches, closures of water fountains, etc. The business of England is business. Thus the sluggishness of the government to impose earlier restrictions and a lockdown to minimise the spread of coronavirus. What does the lack of public toilets say about the country?

US and beyond

Toppling George Washington and the myth of American democracy Related Winston Churchill and the use of chemical weapons Controversies of Churchill's career 

Bill Clinton

Against amnesia: one of his criminal acts   His words from Feb. 17, 1998, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff: '“people in this room know very well that this is not a time free from peril, especially as a result of reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals…And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the  missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq…a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed…But if we act as one, we can safeguard our interests and send a clear message to every would-be tyrant and terrorist that the international community does have the wisdom and the will and the way to protect peace and sec

'Civilsation' in US

As evictions, both legal and illegal, ramp up in the United States they are likely to disproportionately impact a population that has already been devastated by the coronavirus - African Americans. Before the pandemic, research showed that of the 2.3 million evictions that take place each year (about four per minute), they disproportionately impacted black families, particularly low-income, black women. In 17 states, black women are twice as likely to be evicted as white renters, according to statistics from the American Civil Liberties Union. Why the country is expecting an 'avalanche' of evictions

Britain

Britain's persistent racism cannot simply explained by its imeprial history Related: Britain: imperial nostalgia

Isreal

"In Israel, a country no less discriminatory, racist and abusive than the United States, and which has a military dictatorship in part of its territory, there is no significant protest about the way weaker people are treated. Africans are abused and Palestinians are shot, and with the exception of a few organizations and a few brave citizens, the majority either cheers or yawns." Black Lives Matter in Israel? Sounds like science fiction

Jürgen Habermas

A critique  At a time when a global pandemic has only exacerbated spiraling inequalities, pervasive racism, and xenophobic insurgencies on both sides of the Atlantic, Habermas suggests that humanity already possesses the resources for levelheaded debate oriented toward the common good. Yet a tension persists between Habermas’s political ideals and his historical framework. The gap is not so much one of theory and practice, which Habermas readily acknowledges. Instead, his story’s European origin collides with its universal intent. Habermas insists that postmetaphysical reason—because it refuses to take refuge in foundational certainties—provides a basis for the inter-cultural dialogue necessary to confront global crises of climate change, mass migration, and unregulated markets. But by tracing the emergence of modern rationality solely to a Western, and Christian, learning process, he elides the historical reckoning necessary for any such dialogue. The same problem faced Habermas’

Who Owns London?

London: Life support system of the super-rich Alpha City:  How London Was Captured by the Super-rich How the super-wealthy took over London

Global Capitalsm

This falls in the underconsumption theory. It very insighful though, but it would be interesting to see a critique of it, especially that it apparently excludes the relationship between investment and the rate of profit. "Michael Pettis and Matthew Klein's new book  Trade Wars Are Class Wars  begins  with an epigraph from John A. Hobson: "The struggle for markets, the greater eagerness of producers to sell than of consumers to buy, is the crowning proof of a false economy of distribution. Imperialism is the fruit of this false economy." Pettis and Klein update the Hobsonian thesis for the twenty-first century, arguing that, while trade wars are often thought to be the result of atavistic leadership or the contrasting economic priorities of discrete nation states, they are best understood as the malign symptoms of domestic inequalities that harm workers the world over." Trade Wars Are Class Wars

U.S. Imperialism

The Oil for Security Myth and Middle East Insecurity Related McJihad: Empire and Islam Between the US and Saudi Arabia Why the Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain [and the U.S.]
Via Michael Roberts The pandemic lockdowns will reduce incomes of low-paid workers in Europe by anything between 10% to 22% on average, depending on how long lockdowns last, according to a new study. Enforced social distancing and lockdown measures to contain COVID-19 restrict economic activity, especially among workers in non-essential jobs who cannot ‘telework’. These have implications for inequality and poverty. This column analyses  the capacity of individuals in 29 European countries to work under lockdown and the potential impact of a two-month lockdown on wages and inequality levels. There will be substantial and uneven wage losses across the board and poverty will rise. Inequality within countries will worsen, as it will between countries although to a lesser extent. "In sum, our analysis reveals that the lockdown and de-escalation periods will potentially increase poverty and inequality sizeably in all European countries, even without accounting for second-roun

Middle Eastern Cinema

"The 20-year evolution of modern independent Middle Eastern cinema has been exciting, unpredictable, and in some cases, awe-inspiring. A few masterpieces have been made, such as Ala Eddine Slim’s  Tlamess ; Shahram Mokri's  Fish & Cat ; and Annemarie Jacir’s  Wajib . Documentary filmmaking has experienced a major leap in form (see for example the likes of Suhaib Gasmelbari's  Talking About Trees ; and Raed Andoni's  Ghost-hunting ). And film-makers have gained the confidence and experience that previous generations lacked. But foreign money and international exposure have come at a price: the subject matter of films has become repetitive; simplistic liberal politics have become mandatory; and formal experimentation has become a gimmick rather than genuine artistic expression. People tell stories partially to redress historical silences, but if the stories and the resulting images are so ubiquitous, then what’s the point? And if the message and sentiments of

Black Lives Matter

A liberal take. And when liberals mention class it is because they fear the radicalisation of the oppressed classes and class conflict. Black Lives Matter is about both race and class

Ukraine

In a European country where the average monthly salary is £300 Women who give birth for money

Iraq

There a sloppy about Obama in this article. Unsurprisingly, no mention of class at all as if race and class are not interrelated. The rights/plight of the African Iraqis

Black Politics in America

Here is a good analysis "[W]e can no longer assume that shared identity means a shared commitment to the strategies necessary to improve the lives of a vast majority of black people. Class tensions among African-Americans have produced new fault lines that the romance of racial solidarity simply cannot overcome." The End of Black Politics

American State Violence

Some "liberals" are really scared and don't want to see a radicalisation of a movement. After decades of silence and complicity, they are changing tack. Understandably, one is not expecting a Foreign Journal's article to include the capitalist and imperialist settings as a wider context of class and race oppression, the economic policies imposed, the international institution involved, debt enslaving, etc. That would question the "liberal democractic way of life,", the American concept of "freedom", the "cold war" and what it was about, "the definition of terrorism" and discovering American imperialist history. The defenders of the system will do whatever it takes, including concessions and what it sounds leftish discourse, to mollify anger, co-opt resistance, mobilise their troops of intellectuals and celebrities in order to establish a new status quo. If a stronger movement that goes beyond race and racism doesn't chall

Obituary

Albert Memmi I have noticed that there is no mention at all whether he took a position the Israeli state.

England

"All the politicians attacking the Bristol iconoclasts for removing the slave-owner Colston's statue---Johnson, Patel, Steer Calmer, Labour's Shadow Home (can't remember his name] and others, share one thing in common. Not a single one of them has called for the reinstatement of the statue. Wonder why? Calmer agrees it shouldn't be there, but numerous governments, Labour and Tory never removed it. Calmer and Johnson would rather it was done 'legally'. (Laughter). Worth remembering that Colston too was a believer in legality. Nothing he did was illegal! Slavery was the law of the land, free trade, etc." —Tariq Ali, 09 June 2020

'I Hear You'r a Racist Now, Father!'

Richard Pryor, 1979

Britain

"It is not just that this statue [of Robert Clive ] stands as a daily challenge to every British person whose grandparents came from the former colonies. Perhaps more damagingly still, its presence outside the Foreign Office encourages dangerous neo-imperial fantasies among the descendants of the colonisers. In Britain, study of the empire is still largely absent from the history curriculum. This still tends to go from the Tudors to the Nazis, Henry to Hitler, with a brief visit to William Wilberforce and Florence Nightingale along the way. We are thus given the impression that the British were always on the side of the angels. We remain almost entirely ignorant about the long history of atrocities and exploitation that accompanied the building of our colonial system. Now, more than ever, we badly need to understand what is common knowledge elsewhere: that for much of history we were an aggressively  racist and  expansionist force  responsible for violence, injustice and war c

Belgium’s Colonial Legacy

About 6 years ago a Belgian student told me that they were not taught about the Belgian genocide in Congo. Statue of Leopold II, Belgian King Who Britalised Congo, is removed "Brutalised" is used to describe the killing of millions of people! Historians' and anthropologists' estimates range between 5 and 13 million. Related Atrocities in the Congo Free State

France

Paris 1871

British History

Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes Related Many Brits know of the Russian gulag and Sozhenirsyn, but very little is taught about English atrocities. That ignorance shapes one's outlook at what is happening in the rest of the world and strengthens the belief that Britain is a good force in the world (philanthropy, aid ornganisations, charities, missionary celebrities , etc). Similar outlook can be found in France, Belgium and other countries. Excerpts from   Britain's Gulag – The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya   by Caroline Elkins

Statues and History

Do statues serve history? The English historian Simon Schama is not a leftist. Here is what he has to say in a non-leftist paper: "Statues are not history; rather, its opposite. History is argument; statues brook none. The whole honour of history lies in its contrarian irrepressibility; its brief to puncture the pieties of power, should they belie the truth. Those horrified by the de-pedestalisations of recent days — the Black Lives Matter protests have led to the felling of statues from the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol to the brutal colonialist  Leopold II  in Belgian cities — claim that such acts “erase” history. But the contrary is true. It is more usually statues, lording it over civic space, which shut off debate through their invitation to reverence." History is better served by putting Men in Stone in museums Related Churchill's statue may have to be put in a museum . I hope so!

Gandhi

Ramachandra Guha is wrong. Gandhi went from a racist young man to a racist middle-aged man

Reform or Revolution

The twentieth-century question is back. We saw it in the Arab uprisings from Tunisia to Algeria and Sudan, in Occupy, in Greece, in France, etc. And we see it now in the U.S. " The rebellion [in the U.S.] has accomplished more in two weeks than have decades of slow, incremental electoralism." —Ahmed Kanna

Justice

Which tactics are appropriate for today’s rebellions can only be determined by a strategic and organizational analysis along the lines [Marin Luther] King proposed, and not according to the moral judgment which he subordinated to that analysis. In fact, with news that Los Angeles is considering cuts in police department funding, Minneapolis city council members openly considering disbanding the police force, and curfews being lifted in several cities, there are good reasons to believe that the current riots are strategically effective. “No justice, no peace,” from King’s vantage point, means that there is no positive peace without justice. Therefore in the context of injustice, there can be no negative peace, in the sense that there must be tension, there must be a “disturbance of the peace” in order to have the presence of justice. Today, when protestors shout “no justice, no peace,” we should understand this as a political principle which takes primacy over the abstract conceptio

UK: Statues of Slave Traders

The question is: why have the British accepted statues of slave traders (and also killers for the Empire) for so long? Miseducation and ignorance, imperial pride, or indifference? Personally, I am against statues. I didn't like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, for example, having one after his death. Hopefully, what is happening will provoke a dew British people to read the history of the British empire so they know theirs before poiting to Arab or Chinese histories and know that violence and plunder played a significant role in making "Great" Britain what it is today. After Colston, figures such as Drake and Peel could be next Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts movement The history of British slave ownership has been buried Related The Blood Never Dried by John Newsinger Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor

Britain

"The dark star behind Brexit, without which it cannot be understood, remains the British people’s unreconciled relationship with the experience of empire. The empire is a huge and complicated subject that, to our enduring collective detriment, is barely taught and is thus also barely known and absorbed into public discourse. This is partly why Sunday was probably the first time that most people outside Bristol will ever have heard of Colston." — Martin Kettle, the Guardian

Uprisings in Time of Pandemic

Webinar – The “Arab Spring” Lives On: Uprisings in times of a pandemic Friday 12 June 2020 at 4pm  (CES T, Amsterdam time) . Register here:  https://bit.ly/3h7zrWk Ten years ago, the Arab uprisings were celebrated as world changing events. The emancipatory experience was so contagious that people were inspired all over the world. Occupiers from London to Wall Street and the Indignados were proud to “Walk like an Egyptian”. The revolutionary process that has swept North Africa and West Asia, driven by demands for bread, freedom, dignity and social justice, has seen ups and downs, gains and setbacks, which materialized in a liberal democratic transition in Tunisia and bloody counter-revolutions and imperialist interventions in other countries. This led some pundits to pronounce a death sentence on the so-called “Arab Spring”. A decade on, this protracted revolutionary process is well into the second wave of revolt, triggered by the same features of governance and political e

U.S.

An excellent piece "The new black politicians, what the online news magazine Black Agenda Report accurately calls  the Black 'misleadership', would reap the benefits of the racist US system while selling it to the Black electorate as a 'free country' with some racial problems that could be remedied within the 'democratic' system. This background propelled Barack Obama to the forefront of political power in the 21st century." The American republic of white supremacy Related Joseph A. Massad is the author of Islam in Liberalism

Britain: The Meaning of Imperial Statues

"Britain isn't racist." The likes of Hancock and Johnson are unsurprisingly in denial. Johnson nuanced his opinion by saying that Britain is "much, much less racist" than the U.S, for example. Johnson and his ilk have also condemned the "thuggery" of those who pulled down Colston statue, saying that the protesters must have followed the right/legal channels, not taking direct action.   Actually, that's what the campaingers have done for years, but with no change. The campaign of Rhodes Must Fall is a case in point. -------- For the [Rhodes Must Fall] movement’s vocal critics, it has been commonplace to observe, euphemistically, that Rhodes was “a man of his time”, by way of suggesting that his time has nothing in common with our own. But if you replace the word “British” with “western” and “United Kingdom” with “the west”, you find this statement in his will encapsulates not only Rhodes’s vision but a vision of the world today, one that ha

UK

Riots could break out across the UK this summer over the effects of coronavirus, a scientific adviser has warned.  Professor Clifford Stott, a professor of social psychology at Keele University, said mass job losses, rising unemployment along with concerns about economic and racial inequality could spark "confrontations" in the coming months. A divide between poorer and more affluent areas brought on by possible local lockdowns could also have an effect, said Prof Stott, who sits on the government's Sage sub-committee on behaviour. "If the police don't invest in building positive police-community relations now, there is a potential for serious and large public disorder to emerge this summer," he told PA news agency. "I think in the worst case scenario it's not inconceivable that we could have disorder on a scale equivalent to August 2011," he said Source: the BBC online. Related Reading the Riots [of August 2011]

New York Times and Violence

New York Times' meltdown on Tom Cotton Related     Tel Aviv, Israel, 06 June 2020 Related Another deleted article by the New York Times: "The Harvey Weinstein of Islam"

Production Model

"Pierre Charbonnier demonstrated it: after a hundred years of socialism limited just to the redistribution of the benefits of the economy, it might now be more a matter of inventing a socialism that contests production itself . Injustice is not just about the redistribution of the fruits of progress, but about the very manner in which the planet is made fruitful . This does not mean de-growth, or living off love alone or fresh water. It means learning to select each segment of this so-called irreversible system, putting a question mark over each of its supposed indispensable connections, and then testing in more and more detail what is desirable and what has ceased to be so."  What protective measures can you think of so  we don't go back to the pre-crisis production model?

Cuba

A poor country with very limited resources and an American embargo A successful programme to contain coronavirus

Bristol, England

Symbols of crime and empire "The statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston , which was pulled down by anti-racism protestors in Bristol earlier, has been dumped in the River Avon. It had been situated in the city’s centre since 1895, and was subject to an 11,000-strong petition to have it removed." (Source: the Guardian online) There are many similar statues in Britain. Most Brits do not care about their existence. They have accepted Winston Churchill on a five-pound note, a statue of Henry Havelock in Traflagr Square and another of General Charles Gordon also in London. In a poll in the local newspaper, the  Bristol Post , in 2014 56 per cent of the 1,100 respondents said it [Colston's statue] should stay while 44 per cent wanted it to go. A comment by nwhithfield on the Guardian : Many cities in Europe have squares, roads, tunnels and so on named after figures from the 20th century, often done post war - Roosevelt, Kennedy, Eisenhower, and even John

Global Capitalism

Bruno Latour  What we need is not only to modify the system of production but to get out of it altogether. We should remember that this idea of framing everything in terms of the economy is a new thing in human history. The pandemic has shown us the economy is a very narrow and limited way of organising life and deciding who is important and who is not important. If I could change one thing, it would be to get out of the system of production and instead build a political ecology.   However, "the bad guys are better organised and clearer in knowing what they want. The war we are engaged in is a difficult one. It is not that we are powerless; it is that many of us don’t know how to react.           

Arab Cinema

Article Western critics too often overlook the contribution of Arab women behind the camera

Law and Violence

In  Zur Kritik der Gewalt (On the Critique of Violence)  Walter Benjamin argues that the intimate relationship of violence and law is twofold. Firstly, violence is the means by which law is instituted and preserved. Secondly, domination (violence under the name of power ( Macht )) is the end of the law: “Law-making is power-making, assumption of power, and to that extent an immediate manifestation of violence” (p. 248). Benjamin distinguishes between lawmaking violence ( rechtsetzend Gewalt ) and law-preserving violence ( rechtserhaltende Gewalt ) on basis of whether the end towards which violence is used as a means is historically acknowledged, i.e., “sanctioned” or “unsanctioned” violence (named respectively “legal ends” and “natural ends”). If violence as a means is directed towards natural ends—as in the case of interstate war where one or more states use violence to ignore historically acknowledged laws such as borders—the violence will be lawmaking. This violence strives towar

U.S.

What sort of a PhD candidate in sociological studies who does mention capitalism and profit, but not the word 'class' even once? Could it be that an editor remove the word from the article? I don't know. Protests – and riots – are rebellion against an unjust system

Covid-19 and Genetics

"The evidence suggests that this coronavirus does not discriminate, but highlights existing discriminations. The continued prevalence of ideas about race today – despite the lack of any scientific basis – shows how these ideas can mutate to provide justification for the power structures that have ordered our society since the 18th century." Genetics is not why BAME* people die of coronavirus BAME: Black and Minority Ethnic

U.S.

In numbers Police killings compared with other countries and cities Related How many black people die in police custody in England and Wales

Bourgeois Feminism

Tiananmen Square and Ra'baa Square

Tiananmen Square, Beijing Most  estimates  put the death tall between 2700 and 3400. Ra'baa Al-adawiya Square, Cairo Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that "in Ra'baa  Square, "Egyptian security forces carried out one of the world's largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history" and that "this wasn't merely a case of excessive force or poor training. It was a violent crackdown planned at the highest levels of the Egyptian government." At least 1000 killed . Why does the capitalist media reminds us every year about Tiananmen but not about Ra'baa Square massacre? Today the head of the regime that carried out the massacre in Cairo is embraced and supported by Western regimes. Could it be because the Chinese regime is led by 'communists' and has not liberalised/privatised the 'commanding heights' but the Egyptian one is more capitalist and a stabilising geopolitical