tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83101642024-03-25T22:58:39.309+09:00Morning fireEmancipation and communism, from the Mid-East to the Far East.sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-9675890208800962232008-09-12T14:59:00.006+09:002008-09-12T16:18:44.465+09:00Bad News, Good News and Reading Material<a href="http://www.alowaisnet.org/en/default.aspx?T=9&ID=3103">Bad news.</a><br /><div style="font-family:arial;"><br /><span><span><span class="style1" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="style3"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.alowaisnet.org/cms/_data/global/images/alkameel2008en.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 130px; height: 195px;" src="http://www.alowaisnet.org/cms/_data/global/images/alkameel2008en.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a></span></span></span></span><br /><blockquote> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Assassination of Iraqi writer Kamil Shayya Abdallah</span><br /><br /> Unknown gunmen assassinated the Iraqi writer Kamil Shayya Abdallah, adviser to the minister of culture, on Muhammad al-Qasim Street in central Baghdad on Saturday 23 August, 2008. Security sources explained that "unidentified gunmen opened fire using pistols with silencers on his car, the source added that "the accident occurred at about 15:00 local time (12:00 GMT), and Shayyaa was transferred to the hospital before he died there." And the sources confirmed that "his driver was seriously wounded" and was rushed to hospital.<br /><br /> Shayya was a well known researcher and writer and literary critic; he was appointed an adviser in the Ministry of Culture since 2003 after the changes which affected the country and worked with the three ministers who occupied the post of Minister of Culture and they are respectively: Mufeed Al-Jazaeri, Nouri Al-Rawi, Asa'd Hashemi and Finally, with Maher al-Hadithi.<br /><br /> Shayya who was resident in Belgium before the fall of the regime, is one of the most prominent supporters of establishing a new cultural trend in Iraq to be in accordance with open secular aspects.<br /><br /> The deceased was born in the city of Nasiriya (375 km south of Baghdad) in 1951 and worked in the field of translation and writing of literary and cultural researches. He was a member of the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party and one of the most prominent writers and editors of the (Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadeeda "New Culture") magazine issued by the Communist Party. He worked for it 1970s, before leaving the country for political reasons.</blockquote><br /><br />IraqSlogger.com reported that Shayya's death has had consequences in the Iraqi intellectual world: <blockquote> A few weeks ago, an assassination in Baghdad took the life of a high-level official<br /> in the Ministry of Culture: Iraqi academic Kamil Shayya'. Little interest was given<br /> to Shayya's assassination in the Western media, but his life and death have become<br /> the center of a heated debate between Arab intellectuals, involving difficult<br /> questions on war, occupation, collaboration,resistance; questions that are likely<br /> to be central for Iraqis and Arabs for years to come, regardless of the eventual<br /> fate of the US enterprise in the country.<br /><br /> The first flare in Shayya's controversy began when Pierre Abi Sa'b, the cultural<br /> editor of al-Akhbar newspaper, penned an obituary for his fallen friend,<br /> describing him as "our martyr, all of us. The martyr of contemporary Arab utopia<br /> (in reference to Shayya's academic interests.)"<br /> Abi Sa'b did not hide the fact that he disagreed with Shayya' when he decided,<br /> in 2003, to return to Iraq and be part of the new US-sponsored government."<br /></blockquote>However, Mithal Al-Alusi has <a href="http://talismangate.blogspot.com/2008/07/alusi-survives-yet-another.html">avoided assasination</a>. <blockquote> Liberal Iraqi MP Mithal Alusi’s family home in West Baghdad's Hai<br /> Al-Jam’ia neighborhood was reduced to rubble this morning after<br /> terrorists had rigged the structure with explosives in an apparent<br /> assassination attempt. Alusi, a Sunni, had been leading in recent weeks<br /> the drive to repatriate internally displaced Shia and Sunni families<br /> back to their neighborhoods in Western Baghdad.<br /><br /> A couple of days ago, Alusi visited the house that his late father, a college<br /> professor, had built in the 1970s but did not enter the premises. There is a ‘Sons<br /> of Iraq’ checkpoint manned by ex-insurgents directly across from the<br /> house. An investigation as to the causes of their negligence (surprise,<br /> surprise) is underway by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior.<br /><br /> Today’s event is a reminder that men such as Alusi, whose two sons were killed<br /> in a previous assassination attempt in February 2005, are still active<br /> in Iraqi politics and had never given up on the country despite being<br /> embattled and unfunded. He always stood for a secular and non-sectarian<br /> patriotic agenda, one that is being emulated by many Iraqi politicians<br /> now. It is even being parroted by the Consensus Bloc that rejoined<br /> Maliki's cabinet a couple of days ago. They have come a long way since<br /> their previous candidate for the Ministry of Culture fled Iraq over a<br /> year ago--with U.S. official connivance--ahead of an arrest warrant<br /> charging him with the murder of Alusi's sons.<br /></blockquote><pre id="line1044"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr7jKy0EzRCmi_9oV9nSNgw7c0dtJIEc7gId1BoM0f2Fzjs9SmO5T01L73koYiujMz3Xu0r_faRwgwPOHtEWGpnvuG28HvIZre2za5ydjMQN2L0X8iWvyaf_z4MYU0XAJYfnf6_g/s1600-h/610x.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr7jKy0EzRCmi_9oV9nSNgw7c0dtJIEc7gId1BoM0f2Fzjs9SmO5T01L73koYiujMz3Xu0r_faRwgwPOHtEWGpnvuG28HvIZre2za5ydjMQN2L0X8iWvyaf_z4MYU0XAJYfnf6_g/s400/610x.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245024107931163714" border="0" /></a></pre>He has even appeared at an <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1019955.html">anti-terror conference</a> in Herzilya, Israel last week!<br /><blockquote> Iraqi parliament member Mithal al-Alousi delivered the opening statements<br /> at the Herzliyah Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) Conference Wednesday,<br /> in which he called for stronger relations between Iraq and Israel.<br /><br /> Al-Alousi also called for stronger cooperation between Iraq and<br /> Israel in fighting terror, and issued a harsh condemnation of Iran,<br /> which he accused of meddling in Iraqi affairs.<br /><br /> The Iraqi parliamentarian has spoken at the ICT conference two<br /> previous times. His visit in 2004 elicited harsh criticism in Iraq and<br /> several attacks were launched against them, including one that left his<br /> two sons dead.</blockquote><div style="text-align: center;">----------------------------------<br /></div><br />Recently, there has been a great deal of research published on the Iraq situation,<br />especially after the Sinjar raid in which Al-Queda in Mesopotamia documents were<br />captured by Iraqi and American troops. The following are some of the studies put<br />out recently that shed light on how the conflict is developing. All three of these<br />documents (with the possible exception of the Brookings report below) are heavily<br />indebted to the American war effort and thus will reflect quite obvious bias. Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout is for instance written by West Point military men!<br /><br />Nevertheless, for sheer statistics as well as for their insight into American imperial policy and the<br />internal Iraqi situation, I believe they are worth the read. Now the critical question with regards to Iraq is not whether the Americans will withdraw (they will), but what are the forces of the ground that may push for a more progressive society in the wake of withdraw? What are the forces that will push for civil war? And has the last five years of mayhem diminished the stature of the fundamentalists and sectarians?<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.brookings.edu/saban/iraq-index.aspx">The Iraq Index by the Saban Center for Mid-East Policy</a><br /><br />A compilation of statistics and facts on Iraq researched and published by the Brookings group, updated in late August.<br /><br />Includes:<br /><blockquote> Estimated Number of Iraqi Civilian Fatalities by Month, May 2003-Present…………………………………………………………………………………4<br /> Detailed Explanation of Iraqi Civilian Fatality Estimates by Time Period…………………………………………………………………………………….5<br /> Multiple Fatality Bombings in Iraq………………………………………………..………..…………………………………..……………..……..…….9<br /> Killed and Wounded in Multiple Fatality Bombings………………………………………………………………………………..…………………………...9<br /> Multiple Fatality Bombings by Type Since January 2007…………………………………………………….………………………………………………..10<br /> Detailed Breakdown of Deaths Associated with Multiple Fatality Bombings in Iraq……………………….…………………………………………..…...10<br /> Number of Multiple Fatality Bombings Targeting Civilians by Sectarian Group and Month………………………………………………………………11<br /> Number of Newly Displaced People Per Month in Iraq, Externally and Abroad…………………………………………..………………………………...11<br /> Number and Current Status of Concerned Local Citizens (CLC’s) in Iraq…………………………………………………………………………………..12<br /> Status of the Sons of Iraq by Location (With Monthly Pay)………………………………………NEW……………………………………………………..12<br /> Weapons Caches Found and Cleared in Iraq, by Year………………………………………………………………………………………………………...12<br /> Progress of Political Benchmarks Agreed upon by the bush Administration and the Iraqi Government………………………………………………….13<br /> Journalists Killed in Iraq…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………..……………21<br /> Nationalities of Journalists Killed in Iraq….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..21<br /> Circumstances of Journalist Deaths……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..21<br /> Iraqis Kidnapped……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………..….…21<br /> Iraqi Civilians Killed by US Troops……………………………………………………………………………………………………….………...…………..21<br />Fuel………….……………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….39<br />Oil Revenue from Exports……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..…………….……………..40<br />Electricity………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………….……….….…………….41<br /> Nationwide Unemployment Rate………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………..……42<br /></blockquote><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/2008/07-23.htm">Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout</a><br /><blockquote> ...not only expands on the analysis of the Sinjar Records conducted in the first report, it also introduces a host of new data, including:<br /><br /> * Statistics on the exact number and nationality of foreign fighters held by the US at Camp Bucca in Iraq.<br /><br /> * Contracts signed by AQI's foreign suicide bombers<br /><br /> * Contracts signed by AQI fighters entering and leaving Iraq<br /><br /> * Accounting sheets signed by various fighters that indicate funding sources and expenditures<br /><br /> * Several narratives describing AQI’s network in Syria, personnel problems, and ties to Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon<br /><br /> * Weapons reports, etc.<br /><br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Findings</span><br /><br /> The report has several major new findings:<br /><br /> * Foreign Fighters were an important source of funds for AQI; Saudi Fighters contributed far more money than any other nationality<br /><br /> * Far more Syrians and Egyptians are held at Camp Bucca than were listed in the Sinjar Records, which likely reflects the demographic shift away from those nationalities<br /><br /> * Approximately 75% of suicide bombings in Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007 can be attributed to fighters listed in the Sinjar Records.<br /><br /> * “Bleedout” of fighters from Iraq is occurring, but in relatively small numbers. Nonetheless, these individual fighters will likely be well-trained and very dangerous. The primary threat from these fighters is to Arab states, Af-Pak, and perhaps Somalia.<br /><br /> * Smuggling of all kinds across the Syrian/Iraqi border has long been linked to corruption in both Syria and Iraq, which limits both government’s ability to crackdown.<br /><br /> * Fighters that contributed money to AQI were more likely to become suicide bombers.<br /><br /><br /></blockquote><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.understandingwar.org/report/special-groups-regenerate">Special Groups Regenerate in Iraq</a> by the Weekly Standard<br /><br /> <blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVwO5jIchNEDM80RspuPxElMp939zDfMyXavAEloU4ryGercgR4VBW4VeDRWfssvoGRavfh9bvwhiIemuxr4jcqddCI1lmGD4Qr1tJB5Ibzsdy-MuUBLZP-zXE0wbFB58LXs7Paw/s1600-h/%E7%84%A1%E9%A1%8C.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVwO5jIchNEDM80RspuPxElMp939zDfMyXavAEloU4ryGercgR4VBW4VeDRWfssvoGRavfh9bvwhiIemuxr4jcqddCI1lmGD4Qr1tJB5Ibzsdy-MuUBLZP-zXE0wbFB58LXs7Paw/s400/%E7%84%A1%E9%A1%8C.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245030144686357794" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Most Dangerous Course of Action</span><br /><br /> The Special Groups and Iranian-retrained<br /> JAM can take a less immediately violent,<br /> but more strategically dangerous course<br /> of action: namely, to reintroduce a bettertrained<br /> and well-commanded militia in 2009 or<br /> later, as U.S. forces draw down. The training and<br /> reorganizational period might compensate not<br /> only for tactical weaknesses, but for the brittleness<br /> of the command structure that accounted for<br /> its inadequacy. Ties between commanders of<br /> different geographical areas and echelons could<br /> be strengthened in Iran, if the organizations are<br /> not excessively fractious or if leadership there<br /> has the capability to overcome disagreements<br /> quickly. Alternatively, it is possible that the<br /> IRGC-QF could create an elite and responsive<br /> force – weeding out divisive members and leaders<br /> and retraining them over a six-month to a year<br /> period– in order to have a small but effective<br /> militia capable of fomenting attacks against the<br /> government of Iraq over the long-term. The most<br /> likely form of this militia would be an adaptation<br /> of the Hezbollah model suitably modified for<br /> Iraq, which could be reintroduced whenever or<br /> wherever the government is suitably weak. The<br /> organization might be ready to function during<br /> the 2009 national election or in 2010 as the new<br /> Parliament, Prime Minister, and Cabinet take<br /> office—a moment that was central to the creation<br /> and use of Special Groups in 2006.</blockquote></div><div face="arial"> </div><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><div style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""><span style=""><span style=""><span style=""><span style=""><a href="http://www.alowaisnet.org/en/default.aspx?T=9&ID=3103"></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com66tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-85623759295920942802008-08-29T14:58:00.009+09:002008-08-30T10:36:00.798+09:00Scattered Observations<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Sjs1-nLcS9Az6d1qmss5UU5iHb0XBAc0sTVW7IMrLai1qt8RWW5QXY8x9jYJvJIyXsV9UqJamQ7UNti-WI9Efh71n9-8PJGzpHdF2HHEralqLi64RG-4_2qBtYmhyphenhyphenIzlA3mb5w/s1600-h/CPS.NKH26.270808060836.photo00.photo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Sjs1-nLcS9Az6d1qmss5UU5iHb0XBAc0sTVW7IMrLai1qt8RWW5QXY8x9jYJvJIyXsV9UqJamQ7UNti-WI9Efh71n9-8PJGzpHdF2HHEralqLi64RG-4_2qBtYmhyphenhyphenIzlA3mb5w/s400/CPS.NKH26.270808060836.photo00.photo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239843731482214514" border="0" /></a><div><span class="nonprint"> </span> <div>Kazuya Itou was a volunteer working with the Peshwar no Kai group in Afghanistan. The Peshwar-kai is an NGO that has deeply embedded itself in the Afghan countryside and has delivered medical treatment, dug wells, built irrigation channels, and contributed to reviving the ecosystem of the countryside among other concrete human development. Kazuya Itou volunteered, and risked his life to join the mission of reviving Afghan society after nearly 30 years of civil war. His means were peaceful, and he describes his <a href="http://job.yomiuri.co.jp/news/jo_ne_08082803.cfm">intentions</a> in this way:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Judging my current abilities, honestly I'm terrible at languages. I also can't deny that I have no experience or knowledge in agriculture. However I want to learn together with the people of Afghanistan.<br />My aim is to help restore Afghanistan to the rich and green country that it should be. This is not something that can happen in two or three years."<br /></blockquote><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZri3k1r9i4r2XQe87USaBShFETvpdwf1wA8DjLXxYYCfB6VRsTkXhbhMDrrHhg2Jmv8_b-6mno5uRPfQa0E9-UMt8spLzdbaYoO2zwiVS4m9MwyUi0g9P4ZIjzUD3DO7zMGGp3A/s1600-h/agri2007s-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZri3k1r9i4r2XQe87USaBShFETvpdwf1wA8DjLXxYYCfB6VRsTkXhbhMDrrHhg2Jmv8_b-6mno5uRPfQa0E9-UMt8spLzdbaYoO2zwiVS4m9MwyUi0g9P4ZIjzUD3DO7zMGGp3A/s400/agri2007s-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239843360692089282" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghhrkMKO3pQdCxaE_g5W5-_ACVrRC75z9eF6Y9Vj5SOX4ySFQxC21NcXwQe4s3XVT2FJo9vF6u1fqm8ttEkhsrZ98I8iGIbdLsNauLhWZaomvlh_06TGhDIdy_NUNbZvK2aFQVzg/s1600-h/agri2007s-4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghhrkMKO3pQdCxaE_g5W5-_ACVrRC75z9eF6Y9Vj5SOX4ySFQxC21NcXwQe4s3XVT2FJo9vF6u1fqm8ttEkhsrZ98I8iGIbdLsNauLhWZaomvlh_06TGhDIdy_NUNbZvK2aFQVzg/s400/agri2007s-4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239843363839797698" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjKwFpcUu3cWuafyP5yp3CsCqPI4AxN0kMSW2qVXZ9EyxLL8UOACc2_NDN8GXcwAQufryn4RlCA3g_UmOm2xvFtyxsdgyqLImIkFh1v7o1DjKDI1sFYG1q5198za6CJCKE0n23yw/s1600-h/agri2007s-9.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjKwFpcUu3cWuafyP5yp3CsCqPI4AxN0kMSW2qVXZ9EyxLL8UOACc2_NDN8GXcwAQufryn4RlCA3g_UmOm2xvFtyxsdgyqLImIkFh1v7o1DjKDI1sFYG1q5198za6CJCKE0n23yw/s400/agri2007s-9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239843363922689682" border="0" /></a><br />For these quite noble goals instead, Mr. Itou was shot and killed by a Taliban group. This was not a random attack, his attackers have made their <a href="http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20080829-00000106-jij-int">motivations</a> clear: ransoming Mr. Itou for money and creating chaos for the Afghan government. And so his life, and his mission have been ended.<br /><br />Did this order come from on high? It seems unlikely since Afghanistan's Taliban have over the past six years split into several different organizations, more likely this was a crime of opportunity. And yet this did not stop a Taliban organization from issuing a statement <a href="http://www.iza.ne.jp/news/newsarticle/world/173682/">declaring</a> that "the killings will not stop until all foreigners leave Afghanistan," and <a href="http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/lamerfontene/56334752.html">that</a> "although this organization makes itself useful to Afghans, they are spies who bring in western influence." Thus, even the Peshwar kai, an organization dedicated exclusively to the peaceful reconstruction of Afghan society (and adamantly against the American and NATO occupation) is targeted not only at the ground level, also at the political level by Taliban fundamentalism. These brutes have announced that "We will kill members of any aid organization, even if their country has not sent troops to Afghanistan."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh11ScR83Fh0hpX2cZAId3wIlkmUgB_A3Ww3NOelfK_kf9cCasfee46swQU0lemkoC0c_i9NXGop0RMCZVzNhYYPS9uocf6RZDEWH80lUkDrGX58gS7xbZKX3C41ICNHczvaEhDfQ/s1600-h/f-so-080828-1510-ns.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh11ScR83Fh0hpX2cZAId3wIlkmUgB_A3Ww3NOelfK_kf9cCasfee46swQU0lemkoC0c_i9NXGop0RMCZVzNhYYPS9uocf6RZDEWH80lUkDrGX58gS7xbZKX3C41ICNHczvaEhDfQ/s400/f-so-080828-1510-ns.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239843370923467362" border="0" /></a><br />The killers.<br /></div></div> <div><br />There is more to this story. I have personally seen the main representative of Peshwar-kai, Tetsu Nakamura, speak at Kyoto University in 2006, and I remember being very disenchanted with his speech. Of course he layed out the various activities that the group was undertaking in the country which are all very laudable and worthy of emulation. He also described how he saw these activities as directly linked to article 9 of the Japanese constitution. However, when the discussion turned to politics, he repeatedly denounced the presence of the American and NATO-led occupation of Afghanistan. When an audience member asked him what we can do about the situation in Afghanistan, he said "I think we can only wait until America collapses as a country." This struck me as a profoundly reactionary declaration. And yet everyone around me, NGO workers and audience members alike gave him a standing ovation after this, his final statement.<br /><br />I do not mean to question the important work that the Peshwar-kai undertakes in Afghanistan, their bravery, nor the events that they have seen which lead them to their conclusions. However it is obvious enough that the organization and its adherents subscribed to a reactionary ideology and eventually <span style="font-weight: bold;">fell victim to it</span>. How?<br /></div> <div><br />Take for instance <a href="http://www.magazine9.jp/interv/tetsu/tetsu.php">this interview</a> that Magazine 9 did with Tetsu Nakamura, the Peshwar-kai's representative, on April 30th where his views on progressive social change become clear.<br /></div> <div class="yjMt"> <span style=";font-family:MS UI Gothic;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://www.iza.ne.jp/news/newsarticle/world/173682/"><br /></a></span></div> <blockquote>"In Afghanistan, the amount of people who are dying is growing. Of 25 million people in the country, 12 million will be affected by drought, 5 million are at the starvation line and 10 million are right below the starvation line. And then you've got these people trying to realize male/female equality, or put in communication networks around the country, really now what's that about?"<br /><br />....<br /><div class="yjMt"><br />"Q: So the Peshwar-kai has managed to embed itself quite deeply in Afghanistan it seems.<br /><br />Nakamura: Yes. Afghans are very pro-Japanese. Plus we have always respected religion.<br /><br />Q: Religion? I guess you mean Islam...<br /><br />A: Largely there has been a lot of activity that has no understanding of Islam. For example, female equality programs which want to assert womens rights and whatnot. Look, if you try to do that out there, the women will reject it first of all. They'll think like: what is this, some Christian prosletyzing?"</div></blockquote><div class="yjMt"><br />So Nakamura at least takes an antagonistic view towards gender equality.<br /><br />Even worse, in <a href="http://www.nikkeibp.co.jp/archives/150/150174.html">this article</a>, written right at the start of the Afghanistan war, he emphatically defends the Taliban regime and the right of councils of elders to accept Taliban leadership in villages. He talks about how in 2001, although women are not allowed to go to school, the Taliban government will look the other way when they go to 'secret schools'. He would spend the next seven years denouncing the occupation and the aid efforts of most NGOs. And now these same Taliban, wrested from power, are burning down women's schools across the country, in fact <a href="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C08%5C26%5Cstory_26-8-2008_pg7_10">just last week</a> in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Peshwar</span>, of all places.<br /><br />I could do a lot more to expose the contradictions of the Peshwar-kai's ideology. Friends have told me that the organization at one time boasted of 'being Taliban', not in the armed sense, but in 'belonging' to the countryside. To 'be Taliban' how many times must someone look the other way when women are stoned to death, and informal Islamic courts sentence people to execution? Still, one thing is undeniable. When Mr. Itou was murdered, more than a thousand villagers took to the countryside to find the killers and arrest them. Just from that mobilization we can tell that the Peshwar-kai's activities are widely respected and deserve greater attention. And yet in the end, their efforts are mostly for naught, since they are being evacuated from the country along with most NGOs given the collapsing security situation.<br /><br />Mr. Nakamura and those who sympathize with him say a lot about the hopeless ideologies that people will turn to when real social progress seems unattainable. The Peshwar-kai holds something like 10 conferences and discussions a month across Japan, it is fair to say that the organization is one of the most influential Japanese aid organizations in the country, and are depended on for an understanding of the Afghan conflict.<br /><br />I can't help but remember the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hassan">murder of Margaret Hassan</a>, the anti-war volunteer working in Baghdad since before the war, who was killed and left in a bag on the roadside, her arms and legs severed and her throat slit. That was definitely the point, after so many Iraqi leftists, reporters, and other aid workers had been killed, where I realized that I could no longer see eye-to-eye with the anti-war left, who would accept anything over the flawed bourgeois democracy that the coalition was trying to achieve. Given the brutal murder of Kazuya Itou, perhaps there will be others in Japan who realize that <span style="font-weight: bold;">compromising with religious fascists is the first step in getting killed by them</span>.<br /></div><!-- /編集部 --><!-- ゲスト --> <div class="guest"><em></em><br />****************************<br /><br />Which leads to....<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioLxHZ9P_WjcFGhtmHMbRmw-zHR4VY4Ch49WkQuxYe7oNZY-yMYhzXGaZZYvGL2JQtA6JpWnT-2ONJhrHsoalLTddOgZbv7gWKzD7fWaFZCfrHzCjNRoWwkRXDByiBJ5yQo52grA/s1600-h/_mg_0260_0362.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioLxHZ9P_WjcFGhtmHMbRmw-zHR4VY4Ch49WkQuxYe7oNZY-yMYhzXGaZZYvGL2JQtA6JpWnT-2ONJhrHsoalLTddOgZbv7gWKzD7fWaFZCfrHzCjNRoWwkRXDByiBJ5yQo52grA/s400/_mg_0260_0362.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239841151464954098" border="0" /></a>Seen at the <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/live-from-dnc-its-zombietime-day-1/">protest agains the DNC rally</a> (warning: vile right-wing link) organized by the broad anti-war left. Someone should perhaps inform these idiots that it is the Sadrists that are probably most responsible for the near-extinction of progressives and socialists from Iraq. Their Islamic courts were arresting and executing communists once the insurgency got underway in 2004. And their organization has stayed consistent to its original mission: reactionary opposition to occupation in the service of sectarian Shi'ism.<br /><br />In other words, they would literally kill you. And others like you who live in their country.<br /><br />Those who dig their own graves cannot complain when the dirt starts filling in.<br /><br />****************************<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLkWZqwv5IBYQoJWreEpUe9e-xDE2f4cwQkwdrUXEn-npCguKGvzdG-OmvHyf-rWKCbIH54OsKQGZsiWIqcaJFqn55q2gZby-dnp74AM3NKoRa2geFlk2rUh0I14T2xmPuhMQ9g/s1600-h/080824-pchr-gaza.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLkWZqwv5IBYQoJWreEpUe9e-xDE2f4cwQkwdrUXEn-npCguKGvzdG-OmvHyf-rWKCbIH54OsKQGZsiWIqcaJFqn55q2gZby-dnp74AM3NKoRa2geFlk2rUh0I14T2xmPuhMQ9g/s400/080824-pchr-gaza.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239843361197592754" border="0" /></a><br />And in Gaza, again teachers are on strike, this time expressly against the Hamas regime. Which the gutless writers at Electronic Intifada can only describe as "<span class="arttitle1">Palestinian political tensions impacting (the) education sector". Why not call it what it is? A working class struggle against fundamentalism and dictatorship.</span> <br /><br /><span class="text14"><span class="content"></span></span><blockquote><span class="text14"><span class="content">The General Secretariat of General Union of Palestinian Teachers, which is aligned with the Fatah movement, declared a five-day strike at public schools throughout the Gaza Strip to be launched on 24 August, the first day of the new school year, in protest to what it described as "arbitrary decisions" taken by the Ministry of Education of the Gaza government. These decisions have included transferring school directors and teachers to other schools, arresting a number of directors and teachers, attacking janitors and confiscating keys to schools.<br /><br />According to information gathered by PCHR field workers, on the first day of the new school year, Sunday 24 August 2008, a partial strike was reported at all public educational institutions in the Gaza Strip. The commitment of teachers to the strike was estimated at 45 to 55 percent. Consequently, the first day of school was largely disrupted as many school directors, teachers and administrative staff committed themselves to the five-day strike declared by the General Union of Palestinian Teachers. In a subsequent development, the Internal Security Service belonging to the Ministry of Interior of the Gaza government circulated communiqués to directors of public schools, in which it threatened to take what it called "necessary legal actions" against whoever disrupts the educational process.</span></span></blockquote>And from another article:<br /></div><a href="http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=105&sid=1467624"></a><blockquote><a href="http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=105&sid=1467624">Hamas...</a>installed hundreds of new teachers almost immediately after the walkout began. Education Minister Mohammed Askoul estimated 2,000 of the 9,000 public school teachers had been replaced<span class="nonprint"> <p>"Anybody who left their job will not be allowed to return," Askoul said. "They have become irrelevant and cannot be trusted anymore as educators."</p></span></blockquote><span class="nonprint"><p></p> <p>Don't forget the last time there was a <a href="http://libcom.org/news/gaza-public-sector-strike-spreads-14042007">public workers strike</a> in Gaza. </p> <p>So what scions of the internationalist left can we expect to stand in solidarity with the strike-breaking government of Gaza after the firing of over 2000 teachers? Is there any need to revisit the myriad ways in which the repression of working class antagonism works not only to aggravate the fundamentalist hot house but teaches the rest of the dispossesed not to speak up? Ask yourself how long it will be until Hamas finds that it must divert energies that chafe against its internal dictatorship by launching another rocket war against Israeli civilians.<br /></p></span><div class="yjMt"> </div> <span class="nonprint"> </span><br /></div><div><div class="yjMt"><!-- /ゲスト --><!-- 編集部 --></div></div>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-12023967613234793702008-05-10T01:14:00.003+09:002008-05-10T01:24:00.852+09:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmCqBt7QyRqblUmCjd-QJOAfV3rbZcNy-79BdiXk-w1eOA0oOaqLVtNrV36FVIYFU1ew78vdY0rpTkMc-Ce9mmzRHSFw-fIVXQGPW6-LgOu2WaPC8_fZ4A4ehwSuJWOQbpr8eWWw/s1600-h/capt.cps.ncz11.090508141912.photo03.photo.default-512x365.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmCqBt7QyRqblUmCjd-QJOAfV3rbZcNy-79BdiXk-w1eOA0oOaqLVtNrV36FVIYFU1ew78vdY0rpTkMc-Ce9mmzRHSFw-fIVXQGPW6-LgOu2WaPC8_fZ4A4ehwSuJWOQbpr8eWWw/s400/capt.cps.ncz11.090508141912.photo03.photo.default-512x365.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5198413932946971746" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQvOtGFi0Nz5se7kAscE70UdPPJuqmJ41TTKztHOhxhlFb1kRtEoU3Bt2i90u0ch9qC8tMx1hgmwZsTLmCG-V7xcCvGKDTKlH5uI2GNbX_FHOtR9KuKCYRkSH-gYuF32PLty0WQ/s1600-h/Untitled-5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQvOtGFi0Nz5se7kAscE70UdPPJuqmJ41TTKztHOhxhlFb1kRtEoU3Bt2i90u0ch9qC8tMx1hgmwZsTLmCG-V7xcCvGKDTKlH5uI2GNbX_FHOtR9KuKCYRkSH-gYuF32PLty0WQ/s400/Untitled-5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5198413035298806866" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Beirut<br /><br />Follow along:<br />http://sursock.blogspot.com/<br />http://marxistfromlebanon.blogspot.com/<br /></div>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-83388816989448298132007-12-13T12:45:00.000+09:002007-12-13T12:59:50.020+09:00Beer and communism is the way of the phuture<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrRqbzidWC4lbV_A6qtMlE6-BW08XEZsxLonTuLgDnHgmLxqRph6YwVEhKUmXU1A1Fx-s72IqoU-hlOAQJ8q8cLm7yVUK2HlNP1QmNfWZ2bMAoQatga9m6ND9bCKPe8m0Bw28NZg/s1600-h/beer01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrRqbzidWC4lbV_A6qtMlE6-BW08XEZsxLonTuLgDnHgmLxqRph6YwVEhKUmXU1A1Fx-s72IqoU-hlOAQJ8q8cLm7yVUK2HlNP1QmNfWZ2bMAoQatga9m6ND9bCKPe8m0Bw28NZg/s400/beer01.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143299324835208098" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Jd3-Rmw8E1DfS44A91IOHPAVA3PX_A4O0gJVpQ3Gi4B1q4uddu5uQH4zvXfg9H6iRV6FawI9r3XGSZidGqt3A75ngNPGyhlI2zdrisTON82vy_F9EXAtA9GD6XwPPM0ONifW0w/s1600-h/3329671.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Jd3-Rmw8E1DfS44A91IOHPAVA3PX_A4O0gJVpQ3Gi4B1q4uddu5uQH4zvXfg9H6iRV6FawI9r3XGSZidGqt3A75ngNPGyhlI2zdrisTON82vy_F9EXAtA9GD6XwPPM0ONifW0w/s400/3329671.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143302262592838610" border="0" /></a>Readers of the asayake blog, thanks for your support over the years. My comrade Jesse Blue and I have decided to start a group blog at <a href="http://waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.blogspot.com/">Beer and Communism</a> with the somewhat obnoxious theme of inebriants and communist critique (plus a heavy critique of anti-imperialism). Expect discussions of class struggle, Israel, Palestine, Europe, the Middle East, Japan and more. Please have a look, bookmark the page, add it to your links, send it to your friends etc. etc. And be in touch! Hasta la victoria siempre...sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-70721476202876187242007-11-06T00:28:00.000+09:002007-11-06T00:30:06.709+09:00Against the Anti-Globalization Critiques<div class="blogArticleHeader"><a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1507">Why Your Revolution Is No Liberation - a reader (thanks to Engage!!)</a><br /></div><div class="blogArticleAddedBy">Added by Mira Vogel on November 05, 2007 01:30:46 PM.</div><img src="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/images/1194269694pistolpanda.gif" alt="Why Your Revolution Is No Liberation - a reader" style="margin-right: 7px;" align="left" />The dominant anti-globalisation grievance against capitalism goes something like this. Money- and market-orientated processes have reduced human beings to commodities, robbing them of any means of existence except the sale of their own labour-power in exchange for tokens of commodity-value: money. Value therefore comes to be overwhelmingly predetermined by the concrete terms of money. Money comes to dictate social relations with human and environmental degradation as an inevitable consequence. Money is therefore the essence of capitalism and capitalism's overthrow will hinge on the rejection of money and money-grubbing and the adoption of more natural, authentic, humanising forms of capital - craft and agricultural. Here the discourse becomes personalised.<br /><br /><a href="http://antifa-hamburg.com/no-liberation-reader/en/index.html">Why Your Revolution is No Liberation</a> is a reader critiquing this analysis of capitalism. From the introduction:<br /><blockquote>"A criticism of capitalism limited to big players bypasses the totality of societal relations and disguises these by presenting a concrete scapegoat that can also serve as the object of violence for the anti-capitalist revolution."</blockquote><blockquote>"... the personalisation of the capitalist socialization creates the structure of modern anti-Semitism. Value, money and trade as abstract homeless and exploitative forms are being ascribed to particular persons: Bankers, Fat Cats and capitalists. The step then to the personalisation of anti-Semitism, to the Jew, which most globalisation critics have not taken yet, is only a small one."</blockquote>Containing writings of Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, Jean Amery, Stephan Grigat and Moishe Postone, <em>Why Your Revolution Is No Liberation</em> was compiled in response to a debate between German and Austrian anti-facist groups<br />and anti-globalisation activists in the run-up to the 33rd G8 summit last June. <br /><br />It's also available in <a href="http://www.no-liberation-reader.tk/">French and German</a>.sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com85tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-67651095565827614622007-08-28T16:42:00.000+09:002007-08-29T00:26:42.024+09:00Goldner's latest on capitalist crisisBack from the mideast...<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLrj-xzH69rUCsR0J8VaN2Svxw4mrUWBhfosoO2J4LBB8YxlHSwd2r9_gIkmgCQsFT3tF54bU5kngVsGLMG8gZfmOK92vsmrUUT6V2mBeNgjJnzdrUyyBMoBxPLnYa1OyzNluirA/s1600-h/01-01-12-018.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 464px; height: 347px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLrj-xzH69rUCsR0J8VaN2Svxw4mrUWBhfosoO2J4LBB8YxlHSwd2r9_gIkmgCQsFT3tF54bU5kngVsGLMG8gZfmOK92vsmrUUT6V2mBeNgjJnzdrUyyBMoBxPLnYa1OyzNluirA/s400/01-01-12-018.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5103654264900375794" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />For now, read this.<br /><div class="quote-msg"><p><a href="http://www.metamute.org/en/Fictitious-Capital-For-Beginners">Fictitious Capital For Beginners: Imperialism, 'Anti-Imperialism', and the Continuing Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg</a></p> <p> <a href="http://www.metamute.org/en/Fictitious-Capital-For-Beginners">By Loren Goldner</a></p> <p></p><blockquote><p>The liquidity crisis currently wiping billions off global stock markets is just the tip of a very big iceberg. Beneath the credit crunch and incipient insolvency crisis lie the economic and political crisis of the USA’s global reign, claims Loren Goldner. But will this mean global depression, wars and intensified authoritarianism, or a renewed opportunity for communism? Goldner returns to the theories of Marx and Luxemburg to examine today's financial and military imperialism, and its left wing ‘anti-imperialist’ mirror</p> <p>In February of this year the Chinese stock market, which had long been suspected of being in a runaway bubble phase, took a plunge. In the following days that tremor was felt in stock markets around the world. China in recent months has reached the ‘shoe shine boy’ phase of popular stock speculation (a major American investor famously decided to get out of the stock market just before the 1929 crash when a shoeshine boy gave him advice on stocks), and after the (not so welcome) correction, the Chinese market resumed its upward rush to new highs, followed with relief by investors everywhere.</p> <p>With the slightest historical perspective, we can see that the world shock set off by such a hiccup in a still relatively small market (in terms of what savvy people call ‘total market capitalisation’) is something quite new, unthinkable only a few years ago. China’s stock market can have such an impact because people are aware that any pause, not to say downturn in the country’s economic boom (averaging over 10 percent GDP growth for years on end, whereas Britain in its 19th century heyday was considered quite impressive at 3 or 4 percent) could bring the contemporary worldwide financial euphoria to an end. Increasingly insiders and pundits talk openly of the ‘when, not if’ of a global downturn, or even (for some) cataclysm.</p></blockquote><p> </p></div>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-44524492688177421482007-06-16T13:51:00.000+09:002007-08-17T11:37:30.108+09:00REGIONAL WAR IN THE MID-EAST CALLS FOR CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOLIDARITY WITH ISRAEL<a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: times new roman;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3x2xZ95BDqwZugLF74lMvQqQyqLS_dqkKQOm7b1YF3QNRelk8hBWQmcOGQeb61bHr-qv89BggPDfVoUg3Q_CcXQFIdsjntg1XJK7xEE-XZ12CdtQn2guKaM8ZrdYX654G1RGY9g/s1600-h/capt.403343cf8c9045259f9706ba5536bfaa.mideast_israel_palestinians_clash_xem105.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078416884058665794" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3x2xZ95BDqwZugLF74lMvQqQyqLS_dqkKQOm7b1YF3QNRelk8hBWQmcOGQeb61bHr-qv89BggPDfVoUg3Q_CcXQFIdsjntg1XJK7xEE-XZ12CdtQn2guKaM8ZrdYX654G1RGY9g/s400/capt.403343cf8c9045259f9706ba5536bfaa.mideast_israel_palestinians_clash_xem105.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" >The Takeover</span><br /><br />In a discussion with a German comrade awhile back, I brought up the appeal of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwan_Barghouti">Marwan Barghouti</a>, jailed former leader of the Tanzim, and his political faction <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Mustaqbal">Al-Mustaqbal</a>. Barghouti had abandoned the Tanzim after a series of suicide bombings, and has a history of <a href="http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/06/03/2141219&mode=nested&tid=1">collaboration with Israeli left groups such as: Women in Black, Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul, Ta’ayush etc.</a> My German friend wrote me back saying: <span style="font-style: italic;">"Yes, his politics sound good, but how many guns does he have?"</span><br /><br />At the time I was skeptical of his response. The Palestinian intifada had proven (in its best moments) that popular resistance to occupation could overcome a more powerfully armed adversary. What relevance to emancipation would the side with the most weapons really have?<br /><br />This question was in a way answered rather brutally two days ago in Gaza. By now the basic course of events should be well known: after Hamas' election and refusal to engage with the terms of the Quartet, i.e. ongoing negotiation based on the Oslo accords, tensions developed to explosion between Fatah and Hamas, leading to a state of civil war. What are less clear is what events precipitated this. To understand the current moment we have to return to the period directly after the Hamas election. The boycott of the Hamas government by the west had not gone on for very long when public sector workers in Gaza reacted against the new austerities imposed upon them by Hamas' rejectionism, staging strikes and demonstrations against the government late in 2006. Proving their democratic credentials, Hamas attempted to break the strike, firing on the demonstrators and encouraged students to scab against their teachers.<br /><blockquote>"As a protest against the attempts by the banks to confiscate part of the emergency money paid out to workers for loan repayments, demonstrators stormed offices of banks in the occupied territories. The industrial action taken by the workers resumed the the same day and rumours of an impending all out strike began to circulate<br />....<br />The strike included at its start, 37,000 teachers, 25,000 health workers, and 15,000 other public-services workers<br />.....<br />In front of the parliament there were continuous demonstrations with thousands demanding payment of wages, unemployment benefit and the creation of more jobs. They shouted slogans, threw stones at building and stormed the gates until they were brutally repressed by the riot police.<br /><br />In Ramallah on the 30 August, a crowd of 3,000 people demonstrated outside a venue were Abass was meeting UN Secretary General, Kofi Anan. The demonstrators shouted “From today there is no government anymore. From this day on, there is no parliament anymore!” and “We have no money in our pockets.”<br />...<br />Less than a year ago the local Hamas leadership spoke about the possibility of an Intifada against the PNA. Now it is starting to understand that they themselves could be the target of such an event. The government is in negotiations with the strikers and it looks possible that the conflict will come to a negotiated end. The political direction is towards the formation of a unity government.<br /><br /><a href="http://socialistworld.net/">(Socialist World)</a><br /></blockquote>By the time tension between Hamas and Fatah was building towards explosion in the Gaza strip, Hamas had again to cope with the large-scale <a href="http://libcom.org/news/gaza-public-sector-strike-spreads-14042007">walkout of 15,000 public sector workers this April</a>. How could Hamas slow this potential Intifada against its government? We could ask <a href="http://libcom.org/library/interview-rasem-al-bayari-palestinian-trade-unionist">Rasem Al Bayari</a>, Palestinian trade unionist of the PGFTU, one of many workers whose life was targeted by Palestinian security forces (led by Hamas). But sheer violence and repression were not adequate to contain the unrest. Hamas found other means more familiar to its activists. By <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Qassam_rocket_attacks">firing or permitting the firing of rockets into southern Israel</a>, Hamas could continue to make the eliminationist case for claims on Israeli territory, creating a focal point of 'national resistance' through which the population could be distracted with the fantasy of evicting the Israeli population. These rockets also double as bait for Israeli counterattacks, which in the event of a large-scale reoccupation of Gaza, Hamas would be in a position to unify the Palestinian factions on its own terms (since this interplay has been one of Hamas' major strategies after disengagement, it is obvious why Olmert has refused to hit Gaza in any major way so far). The focal point of the rocket launches more importantly allowed the party to compete with rival factions in Gaza, where Hamas struggled to increase its influence in streets that it did not fully control.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfw2t0uGm8EaD4gzSHLjM_RNM58d6I944wCyUOyp82Zln11P9XjPM7NL2tTPWyNVx78t1hojrI5zBk_jTHoxSbtIvUi2LWnc6v4TE3g6AEU32XiYA-YwEo2Jvg-OelwKSl0FFycA/s1600-h/capt.sge.muy10.130607115441.photo03.photo.default-512x341.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078415591273509618" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfw2t0uGm8EaD4gzSHLjM_RNM58d6I944wCyUOyp82Zln11P9XjPM7NL2tTPWyNVx78t1hojrI5zBk_jTHoxSbtIvUi2LWnc6v4TE3g6AEU32XiYA-YwEo2Jvg-OelwKSl0FFycA/s400/capt.sge.muy10.130607115441.photo03.photo.default-512x341.jpg" border="0" /></a>One of Hamas' major focuses in the Gaza strip since the disengagement has been an effort to recoup the political forces that have held power in the strip after disengagement. The eruption of working class struggle and the challenge of the Fatah faction made these efforts even more important. In Gaza, many of the forces patrolling the ground are clan forces, who may not have an essential loyalty to either Fatah or Hamas. This was made clear in the abduction of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Johnson">Alan Johnston</a> by what are speculated to be Gaza clan forces (whom Hamas cannot crush outright), and his recently announced <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/871519.html">impending release</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">subsequent to the Gaza coup</span>. In this way Hamas plays a power game with the clans. <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=9307843">This NPR segment</a> sheds more light on clan influence in Gaza:<br /><blockquote>"WESTERVELT: ...in the security vacuum, well-armed clans have stepped in and appear to be consolidating control over key neighborhoods, as well as smuggling operations in Gaza commerce, legal and illegal. Professor Iyad Barghuthi, who runs a Palestinian human rights group, now counts more than 50 unofficial armed groups in Gaza.<br /><br />Professor IYAD BARGHUTHI (Palestinian Human Rights Activist, Gaza City): You are talking about families. You are talking about, you know, groups with political movements. There's some mafias. And each one of the 53 wants to show that he has the power and he can do whatever he likes.<br /><br />WESTERVELT: One of the most dominant local factions in Gaza today is the Dogmush clan. Palestinian security officials are extremely reluctant to even talk about the clan, but a senior Israeli security official who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned of growing weapons smuggling in Gaza and said, quote, "the Dogmush clan tells the story of Gaza today. It's clan business and no one in the Palestinian authority has the guts to stand up to them. There is no accountability," end quote.<br /><br />A few of the many examples of Gaza chaos: masked gunmen recently shot up the convoy of the Gaza director of the U.N. agency that provides emergency food aid to nearly one million local people. The attackers remain at large; no one has been arrested. Last week, the new interior minister tried to survey the damage after sewage flooded a North Gaza village, killing five people. When the minister arrived, well-armed local families tried to kill him."</blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo0tBf01uW3EdEPRXlDagkegKLEJ_ahWnwNEeNbHgpEVa6hsilyHV010G9dCW9WGYU_16Q9NspZ4wpIcu2MxecBa1i3RKK6mAhvjkpK38Eq_sUefNZouOy8_NDozxhAg90PW8Bjg/s1600-h/capt.789f33ec60a84aaea3d587cbfed0da72.mideast_israel_palestinians_clash_xem114.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078415599863444258" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo0tBf01uW3EdEPRXlDagkegKLEJ_ahWnwNEeNbHgpEVa6hsilyHV010G9dCW9WGYU_16Q9NspZ4wpIcu2MxecBa1i3RKK6mAhvjkpK38Eq_sUefNZouOy8_NDozxhAg90PW8Bjg/s400/capt.789f33ec60a84aaea3d587cbfed0da72.mideast_israel_palestinians_clash_xem114.jpg" border="0" /></a>Since the channels of real local control in the strip were not fully open to Hamas, and in fact in some respects threatened a counter power, Hamas made its decision to seize political power. Hamas spokesmen like Hamdan Osama came up with a motive, describing clans patrolling in Gaza as<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/14/gaza/index.html?eref=rss_topstories"> 'lawless forces', and 'fiefdoms in Gaza'</a>. Nevermind that Gaza is itself now a lawless fiefdom. The attack that came on the Fatah security forces was therefore at the same time an assertion of dictatorial rule over these clans, and clearly the Gaza working class, since during these melees Hamas forces fired on demonstrators demanding the cessation of hostility between factions. Just yesterday Hamas killed two unarmed <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/870794.html">peace demonstrators</a> (to no international outcry). 26 people died in the ongoing street struggle in the same day and at least 600 have died in the period since the factional militias began feuding.<br /><center><embed style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: times new roman;" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sbb6FO3gk8Q" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="350" width="425"></embed></center><a href="http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-06-13-19-03-32"></a><blockquote><a href="http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-06-13-19-03-32">"The morgue was overflowing, with four bodies lined up on the floor, and some of the wounded were sleeping on cardboard on the floor.</a><br /><br />Two men were killed in revenge slayings Friday, including a Fatah gunman thrown from a roof in what Hamas described as a family grievance - the gunman, they said, had killed a member of a Hamas-allied family. Another Fatah loyalist was shot dead in southern Gaza.<br /><br />Since Hamas' victory late Thursday, about a dozen Fatah gunmen had been killed in gangland-style executions, Fatah said."<br /></blockquote>Now that Hamas has effectively split Palestine into two different enclaves it is critical to look at the wider implications and background of forces which made this possible.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Context of the Crisis<br /></span></span><br />The insurgency against the US armed forces in Iraq has completely changed the coherency of American imperialism in the middle East and these changes are visible in the recent events in Gaza. In the midst of the largest crisis of American foreign policy in its history, Washington is increasingly trying to shelve not only the management of the Iraqi state in crisis, but also its stake in the proxy war waged by Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria in Iraq onto American allied Arab states in the region. This 'disengagement' could take the form of withdrawal with a political settlement negotiated among regional powers (including Iran) or an escalation into a wider regional Middle East war involving a <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/03/21/us_looks_to_sell_arms_in_gulf_to_try_to_contain_iran/">mobilization of Saudi Arabia against Iran</a> (the Iraqi civil war is an anticipation of this conflict). The results of the latter would be particularly grave for humanity. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,,2040626,00.html">Washington has gone so far as to look the other way</a> as Turkey invades Kurdistan to attack Kurdish nationalist militias like the PKK, with the Machiavellian logic that perhaps this pressure could produce a compromise on the bitterly contentious city of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkuk">Kirkuk</a>. Within this, the American ruling class is trying desperately to shore up its position in the Middle East in order to maintain a potential threat in the region.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfyaQnTliD2RxWCfffK5umcpKcMrO4698O30Cr5fH-qifK0lZoagVK8bwKx5Zj8Hfb5qW-DbZpu9jk4LJYSBjzGdEy-qSrABU3g0sBHZrQkZ1hccr13TVjYiRcn20HOfHDLHoaA/s1600-h/capt.6276f70bdbc6403eb6d0edac15bfd177.aptopix_mideast_israel_palestinians_jrl169.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078415599863444242" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfyaQnTliD2RxWCfffK5umcpKcMrO4698O30Cr5fH-qifK0lZoagVK8bwKx5Zj8Hfb5qW-DbZpu9jk4LJYSBjzGdEy-qSrABU3g0sBHZrQkZ1hccr13TVjYiRcn20HOfHDLHoaA/s400/capt.6276f70bdbc6403eb6d0edac15bfd177.aptopix_mideast_israel_palestinians_jrl169.jpg" border="0" /></a>That has meant in the context of Hamas' putsch in Gaza that the strip could be abandoned to Hamas while the West Bank and even camps in foreign countries like Lebanon are brought under the control of Fatah and the new PA. It is under these conditions that the US would release funding for the newly established PA and Israel will release tax revenues withheld from the Hamas government. The ending of the sanctions will in some ways be an improvement, but only for those in the west bank. In this way, America tries to prop up a new Palestinian Authority, loosely federated with the remaining American-allied ruling classes in the region: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Lebanon and Iraq (both shaky).<br /><br />The reinforcement of Fatah is primarily an effort by the Western ruling class to reinforce its credible threat against the emerging opposition belt from Lebanon to Iran to Syria. There have already been many arguments in the media for bringing both Fatah and Hamas into the 'Sunni orbit', which refers to the American-allied states in the region. Hamas on the other hand is largely viewed as a lost cause due to its engagement with Iran and Syria.<br /><br />By now much of the left is able to identify the ruthlessness of Hamas in the Gaza takeover. Some on the far left even take a clear position against both Hamas and Fatah, whom they argue will to varying degrees repress struggles within Palestinian society. In a discussion recently a comrade summarized this position succinctly:<br /><p></p><blockquote> "...it's a conflict between two completely reactionary forces and ideologies."</blockquote> <p></p> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCJeKz9r9B_lQVe1vfNbfIye_D7boo6QBH-9xaQkUAOVbOC7FkbpFL085lD9uDO3AtpkpQIv_XSjOrI25D3mzqoVJPELlSmotS9YOQCCk-mMz6nmgtefBNGVE7ffyp1iyihb4Fqw/s1600-h/west_bank_2007.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078505377564832642" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCJeKz9r9B_lQVe1vfNbfIye_D7boo6QBH-9xaQkUAOVbOC7FkbpFL085lD9uDO3AtpkpQIv_XSjOrI25D3mzqoVJPELlSmotS9YOQCCk-mMz6nmgtefBNGVE7ffyp1iyihb4Fqw/s400/west_bank_2007.jpg" border="0" /></a>I would agree with this statement in many ways. However, it does not acknowledge that in Fatah and Hamas we are dealing with two ideologies (and therefore forces on the ground) which have very different goals and implications. <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/828665.html">The goals of the US, the quartet and the PA etc. are quite clear</a>: territorial compromises in the West Bank to Israel and an ominous segmenting of Palestinian territory in exchange for a Palestinian state that can effectively control its population. There are larger themes at work here but I would argue that their motivations are based in the classical interest of state control over territory. In contrast it has long been clear that Hamas is part of a wider spectrum that includes forces calling for the complete elimination of Israel. Not only Ahmedinajad, but Syria, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood etc., in Europe elements of the right and some on the left who while making disclaimers are only too quick to apologize for the efforts of Hamas and Hezbollah. All of these parties are strictly speaking 'rational actors' on bourgeois terrain: they want to extend their influence just like America and NATO does, <span style="font-style: italic;">the difference is that they use eliminatory rhetoric, </span><span>which dehumanizes Israelis</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span> This sort of irrational discourse against Israelis has become quite common. By now it is cresting in <a href="http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,,2091769,00.html">industrial action by British unions against <span style="font-style: italic;">all Israeli academics</span></a> (<a href="http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/index.php">instead of a specific critique</a> and hostile engagement with those who have supported the occupation), which isn't a lot different from the logic that drives the eliminatory factions. Britain's <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3415552,00.html">UNISON union</a> and the largest trade union in South Africa, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/865408.html">the Casatu</a>, have jumped on this train and are seeking to spearhead their own boycotts. Rapidly the left (but more importantly, popular opinion) is losing analytical specificity for the texture of the entire conflict. I have argued in my piece <a href="http://asayake.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html">'When the Grass is cut, the Snakes will Show'</a> that this is a direct result of the collapse of American imperialism in the mid-East and that while it has potentially good implications in terms of a slow end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, that the easy discourse which managed to blame the brutality of capitalism on Arabs themselves (and justify suspicion towards them domestically) will now be turned against Israel and in turn, Jews, in the absence of a popularized communist critique capable of exposing the capitalist crisis beneath. <p></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xGvZP2YxOIHkc_V-vZhYh2HhbrMWceXHXsLE3gi4hamE0Yg_4qv7cnqzwpxQaM7ira74p4c102BH_kHotFh7s9e0CgP0gc_vizGTjsI3xLMNz-V2E195Pr6qhqXzQAO6ZOdlew/s1600-h/p1129.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xGvZP2YxOIHkc_V-vZhYh2HhbrMWceXHXsLE3gi4hamE0Yg_4qv7cnqzwpxQaM7ira74p4c102BH_kHotFh7s9e0CgP0gc_vizGTjsI3xLMNz-V2E195Pr6qhqXzQAO6ZOdlew/s400/p1129.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078663406591521714" border="0" /></a> Anti-Israel pathos of course shares many characteristics of anti-semitism, but not all of them. One similarity is the universal appeal of both trains of thought, that people anywhere who may have even no contact with Jews, are able to convince themselves that there is an all-powerful Jewish conspiracy working out of Geneva or Jerusalem directing American domination of the middle East. More and more thought like this substitutes for class struggle and in the worst ways, becomes <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2006529,00.html">an ideological inversion bent on its own defeat</a>.<br /><p></p> The question is what steps can be taken not only to attack the economic relations which we animate (class struggle), the same relations which empower the imperialist regional war in the middle East, but also how a political break with the existing war discourse can be produced. The former must be the priority since there are no forces waiting in the wings so to speak which could tip the scales in our favor, i.e. forces which could embody or popularize a better society. In the middle east for instance, one by one, the competing militias inherit the torture chambers of the regimes they supposedly opposed. <p></p>As far as a political break with the war discourse, I do not think that the communist indictment of both sides of the regional war has made many inroads. If anything alienation from the entire subject has grown epidemic and the influence of liberatory ideas in these frameworks has not expanded by much (1). Increasingly, people turn to any savior that appears to have even an ounce of integrity (see the popularity of presidential candidate Ron Paul for one example). But in particular, it is action and discussion around Israel that has entered a spiral of misinterpretation.<br /><p></p> Where obvious idiots like the anti-semites of the libertarian right (anti-war.com etc.), and 'left' anti-imperialists like George Galloway, Sue Blackwell and so on pave the way for a hollowed out discussion of Israeli history, more<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEXgVVMK9on6IROuFlLotrBTNwTmE7KbtzRK_nJNHf-AVKTMIaZC8_JST8BgTqC6kFMhP6c5AuA6zV2snTEcnClrD5EXOQ-vQh9JlUgGbwS22fD0Rnw5HFqeXsANpJLoI1QH4yhQ/s1600-h/car_hit.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5071862078697204658" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEXgVVMK9on6IROuFlLotrBTNwTmE7KbtzRK_nJNHf-AVKTMIaZC8_JST8BgTqC6kFMhP6c5AuA6zV2snTEcnClrD5EXOQ-vQh9JlUgGbwS22fD0Rnw5HFqeXsANpJLoI1QH4yhQ/s400/car_hit.jpg" border="0" /></a> concretely, Islamic Jihad and others give life to an ideological identification of all Israelis with the occupation government, by dumping missiles into Southern Israel, demonstrating the appeal of killing, or terrorizing any Israeli for 'their' crimes. Although Hamas is a different organization, it shares these tactics, differing only in that as a ruling state party it is obligated to channel (and outright oppress) class struggle in the classical sense.<br /><p></p> Given this, and the struggle to produce eliminationist spectacles on Gaza's northern border, the nationalist factions more and more find their audience in the attack upon Israel <span style="font-style: italic;">as a body </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier">(partially because suicide bombing is now less of an option</a>). That is, where a real class struggle would necessarily come into conflict with the occupation forces, <span style="font-style: italic;">even this is discarded </span> towards a more general nihilistic assault on Israel as a place, Israel as an idea. I think this is at least a major difference between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada">the first intifada</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Intifada">the second</a> and this change has of course been consciously driven by elements in Palestine, Damascus, Tehran, Hezbollah etc. In the same way we see the growing influence of these actions reflected in worldwide popular opinion.<br /><p></p> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhO7ShuNwkOjb8QB6dA5M9L1SKErUmBE7-S9Bx0AMeE4NnLMWks5nsqh0mCQeIxBNU7j-jk1N-1NYhhmH-q7-7lF2SzqrBMEQaECjdxTW7f8UEXUQUW-qq0DfSj01a27QYhDG7cA/s1600-h/Gaza-Hamas-17mai2006-2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078416892648600434" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhO7ShuNwkOjb8QB6dA5M9L1SKErUmBE7-S9Bx0AMeE4NnLMWks5nsqh0mCQeIxBNU7j-jk1N-1NYhhmH-q7-7lF2SzqrBMEQaECjdxTW7f8UEXUQUW-qq0DfSj01a27QYhDG7cA/s400/Gaza-Hamas-17mai2006-2.jpg" border="0" /></a>The attacks against Israel on the plane of history and ideology present a particular danger in my view. Popular opinion is generally drifting towards the idea that Israel is a nation that deserves either abandonment, dissolution or, in the extreme, elimination. <span style="font-weight: bold;">I'm prepared to argue the exact opposite: that Israel is the only nation with a good reason to exist.</span> That is, along with some on the German left, I think that an opposition to capitalism, imperialism and nationalism must include a <a href="http://www.cafecritique.priv.at/interviewIN.html">solidarity with Israel</a>, a nation whose creation was an inevitable result of the failure of the first revolutionary wave which could not prevent or defeat Europe's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust">lapse into anti-semetic barbarism</a>. The subsequent history of Zionism and Israel is as much a history of liberation as it is a history of imperialism and colonialism. <p></p> Since Israel is itself a participant in the imperialist conflict in the mid-east now, this solidarity does not include support for its military adventures. I would argue along with <a href="http://www.maki.org.il/english/english.html">some on the Israeli left</a> that there could be an Israeli nation that both defends itself against elimination and refuses the wars that the west requests of it (for instance, Olmert was requested by France <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1173879109084&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">to 'regime change' Syria during the second Lebanon war</a>). Making an exception for Israel does not excuse in every way the manner in which the nation came about, its imperialism nor its treatment of its neighbors, I'm arguing only for the necessity of a Jewish nation after Auschwitz, not its use as a warhead against its Arab neighbors. <p></p>Israel has enough of its own contradictions in regards to its own population to make obvious that in many ways it fails its own mandate (the oppression of the Mizrahi Jews, or the past employment by the state of Nazi war criminals are some examples that speak to the depth of Israeli contradictions). Like any nation, for whatever ideal it is created for, it will act as an incubator for the state and capitalism, and thus deserves to be overcome by<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism"> a wider human community</a>. Israel itself is far from an embodiment of liberatory or even classic bourgeois ideals, and in many ways reflects their failures. Nevertheless, these smaller contradictions do not amount to an argument for prioritizing its abolition above others. Nor do they justify unrealistic expectations on Israelis to dissolve themselves into a single society with their neighbors (the position of many of <a href="http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/871413.html">those who voted to boycott Israel in the UCU</a>) which is not a demand placed on <span style="font-style: italic;">any other people in the world</span>. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The chief motor of the imperialist malaise lies in the developed countries (specifically the west) and that's where our opposition should be; within that opposition I think we have to stand against the slide into negationist history by expressing a critical solidarity with Israel.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbN-Z5QGRH2P6tDGUPanjkN32WfQxgJXtyLX5u0BPbmh3fb-jufvnuebN0UN68su_d14PPbLIPblhVEV-LSwHD6e_0DI7O5_u68nw53dzp_5y1mS3p-1nf-xbzLvySFe3NZC8idQ/s1600-h/isr027.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbN-Z5QGRH2P6tDGUPanjkN32WfQxgJXtyLX5u0BPbmh3fb-jufvnuebN0UN68su_d14PPbLIPblhVEV-LSwHD6e_0DI7O5_u68nw53dzp_5y1mS3p-1nf-xbzLvySFe3NZC8idQ/s400/isr027.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078541940621423522" border="0" /></a><img src="file:///K:/Ext/buffalo/Asayake/13.jpg" alt="" /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">(1) One good example (and there are many others) of a struggle across borders has been provided by the Fire Brigades Union of Britain, who lugged two fire engines through Europe and Turkey into Iraq to fight the fires of war.</span>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com85tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-5915733343425580332007-06-16T08:58:00.001+09:002007-06-16T09:38:39.377+09:00Scream Quietly or the Neighbors will HearFrom <a href="http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/">Layla Anwar</a>...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEps3KwfPHPuUfXoBtQGaeiflf_h8QXYE4trBfn_r6GKj6gO64nPw_L8leKIX4eu9OukHmX3hglecNng4GRUEGrjcjrPbK1mm8AezdpnsM5YHcIa3epA_rGBsavCalFa0HjxJXow/s1600-h/thamerdawood2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEps3KwfPHPuUfXoBtQGaeiflf_h8QXYE4trBfn_r6GKj6gO64nPw_L8leKIX4eu9OukHmX3hglecNng4GRUEGrjcjrPbK1mm8AezdpnsM5YHcIa3epA_rGBsavCalFa0HjxJXow/s400/thamerdawood2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076444952903922386" border="0" /></a><blockquote>I remember reading a book some years back. I cannot remember the name of the author though. I did warn you that I am bad with names. But the exact title is well lodged in my mind: "Scream quietly or the neighbors will hear".</blockquote><blockquote>The book was about female battering. You know what woman battering is don't you?<br /><br />It is basically when a man beats, strikes, punches, kicks, pounds...a woman and sometimes severly enough that she ends up in hospital and sometimes severly enough to bring about her death.<br /><br />It is interesting to note that the verb "to batter" is also used in cooking i.e to make a dough. The French have similar anologies between battering a woman and food. They would say he turned her into a "compote".(compote is cooked fruits). Ditto for Arabic expressions. They would say he broke her bones, they became like "soup"...<br />Am sure other "cultures" have more analogies of the same sort. I will leave it to you to dig up some expressions that you are familiar with, along the same lines...<br /><br />Did you notice something here? A common trait in the use of words, in the use of language?<br /><br />It is as if they allude to render that "thing" liquefied, easily moulded, soft to the palate...<br />In sum, easily mixed and easily digestible. I will also leave it to you to make further associations on the same theme.<br /><br />No society is immune from woman battering. I will not dwell on figures now. All societies are guilty of it. East and West, equally guilty. And R.Kipling was wrong when he said that East and West shall never meet. They do meet. They met. They met in Iraq.<br /><br />They met in Iraq, the land, the earth, the Mother...<br />They also met and agreed on her daughters bodies - Iraqi Women.<br /><br />That body which, since the "liberation", has become a public commodity. A public thing. A thing to be veiled, a thing to be controlled, a thing to be ordered about, a thing to be disposed of, a thing to be battered, moulded, shaped into a liquefied, soft, yielding thing. A digestible thing.<br /><br />Yes, batter, pound, strike, punch, beat, rape, torture, imprison...that "thing" and ultimately dispose of it, annihilate it.<br /><br />Both "East and West" are bent on the destruction of Iraqi women.<br />It is as if, plundered, occupied Iraq has become the center point, the "lieu" where these forces can pour out their venom, their deep hatred, their frustrated instincts, their perversities...In sum their collective misogyny.<br /><br />And those who know me a little by now, know what I mean by East & West. Just in case you are new to this blog. East is metaphorically used for Iran and West for none other but the "greatest democracy on earth", America.<br /><br /><a href="http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/">Continued...</a><br /></blockquote>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-48561261521678634202007-06-14T19:50:00.001+09:002007-06-16T12:56:47.442+09:00交流と運動<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzqcdIDVHwDs4KAoeGlhh2t9oGW4lsEcj3TBwb_BVV4ggL0rBoSnWjw_rj73JAQbNzVGPvfve-iuczb6eyComZfhZkHg9rChZBuTDMmy-iDD_O32JE5B_G1qxPPtd07Er_ELJ_Mg/s1600-h/146404829_d348b08487.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzqcdIDVHwDs4KAoeGlhh2t9oGW4lsEcj3TBwb_BVV4ggL0rBoSnWjw_rj73JAQbNzVGPvfve-iuczb6eyComZfhZkHg9rChZBuTDMmy-iDD_O32JE5B_G1qxPPtd07Er_ELJ_Mg/s400/146404829_d348b08487.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076435731609137858" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">先日、仲間たちと一緒にパレスチナ関係2つの映画を上映してていただいた。そこでパレスチナとレバノンの歴史について以下の反省を書いた。</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">皆様</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">先日上映していただいた2つの映画に深い印象を持ちました。名称がわからない1つ目はパレスチナ領域内で住民たちの蜂起の犠牲と怒りに感動しました。アラビア語が苦手なため言葉が通じなかったけど、政治派なし行動して弾圧に対して闘っているパレスチナ人の姿、そして政治派の旗なしの長い葬列の姿は現在のパレスチナでは見当たらなくなってきてものすごい感動的でした。</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">2つ目の映画の方は、観たときにイスラエルの空爆の残虐性と犠牲人の耐え難い被災をよくあらわすこと一方、レバノン戦争・内戦の事実の一部しか表さないし、情報を省略することで不正直だと反応しました。前に内戦時代に触れる2つの本を読んだことあったのに、その場で歴史の流れを早めに思い出して語ることができなくてちょっと気落ちました。なので、翌日の出勤で内職研究ということでWikipediaなどのサイトを読みながら、内戦・侵攻の流れを調べなおしました。</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">(</span><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AC%E3%83%90%E3%83%8E%E3%83%B3%E5%86%85%E6%88%A6">Wikiレバノン内戦の歴史</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">、日本語)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">(</span><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_civil_war">Wikiレバノン内戦の歴史</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">、英語)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">内戦についてWiki日本のエントリーが情報不足で、以下の引っ張ったところが英語のWikiページからなります。英語が苦手な方、申し訳ありません。なるべく解説しようとします。では、見てみましょう。</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">まず、内戦の総括を言うと</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">「Lebanon still bears deep scars from the civil war. In all, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people were killed, and another 100,000 handicapped by injuries. Approximately 900,000 people, representing one-fifth of the pre-war population, were displaced from their homes. Perhaps a quarter of a million emigrated permanently. Thousands of land mines remain buried in the previously contested areas. Some Western hostages kidnapped during the mid-1980s (many claim by Hezbollah, though the movement denies this) were held until May 1992[31]. Lebanese victims of kidnapping and wartime "disappeared" number in the tens of thousands[citation needed].」</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">要するに内戦時代で10万人ほど死亡したとのこと。死んだ人の中、映画で語られるベイルート包囲の間イスラエルの攻撃で何人が死亡したでしょう?</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi86DQSBn3J9NS_zbA8dl9dfd1410rCNWPXhSNTYU_USYczc55zvXNzSYZWlrQAh5Lzg6jmx9kPfyAeKZLYPvT5yzVxMxJIVMNA-lnptpMX9DS5IPe-iIlPru4C9GMBEfA_PUSj0g/s1600-h/thelogoontheflag.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi86DQSBn3J9NS_zbA8dl9dfd1410rCNWPXhSNTYU_USYczc55zvXNzSYZWlrQAh5Lzg6jmx9kPfyAeKZLYPvT5yzVxMxJIVMNA-lnptpMX9DS5IPe-iIlPru4C9GMBEfA_PUSj0g/s400/thelogoontheflag.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076435426666459794" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">「The number of civilian casualties is disputed, and is probably between 10,000 and 12,000. The math is as follows: An Nahar, a Lebanese paper published in Beirut, estimated that the total military personnel and civilians dead from the Lebanon campaign (up to and including the siege) was 17,825. Subtract 2,000 Syrian dead, 1,400 PLO and 1,000-3,000 civilians killed in the southern campaign, 1,000 PLO killed in the siege, and the 368 IDF killed. This number excludes the 750-3,000 Palestinian refugees killed in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which occurred when Israel broke into West Beirut after the assassination of Gemayel, in defiance of the peace accord negotiated by Habib, and allowed Phalangist forces into the camps.」</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Jp4WLzU-LMnbI-01kKoA_MzTlXn3ZaZGNaNJ6VbSWbi8N4F0QnUB_UvPKYm4R8mgzPbMfvEw6cep8H5Qt-u8ogHIPc6GEcd04uM-yrsXU2slQ3TK-1uO5wc4-b6nwl6TKb58Qw/s1600-h/sabra018_3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Jp4WLzU-LMnbI-01kKoA_MzTlXn3ZaZGNaNJ6VbSWbi8N4F0QnUB_UvPKYm4R8mgzPbMfvEw6cep8H5Qt-u8ogHIPc6GEcd04uM-yrsXU2slQ3TK-1uO5wc4-b6nwl6TKb58Qw/s400/sabra018_3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076434971399926402" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">つまりベイルート包囲で民間人の死亡数は1万人から1万2千人ぐらいだといいます。イスラエルの南より侵攻で3000人と、サブラ・シャティラ避難民キャンプで虐殺された最大3000人を加えたら、13万死亡人弱ですね。もしイスラエルの1978侵攻で死亡した民間人を加えるとしたら、</span><a style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_South_Lebanon_conflict">南レバノン侵攻</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">のWiki歴史によると</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">「The Israeli Army occupied most of the area south of the Litani River, resulting in the evacuation of at least 100,000 Lebanese [5], as well as approximately 2,000 deaths.」</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">約2000人が死亡したので、イスラエルのレバノン対軍隊介入のせいで最大15万レバノン人とパレスチナ人が殺されてしまったらしい。映画がよく表現したように攻撃の方法だけでなく、使った武器は特有の残虐性を持って、政治的・軍隊的な対象だけでなく、民間人も対象になったとは明らかです。</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">イスラエルの介入は内戦の一部に過ぎないので、内戦で死亡した民間人の10万人の残りはだれに殺された、なんで殺されたを知るには詳しく歴史を見ないとはっきり把握できないだろうと思います。ただし、イスラエルの1982年の侵攻という時点にいたるまで、事前に大量虐殺がいくつかあったし、知っているはずな映画の監督さんが内戦の経緯と虐殺の歴史に全く触れないのは疑問に思います。いくつか当時の虐殺を研究してきました。</span><br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_%28Lebanon%29">黒い土曜日</a><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">「In an orgy of bloodletting, several hundred people were murdered in a few hours, most of them civilian. Estimations of the total number of victims range between 200 and 600.」</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">黒い土曜日といい、ファランジスト派(キリスト教右派)に起こした、600人に至った両側が巻き込んだ虐殺でした。レバノン内戦の始まりといってもいいです。</span><br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_al-Zaatar_Massacre">テル・アル・ザータール虐殺</a><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">テル・アル・ザータール虐殺で、シリア軍がテル・アル・ザータールという難民キャンプを包囲して、マロン右派と協力して、3000人の民間人を大量虐殺してしまいました。</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">「On August 12 the camp finally fell, following an on-and-off siege of several months. During the last two months, the siege had tightened with Syrian backing. Heavy artillery shelling damaged much of the camp and killed a number of inhabitants. As the militias took control of the camp, its inhabitants were forcibly evacuated - or ethnically cleansed - towards Muslim-held Western Beirut. During the evacuation, militia forces are said to have machine-gunned refugee columns, and others were killed with gunfire, grenades and knives inside the camp; a large number of rapes were also reported. The camp itself was completely obliterated to prevent the return of the inhabitants.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Harris (p. 165) writes that "Perhaps 3,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died in the siege and its aftermath"</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Cobban (p. 142) writes that 1 500 camp residents were killed in one day and a total of 2 200 were killed throughout the events.」</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="t13B"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_South_Lebanon_conflict">南レバノン紛争</a><br /><br />当時にイスラエル領内で、以下の3つの虐殺もありました。<br /><br />「# On 15 May 1974 members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine infiltrated the Israeli border town of Ma'alot from Lebanon, killing five adults and taking grade 11 children in a local school hostage. They eventually shot 21 of the children, before being killed by IDF soldiers, in the Ma'alot massacre.<br /><br /># On the night of 4 March 1975 eight PLO gunmen travelled from Lebanon to Tel Aviv by sea in a rubber dinghy, entered the Savoy Hotel and took dozens of hostages. During the rescue mission three IDF soldiers were killed and eight hostages wounded; the PLO gunmen retreated to a room and attempted to blow themselves up, killing eight hostages and wounding 11, as well as killing seven of the PLO gunmen. See Savoy Operation.<br /><br /># On 11 March 1978, 11 Fatah members led by the 18-year old female Dalal Mughrabi travelled from Lebanon and killed an American tourist on the beach. They then hijacked a bus on the coastal road near Haifa, and en route to Tel Aviv commandeered a second bus. After a lengthy chase and shootout, 37 Israelis were killed and 76 wounded [1]. This, the Coastal Road Massacre, was the proximate cause of the Israeli invasion three days later. (Cobban, p.94, Shlaim p.369)」<br /><br />これらの虐殺は1978イスラエル侵攻の原因のいくつかになりました。<br /><br /><a id="tickerAnchor" target="_top"><br /></a></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUNzEVhqAm1AadpyJyzblhNwBlerPlcO61AeJctHaHG4hB3s4_50xN2he9MzYuq4WA3-1s_5RN3-cMbP5U7Yrog1omu5Sf9fojCC5QNk8S8vAZBYH5szdWPBi45sgsOd3P8hZvqQ/s1600-h/kataeb1z.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUNzEVhqAm1AadpyJyzblhNwBlerPlcO61AeJctHaHG4hB3s4_50xN2he9MzYuq4WA3-1s_5RN3-cMbP5U7Yrog1omu5Sf9fojCC5QNk8S8vAZBYH5szdWPBi45sgsOd3P8hZvqQ/s400/kataeb1z.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076434962809991794" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="t13B"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="t13B"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karantina_Massacre">カランティーナ虐殺</a><br /><br />カランティーナ虐殺では、1000人以上のパレスチナ人、シア派アラブ人などが虐殺されました。<br /><br />「Harris (p. 162) notes "the massacre of 1,500 Palestinians, Shi'is, and others in Karantina and Maslakh, and the revenge killings of hundreds of Christians in Damur".」<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damour_massacre">ダームア虐殺</a><br /><br />カランティーナ虐殺の復讐としてダームア虐殺というのも実施されてしまいました。<br /><br />「Twenty Phalangist militiamen were executed and then civilians were lined up against a wall and sprayed with machine-gun fire. An unknown number of women were raped, babies shot at close range, and bodies were mutilated and dismembered. None of the remaining inhabitants survived.[2] Estimates of the civilian dead range from 25–30[3] to 582[4] with the most reliable figure probably being around 330.」<br /><br />変に、虐殺を実行した人の中に日本人までいたということが書いてあります。<br /><br />「The bulk of the attacking forces seems to have been composed by brigades from the Palestinian Liberation Army[9] and as-Sa'iqa, as well as other militias including Fatah. Some sources also mention the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Muslim Lebanese al-Murabitun militia among the attackers. There are also reports that mercenaries or militiamen from Syria, Jordan, Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan were part of the assault, and even Japanese commandos who were training in Lebanon.」<br /><br />例の映画はおそらく1983・1984年に作成されただろうと思うので、Wikipediaにある情報の限り、上記の虐殺が起こったのは当時に明らかであったはずで映画を作製した人たちにも明らかであったはず。本に記録されてあるWikiに書いてない虐殺もあるし、虐殺でもない内戦の日常的な爆弾、そしてシリアの侵攻などでどれだけ人が死亡したことを仮においても、先日私が出張した通りにこんなような映画、すなわち焼かれた人たち、不具の人たちの姿、死体の積み重ねなどを取り上げる映像をレバノン内戦の経緯において、どこでも同じように作成することが出来ただろうと強調します!同じような映画を作ることが出来ただろうといっても、そもそも内戦の状況、文脈を解説せずに戦争のWhy?を分析することがまったくできないし、ある意味で一方的なプロパガンダしか作り出せません。イスラエルの攻撃が特有な残虐性をもち、それなりの目的と文脈があるのは誰でもわかるけど、シリアとその同盟組織の残虐性とその目的は?触られないので、探ることさえできません。内戦のやりとりで、PLO自体に民間人の死亡と虐殺の責任がある(実際、PLOがベイルート包囲時に東ベイルートのキリスト教徒区域を迫撃砲で攻撃し続けた)ということもあるので、映画を作製した人たちは自らの隠し事を負っていると想定してもいい。<br /><br /></span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0lZZl2IbLpcmm-M91tlOA8xvbonY8TN1MP2lWb-yyCaIiFLWj_oql1tyAIS1RKQ35FvzALUDVmY8ONYrPJPtBcYspRKJgz1EbvlIvAznrlsuILItTSzhaIOscA3wNRTP0fGdRwA/s1600-h/lb%7Damalg.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0lZZl2IbLpcmm-M91tlOA8xvbonY8TN1MP2lWb-yyCaIiFLWj_oql1tyAIS1RKQ35FvzALUDVmY8ONYrPJPtBcYspRKJgz1EbvlIvAznrlsuILItTSzhaIOscA3wNRTP0fGdRwA/s400/lb%7Damalg.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076435731609137842" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="t13B"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="t13B"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="t13B"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_camps">キャンプの戦争</a><br /><br />映画が作成した年を越えてみたら、イスラエルがレバノンからほとんど撤退してから、内戦が1983年から切りなく続いてきました。「キャンプの戦争」という紛争でパレスチナ人とレバノン人がアマル派とマロン派に多く犠牲にされました。歴史的な皮肉として悪名高いサブラ・シャティーラ難民キャンプはまた大量攻撃を受け、今回はシア派のアマル組織に犯されました。<br /><br />「<span style="font-weight: bold;">The camps war 1985–7</span><br />Between 1985 and 1987, the Syrian-backed Amal Movement, a major Shia militia, attacked several Palestinian camps in Beirut and in the south in order to get rid of the remaining pro-Arafat PLO combatants (Suleiman 1999: 68). During periods of intense fighting, many of the camps were besieged and cut off from the outside, and suffered from lack of food, clean water, and medical supplies (USCR report 1999: 8). The Amal Movement was not able to control any of the camps; however, it is estimated that the fighting resulted in the destruction of 80 per cent of homes in Shatila camp (Beirut) and 50 per cent of homes in Burj El Barajneh camp (Beirut). Sabra (an informal settlement next to Shatila) was almost totally destroyed. An<br />estimated 2,500 people were killed during this period (Khalidi 2000: 7).」<br /><br />つまり3つのキャンプで2500民間人が虐殺されたとのこと。<br /><br />「At the end of the war an official Lebanese government reported that the total number of casualties for these battles was put at 3,781 dead and 6,787 wounded in the fighting between Amal and the Palestinians. Furthermore, the number of Palestinians killed in internal struggles between pro-Syrian and independent organizations was around 2,000. The real number is probably higher because thousands of Palestinians were not registered in Lebanon and the blockade meant that no official could access the camps so that all the casualties could not be counted.」<br /><br />キャンプの戦争が終わったあと、計3781人ほど殺されたとのこと。キャンプの戦争後にも、2つの大量虐殺もありました。<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_13_massacre">10月13日の虐殺</a><br /><br />「October 13, 1990 at 7:00 a.m The Syrian Forces invaded the Eastern areas which support the Lebanese Army. An estimated 700 people were killed by the Syrian invaders that day and 2000 had been injured. Estimates of the Lebanese Army losses during the battle, of whom some were executed by the Syrians and including Prisoners of War as between 400 to 500 soldiers.」<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safra_massacre">サッフラの虐殺</a><br /><br />「The Phalangist forces launched a surprise attack on the Tigers, a 500-man militia that was the armed force of the National Liberal Party (Lebanon) of ex-Lebanese President Camille Chamoun. The attack claimed the live of roughly 200 people [1]. Dany Chamoun, leader of the Tigers, managed to escape; his daughter Tracy was injuried.」<br /><br />ここに止めを打ちましょう。レバノンの内戦にはよっぽど長い経緯があり、民間人の犠牲そして虐殺は多くありました。パレスチナ難民の多くが解放的な姿勢を持ち左翼向けで、内戦の複数側から嫌われ、明らかに一番犠牲されたのはパレスチナ人でした。しかし、イスラエル介入の特性を紹介して解説する中、内戦の文脈、虐殺と原因を触らないのは一方的だと思うし、レバノン内戦・侵攻を把握するには部分的にしか役に立てず、その部分に誤解を招く解説もあることで反省すると、先日の映画をかなり批判的に思います!!<br /></span></span></span></span></span>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-35592472212686656362007-06-10T18:56:00.000+09:002007-06-11T13:00:19.826+09:00Recent correspondence<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;">Received a nice letter from my friend L</span> (who works with <a href="http://www.bustan.org/">Bustan</a> outside of Jerusalem) in which she enclosed some heirloom seeds native to Israel. I've already got buds in the vegetable boxes, and am particularly looking forward to the <a href="http://sunriseseeds.com/images/gourddinosaur.jpg">dinosaur gourds</a><br />and the <a href="http://www.vegetableseed.net/heirloom-vegetable-seeds/bean-seeds/bush-bean-seeds/roma.jpg">green jade bush beans</a>!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A few months ago</span>, I had a reply from <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/07312328294843841459">Phoenix Insurgent</a>, my comrade from Phoenix, replying to my article on <a href="http://asayake.blogspot.com/2007/01/notes-on-ongoing-workplace-struggle.html">worker subjectivity</a>. I think his comments draw out some interesting points. My objective with the piece was to consider some of the directions in which workers grate at the production process in tech industry workplaces. Within that, I wanted to theorize a way to make a break with the traditional confrontation which tends toward a trade union model of struggle, and consider the impact of 'dragging one's feet' or a collective groan which does not make particular demands. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/07312328294843841459">He</a> writes:</span><br /><blockquote>When I was working for the post office, we were replaced by computers and my entire section was laid off, leaving only a small cadre of old careers doing the work of what used to be a large workforce. We were union, of course, but the union did nothing but lie to us (which wouldn't surprise me now, but then was a source of frustration). Their interest was in defending the careers, who represented the backbone of the union, particularly financially - even though there were permatemps at the site that had been temps for several years.<br /><br />Anyhow, the point is, there was a lot of cynicism and sarcasm and general shit-talking about the bosses and our obvious fate, but it did nothing. Those of us on the chopping block withdrew some labor, but as the computers came online, our slowdown was undermined by forced early outs (going home early). The careers were protected from this because they had guaranteed minimum hours in the contract that didn't apply to us permatemps. We were hauled into one joint meeting with both careers and permatemps that resulted in no serious challenge to the boss, partly because the shop steward stood right next to the him and lied about the looming layoffs. When the terminations came, we were fired in shifts right before the weekend, so it was very difficult to let anyone know what was happening.<br /><br />It seemed to me that the divisions in the workplace became impediments because we didn't articulate clear demands that could be defended through solidarity (whether through the union or not). A strong demand that no further automation take place, perhaps backed up by direct action against the computers and a broader work slowdown, would have gone a long way towards defending our jobs, which were already pretty flexible in terms of hours and generally well-compensated with night differentials and such.<br /><br />I think our inability to act clearly and together towards clear goals was a limitation that allowed management to go forward with their program, eliminating our jobs and, of course, eventually those of the careers as well. Without clear goals, no solidarity could take place with the careers, because they didn't see that our position was just their advanced by a year or two.</blockquote>Your story keys into the struggle of workers worldwide against redundancies doesn't it? Automation is used as a weapon by managers in order to save on labor costs, meaning that people lose their jobs, and therefore their means to carry on living. PI makes the case that working towards clear goals among employees would have increased communication within the workplace and lead to a broader solidarity. I would say that I agree with this.<br /><br />One of the contingent factors of the struggle at my own workplace is that we are constantly on computers, we are emailing each other and some people even use instant messaging. This is not live communication, but it does enable a general 'feeling-out' of where we all are at as the day passes, and so we haven't needed to make particular demands. During the more intense periods of confrontation, meetings with management were almost always collective as well, so there was very good communication among workers, only hobbled by a deep sense of trepidation at somewhat important moments. Had our conditions mirrored those of you workplace, I think drawing up demands would have been essential. Thus, some of the points outlined in '<a href="http://asayake.blogspot.com/2007/02/notes-on-ongoing-workplace-struggle.html">Notes on an Ongoing Workplace Struggle</a>' could not apply to any workplace.<br /><br />Separate from the question of demands, you raise the question of sabotage and that strikes me as problematic. Let's think about worker opposition to automation. Any wage laborer is prima facie subjected to the conditions of capitalist society, rent, work, wages and so on. Most jobs are worked in order to maintain a person and/or her family. Is the mailroom of a post office not a miserable job? I don't know myself. But it would seem so, and if it is, then by all accounts the workers should be delighted that automation has been introduced to make their roles obsolete. Except that they are not, because their continued subsistence is premised on receiving the wage which the machine obviates. We are stuck at a fork in the road. For the workers to recover themselves they can either oppose the automation, and demand wages on the anti-social terrain of capital, forfeiting a critique of their workplace for a continuous wage. Or they can attempt to attack the workplace socially; we saw this a lot at the end of the 1960s and particularly the 1970s where welfare payments and state spending compensated workers whose jobs were obviated by automation. With this in mind I would claim that the communist effort should be aimed at increasing the level of social struggle around the workplace, such that labor is not trapped on capital's terrain. If anything, the terrain of struggle for precarious and temporary workers is less the workplace than the unemployment office. By building a safety net they critique the organization of society, which automates only to impoverish. If the workers go to war with automation, they will set the stage for new problematic ideologies in my view.<br /> <div class="byline"><a href="http://asayake.blogspot.com/2007/02/notes-on-ongoing-workplace-struggle.html#732897926055811997" title="permanent link"></a><br /></div><span style="font-style: italic;">Next, I received a comment on the blog a couple weeks ago from a passing dissident Iranian</span>, who posted a curious rant in Persian. L had her grandmother translate a summary into English for me:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Iran as an official entity is being inflicted by all these hardships and woes because of their father's sins/mistakes that for turning to Islam.<br /><br />Iran wasn't originally a Muslim country and all the problems they are facing in their government is a result of their mistake of accepting Islam.</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br />Hizbollah has insulted and hurt Iran and everything they (Hizbollah) says is a lie. Those in power in Iran's government are idiots for listening and becoming pawns of Hizbollah. Hizbollah only got ahead and took advantage of Iran because of all the hardships Iran was going through.</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Everything going wrong in Iran should really be blamed on Mohommad because he was a disturbed person. (Then there was a long serise of really harsh curses and cussing out of Mohommad and Islam and the Iranian government) </span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br />Ristalah is twenty times worse than the devil and the lowest of animals...(not sure what a lot of that paragraph was about). </span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br />The Arabs try to say that the kailah e fars (persian gulf) is really the kaligh e arab and belongs to them. There is a big dispute about this. Iranians are upset and outraged about this but meanwhile their actual ruler is Arab (Muslim?) and they don't care about that.</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">People who are from foreign languages are welcomed and invited to spread this all over. (then it ended with some Arabic).<br /></span></blockquote>Well.............I do not think all of modern Iran's problems stem from Mohammed's personal issues. Obviously things run much deeper. Among other things, the discussion could not continue without a meditation on Iran's position as an imperialist prize and the role that the Shah's dictatorship played in that.<br /><br />Iran is now however at the forefront of the ideological war with the west, it is an imperialist power of its own and uses the anti-semitic critique of Israel to unite European and middle Eastern reactionaries into new alliances. Iran is also the chief sponsor of proxy wars against middle Eastern regimes allied to the west and of course Israel, where Iranian money funds the northern and southern fronts. The conflict between the Iranian government and other Arab regimes, Israel, the West etc. is thus rooted in geopolitics and clothed in the evangelical ideology of fundamentalist Islam.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Lastly, Anonymous writes</span>:<br /><blockquote>sphinx I have read your blog for a long time<br />thanks for this post: but I am waiting<br />for you to give us a long coherent argument, why a communist should "support Israel" (and what do we mean here),<br />instead of just reposting Liberal, right-wing, etc. articles?<br />(esp. for those of unfamiliar with the "antigerman" current and related views.)<br /></blockquote>To which I responded:<br /><blockquote> Hi Anonymous.<br /><br />I do think communist solidarity with Israel is an essential element of breaking with many of the problematics that anti-imperialism and flawed analysis of capitalist phenomena have brought into anti-capitalist movements. It is a place to insert oneself that provokes, that suddenly unwinds all the previous assumptions and challenges fundamental assertions. That said, it is a problematic position that ultimately deserves its own super cession. However, an overcoming like that is not visible at all on the left, in fact the opposite is true, that discourse around Israel is getting more and more irrational.<br /><br />I'll write more in detail in a longer post that I'm working on right now about the rockets in Gaza and the boycott movement.<br /></blockquote>And back:<br /><blockquote>thanks for your reply. I'll look forward to the longer piece.<br /><br />to put very crudely the question your very interesting and attractive formation creates for me: how to reconcile the position you sketch with a consistent internationalist position?<br /><br />and what do we make of this here in the states, where (unlike say on the European left, where I understand leftist pro-Islamism/antisemitism is common and visible) there is widespread anti-Muslim and Arab sentiment, widespread approval of Israeli policies, and a massive fundamentalist Christian movement inculcating its followers with militant apocalyptic Zionism?<br /><br />the emotional force of your images is directed obviously against the selective attention to murder on the left, but again, versus the US media what can this mean? versus the editorial page of every local paper in America?</blockquote>Of course these are important considerations. I am working on a longer piece right now that I hope to have done by the end of June that will clarify my own position, the extreme danger that inter-imperialist conflict represents for the population of the Middle East, and the role that the anti-semitic critique plays in this maelstrom. I will attempt to address the question of why communists should have solidarity with Israel, and also: what could this position mean after the massacres in Beirut, Gaza and elsewhere during the second Lebanon war? Such a position is incidentally the very antithesis of the frothing mania of a Jerry Falwell.<br /><br />In the meantime, anyone interested in the fundamentals of a communist position that calls for solidarity with Israel is invited to read this <a href="http://cafecritique.priv.at/interviewIN.html">interview with Stephen Grigat</a>, and visit the <a href="http://del.icio.us/antideutschproject?page=1">anti-deutsch</a> project.<a href="http://asayake.blogspot.com/2007/05/matthias-kuentzel-on-some-double.html#8974465970118112521" title="permanent link"><br /></a>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-76990859458924327442007-06-01T00:41:00.000+09:002007-06-01T00:51:21.629+09:00Against the BoycottsI have quite a lot to say about the recent boycott attacks against Israelis, but for now this piece will have to do. I send my respect to those in the union who fought this absurd measure and those who fight against this reductionism which leads only to more violence.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgyOOyaf5zOQwA1X5ym4WbNeHFm15NSZmyQvDNPTb5-efOryTsiWfw0XN8MDTLSMNSH2BjUtmRqZw68vVZs6XIjbf1TGLqNfu3Ova85N2I0YM4lTm7JrYyxFn_0_7fXe4VB5iY_w/s1600-h/brit_academics.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgyOOyaf5zOQwA1X5ym4WbNeHFm15NSZmyQvDNPTb5-efOryTsiWfw0XN8MDTLSMNSH2BjUtmRqZw68vVZs6XIjbf1TGLqNfu3Ova85N2I0YM4lTm7JrYyxFn_0_7fXe4VB5iY_w/s400/brit_academics.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070752143183801170" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/865499.html">Boycotting Israel as moral masturbation</a><br />By Bradley Burston<br /><br />Just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that you're a British academic. You believe strongly that the occupation must end, that the Palestinians should have an independent state, that Israel's military and diplomatic policies are wrongheaded to the point of immorality.<br /><br />What to do? Simple. Find the one group within Israeli society which has consistently, vigorously and courageously campaigned against the occupation since its inception.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvbdfigBjeK72YC-qblRV3DyRNOaEjO0ZtOqWIo7u3UifkdgE_4ZTkm9SgZYWGa4eg3MsoTE-OnkbCBmGaI80sHhyphenhypheno5S2DbzmMAY_ndVt_LYRE7gL4-TnxePZEBQzJplyvnQIVkw/s1600-h/248hazbaa_BRANDONKELLEY.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvbdfigBjeK72YC-qblRV3DyRNOaEjO0ZtOqWIo7u3UifkdgE_4ZTkm9SgZYWGa4eg3MsoTE-OnkbCBmGaI80sHhyphenhypheno5S2DbzmMAY_ndVt_LYRE7gL4-TnxePZEBQzJplyvnQIVkw/s400/248hazbaa_BRANDONKELLEY.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070752143183801186" border="0" /></a>Then attack them.<br /><br />Single them out for professional ruin. Do your best to get as many of their colleagues around the world to shun them. Yes, just as if you were in seventh grade and had decided to alleviate your own feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, panic and lack of requisite cool by cutting another victim from the middle school herd and lobbying your equally insecure colleagues to abuse the chosen victim.<br /><br />Choose your victim with care. Select the one group in Israel which has taken substantive physical, professional, legal and personal risks, which has defied the spirit of Israeli nationalism and the letter of Israeli law, in order to seek out Palestinians to search for equitable solutions.<br /><br />Select the one group which has, from the very beginning, spoken out eloquently for the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination, to freedom from Israeli domination, to freedom from disproportionate and often indiscriminate use of force, to freedom from social injustice.<br /><br />Then denounce them.<br /><br />Decide that your moral vision fully empowers you to declare Israeli professors and other university and college faculty to be unworthy of practicing their calling. All of them.<br /><br />That is, perhaps, the real beauty of the British campaign to declare a quarantine over Israeli academics.<br /><br />You really must envy the U.K. far-left for its blindness. Its consummate inability to see more than one side, which is to say, its demonstrated refusal to see Jews as fellow human beings, is only exceeded by its exquisite sense of timing.<br /><br />No matter that in the whole of the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein managed to hit all of Israel with a total of 39 missiles, and that two weeks ago, Hamas sent 40 rockets into the Sderot area in the space of a single day.<br /><br />No matter that Sapir College, Israel's largest public college, has for years been a primary target of Qassam crews.<br /><br />No matter that in boycotting all Israeli academics on the basis of their being Israelis, the measure is patently racist, a grotesque reprise of the history of curbing academic freedom.<br /><br />No matter that Israeli Arab academics who are staunchly opposed to the occupation are vehement opponents of the boycott as well.<br /><br />No matter, even, that opposition to the boycott runs strong within the British University and College Union itself. In fact, all the more reason to press on.<br /><br />For the genuine elitist, the unpopularity of an opinion is the best assurance of its real value.<br /><br />Perhaps this is why the whole boycott campaign smacks of a uniquely far-left British brand of moral masturbation, a desperate, delusional, sterile, supremely self-contained form of non-activism that risks nothing even as it changes nothing.<br /><br />There must be some reason why no one in this world does condescension better than the British far-left. There must be some reason why the British far-left manages to satisfy itself with a uniquely public, uniquely self-congratulatory form of ideological self-abuse.<br /><br />Leftists abroad would do well to respect their Israeli counterparts for defying societal norms to work for the rights of people with whom their nation is at war. Perhaps the Israeli left deserves respect, as well, for having to do this while enduring the racist abuse of leftists abroad.sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-53385832570568958562007-05-24T23:36:00.000+09:002007-05-24T23:47:24.268+09:00Matthias Kuentzel on some double standards<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >As the rockets continue to fall on Sderot from evacuated territory...</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFc3IkTgVjbm6_4SGdyQXBeHkU_fN0b2KvoFrDDWuNKGnyyFoiwvguQXSZGmA3NP1lOM9KNWrPyul_dZFtJRf6Y3ueRFv8JAypdM5TgMa3JVIMxleWLqll9eT_jnV_z9iKx9-Sjw/s1600-h/sderot-terror.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFc3IkTgVjbm6_4SGdyQXBeHkU_fN0b2KvoFrDDWuNKGnyyFoiwvguQXSZGmA3NP1lOM9KNWrPyul_dZFtJRf6Y3ueRFv8JAypdM5TgMa3JVIMxleWLqll9eT_jnV_z9iKx9-Sjw/s400/sderot-terror.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5068136578081213810" border="0" /></a><br /></span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisW_n_2dtQKClJ591HFr3FuymBQnsqeCgpdiEVRUm1HkUBCw_Mp4IMWTet4tlIJBjfzbruOjwHJdVJZih5EcKrREO9BLiNYwc67vtB4NvobMr0OagxYh7iwPwdTuCHUZ6RUdxnEQ/s1600-h/qassam.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisW_n_2dtQKClJ591HFr3FuymBQnsqeCgpdiEVRUm1HkUBCw_Mp4IMWTet4tlIJBjfzbruOjwHJdVJZih5EcKrREO9BLiNYwc67vtB4NvobMr0OagxYh7iwPwdTuCHUZ6RUdxnEQ/s400/qassam.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5068136505066769762" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/why-we-cannot-criticize-israel-that-way">Why We Cannot Criticize Israel that Way</a></span> <p class="left"><span style="font-size:100%;"> A response to Alfred Grosser · <i>By Matthias Küntzel</i></span> </p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">“I was despised as a Jew by the Germans.” This sentence begins the French political scientist Alfred Grosser’s essay, “Why I Criticize Israel.” He is not the only one to emphasize Jewish identity when criticizing Israel. A German-Jewish group is calling for an end to the Hamas boycott; Jewish-American authors like Tony Judt have argued for the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state; and 350 Jews in Britain (Independent Jewish Voices) have distanced themselves from their umbrella organization’s pro-Israeli position.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Some, such as the historian Eric Hobsbawn and the playwright Harold Pinter, seem to have discovered their Jewishness upon becoming critics of Israeli policy, which has garnered them greater attention in the media. The contention that Jews cannot be suspected of anti-Semitism and that they are therefore especially convincing critics, one assumes, is common sense. This, however, contradicts a study published by the American Jewish Committee, which documents anti-Semitism among Jewish writers and concludes that Jews contesting and challenging Israel play a decisive role. This phenomenon represents a “staggering characteristic of new anti-Semitism.”[1] How do we view Alfred Grosser’s criticism of Israel? Are his arguments “especially convincing” or “staggeringly anti-Semitic”? </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Grosser calls our attention to “the terrible lot of the inhabitants of Gaza, the West Bank, or East Jerusalem” and attributes their circumstances to the “terrible position of present-day Israeli policy.” He writes: “I do not understand the fact that Jews today despise others and claim the right to pursue policy mercilessly in the name of self-defense.” Israel’s violence, he continues, is “luring … so many desperate young people into suicide attacks.” Moreover, the “old, fundamental” Arab question has to be taken seriously: “Why should we bear the onerous consequences of Auschwitz?” </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Here, Grosser touches upon a sore spot, crucial to the guilty conscience of many Europeans who hold themselves indirectly responsible for the plight of the Palestinians. This, however, is based on a false assumption: No Arab has had to suffer onerous consequences for Auschwitz. It is true, the experience of the Holocaust in 1947 prompted the United Nations to vote in favor of the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The fact that this resolution at the same time created an Arab Palestinian state, however, has fallen into oblivion.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>Eternal Oppressor?</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The majority of Arab Palestinians wanted to accept the United Nation’s two state solution in 1947. After all, at this time around 10, 000 Palestinians were working in predominantly Jewish-led industries such as citrus farming. But the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, rejected the two state solution without consulting his fellow Palestinians and persuaded the leaders of the five neighboring Arab nations to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state by all means. The war of 1947-48, just as disastrous as it was avoidable, resulted in the “onerous consequences” Grosser alludes to: 6,000 Israelis and countless Arab Palestinians dead, and innumerable Arab Palestinians and Jews within the rest of the Arab world displaced. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">To this day, PLO historiography suppresses Arab voices that supported Zionism or had come to terms with the Zionist movement. It was in this spirit that numerous Arabs welcomed European Jewish immigrants in the 1920s as investors who would help lessen the material and cultural gap between the East and West with new technologies and new enthusiasm. Hillel Cohen’s pioneering study, Palestinian Collaboration With Zionism 1917-1948, enumerates the motives for Arabs to cooperate with Zionists. Some promised themselves personal gain (supplementary income or employment), others co-operated in what they considered to be the best interest of their tribes, villages, or nation, while the motivations of a third group “were ethical and humanist: They had Jews as friends and neighbors and were digusted by the violence of the Palestinian national movement.”[2]</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">These acts of violence were perpetrated by Arabs whose hatred of Zionists was rooted in the new immigrants’ modern way of live – a way of life that severely challenged traditional customs. While, as a rule, the branch of Palestinians in favor of modernization sought to cooperate with Zionists, Islamist forerunners under the leadership of the Mufti Amin el-Husseini battled against every attempted agreement as a betrayal and thus enabled the overthrow of the first two state proposal in 1937.[3] </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">This Mufti’s legacy continues to have an effect. Those who seek a settlement with Israel still risk their lives: A total of 942 Palestinians were murdered by fellow Palestinians between 1987 and 1993 due to alleged “collaboration,” whereby 130 of these allegations involved “moral misconduct” (drug use, “prostitution”, video trafficking).[4] Is Grosser interested in these deaths as well? </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>The Abstract Evil</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Sari Nusseibeh, the former PLO representative for Jerusalem and director of the Al-Quds University, refers to the second Intifada as “a ruinous and sanguinary fit of madness” in his recently published autobiography. He accurately criticizes the Hamas charter as a document that “sounds as if it came straight from the pages of Der Stürmer.”[5] Dissidents such as Nusseibeh are not mentioned in Grosser’s essay. He views the Palestinians as the collective victim and Israel as the aggressor that commits crimes “in the name of self-defense.” Obviously, Grosser is little interested in the real policy options for Israel. When asked in an April 2007 interview in the German daily Die Tageszeitung, “Isn’t it true that Israel faces a special threat?” Grosser replied: “In my opinion: No. Israel exists.”[6]</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">When Iranian president Ahmadinejad refers to Israel’s obliteration as a contribution to the “liberation of humanity,” Grosser does not listen. He also turns a blind eye to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, who calls Israel a “cancer” that “must be eliminated,” and to the Hamas charter, which considers the destruction of Israel to be a vow, a promise to God. Whether Israel continues to occupy the Gaza Strip or vacates the territory in spite of rancorous domestic opposition seems to be irrelevant to Grosser. If the Gaza Strip develops into a flourishing Palestinian model region after the withdrawal, whose inhabitants focus on peace and prosperity (as was hoped in summer 2005), or if this swathe of land turns into a militarized frontline of the war against Israel does not really matter to him either. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Essentially, the familiar black and white paradigm must remain intact. Grosser portrays Israel as the abstract evil, irrespective of what policies the Israeli government does or does not carry out—while the Palestinians stand for the abstract good, regardless of what their representatives permit or accomplish.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>The Beginning of Complicity</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Thus, Grosser shows understanding even for suicide terror and attributes the “willingness to commit suicide attacks” to Israeli “oppression, disrespect, and dipossession.”[7] From the offender’s perspective, Grosser’s attempt to rehabilitate the suicide bomber’s honor represents an affront. Sheik Qaradawi, the most prominent representative of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas is a member organization, reminds us: These “are not suicide operations. These are heroic martyrdom operations and the heroes who carry them out don’t embark on this action out of hopelessness or despair.”[8] Pride and enthusiasm are central to the suicide murderers testamentary videos, which confirm Qaradawi’s claim that they are fulfilling a religious mission.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Grosser ignores the fact that the character of the Middle East conflict has fundamentally changed in the last 20 years. A war of Weltanschauung and religion has emerged from a minor conflict between Palestinians and Zionists, which later escalated into a larger conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs. Today, Iranian-led Islamism is waging war against the Western modell of liberalism and democracy, a war that aims to destroy Israel in its first stage. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Grosser’s claim to act out of “genuine sympathy for the suffering in Gaza and in the ‘territories,’” degenerates into a sentimental gesture; he does not care about analysis, which – in its literal translation – means the dissolution of a complex problem in its individual parts. The absence of clarity, however, is the beginning of complicity. Those like Grosser who turn a blind eye to Islamist ideology—its cult of death, its anti-Semitism, its hatred of self-determination—stab every Muslim in the back who wants to prevent the Talibanization of his live. Second, they make Israel into a scapegoat for Islamist violence according to the motto: The more barbaric anti-Jewish terrorism becomes, the more outrageous Israeli guilt must be. The ancient “the Jew is guilty” stereotype is thus supplemented with a modern variant.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">This type of circular argument, based on ignorance, is en vogue. A 2007 survey sponsored by the BBC shows that 77 percent of Germans negatively view Israel’s world influence. The only country in the world whose elimination is being propagated and prepared for by Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, is thus regarded as scapegoat No. 1. It is comprehensible that against this background a growing number of Jews prefer to belong to the “good Jews,” who attack Israel instead of defending it against Islamists. Why should Jews be more courageous or more prudent than non-Jews? Is, however, everyone who radically criticizes Israel at the same time an anti-Semite? </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Israel is not a haven of virtue as is generally known. On one hand, Israel’s government deserves to be criticized just like every other democratically elected government in the world. On the other hand, European thinking has been influenced by anti-Semitic patterns for centuries—in this regard, no criticism of Jews or Israel is a priori immune of anti-Semitic stereotypes. At least, a European Union working definition has helped us establish a framework to evaluate when legitimate criticism stops and anti-Semitism begins: 1. When Israeli policy is equated with Nazi practices or when symbols and images of long-established anti-Semitism are assigned to Israel; 2. When Israel’s right to existence is denied; and 3. When a double standard applies and demands are made of Israel that would never be expected or demanded of another democratic state. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Those who breach this code are not necessarily supporters of Nazi anti-Semitism. They nevertheless pave the way for those who are prepared to wage a nuclear war against Israel. Hostilities against Israel appear today in the form of a pincer movement: On one side, we have anti-Semites such as Ahmadinejad or Hamas who draw their “knowledge” about Jews from the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” On the other side we have non-Jewish and Jewish “fellow travellers of anti-Semitism” in progressive Western movements and governments who take up and proliferate, albeit in muted form, Iran’s attempts to delegimize Israel.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Can Alfred Grosser be located in the second camp? I will leave the answer to the discretion of the readers.<br />————————————————————-</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">[1] Alvin H. Rosenfeld, “Progressive“ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism, American Jewish Committee, December 2006. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">[2] Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows. Palestinian Collaboration With Zionism 1917-1948, (University of California Press, 2007). </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">[3] On Amin el-Husseini’s role see, http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/national-socialism-and-anti-semitism-in-the-arab-world </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">[4] Abdul Jawahd Saleh and Yizahr Be’er “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations” (February 1995), www.birzeit.edu/crdps . </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">[5] Leon Wieseltier, “Sympathy for the Other”, New York Times Book Review, April 1, 2007. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">[6] Interview with Alfred Grosser, “Ich muss als Jude nicht für Israel sein”, Die Tageszeitung, April 4, 2007.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">[7] Ibid.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">[8] Anti-Defamation League, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi: Theologican of Terror, August 1, 2005, see: www.adl.org .</span></p>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-61837306086864925382007-05-17T00:55:00.000+09:002007-05-17T01:09:21.269+09:00Zeyad and more on Charlie RoseCharlie Rose interviews Ali Fadhil, Ayub Nuri, and <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Cdiv%20class=%22posttext%22%3E%3Cembed%20style=%22width:400px;%20height:326px;%22%20id=%22VideoPlayback%22%20type=%22application/x-shockwave-flash%22%20src=%22http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=7936238194469304794:2097000:1189000&hl=en%22%20flashvars=%22%22%3E%20embed%3E">Zeyad Kasim</a> on journalism and Iraq.<br /><pre id="line861"><br /></pre><br /><embed style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=7936238194469304794:2097000:1189000&hl=en" flashvars=""></embed><br />Also: some sort of <a href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/2790/Iraqi_Marxist_Insurgent_Group_Declared">'Marxist' insurgent group</a> pops up in Iraq's south. Problematic politics,<br /><br /><blockquote>resistance against American, British and <span style="font-style: italic;">Zionist</span> occupiers in order to liberate Iraq and form a free socialist, democratic alternative</blockquote>but a vast improvement from the sadistic fascists of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jama%27at_al-Tawhid_wa%27l_Jihad" title="Jama'at al-Tawhid wa'l Jihad">Jama'at al-Tawhid wa'l Jihad</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_army">the Mahdi Army</a> etc.<br /><br />Add this to the movement in the awakening councils and there may be signs of hope in Iraq amid the awning darkness.sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-44029299325384685852007-05-12T00:32:00.000+09:002007-05-12T00:49:26.228+09:00Precarious workers and the cyber-homeless - Mayday march in Japan<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:85%;">(Ripped from <a href="http://libcom.org/news/precarious-workers-and-cyber-homeless-mayday-march-japan-08052007">libcom</a>. Regretfully, I've been more or less silent about events in Japan, mostly because I don't particularly try to expose the struggles that I'm involved in to unnecessary attention. Also, I want to have a firm grip on something before I critique it. Right now, the Japanese left is stagnant, in similar ways to the left worldwide, but with its own problematics. My neglect of important subjects like these poses the problem of slipping into theoretical poverty. That's why after this article, I plan to write a bit more on the theme below of the casualised working class and after which move on to a multi-part article about the structure and cultural codes of Japanese fascism. Thanks to comrades and regular readers of the blog.)</span><br /></span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitjcTk23W2DVJW5jV7mF0ZCXnwakobTuQRB42fDJTRq_-_XXUQvf6PGKirW_ijAKlC4-mj0sTRbVSsxNdECPOKnJpF0lwWontjRP0wzYlg7VBx9vCrNBYrBGV_DpyQ2lIwlFgU2w/s1600-h/cafe.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitjcTk23W2DVJW5jV7mF0ZCXnwakobTuQRB42fDJTRq_-_XXUQvf6PGKirW_ijAKlC4-mj0sTRbVSsxNdECPOKnJpF0lwWontjRP0wzYlg7VBx9vCrNBYrBGV_DpyQ2lIwlFgU2w/s400/cafe.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5063327228999929314" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:100%;">There are 2.3 million young casualised and part-time workers in Japan.</span><div class="field field-type-text field-field-introduction"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item"> </div></div></div><div class="field field-type-text field-field-article"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item"><blockquote><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Takeshi Yamashita does not look like a homeless person. From his carefully distressed jeans to his casual-cool navy striped T-shirt, he is every bit the trendy Tokyoite. Yet the 26-year-old has been sleeping in a reclining seat in an Internet cafe every night for the past month since he lost his steady office job and his apartment. It's cheaper than a hotel, offers access to the Internet and hundreds of Manga comic books, and even has a microwave and a shower where he can wash in the morning before heading off to one of his temporary jobs ranging from cleaning to basic office work. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Yamashita is one of Japan's many "freeters" -- a compound of "free" and "Arbeiter," the German word for "worker." A by-product of the economic crisis that hit Japan and its lifelong employment guarantees in the 1990s, freeters drift between odd jobs. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Now the economy is recovering, but many freeters are missing out on the upswing after years of unskilled work. Most expanding companies prefer to recruit fresh university graduates or transfer basic jobs to low-wage countries such as China.(yahoo news, May 7 2007) </span></p></blockquote> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Comprising freelance workers who live on earnings split between several jobs, and other temporary workers, day labourers, over the past two decades the numbers of freeters keeps increasing. The economic downturn that hit Japan in the 1990s has lead to permanent changes in employment practice - like elsewhere, jobs for life are long gone. Casualised low wage work has become the realityfor a wide range of young workers today; Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities in the world and high rents mean that a short period of unemployment can soon put workers on the streets. Dubbed the 'cyber-homeless', an unknown number of workers now survive for varying periods by sleeping nightly in internet cafe cubicles.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Paying 1,400 to 2,400 yen ($12-$20/£6-10/EU8.8-14.7)) for a night in a central Internet cafe, each cubicle provides a reclining seat or sofa, a blanket, computer and clothes hanger. Free soft drinks, TV, comics and Internet access are included -- and prices are cheaper than those of Japan's famous "capsule hotels," where guests sleep in plastic cells. </span></p> <blockquote><p><span style="font-size:100%;">There is no official data on the cyber cafe homeless. Japan's Welfare Ministry plans a wider study on the phenomenon, according to a newspaper report, but in the meantime, it is hard to gauge the scope of the problem or its social impact. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many are freeters in their mid-to-late-twenties, who stay in a net cafe for a couple of months before settling for a more permanent housing solution.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Those who are older, poorer, with fewer chances of escaping their drifting lifestyle, and sometimes too embarrassed to return home, find themselves at the very bottom of cyber-society. They congregate in run-down Tokyo suburbs such as Kamata, renting poorly ventilated, smoke-filled cubicles with reclining seats for 100 yen an hour.<br />"It's very uncomfortable. You can't really sleep," said one Kamata cafe guest who preferred not to be named.</span></p></blockquote> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Those who are poorer still, both homeless and workless, live in the 'cardboard cities' of the major towns. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">(All this is not so very different from what is happening now in London, an even more expensive city. Last week it was reported that East European immigrant workers were sleeping in public toilet cubicles in Hackney - at 20p a night with free washing facilities, by far the cheapest rent in town for the low-paid casualised worker. Dreams of economic advancement can quickly shatter against hard reality...)</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">'Rengo', the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, comments on the freeters;</span></p> <blockquote><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Emerging Problems of Freeters (Freelance Part-Time Workers) and NEETs (Young People Not in Education, Employment or Training)<br />Due to high turnover (the so-called 7/5/3 phenomenon*) among young workers, their unemployment ratio remains as high as 10%. Freeters amount to 2.13 million, increasing by 100,000 a year, while NEETs are reported to number 640,000. 40% of freeters receive financial assistance from their parents and siblings, and their marriage rate is lower than that of non-freeters. They have emerged as a social problem not only from the concern of their impoverishment due to low wages but also because they could gravely undermine the social security system through their positioning outside of the coverage of pension and health insurance plans.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> (* 7/5/3 phenomenon: 70% of secondary school graduates, 50% of high school graduates and 30% of university graduates terminate employment within 3 years of entering a company.)</span></p></blockquote> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The proportion of youth NEET has more than doubled since doubled since 1990. This includes those suffering from the 'Hikkomori' (literally; 'shut-ins') syndrome; "One million Japanese, or almost 1 percent of the population, are estimated to suffer from hikikomori, defined as a withdrawal from friends and family for months or even years. Some 40 percent of hikikomori are below the age of 21." Western psychologists have compared it to extreme social anxiety and agoraphobia (fear of open spaces). On the Mayday march described below a banner declared "Hikikomori also have a right to life".</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> A MAYDAY MARCH OF THE 'PRECARIAT''<br />On April 30th in Tokyo a march entitled “MayDay for Freedom and Lives” took place in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Subtitled “Resistance of the Precariat”, over 400 people took part, including freeters, part timers, day labourers and homeless, who all live with neither security nor stability. The May Day march has been organised for the past four years by the “Freeters’ General Union” to publicise and protest the problems of the precariat. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Despite tight policing the procession marched through the city to a busy shopping centre. The main feature of this event was a "Sound Demo"; the 400 demonstrators dancing to music while yelling and voicing their discontent. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"> A demonstrator commented;<br />"Talking does not make any difference, and I had to take action, so I went to a demonstration for the first time in my life. I learned and discovered so many things.<br />.... More than one third of the entire working population is made up of non-full time workers. In other words, even if they wish, one third of all people cannot be employed full time. .... Is this such a serious fault that they deserve to become homeless or even starve to death?"</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">After the march, a "Precariat talk session and interchange" took place where many different experiences and views were exchanged.</span></p></div></div></div>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-88887604151644945762007-05-10T17:53:00.000+09:002007-05-10T18:06:06.686+09:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFNIelmsQUFRbmFDgB-e6B77izEzcMRkFa8xuy3ZT4fah84MIhBowTPMD8v65E70vwIfEJ_HbTOMwPURtAvzb4U_GEthQNbj8nTqh3nuauQutFp5dHyCSNpgeSxS6YOdkySIcAA/s1600-h/hitler01.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFNIelmsQUFRbmFDgB-e6B77izEzcMRkFa8xuy3ZT4fah84MIhBowTPMD8v65E70vwIfEJ_HbTOMwPURtAvzb4U_GEthQNbj8nTqh3nuauQutFp5dHyCSNpgeSxS6YOdkySIcAA/s400/hitler01.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5062854503424495058" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/kllvqf">Towards a Marxist theory of Fascism and National Socialism: A Report on Developments in West Germany by Anson G. Rabinbach</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/vjawd4">Re-adjusting Cultural Codes: Reflections on Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism by Shulamit Volkov</a><br /><br />Don't miss these.<br /><br />(If you happen to have a claim to the property rights of either of the above files, make sure to email me so I can tell you to fuck right off)sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-41502257375249682332007-05-02T14:49:00.000+09:002007-05-02T14:54:01.121+09:00May Day in Baghdad<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74038653_8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74038653_8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74038649_8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74038649_8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74038643_8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74038643_8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74036720_8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74036720_8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74036729_8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74036729_8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74036830_8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74036830_8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_large/74038654_8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_large/74038654_8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74038647_8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://www.iraqslogger.com/images_full_column/74038647_8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Hope still burns in Iraq.<br /><br />From <a href="http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_healingiraq_archive.html#2392655976963021322">Zeyad</a>.sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-21245238133398926752007-05-02T02:09:00.001+09:002007-05-05T15:18:40.529+09:00Pour out a little liquor for the '9/11 truth movement'*<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuiz1DleuWn60RtgD0xbg2lrSQhuXg7nadI3z_yJGwfS4ylXGt8QTurVrAg88simrRHAPQf4PD7jJizTwC7PLEqpodYPqj14-XG46z_dLV0jkv_Mml_XtOpQKZxKfAIK-copstWA/s1600-h/IMG_1305.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuiz1DleuWn60RtgD0xbg2lrSQhuXg7nadI3z_yJGwfS4ylXGt8QTurVrAg88simrRHAPQf4PD7jJizTwC7PLEqpodYPqj14-XG46z_dLV0jkv_Mml_XtOpQKZxKfAIK-copstWA/s400/IMG_1305.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060768150046018978" border="0" /></a>That's right, thanks to a truck driver in Oakland, we've finally arrived at the twilight for one of the most embarrassing American social 'movements' to have ever existed, the 9/11 'truth movement'. United by the central paranoia that 'something's just not right' about the massacre of thousands of people by Islamists on September 11th, truthers were able to cross political divides to come up with the most empty and distracting 'critique' that the American ruling class could possibly hope for. The left, which was looking for something more 'radical' than the superficial political economy on hand with the anti-war movement, was ready for the mystery meat of Alex Jones' (and others') cafeteria. Armed with the truth, they could now march with <span style="font-style: italic;">radical signs</span>. Now they were digging <span style="font-style: italic;">deeper</span>. The new critique took every aspect of existing society for granted in order to bury itself in forensics, in an almost monomaniacal search for the 'real killers'. Accordingly, an extraordinarily elaborate system of justifications was drawn up and distributed <span style="font-style: italic;">collectively, </span>as a mode of <span style="font-style: italic;">participation....</span>in something! The critique no doubt felt confrontational, since the dogma collectively prepared and re-hashed on the internet had to be disseminated within the anti-war movement through obscurantist arguments about the melting point of steel, the angle of incidence of security cameras etc. Hard work was demanded for all involved in constructing multiple fail safes in case the most obvious idiocies couldn't stand on two feet!<br /><br />How tragic then that this enormous monument to crawling up one's own ass in self-refential 'scientism' now meets its end with the conclusive debunking of the 'movement's' central 'premise' i.e. that a free fire could not melt (or weaken) structural steel sufficiently to cause a structure to collapse.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVTeE3VUoLBCo0EtesKLzpZTQe8RQW6wwuobbXFkSkWGFBhqQMKMECuZySGGjQUcxMGjZZ0aMaDYyDlsMsYLW_iURN43gg3nYSl0aWPDmXhuB-QLaHwaT33krJduknDEwIslQLog/s1600-h/image2739453g.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVTeE3VUoLBCo0EtesKLzpZTQe8RQW6wwuobbXFkSkWGFBhqQMKMECuZySGGjQUcxMGjZZ0aMaDYyDlsMsYLW_iURN43gg3nYSl0aWPDmXhuB-QLaHwaT33krJduknDEwIslQLog/s400/image2739453g.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060789148141129154" border="0" /></a><br />Welcome to <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/29/national/main2739222.shtml">Oakland</a>.<br /><b></b><blockquote><b>(CBS/AP) </b><!-- sphereit start -->A heavily traveled section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and erupted into flames, authorities said.<br /><br />Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.<br /><br />"I've never seen anything like it," Officer Trent Cross of the California Highway Patrol said of the crumpled interchange. "I'm looking at this thinking, 'Wow, no one died — that's amazing. It's just very fortunate."<br /><br />Authorities said the damage could take months to repair, and that it would cause the worst disruption for Bay Area commuters since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged a section of the Bay Bridge itself. </blockquote>It was <a href="http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2772159">Fark.com visitors</a> who immediately picked up on the implications for conspiracy theory in this story, where fire had clearly weakened steel (enough to collapse a freeway overpass), proving that the 'theories' popularized by Loose Change et al (that the twin towers could only have collapsed via pre-set demolition charges since fires inside the buildings could not have reached an adequate temperature to weaken the structure) are <span style="font-style: italic;">utterly false and hereby proven so</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">physically</span>. No longer disproven only by mere circumstancial evidence such as the fact that a conspiracy of such a magnitude couldn't possibly be kept secret, as argued brilliantly by <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2017005,00.html">George Monbiot</a>, and not merely by the fact that the conspiracy theory in question had to be studiously invented with ugly and visible stitch marks avoiding Occam's razor all the way...now after the Oakland fire, the only conspiracy theorists left are in fact <span style="font-style: italic;">actual conspiracists</span>, engaged in an ongoing racket of inventing their own reality where they enjoy all the benefits of science without the pre-requisite of critically analyzing <span style="font-style: italic;">reality</span>. Thus for them, the object of critique becomes the method of critique.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://429truth.org/"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUFZ_kI6DuyGWlIfl7pZMQMvXLsUf9PSfgggFd6BykvTTWq-A9YkWF_1Tge7r_OnQORJ3h5hxUNOSQTAC1ReDZNsSKM_k9KbPgzc9QZuMIRlAN9Xu3H6GKfyaVOn-Wm2EV7_wmbw/s400/429trutheb9nl7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060769266737515954" border="0" /></a>But this is no loss for the CT fringe, which of course existed in nuclei in variously libertarian, gun-clutching, anti-semitic and white supremacist guises far before people convinced themselves that the perpetrators of 9/11 were innocent of their greatest accomplishment. No, these lunatics will retreat back to exactly that line of acceptability that still permits them audience in the country historically responsible for the defeat of mid-century fascism. For the CTs it was an important foray, because their way of thinking was spread to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide (and the pre-requisite for the anti-semetic critique was laid; as a Fark poster put it, "Just blame the Jews and get it over with"). <a href="http://dispiracytheory.blogsport.de/">Daniel Kulla</a> writes,<br /><div class="entry-content"> <p></p><blockquote><p>Any historian will abhor the inept mechanical history, any political scientist the personalisation, any social scientist the ignorance against the majority of people, any journalist the poor research - but by doing so they play the game. Conspirationists do not want to show the experts that they are equal or better experts, they seek recognition via the audience. They might break the rules applying for the respective profession but that is only of interest for those who are subject to these rules themselves, not for the layperson readers, TV watchers, cinema goers or event attenders. They will most often not know about these rules and with high probability they will be influenced in their judgement by conspirationist shindig, the pretension of authority I refer to as ‘travesty’. Sometimes if not often the audience will consider the conspirationist copy of science, history or journalism to be more scientific or adequate than the original.</p> <p>Conspirationism manages to over-optimally emulate socially relevant structures on the level of their appearance. From their more or less marginal position, German protagonists of conspirationism usually present predigested information from US conspirology sources in a way that it forms a more consistent story and a more perfect system which then can be blamed for any personal failure. Having been defeated by these enormous historical powers makes any defeat somewhat heroic, but makes sure that no personal consequences are drawn from that defeat.</p></blockquote><p> </p> </div>Conspiracy theory is the acceptance of defeat for the struggle against daily capitalist exploitation. It is loyalty to spectacular events that supposedly dictate everything but in fact draw power from our obsession with them. Marx described the dialectical method as a movement from the abstract to the concrete to the abstract to the concrete, progressively wearing away at levels of abstraction. In this case, the abstract was melted by the concrete, and society has the chance now to regain its senses and oppose the outrageous state of affairs that only survives by distraction.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*Note: I drink motherfucking Kirin Grand Ale, and it costs me an extra 30 yen for a smaller bottle of better beer. I'm not about to waste any of it on the 3rd grade physics of the 9/11 'truth' movement; hence the empty bottle.sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-39999608157439657972007-04-28T18:40:00.000+09:002007-04-28T18:47:21.983+09:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN4cppFiStq1Sxrx8jgHOiFFowq7MvYNN9suD_NA7JcB2AXVSSpSFVyO2j1zIo8u1V-9ag24AQGikREUZaltN8K9kiK_eb2yqMGQ3Krav2EJ7qMcJbEGK8kWvtXL6dyCwPjQRc3Q/s1600-h/Jamiya1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN4cppFiStq1Sxrx8jgHOiFFowq7MvYNN9suD_NA7JcB2AXVSSpSFVyO2j1zIo8u1V-9ag24AQGikREUZaltN8K9kiK_eb2yqMGQ3Krav2EJ7qMcJbEGK8kWvtXL6dyCwPjQRc3Q/s400/Jamiya1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5058412313239522706" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_awCxK3gHH2c/RjKsmm9aTUI/AAAAAAAAAKk/WeMkqaYu3j4/s1600-h/Jamiya1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_awCxK3gHH2c/RjKsmm9aTUI/AAAAAAAAAKk/WeMkqaYu3j4/s1600-h/Jamiya1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-59390094950878285762007-04-07T21:41:00.001+09:002007-04-13T19:41:58.439+09:00Loren Goldner speaks on the crisis of American Capitalism<a href="http://kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=19534">Live on KPFA's "Guns and Butter", definitely worth giving an attentive listening to.</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6lMuKfL05HQkwGXidoNwvW_byrM4m_IKPkqUHA6whtsdXVxf8wJoS57utZ5coM5VtRzIp76OUnc3XfYqYYFwGD1ysB-cfxB-_vG6xcx8ABr5LsOYFOplSmnw15dPQyG8s4GZs1Q/s1600-h/stock+trader2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6lMuKfL05HQkwGXidoNwvW_byrM4m_IKPkqUHA6whtsdXVxf8wJoS57utZ5coM5VtRzIp76OUnc3XfYqYYFwGD1ysB-cfxB-_vG6xcx8ABr5LsOYFOplSmnw15dPQyG8s4GZs1Q/s320/stock+trader2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5052564052454147858" border="0" /></a>I promised to put up some comments and I'm afraid that they are mostly just scribblings, trying to catch up with the obviously deep pool of knowledge that Loren is working with. I've been inspired by this broadcast to deepen my own understanding of financial markets, and especially how American and Japanese capitalists contain crises through them. Give it a listen, I'm sure it will give you food for thought (and action).<br /><br />Goldner opens by describing the post-September 11th wars as among other things, American capitalists "running forward to avoid crisis in the rear", which is characterized by the need to prop up the dollar standard internationally, and therefore assert American military influence. The crises of the dollar standard stems chiefly from the expansion of lines of credit to American consumers, one expression of this being the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-prime_mortgage#Subprime_Mortgage_Lending_and_the_U.S._Subprime_mortgage_crisis_2006-2007">sub-prime mortgage crisis</a>.<br /><br />This is an example of the consumer-centered expansion that American capital underwent after WWII, a process that was pregnant with contradictions, because while simultaneously allowing for increased working class consumption, the consumer boom increased imports from places like China, East Asia and the Middle East, creating a dependency relationship of US capital on these economies for their low-priced commodities, and the reverse, a massive investiture of third world capital in the US dollar.<br /><br />In the post-war world, the new international system was backed by the dollar, which became the international currency standard when the gold standard was finally abandoned in 1971 by the US. Goldner mentions how this gave the US a unique vantage of being able to inflate or deflate the world economy by withholding or printing dollars. And yet, the reconstructed economies such as Germany and Japan, as well as America's ballooning trade deficit (from 1 trillion to 4 in the Reagan era) were soon to threaten this hegemony. Not to mention that, when national inflation hit the states, those foreign countries that held stock in US treasury bonds or dollars generally began to feel the decline in value of their investments.<br /><br />The 1960s also saw a renewed cycle of working class wildcat strikes and struggles, such as the wildcats of the Appalachian coal miners, which helped push the American energy sector into a search for foreign sources of energy. Goldner describes third world accumulation movements like these as 'looting'. He points out that this looting is simultaneously a local feature of the domestic capitalist economy. Not only is loot found internationally in countries with cheaper wages and natural resources, but also inside the US, by looting what seems to the capitalist class to be unnecessary for immediate reproduction: social services, education, health care, pensions etc. Labor from the third world is also brought in as loot, in order to bring domestic wages down.<br /><br />Goldner mentions that by the end of the 1960s, socially necessary labor time had been reduced to such an extent by gains in productivity that it could be superseded by a better system (communism). Although the preconditions for such a revolution were present in this period, one did not occur. What did happen was an international revolt of the working class against older forms of fordist labor such as the assembly line.<br /><br />That absence of revolution leads problematically to what Goldner describes as 'real retrogression', wherein capital turns on society in order to 'loot' when it has reached a barrier of expansion (of course capital also 'escapes' and flows into other countries in search of cheap labor and raw materials). Goldner makes it clear that this crisis begins in the sphere of production and not in the sphere of circulation (the <a href="http://www.amptoons.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/ahmadinejad_chavez.jpg">anti-globalization movement</a> holds the reverse to be true). He describes how capitalism undermines the paper value of things, wherein real depreciation (not only physical depreciation but relative depreciation via falling average fixed capital prices) of assets lead to attacks on wages. This happens because the loans for these now-depreciated assets have to be repaid at the same amount they were taken out at. When this occurs at an industry level, you have the beginnings of a crisis.<br /><br />He mentions the ambitions for a leisure society in the 1960s and how this ideal has mostly been forgotten. Certainly it is almost a taboo in this country (Japan) to even come out in favor of <span style="font-style: italic;">leisure</span>. Working long, unrewarding overtime hours is simply de-facto. The initiative to investigate the circumstances that demand these sacrifices is also nearly non-existent. So it's good to see that someone is still willing to shout out loud that this turn away from leisure is absolutely a 'real retrogression'.<br /><br />My curiosity was peaked when Goldner mentions Brzezinski's statement that East Asia represents the main potential rival to the United States. Surely there are already movements in Japan towards a base anti-Americanism, and if what we are seeing today in Iraq, with the bombing of the Green Zone and the anti-enlightenment nationalist/Islamist insurgency continuing appeal, American power is in severe decline. One of the key allies of the American government is Japan, whose SDF have been dutifully carrying munitions on cargo planes for the Americans after having a remarkably unsuccessful go at reconstructing Iraq's Samawah province. Today we can see the changing shape of imperial relations, <a href="http://gwbstr.com/b/2007/04/11/measuring-progress-from-wens-japan-visit/">with Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo welcoming Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to Tokyo</a>. The absolute media spectacle accompanying this visit is a site to behold. The morning and evening news were almost filled with pissant images of Wen sauntering about Kyoto looking at Koi and saying 'delicious' after being fed things. It's almost hilarious to watch Abe's government making this effort to heal wounds with the same East Asian countries that have been relentlessly demonized in the Japanese media for years. But China's continual neo-liberal reforms mean that its economy is attractive for Japan in particular but also other countries, and its military power has the potential to put down not only domestic unrest, as it does regularly (never forget that <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200604/r79767_229516.jpg">this man is a butcher</a>) but also revolt or separatism in East Asia at large. <br /><br />Back to the subject at hand, following his analysis of American decline, Goldner recommends Emmanuel Todd's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/After-Empire-Emmanuel-Todd/dp/1845290585/ref=sr_1_5/103-5859901-5581424?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176436622&sr=8-5">After Empire</a>" which examines this collapse. To combat the decay of confidence in the dollar, Goldner argues that creating chaos in certain sections of the world would serve US interests in keeping the world from bolting away from the dollar-dominated financial economy. Obviously this is true to a certain extent, although the word 'chaos' is too vague and prone to manipulation.* American policy abroad is, like any capitalist-driven endeavor, not driven by vague dart throwing, but by finding the path of least resistance, the local ruling class that will cooperate for the least amount of blood and treasure. The support given by the American government to the death squad-linked Iraqi governments (especially Maliki) as well as past support for the Afghan mujahideen, Chechen nationalists and so on, has certainly created 'chaos', but this chaos is actually imperialist warfare. Now after four years of war in Iraq, the Americans have turned to arming local ruling classes in place of direct intervention. This can be seen most recently in <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/847618.html">the American effort to upgrade Saudi Arabia's military</a> for what will ultimately be the regional war whose contours have been visible at least since the second Lebanon war.<br /><br />Goldner, however, reminds us that there is still a path out of the barbarism that characterizes the methods and compromises of the imperialists and the anti-imperialists, that a society organized on truly socially necessary work time is still possible, and that such a society could eliminate the market imperative to an average rate of profit, one which produces an uncontainable pressure within the capitalist economy that, as history has shown, leads to crisis, which can only be overcome by an outward push for loot or domestic cannibalization. The society that could overcome this violence is still called communism, despite the <a href="http://www.dictatorofthemonth.com/Il/bigkim.jpg">liars</a> who claim its mantel even today.<br /><br /><a href="http://home.earthlink.net/%7Elrgoldner/">Break their Haughty Power</a> (Loren Goldner's website)<br /><a href="http://home.earthlink.net/%7Elrgoldner/roundtable.html">Left Communism and Trotskyism: A Roundtable</a><br /><br />*We could note how much a counter-productive focus on conspiracy and chaos can distort analysis, leading to the sad situation where even 'Guns and Butter', the show that hosted the interview, with an obviously intelligent host, is deeply immersed in <a href="http://static.flickr.com/97/241184287_a04040900c.jpg">conspiracy theorist ideology</a>. See their archives for some examples of "real retrogression": http://www.gunsandbutter.net/archives.phpsphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-33129198654506157212007-04-02T23:02:00.000+09:002007-04-02T23:12:22.093+09:00<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/845003.html">Fire destroys Neturei Karta synagogue, rabbi's residence in NY</a><br />By The Associated Press<br /><blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizcAaC9f4aJeTeYhyphenhyphenGbhU6Db9qnDE5phkf68dAY5L2z84tX01vI04Lw5Wzy1zptUjHVFKfT-TPGI5EID13Bp8veBmxqJUcSgjv2FtG-tOOibw2vgtrI0aevVikZH6856FhIV9SGQ/s1600-h/1-IMG_0902.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizcAaC9f4aJeTeYhyphenhyphenGbhU6Db9qnDE5phkf68dAY5L2z84tX01vI04Lw5Wzy1zptUjHVFKfT-TPGI5EID13Bp8veBmxqJUcSgjv2FtG-tOOibw2vgtrI0aevVikZH6856FhIV9SGQ/s320/1-IMG_0902.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048833257355330338" border="0" /></a>A fire deemed suspicious destroyed a New York suburban synagogue of an<br />anti-Zionist Jewish group heavily criticized for attending a conference last year where participants debated whether the Holocaust occurred.<br /><br />No one was injured in Sunday night's fire in the town of Monsey. A senior Neturei Karta rabbi and his family, who lived on the top floor of the three-story structure, were not home.<br /><br />"It may in the future be found to be accidental, but at this time we're treating it as a suspicious fire and we're investigating it as such," said Sgt. Daniel Hyman of the Ramapo Police Department, which provides services to Monsey, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) north of New York City.<br /><br />The Neturei Karta has been the target of threats in the recent past because of their involvement in the anti-Zionism movement. The group has been widely criticized by other Jewish groups.<br /><br />"Anybody who would like to reveal to the world their opposition to this political, national movement of Zionism is attacked," said Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of the Neturei Karta.<br /><br />"A call of a fire in the kitchen area of the three-story structure came in to authorities at about 8:12 P.M. Sunday," Monsey Fire Chief Douglas Perry said.<br /><br />He said that when firefighters arrived, one side of the house was engulfed in flames and power lines had come down. "It was too dangerous for any entry," he said, and the fire had to be fought from the outside.<br /><br />"It's totaled," Perry said. "I would deem it dangerous to even go inside."<br /><br />Weiss said that the group suspects arson because of previous threats.<br /><br />"There's no question that the issue is to stifle the opposition to Zionism," he said.<br /><br />In December, about five members of the group traveled to Tehran for a two-day conference convened to debate whether the Holocaust occurred. Some were photographed meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a myth and has criticized the existence of Israel. Other Jewish groups were outraged.<br /><br />Following the group's return from Iran, a large protest made up mostly of other Jews opposing their anti-Zionist views was held outside the Monsey synagogue. Neturei Karta refuses to recognize the existence or authority of Israel on the grounds that a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish law.<br /><br />"The group does not dispute that the Holocaust occurred," Weiss said.</blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjPls2c8pF9EhKjZVGIxZFRNBJ7_TuXf9MbyT2ra8G6TZdau0vDOALqwUQHzPqtw_OCYvybzHWJhYKg1VEQze9sl4mlusLpgb8BCrADTofWfvjyMLEMQiRGop0NlnMCujsoHCtg/s1600-h/simpsons_nelson_haha2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjPls2c8pF9EhKjZVGIxZFRNBJ7_TuXf9MbyT2ra8G6TZdau0vDOALqwUQHzPqtw_OCYvybzHWJhYKg1VEQze9sl4mlusLpgb8BCrADTofWfvjyMLEMQiRGop0NlnMCujsoHCtg/s320/simpsons_nelson_haha2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048831994634945298" border="0" /></a>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-45348116288125936152007-03-19T08:57:00.000+09:002007-03-19T09:04:48.836+09:00Civilization Embattled<span style="font-style: italic;">Welcome to Baghdad</span> (via Zeyad, and Iraqi Mojo)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rheZuPi9bKNL2ko9jAwVsQYdPdbFwc70r5zI0qpe9nfh3tG4JnVBy2FRd5F4qvWAM1zgCXE-yw3t0tz-OOvMwLnDV9FVhpb1av-jYF7z9g_DcQkMQWT8Xh_ZYJLB974y83jL9w/s1600-h/map_large.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rheZuPi9bKNL2ko9jAwVsQYdPdbFwc70r5zI0qpe9nfh3tG4JnVBy2FRd5F4qvWAM1zgCXE-yw3t0tz-OOvMwLnDV9FVhpb1av-jYF7z9g_DcQkMQWT8Xh_ZYJLB974y83jL9w/s400/map_large.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043419253956333186" border="0" /></a>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-64268012196530914012007-02-22T00:55:00.000+09:002007-02-22T01:00:15.622+09:00時事論<a href="http://libcom.org/news/egypts-wildcat-strike-wave-continue-unabated-21022007">Egyptian workers in unprecedented strike wave</a><br /><br /><blockquote> Ali Ghalab sat on a dusty office couch in a pinstriped suit, explaining why his 11,700 employees joined a wave of wildcat strikes that have shocked the government and paralyzed Egypt's textile industry. <p>"It's the Muslim Brotherhood," the factory chairman yelled, referring to the officially banned Islamist movement, "and the communists. The Muslim Brotherhood stands behind every trouble in every single factory."</p> <p>A mile away, more than 1,000 strikers had barricaded themselves inside the textile plant in Kafr el-Dawwar, a gritty town on the Nile Delta about 100 miles north of Cairo. They were demanding more money and greater opportunity for promotion. A shipment of cotton fabric destined for Turkey was locked inside with the disgruntled employees.</p> <p>"Ali is a shoe," they chanted. "He is useless."</p> <p>Rattled by rising prices, falling benefits and looming privatization, tens of thousands of Egyptian workers at state-owned industries have been in rebellion. In recent weeks, more than 35,000 workers at nearly a dozen textile, cement and poultry plants have gone on strike in a nation where any strike is illegal and even the smallest public protest can be squelched with police truncheons. Train engineers, miners and even riot police also have walked off the job or held demonstrations in the past 2 1/2 months.</p></blockquote><p></p>Also,<br /><br /><a href="http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2007-02-18T155311Z_01_L1858760_RTRIDST_0_OUKOE-UK-ISRAEL-SEX.XML&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-C2-AlsoToday-11">Long live Israel</a>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-6143082195959757432007-02-18T02:47:00.000+09:002007-06-28T08:44:34.108+09:00"What governments should really fear is a communications expert."<span class="postbody">I thought I'd give a brief highlight to the person who introduced me (and many others) to the ideas of anti-German communists, an oppositional current that emerged in the early 1990s around the Gulf war and has provided a powerful counter-weight to a left incapable of breaking with the macromass of the nation. In this sense, they continue the important work of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Theodor Adorno, Klaus Theweleit and other intellectuals who confronted in the course of their struggle the universal demobilizing force of the nation-state and the particular counter-revolutionary character of the German nation.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-XlzjtJlJzF4dEqL9PcWyNNyTmKhBAPbzZ0YeZW-FeOUSeEfqtLyxv0Xvv4Gg1tuM-zFanhU1ZyRSTOw8Po7t-58fb3PVR_1gamzxsRP428QbxOmHPBIYdxRVkxn6MbN_LdL0kg/s1600-h/155052.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-XlzjtJlJzF4dEqL9PcWyNNyTmKhBAPbzZ0YeZW-FeOUSeEfqtLyxv0Xvv4Gg1tuM-zFanhU1ZyRSTOw8Po7t-58fb3PVR_1gamzxsRP428QbxOmHPBIYdxRVkxn6MbN_LdL0kg/s320/155052.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5032571819233001858" border="0" /></a><span class="postbody">CF argues with a persuasive and researched polemic which does not surrender to easy anti-imperialist logic or for that matter "history's end". His 'regular' writings can be read in the magazine <a href="http://datacide.c8.com/">datacide</a> (issue 9 being the latest, and recommended). His position on Iraq in hindsight did not take into account the brutality of the American occupation (which works directly against the working class) nor foresee the Islamist/Ba'athist insurgence, but still has some interesting insights.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaKkVPC7DARH6FGWjk2gd5d1hSgnyh-tQRdVO9zEeBvpgsOZ0pRHhE2Gmwbe6JuYXw3fRwPvPQFOOwIdciLe5ZMEyUxflS-tWanIMNDiUa7EWR-VqGGzcpvoW-EI2mV00QjiZMLA/s1600-h/datacide9.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaKkVPC7DARH6FGWjk2gd5d1hSgnyh-tQRdVO9zEeBvpgsOZ0pRHhE2Gmwbe6JuYXw3fRwPvPQFOOwIdciLe5ZMEyUxflS-tWanIMNDiUa7EWR-VqGGzcpvoW-EI2mV00QjiZMLA/s320/datacide9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5032571956671955346" border="0" /></a><a class="maintitle" href="http://c8.com/c8/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=191">Jörg Haider on Al Jazeera</a><br /><span class="postbody"><br /><a href="http://c8.com/c8/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1220">Why I won't be at the Peace March</a><br /><br /><a href="http://c8.com/c8/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1357">The war has begun</a><br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">"see here i disagree, I think neo-nazis are revolutionaries but in a totally different way than communists (should be), they want to revolutionise society into something much worse than it already is, the same is the case with the islamists they sympathise so much with.<br />I plead for a revolutionary movement that is entirely un-compatible with the nazi concepts, i'm not interested in a nazi-compatible left."</blockquote></span>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-1170939980446674122007-02-08T20:57:00.000+09:002007-05-25T10:27:56.209+09:00Notes on an Ongoing Workplace Struggle (part 2)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3DVOR9NbVy-5lYcWuTS3S6_q2rniBCwK0GV1H2zi3pGVdQEX-Dc2PR_Ziq9jB1Eggn32aeEBiYbLHMJj1fKyNOEwcYLd7q03pvOK6tSrx45X3ciThUWiK5eMgjiBg0Vszidn_pA/s1600-h/810.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3DVOR9NbVy-5lYcWuTS3S6_q2rniBCwK0GV1H2zi3pGVdQEX-Dc2PR_Ziq9jB1Eggn32aeEBiYbLHMJj1fKyNOEwcYLd7q03pvOK6tSrx45X3ciThUWiK5eMgjiBg0Vszidn_pA/s320/810.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5029855587425730930" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">6.</span></span> <span style="font-style: italic;">How will the employees, who do not possess the experience of dissent, evade the despotic organization of the workplace which on the one hand threatens to crush them and on the other hand to integrate them?</span> It is true that any advance into organization made by individuals who have never considered withdrawing their labor will proceed cautiously. A workplace staffed by those who consider themselves integrated (not interchangeable) to its functions will tend towards extreme vertical relations of authority since the employees do not steadfastly insist on separation. The vertical relations are outwardly dormant, needing to operate in the open only when an employee or a group of them posits themselves in stark contrast to the organization and maintenance of the workplace. Normally, this is when disciplinary action is taken in order to circumvent future disruption, since when a person communicates their frustration to others and finds a similar echo, the command structure in place is worked around. The structure is also threatened<br /><br />a) by horizontal communication unoccupied with modifying work processes to enhance efficiency<br />and<br /><br />b) by the threat of stoppage, arising less from any possible strike, but from work time lost to this communication, its expansion, any meetings necessary to contain it and of course the threat of potential compromises down the line.<br /><br />What acts first against the menace of communication then? Not the manager or the section supervisors, not directly (too obvious). Actually, the first line of defense will be the socialization of the employees which has already been instilled in them. This socialization allows for formations against the individual who imposes herself socially (with demands rooted outside of the workplace).<br /><br />All of the employees have learned to speak in a certain way. Senior employees for instance have learned exactly how to compose themselves, which furrowed looks cross the lines of disloyalty, what words cannot be spoken, and so on, they've learned all this through hard circumstance. Thus every expression and vocalization made by the worker, who embarks on an inquiry inviting conflict with the workplace's organization, initially walks along the two options that do not cross workplace taboos i.e. quitting or making 'suggestions' (not yet demands). These two obvious options allow the individual to remove herself from the workplace totally and dissolve into the wider society, or to demand concessions at the cost of re-integration. Thus, any struggle in the integrated workplace (specifically the tech industry) begins with inquiries that walk the line between liquidation and re-integration. The power that limits the individual to these two options so far goes unquestioned. More likely this bordering power is mystified as 'honor' or 'respect'. She reasons: "the company is the company I signed a contract with. I may disagree with it and attempt to reform it, but if that doesn't work, or if management delays and delays, I'll simply leave. That's more honorable. I could leave and still respect myself that way."<br /><br />To escape these two options, which she recognizes as miserable, she has to exit her socialization (which is ruled by these choices) as she has known it. The possibility of radically <span style="font-style: italic;">staying</span> in the workplace must be explored. While she stays she can experiment, locating weak points in the immediate relations of power. <span style="font-style: italic;">How much of my ribbing will the supervisor take? How can I alter the work uniform slightly to see if others follow my lead? Can I refuse to do overtime or has no one simply ever tried?</span><br /><br />Conversations are held in the bathroom, over e-mail and go on with a great deal of sardonic laughter. She fields the complaints of others and listens to them. Taboo subjects are secularized. Objects that were previously immobile and fixed are moved around. Section chiefs find their chairs swapped out or the coffee machine moved closer to the workers' section. The periodicals library, stocked with PC Mag, Macworld and so on, is entirely replaced with video game and fashion magazines. A scandalous parody of a supervisor appears in the women's bathroom, where the supervisor can't go. Moving gregariously, the worker appropriates and demystifies office objects and relationships. This workplace blasphemy conveys itself through humor. Whoever laughs is a potential ally. Humor is another instance where collective communication (e-mail, message boards etc.) cannot be silenced without revealing an obvious despotism.<br /><br />The employee sets out critiquing what she finds with the allies she meets and the networks they establish. First quietly, through e-mail, on break or after work at a drinking party. In critiquing, she moves like a person who wants to dance in a room of still people. Confident that others want to dance too, she starts moving her knees before her moving her legs. When relationships of trust develop, the employees invite each other out after work, on the weekend, sometimes even to their private worlds (apartments, hang-outs, gardens) where their life projects are fed by the money they receive for their labor. Previously isolated individuals reveal to each other that the rewards of gainful employment are simply <span style="font-style: italic;">means</span>. In so doing, they suddenly separate themselves from the workplace radically. They relate their life stories and discover a commonness which was previously unspeakable. As if they were observing a wall of TV monitors showing scenes of men and women pushing through subway gates, they realize that <span style="font-style: italic;">what was so irretrievably first-person is now external</span>, that their individual sacrifices to arrive at 'gainful employment' have always been near duplicates of the sacrifices of others to arrive at that same 'success'. They are surprised to learn that they all peek at the internet when the supervisor goes to the bathroom.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1907/557/1600/252472/01_01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1907/557/320/41935/01_01.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1907/557/1600/252472/01_01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1907/557/320/41935/01_01.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1907/557/1600/252472/01_01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1907/557/320/41935/01_01.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>The individual worker discusses her suffering with others who have different sufferings. Some convergence points are found: the arrogance of the supervisor (that fuck!), work conditions (as if we were slaves!), the wage rate (I can't pay my rent!), the amount of hours worked (I never see my children!), the absence of physical activity in mental labor (I've grown so weak). They arrive back in the workplace, more confident.<br /><br />Despite these valuable convergences, they find that their dissent takes its strength from its disunity (the collective groan). Dissatisfaction remains in a clamor because the clamor holds the most potential. As the dissatisfied begin to express themselves, supervisors, managers, quality circles etc. are interrupted with complaints and dissent. Face-to-face meetings become difficult to manage. The supervisors promise they'll 'try to get to the bottom of things'. Elsewhere, the message board and e-mail are alive with a visible frustration that seems to have no handles. Some workers express themselves through absenteeism ('Out sick today' or even 'I'm simply exhausted'), others peek at the internet when the supervisor cannot see or occupy themselves with something or other on 'company time' (in Japan, this is referred to as <span style="font-style: italic;">naishoku</span>, wheedling away at private projects on company time). With enough volume, persistence and coordination (taking place on work-time), the supervisors feel compelled to intervene to rescue productivity. They attempt to shuck away the frustration and anger which aims at everything and look for what is <span style="font-style: italic;">unifiable</span> (even before they look for what is "possible").<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">7. </span></span>To amplify their clamor, which has no necessary unity, the employees must try to seize <span style="font-style: italic;">objective moments of opportunity</span> which occur outside of their control but present a venue for critiquing the workplace. These moments are unpredictable yet may have a pattern that develops out of the dissent thriving in the office. For instance, one, two, three employees may quit in quick succession, as in my workplace. More simply, a flood of work may come through that exceeds the normal workload and the employees judge it to be intolerable. A supervisor may say something rude to an employee. An incident of sexual harassment may occur. In critiquing objective moments, the employees learn to vocalize themselves and their dissatisfaction, and also to act on the moment. This breaks the silence of the technological workplace, a pre-requisite for engineering innovation (concentrate!), and diminishes the importance of e-mail and other substitute communication methods. Vocal interruptions recompose the employees as critics of their own responsibilities. Initiative lies with them, not the supervisor structure, which slowly finds itself without an audience.<br /><br />This is because so far, the employees have grounded their words in their private (and therefore social) difference with the workplace (the groan) while holding back on specificity. They know that their power lies in the potential for workplace disruption and lost work time. Their grievances, which have become social, must retain their wholeness and not collapse back onto anti-social ground i.e. how can the company 'solve the problems'.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">8.</span></span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Management's main line of defense against the accumulating groan which seems to have no source is linguistic attack.</span> Supervisors attempt to adapt the antagonism into a dialogue between two powers, and this adaption takes place on the field of <span style="font-style: italic;">vocabulary</span>. They try to change complaints such as 'I'm always so exhausted' into 'What if we implemented 15 minute breaks every four hours?', or 'The workload is killing me' into 'Let's make the work flow more efficient', and 'I'm rotting not moving all day' into 'Let's sponsor 50% of employee gym memberships!'. Every meeting held to mediate worker frustrations is a venue for this kind of re-wording. Mainly the supervisors will press these 'subtle' linguistic changes outside of the collective venue and on a person-to-person level within the workplace (or at group dinners where conviviality is implied). The employees, who are not unified in their demands, must maintain the heterogeneity of their critiques and refuse their integration into easy solutions. A workplace at a certain level of dissatisfaction forebodes dysfunction and lost capital. Such a situation will always force management, or an intermediate, to come running with proposals for compromises. At this point, having refused to present unified demands can allow:<br /><br />a. <span style="font-style: italic;">The formation of a collective struggle for individual demands</span> instead of a collective struggle for collective demands. This allows the employees a unity from which to attack collectively in the form of slow-downs, absentia or even a strike if individual demands (which already include collective demands) are not met via individual consultations. At the same time, the employees evade the attempts of the company to bind concessions to a restored or even increased loyalty.<br /><br />b. The preservation of the different vectors of those individual demands (from the housewife to the recent graduate, the part-time artist to the workaholic) <span>also preserves</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> the social nature of the confrontation</span>, which takes place at one location of a circuit on which individuals confront capital (other locations being housing [rent, mortgage], transport [fares] and so on). In protecting their individual demands, the employees build ladders outside of their office windows. Outside is the city.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">9.</span></span> <span style="font-style: italic;">At some stage however the employees will be brought into a meeting with the supervisors</span>. Hopefully they will have had the foresight to refuse to elect 'representatives' for negotiating on their behalf, and the meeting will feature the numerical advantage of the frustrated. Management will open by emphasizing its openness and 'flexibility', although the purpose of the meeting is to quiet dissent in the office. The employees who have been strong through their cacophony have limited goals here. They must show themselves willing to take action (or worse) maintain demoralization if not provided with individual consultation and satisfaction. They must also prevent the supervisors from ordering the proceedings and asserting the office as management's terrain. True enough, <span style="font-style: italic;">the meeting</span> is management's terrain. It is structured linguistically to ensnare the employees, who will be questioned and asked to come up with solutions for draining their own antagonism.<br /><br />In such a setting, the workers can invert the 'serious efforts' of management via sarcasm and skepticism, which are methods of critique that don't stand on any ground, moving with a mocking breeze. For the employees, the meeting is no place for 'pointing out contradictions'. Here, every contradiction has an explanation and every problem a solution. When a solution is not favorable to the employees, they may be forced to threaten action while on very weak ground. A 'ceaseless advance' of angry confrontation will no doubt be advocated by people who maintain themselves by organizing others (unionists). No. Here the employees should choose <span style="font-style: italic;">a passive withdrawal</span>, one that does not delight itself in the concessions made by the management (which could suddenly make 'the concessions' into contractual guarantees of hard work!), nor acknowledge the 'unity of demands' among the collective groan that management has endeavored to create. The passive withdrawal is active because it refuses to comment, never mind integrate. The workers remain intransigent. <span style="font-style: italic;">Paradoxically, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">t</span><span style="font-style: italic;">he potential for a contiguous struggle that wants to protect itself from being mutilated </span><span style="font-style: italic;">thus </span><span style="font-style: italic;">hinges on a retreat that refuses capture</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">10.</span></span> The workers, who now have no obstacles towards a sustained and much wider conflict (because they have not been bound) must at this point retreat from the workplace and locate similar antagonists in the wider social context. Not only because their own office is duplicated across the social terrain, and by making links to those in similar circumstances, they strengthen themselves. The workers must also explore the poles of capital they confront beyond the workplace, looking for weak points that amplify the struggles they already wage. In doing so, they meet others much like them. Group lunches are arranged on the roofs of the city.<br /><br />When they have made inquiries at every end of the structures which regulate them, they begin naturally to do the most dangerous thing possible, to theorize themselves and their labor. 'Why do I work for a wage?' 'Why can I not live comfortably without one?' 'What do we make here?' 'Why are we making it?' 'How are we making it and why do we make it that way?' Like this, their struggle in the workplace, which was once so unspeakable, has given them room to breathe against the suffocation of all the coercions they endure. With the space that they have carved out, they begin to re-arrange what is in front of them.<br /></div>sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8310164.post-1169830110490882472007-01-27T01:26:00.000+09:002007-02-11T01:48:28.403+09:00Iraqi Freedom Congress in Japan<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1907/557/1600/921401/45p1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1907/557/320/894773/45p1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>It was my great pleasure to hear Suhad Ali and Amjad Al Jawhary of the Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC) speak in Osaka last month. Although the presence of the left in the ongoing sectarian violence sweeping Iraq is negligible, the IFC has at least attempted to bridge ever-deepening sectarian chasms in the name of classic social democratic ideals (freedom of speech, freedom of women, a free press, opposition to discrimination, and so on). Much of the IFC's activity is by now outside of Iraq, not surprising given that 15% of Iraq's population has become refugees in Jordan, Syria and other states. I had seen a representative of the IFC speak in Tokyo about two years ago, and she was based in Australia at the time. So it was refreshing to hear direct perspectives from Suhad Ali who is a young university student in Iraq (in one of Mosul or Baghdad...can't remember).<br /><br /><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EtA1xJ-qCfo"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EtA1xJ-qCfo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="350" width="425"></object><br /><br />The topic of the evening was 'standing in solidarity with Iraqi women' and so Suhad's speech focused on the plight of women in Baghdad, who are daily confronted with a snaking civil war waged by sectarians whose only commonality may be there desire to control and subjugate the women of Iraq. Below, I reproduce some of my notes from the talk, which are by no means complete and do not give justice to the descriptions of internecine mayhem that Ali and Jawhary were able to give the audience.<br /><ul><li>Since the war has begun, over 3.5 million Iraqis have become refugees.</li><li>Amid the chaos borne by armed factions vying for post-occupation power, rapes are widely reported and in Baghdad no neighborhoods are safe for women to go out at night. Death penalties by stoning have been enforced against women judged to have breached chastity, betrayed their husbands, or otherwise failed to perform feudal duties.<br /></li><li>The IFC has a variety of events worked out for March 8th, International Women's day.</li><li>Some Shiite groups are practicing what are known as 'temporary marriages', which Suhad Ali described as a form of prostitution in which a woman is sold into a household where she is expected to perform domestic responsibilities and 'serve her husband'. This practice had been banned in Ba'athi Iraq and was practiced in Islamic Iran, but has now became widespread in central and southern Iraq in the chaotic social setting.</li><li>The IFC has created several social centres (mainly in Kurdistan) which instruct women and others in the use of computers, job skills, English language, seminars in culture, politics and so on.</li><li>There are no effective shelters for women in distress to utilize and so IFC offices in the country have become default places of refuge. Women are sheltered there for several days until they can be sent north or even out of the country and resettled. In Kirkuk and other cities they are often received by families working with the IFC who help them put a life together in the north. Those who seek asylum in other countries, especially Turkey and Jordan face a long and uncertain wait for status.</li><li>Much of Muqtada Al Sadr's power stems from the huge unemployment rate prevailing in Iraq, in place of which his Mahdi Army provides an income for those who will take up the armed struggle.</li><li>Discrimination by sectarian affiliation has reached the point of separatism in public schools enforced by various militias but especially the Mahdi Army.</li><li>The ministry of health is controlled by the Sadrists. 1018 doctors have fled the country and an additional 3,000 have fled to Kurdistan.</li><li>Religious militias see fit to determine to determine what subjects women are allowed to study (where they are allowed to study).</li><li>Women are used as cannon fodder in the ongoing sectarian conflict. 1,000s of cases have been reported of Shiite and Sunni gangs or tribes kidnapping a woman and raping her, ruining her 'honor', which in turn dirties the 'honor' of the tribe. The tribe then follows the obligations of tradition which requires that such a woman be executed.</li><li>Much of the fundamentalist violence against women stems from their position within the Sharia which ranks women in a hierarchy from man-->children-->woman, placing her at the very bottom of the family and therefore society.</li><li>In one such case, in which a woman was kidnapped, raped and tortured for three days and then returned to her family, the IFC intervened to prevent her execution. She relocated to Kurdistan.</li><li>Students at universities in Basra and other cities have been directly requested not to go to school by the Sadrists. When students did not obey this order, a woman was isolated and shot in the head of front of hundreds of students. Zeyad at <a href="http://www.healingiraq.blogspot.com/">Healing Iraq</a> has written an account that goes much beyond this particular anecdote.<br /><br />"Sucked up in a sectarian vortex they can never escape, students in Iraq face enemies from all sides. Sadrist militias took over this particular university a long time ago. Posters of religious symbols filled lecture halls. A black religious flag flew above the university’s main tower. Girls were told to cover up, not just in veils, as was the case last year, but in <i>‘abayas</i>, or full Islamic body garb. College texts were tampered with. Student unions became fronts for militiamen, who replaced former Ba’athist unions and threatened students and professors alike for any reason. Professors were kicked out, because they were of the wrong sect or political ideology, and many were abducted and assassinated. Just days ago, there were rumours that three female students from the university were kidnapped, tortured and raped before they were killed by militiamen. However, some students insisted to complete their studies, even though attendance rates in Baghdad have fallen to less than 30%. Dozens of academics were abducted and went missing in one recent incident when gunmen in police uniform stormed an educational institution.<br /><br />As if all that was not enough, Sunni insurgent groups distributed pamphlets recently, calling on college students and professors to boycott their universities. Ironically, they called it a “campaign to support our scientists and students in Baghdad universities.” Students were warned not to attend their classes because universities have turned into headquarters of militias and death squads. “Save the lives of our professors and dear students from the rejectionist government of Maliki and their death squads,” one pamphlet said. “It is prohibited to attend after this announcement.” Another one featured a photo of the very main gate of Mustansiriya University, where the bombings took place yesterday, reading, “From these universities, our scientists graduated. And today they are killed on their gates. There is no solution to stop the bloodshed except by boycotting.” “God willing,” said another, “we will work to cleanse universities from these filthy groups.” </li></ul>It was made obvious during Suhad Ali's speech and Jawhary's subsequent remarks that there is no excuse (and has never been) for supporting either the anti-imperialist faction in Iraq, which is dedicated to establishing the men's society over all of Iraq, nor the imperialist faction of the coalition which has effectively functioned as a patron of the worst fundamentalist Shiite militias in the country i.e. the Badr brigades and SCIRI, even tolerating Moqtada Al-Sadr's imposition of Islamic dictatorship in Najaf and other parts of the south, not to mention the coalition's tight relationship with the 'progressive' fundamentalist Al-Sistani (who has declared "that men and women should not mix socially, that music for entertainment is prohibited and that women should veil their hair") and which, <span style="font-style: italic;">by embracing the social forms that bourgeois democracy should in its classical form abolish</span>, has done much to restore and reinforce the twin barbarisms of the tribe and Islam across Iraq. There remains perhaps no alternative to the current impasse than <span style="font-style: italic;">critically</span> supporting left elements in Iraq as well as the diaspora. Perhaps it will fall to the diaspora to organize itself in retaking the cities from which it has been expelled.sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17778790094623217541noreply@blogger.com5